Batman the Dark Knight Strikes Again Getcomicsinfo

Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again, too known every bit Night Knight two, was a three issue Batman mini-series written and illustrated by Frank Miller with Lynn Varley in 2001–2002, the sequel to 1986'southward Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.

Set three years after the events of The Nighttime Knight Returns, the globe has managed to get downhill since and so—the President is a simulated, and the police state of a globe is run by Lex Luthor and Brainiac, who has many a hero enslaved.

Of course, Batman won't exist having that, so he and his allies—Catgirl, the Green Pointer, and his Batboys—set out to change the world past judicious awarding of violence. But first, they need allies—and they demand to bargain with Superman, who is notwithstanding in the thrall of the regime...

Overall, it goes further off the deep end than The Night Knight Returns, nigh to the indicate of being a Deconstruction of the Darker and Edgier nature of the first story though, naturally, not everyone thinks that makes it any good. The color palette is much more than varied than The Dark Knight Returns' muted colorization, taking it to an almost garish degree, that takes a footling getting used to (many reviewers termed it ugly). It was somewhen followed starting in 2015 by Night Knight III: The Chief Race.

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This miniseries contains examples of:

• Adaptational Ugliness: Nobody is particularly good-looking in this comic, only Lex Luthor takes the cake: while rather presentable-looking in the main comics continuity, Luthor here is drawn as a morbidly obese hunchback with a pointy, crooked nose.
• Ambiguously Gay: Dick Grayson of the Depraved Homosexual multifariousness
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: At least ane commentator regarded News in the Nude with incredulity, apparently being unaware of Naked News . At the very to the lowest degree, though, the latter's a paid subscription service.
  • The sex activity work industry becoming more or the mainstream, especially among the sexy Cosplay of superheroes, seemed ridiculous for the time both in and out of universe.
• Art Shift: When searching the ruins of Metropolis, Superman discovers a locket containing Aureate Age pictures of him & Lois Lane.
  • The art in general is also very different from the first book. The coloring is the well-nigh obvious change (from muted and dirty to garishly brilliant) but everybody has really exaggerated figures either in terms of proportions or angles. Lex in particular looks like a shaved gorilla.
• Writer Tract: Evidently Miller doesn't similar trends the media are taking.
• Best Her to Bed Her: Wonder Woman.
• Beware the Superman: At the end of the series Superman rules the globe with his daughter, Lara.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Lex Luthor and Brainiac, with New Joker equally The Dragon.
• Brother–Sis Team: Hawkman and Hawkwoman's children.
• Butt Brand: Ane issue features a woman with the House of El sigil stamped on her ass.
• Butt-Monkey: Superman. It really gets to the point where you call back Miller has something confronting the character.
• The Cameo:
  • Alfred East. Neuman appears every bit one of the talking heads in consequence ii.
  • In a blink-and-you'll-miss it moment, Kara Zor-El makes an advent ◊ leading the Kandorian rebels. In that scene Brainiac gloats over belongings Superman's cousin hostage.
• Cat Girl: Carrie Kelly, the one-time Robin.
• Grapheme Development: Of a sort. In All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder, Batman was a gruesome individual. He treated everyone in the story like dirt, insisted that Dick eat a rat for dinner, threatened Alfred for feeding him a proper repast, slapped Dick for crying over the loss of his parents, and gleefully killed (dirty, some willing to murder kids) cops chasing him and was overall a deranged, loathsome maniac who ironically gained some humanity from Grayson.
  • Batman: The Night Knight Returns could exist interpreted as Bruce Wayne being older, wiser, and struggling to hold on to his humanity and/or sanity. By The Night Knight Strikes Again, Bruce Wayne probably reverted dorsum to his personality in All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder. In brusk, what you have hither is i seriously messed-up homo who is not as rational and logical every bit he thinks he is.
• Coitus Ensues: Superman and Wonder Adult female had several pages dedicated to them having sex for no reason other than to brand Superman feel better.
• Comic-Book Time
• Crazy-Prepared: Naturally plenty, Batman. To the point of having glowing green boxing gloves.
• Creepy Child: Saturn Girl.
• Decoy Leader: The President was a decoy for Luthor.
• Defiant to the End: Batman, when captured by Luthor.
• Depraved Homosexual: It's implied that Dick Grayson had the hots for Batman, but was rejected past him, which led to Dick condign a villain. At the finish of the comic Batman taunts him with all sorts of quasi-homophobic euphemisms relating to his supposed "sissiness". And since Dick is the villain, patently Miller thinks nosotros're supposed to side with Batman hither.
• Destructo-Nookie: Superman and Wonder Adult female have sex and so over-the-top it alters the globe's weather condition patterns.
• Distracted past the Sexy: More than or less the point of "News in the Nude".
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Hawkman and Hawkgirl, ingloriously nuked off-panel. Captain Curiosity had a longer sequence where a behemothic building was dropped on him.
• Expy: A weird inversion, or something. This story's The Question is basically Rorschach from Watchmen, and Rorschach himself was a Captain Ersatz of the original Question, so this makes this version of the Question closer to the original Ditko Question and oh no, we've gone crosseyed.
• Apartment "What": "Information technology's about to blow! ◊"
• Gang of Hats: The Batboys.
• Gonk: There are some seriously ugly grapheme designs here, especially Lex Luthor, an iconic Diabolical Mastermind, Übermensch and Man of Wealth and Taste who for some reason is depicted as a cigar-chomping, hulking neanderthal with huge hands and a hunchback, to the point that it looks every bit though his easily are physically weighing him downward, forcing him to walk with a hunch and thereby making him a literal knuckle-dragger, causing one to wonder if he is really meant to be physically deformed. The Gonkishness is mostly limited to the elderly males of the cast (which there are a ton of) but even the ostensibly pretty females have weirdly athwart faces.
• Hamster-Wheel Power: This is what the Flash has been up to lately.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Ane of the libation bits of the series is that Miller really woke people up to simply how utterly, insanely ''powerful'' Plastic Man is. A lot of comics released after this seemed to run with Miller'due south description of Plas equally a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass of epic proportions.
• Hypocrite: Catgirl berates one of the 'Batboys' in issue one almost killing some soldiers and even beats him up for it. All the same in event three she clams to have killed the Joker imposter "without an ounce of remorse" and "without a shred of regret" with an arrow through the head. Truthful he couldn't die from that, only she didn't know that at the fourth dimension.
  • The beating itself at to the lowest degree is justified by the fact that the Batboy himself reverted to his more psychopathic attitude and threatened to pause her bones first. Now the whole killing just not killing on the other hand...
• Intimate Healing: Superman is completely healed of his injuries after having sex with Wonder Woman. According to Miller himself, this was done to highlight the fact that women are "nurturers and life givers".
• Invincible Hero: Batman. By the fourth dimension anyone comes up with anything he's already twelve steps ahead of them. Superman heading for the Bat-Cave? No trouble! Only use the gigantic Kryptonite gloves over there! Got captured? No biggie! It was part of Batman's plan all along. It gets so bad that Batman can literally storm into Luthor's base of operations of operations, beat out him upwards, cut his face, and just leave with absolutely zero consequences. In the page image, he spells out why—he wanted to inspire terror in Luthor, to let him know that his empire was crumbling. And he wanted to requite Hawkboy the honor of killing Luthor.
• Kill It with Burn down: Dick Grayson has become a Near-Invulnerable Monster Clown super-assassin that can survive all attacks, but is finally destroyed once and for all when he falls into the Lava Pit that formed in the destruction of the batcave.
• Kryptonite Ring: More than a ring—try Kryptonite napalm, Kryptonite power fists...
• Losing Your Caput: Dick Grayson. He reattaches information technology.
• Monster Clown: For one time, there was a reason to highlight this. It's not the Joker, information technology's Dick Grayson.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Hot Gates, the porn star who dresses every bit Big Barda, is a shout out to the recurring theme of Thermopylae that appears in Frank Miller's work. She was also name dropped in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and so information technology's also a Call-Back.
  • The President has the last name Rickard, as in Prez.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands:
  • Luthor'south nanites removed all the Martian Manhunter'southward powers except his ability to run across the future. A power he'due south never actually had before.
  • Superman can now absorb energy from the Earth to heal himself and replenish his powers. It was always the Power of the Sun earlier.
• No Proper name Given: We never learn the names of Hawkman and Hawkwoman's children. Only that their son is chosen Hawkboy.
• No One Could Survive That!: Saturn Girl has a vision of Catgirl being murdered by the New Joker. Catgirl isn't besides worried, as she shot the New Joker with several explosive arrows, so went to work on him with a hatchet.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Happens to pretty much every character, good or bad. Batman is at his sorriest-looking country ever by the stop, going well past "beaten up" and into "disfigured."
• Old Superhero: Pretty much the entire cast, with a few exceptions, such as Carrie Kelly, or the new Supergirl (daughter of Superman and Wonder Adult female, the fan-ship of many an Elseworlds writer).
• Our Wormholes Are Different: A throwaway line during Hal Jordan'south journey back to Globe about the wormhole being where he still left it implies he can create or motility them.
• Concrete God: Wonder Adult female calls Superman this.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: It's unsaid that Carrie doesn't actually know what the Zorro Marker is, only that it means something to Batman.
• Power Dynamics Kink: Implied if not outright stated to be the case of Superman and Wonder Woman'southward relationship. Her response to Superman feeling down about Batman beating him (again) is to punch him in the face up and say, "Where is the homo who threw me to the basis and fabricated me his prize?".
• President Evil: Actually a hologram controlled by Lex Luthor.
• Puny Humans: What Lara Kent believes.
• Retcon: Of sorts. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns treats the absence of superheroes (and Superman having "sold out") equally a consequence of a Super Registration Act, with the unnamed president strongly implied to be Ronald Reagan, who's super-aged and losing his sanity. Hither, it's revealed that the whole scenario is due to Lex Luthor and Braniac belongings the world (and Kandor) earnest via orbiting cannons and a hologram of the president (whose name is stated to exist "Rickard", a reference to the comic Prez).
• Retraux: Superman looks more like his Gold Historic period version than the i used in DKR.
• Sacrificial Panthera leo: The Guardian, the Creeper, and the Martian Manhunter all dice in horrible ways to show how dangerous this "New Joker" (Dick Grayson) actually is.
• Sexposition: Role of the arc's Bad Futureness is "News in the Nude," the simply news worth watching. Approximate Frank Miller had never heard of Naked News.
• Sibling Team: The original Hawk and Dove are inspired to start fighting injustice once again by Batman'south speech, but they're a bit out of shape (fifty-fifty if that probably won't affect their powers much), and Don argues that they spent nigh of their time every bit vigilantes arguing with each other.
• Signature Way
• Strawman Political: The Question is a radical Libertarian, Green Arrow is a radical Marxist. Miller didn't requite us whatever clue which he agrees with, and which, if either, is meant to exist correct.
  • False Dichotomy. Both characters are shown to be ridiculously over the pinnacle in their antics. The Question refuses to use anything more technologically advanced than a typewriter (though that could exist Properly Paranoid given the setting), and Greenish Arrow is a hypocritical billionaire Marxist hippie who presumably spent a fortune to get a cybernetic arm when the world is in the throes of a nuclear winter.
• Swallowed Whole: Carrie accidentally swallows Ray Palmer early on, leading to a Vomit Indiscretion Shot.
• Take That!: Word of God says the book as Frank Miller's reaction to the Dark Age Dork Age he helped inspire.
  • Which leads to some Fridge Logic when combined with All-Star Batman & Robin, the Male child Wonder. For example, this comic lauds Light-green Lantern (Hal Jordan) specifically as a noble hero exiled past the petty people of Earth, merely who is shown to be absolutely worthy of godlike power. In contrast, the Goddamn Batman once lured Hal into an ambush and shell him savagely with little provocation. The beating occurs canonically before he entrusts Bats with a means to summon him, but was written later.
• Technical Pacifist: Batman at this signal is simply i out of keeping his give-and-take. He clearly does non intendance almost killing enemies anymore, letting subordinates use lethal forcefulness liberally, and actually shows a disturbing corporeality of glee over Hawkboy brutally murdering Luthor. Somewhen, he opts to break his code birthday when he happily kills Dick Grayson himself.
• Together in Death: Hawkman and Hawkwoman were killed in a military strike ordered by Lex Luthor, embracing each other in their final moments.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Batman.
• Villain Decay: Brainiac and Lex Luthor aren't nearly as smart in TDKSA as they are in other stories. In fact, some of the decisions they make are downright moronic.
• Nosotros ARE Struggling Together: Green Pointer and The Question, in that ane wants Marxist Socialism, and the other Randian Objectivism.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to Mary Marvel? It was never revealed if she was rescued or not.
• Wife Husbandry: Dick Grayson implies that this is what Batman is doing with Carrie, though Discussion of Miller denies this vehemently. Also, Dick Grayson was batshit insane at that point, and had just spent a practiced amount of time mutilating Carrie out of psychotic jealousy. He is an unreliable source, to say the least.
• Willfully Weak: This is plainly Batman'south (and Miller's) main problem with Superman, as he stops beingness treated as a Butt-Monkey once he starts taking the attitude to match his ability as a Concrete God.
• Winged Humanoid: Hawkman and Hawkwoman gave their children wings while living in Republic of costa rica.
• You lot Killed My Begetter: Luthor killed Hawkman and Hawkwoman. Their children, Hawkboy and his sister, want revenge.
• Zeerust Canon: Published xv years afterward, but only takes place two years afterward.
• Zorro Mark: Batman carves ane onto Lex Luthor's face up.

  Catgirl: "The Boss leaves his marker. [nosotros encounter Batman use a batarang to make the three quick slices] It must mean something to him... "

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/TheDarkKnightStrikesAgain

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