View Single Post
Old 04-10-2021, 07:09 PM   #13
Leo656
The Franchise
 
Leo656's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: nWo Country
Posts: 27,696
More or less, although it got close to completing its initial 12-issue run - the Collected Edition lists 10 issues and it was originally presented or marketed to be a 12-issue series - and apparently must have generated enough interest that at one point it was supposed to continue under the rebranded title "Dark Knight: Boy Wonder". That was announced back in 2011 and nothing came of it since. It's pretty much just "vaporware", now. Especially since Miller went ahead and did TWO more sequels to "The Dark Knight Returns" since then, which suggests that there's no strong interest on either side to continue the ASB&R story or they would have done it by now. Either DC doesn't want it, or Miller isn't interested in finishing it, or both.

To be completely fair... it's not the WORST Batman stuff I've ever read, and I can buy it as a Definitely Not Canon take in which this particular Bruce is really screwed up and much more of a jerkass than normal. And if we must accept the whole "Dick Grayson Became A Twisted Super-Villain" plot point from "The Dark Knight Strikes Again" - and good LORD, you wanna talk about a BAD Batman comic? DK2 probably takes the sh*t taco - then this version of Robin's origin story where Bruce was outright abusive, calling him retarded and making him eat rats definitely fits into the... "questionable" canon of Miller's other Dark Knight books. And if nothing else, Jim Lee's art is always amazing. His Black Canary is... hm. Well, she's "something", let's put it like that.

ASB&R is a little more cut-and-dry than All-Star Superman, what with its "Canon Or Not?" status, as Miller has openly said numerous times that while all of his Batman stories share a continuity with each other they're not canon with anything else outside of that; the only one that gets muddy is Year One, since that was printed in the main Batman book and since other writers liked that one so much that they borrowed from it heavily later on, and so it basically became the de facto Batman Origin Story from that point on. But the Dark Knight books, ASB&R... none of that is canon anywhere except in the Frank Miller Batman Universe. And honestly, Thank F*cking God for that. But it does get weird, because Year One is canon with all of those, BUT is also more or less accepted as "real canon", whereas the rest are all very explicitly Elseworlds stories and labelled as such. Kind of a "Not All Rectangles Are Squares, But All Squares Are Rectangles" deal.

Definitely a rather... bizarre take on Batman & Robin, for sure. But I can see it making sense in its own self-contained way, and it's admittedly very, very pretty. So I do see some value in it, compared to "Dark Knight Strikes Again" which is, bar-none, one of the worst Batman comics I've ever read in my life. I can re-read it when I want a laugh and it doesn't hurt me; DK2, by contrast, is physically painful for me to even look at.
-----------

- More to topic, y'know whose run on Superman ("Adventures of Superman", specifically) I really liked? Greg Rucka. I really liked the whole "Ruin" saga, and his use of the supporting cast, even though I thought the Prof. Hamilton reveal was kind of a letdown and came sort of out of nowhere. That was a really strong run on the whole, though, especially compared to the absolute dogsh*t run Chuck Austen was having over on Action Comics at the exact same time. I mentioned "Sacrifice" above but you really can't go wrong with anything from Rucka's whole run on Superman. He's not often mentioned as one of the best Superman writers but I definitely think he is.

- Side Note: After I started this thread, I bought both hardcover volumes of "Superman: For Tomorrow" for under $20 total. I don't often do this for stories I already have the single issues of, but given how all my longboxes are stacked up that's definitely one I want to have right at my fingertips on the bookshelf for "anytime" reading.

Kind of "agnostic" on Brian Azzarello but he spun a damn good Superman story in his one turn at bat. Didn't much care for the "Lex Luthor: Man of Steel" mini, but "For Tomorrow" is terrific.
__________________

"I left some words quite far from here to be a short reminder...
I laid them out in stone, in case they need to last forever..."

"But hey... I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know."
nWo Tech: The Official Thread Poison of the Technodrome Forums
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxr...awnHgDz1ceDcfA
https://theroxxshow.blogspot.com/
Leo656 is offline   Reply With Quote