PhoenixRising

Damn. I loved it.

sum1

Frank Miller is usually full of crap, to be honest. I liked his collaboration with JRJR on Man Without Fear, but I found much of his Daredevil run to be annoying and overrated, particularly the vaunted Born Again storyline.

I'm sick of his "Look I'm being cynical and realistically gritty" style. Critics think it's real clever, but it's just a teenage rebellion against the relative optimism of traditional superhero comics. And that script lettering is bloody hard to read and quite unnecessary. David Mazzucchelli's deliberately unheroic style of art leaves Batman looking as bad as he did in the '60s tv show. And I think giving the corrupt police commissioner a Jewish surname was quite unnecessary. And as an origin of Batman the story sucks. It provides very little on his actual origin. Where he got his skills, what he did in that time abroad, what his childhood was like after his parents were killed. etc. There's very little in the comic other than cliched cycnicism about authority and a lot of look-I'm-gritty posturing. Frank Miller, grow up.

wickedrum

Outlander

PhoenixRising

Outlander

Friends

NFC Divisional Playoffs - Philadelphia Eagles vs. New Orleans Saints

Well, I actually agree with you when it comes to Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, sum1. But I actually did like Batman: Year One as a jumping off point for Bruce Wayne's origin story. I thought it was optimistic when it came to showing Bruce and James Gordon becoming allies and showing how Bruce spends his first year in Gotham. Yeah, I know that it leaves out a lot of the stuff that happens earlier, like Bruce's training, but that stuff actually gets fleshed out with more detail in the Legends of the Dark Knight series, which kind of acts as a companion to Year One. A lot of Bruce's backstory gets told later on, and Year One sets it up. I do think that the story for Selina Kyle couldn't been better. I thought the whole prostitute storyline was unnecessary. And I always thought that Commissioner Loeb was named after comic book writer Jeph Loeb, who eventually wrote The Long Halloween and Hush.

sum1

No, it's been expressly stated that Commissioner Loeb was NOT named after Jeph Loeb. And even if the character were named after the writer, sticking a Jewish name on a very corrupt police commissioner smacks of the sort of conspiracy theory that sees powerful corrupt Jewish people behind every problem. It's not like police commissioners are usually Jewish. If anything they're more likely to be of Irish ancestry like Miller himself.

In Batman year one you never get to know Bruce Wayne/Batman. You only get to know Jim Gordon, and considering it's called Batman: Year One, not Jim Gordon: Year One, it has to be counted as a failure.

Also, considering the series is supposed to be Batman's origin, his training should shown be shown there, along with various other things which aren't shown. It shouldn't be relegated to a follow-up series. Leaving them out makes it a failure. They should have made it two issues longer (6, like Man of Steel, instead of 4) and included that stuff.

I didn't find the series to be optimistic in the slightest. It showed a city that was almost totally corrupt, where most of the police were basically evil, and the mayor too. Frank Miller has a habit of flogging cynical darkness like he thinks it makes him look both clever and tough simultaneously. But I've come to realize it's just adolescent posturing.

As for Catwoman, at least she comes off more as a person than Bruce does in the series. But Frank Miller does seem to think most women are prostitutes or something. I'm sick of his gritty city schtick.

I found the series to be 90% bull.

PhoenixRising

Friends


Okay, sum1.

sum1

In-depth answer.

PhoenixRising

Well, I've already given mine.

sum1

I'm really pissed off about the Loeb thing. Judge Dredd comics have done that too -stuck a lot of Jewish names on criminals and villains. It gets to be a bit much after a while. And it's not like comics are overflowing with tons of Jewish superheroes. There wasn't a single openly Jewish superhero until Kitty Pryde came along in the early '80s. And she got cast as non-Jewish in the films. You don't see them casting Black Panther as a white guy.

PhoenixRising

I honestly didn't know that Loeb was a Jewish name, sum1. For the record, there was a Jewish mob here in the USA, along with the Irish and Italian mob, with gangsters like Mickey Cohen, Meyer Lansky, and Bugsy Siegel. Maybe it's a reference to that, I don't know.

sum1

I know there was a Jewish mob, but they're long gone. None of that would make it more likely for a Jewish guy to be a police comissioner in the '70s or '80s (whenever the story is set), or a corrupt one at that. There's no excuse. It just stinks.

wickedrum

Black Swan

sum1

Nothing.

PhoenixRising

wickedrum

The First