"Dark" Knight does not mean "Psychotic-Ninja-Nutjob" Knight.

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That's not how Miller depicts him, either. I recall an interview JB did in (I think) Comics Scene, in which he stated that Batman should *not* be unhappy. Unlike most people who suffered such a tragedy, he gets to vent his frustrations night after night. He should be *smiling* and thinking, "I'm bashing heads!" The interviewer responded that "such a Batman would frighten" him.

This is, I think, Miller's Batman. Even in All-Star Batman and Robin (which I have pacing problems with more than anything else), Miller's Bruce Wayne loves what he does and is practically giddy about it ('the goddamn Batman!').

Miller sees Batman as a sort of "urban terrorist" ("Striking terror -- best part of the job" -- from DK Strikes Back). He's not a caped crusader fighting aliens or tackling crimes the otherwise competent cops can't handle. That doesn't make sense given that his whole motivation stems from a simple street mugging gone bad. He is not psycho, though. He never killed anyone in Dark Knight -- even when cops were trying to kill him. He is ruthless, breaking bones and cracking ribs.

It's an interesting, very primal take on the character.

I agree with with Mr. Miller, Elektra is Dead.

Robert K.  Live from Austin

It's an interesting, very primal take on the character.

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I loathe it.

Limbaughian or O'reillyian

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THey are not nearly the same thing

 I'm surprised at his hyperbole
around people equating flushing the Koran with other violent acts.

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He's wrong by a lot that it is half the country, but not wrong that it is done, especially by a good number of the media. His opinions on it seem very "real guy" to me, from the little we got.

Stephen,

You're right: Miller's version is not the psycho-ninja-nutjob; that's the product of everyone who's tried to one-up him on the grim-n-gritty meter since BTDKR and BYO.

Perhaps Miller's Dark Knight is the same Batman that's in ASBARTBW, but it's not playing well--for me, at least.

Almost half my country equates flushing a Koran down a toilet with sawing the head off an innocent contractor

There are a few important contextual details he's leaving out here, namely that the Koran-flushing (if there was indeed Koran-flushing) happened inside a concentration camp populated by prisoners held for dubious reasons in conditions violating the Geneva Conventions by an administration that condones and seems to regularly indulge in the use of torture. They're part of a larger series of such prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, Eastern Europe and North Africa, where a large number of prisoners, many of them captives from a war of aggression against a sovereign nation in flagrant violation of international law, seem to be languishing indefinitely without due process.

Christ, what a tool. I had no idea Frank Miller was such a blithering idiot. Well, one less comic creator's work to buy.

It should be fun to watch people try to claim that the fourth article of the Geneva convention applies to non nonuniformed combatants as opposed to civilians(nonuniformed nonombatants) and grant the Taliban the protections of a document that THEY never signed and hold in contempt.

Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention are not protected by it.

Frank's right. Elektra IS dead. She lives on spiritually in the Wildstorm universe which is all Elektra and all Wolverine ALL the Time even after ten PM on Sundays. Ninja-kewl is on dialysis anyway.

And I still still completely hate the All Star Batman. Issue 4: "It's time to leave the Batmobile!: Or... Bruce needs a pee!"

And I still love the incredible Big Guy and Rusty stuff he and Geof Darrow did.

There's such a thing as signing up to the spirit as well as the letter of the convention.

If you want the high ground you need to be prepared to actually occupy it.

America is frittering away international sympathy generated by the barbaric acts of others (which are infinitly worse) by glossing over minor idiocy that it could relatively easily avoid.

We're the same - we had some tube trains and a bus blown up, our daft response - have armed police shoot an innocent man on suspicion. D'oh.

Would the 'real' Captain America torture a prisoner, or fly one to a less strict state in the implicit hope that he'd get tortured there?

Simon BJ