Oh man…

Just finished the first book of The Dark Knight Strikes Again and it rocks. Hard. The story opens three years after the last series and no punches are pulled. Miller goes right for the throat. In the near future, our world has been compromised by corporations and the US has been under martial law. With mainstream news media castrated by corporate sponsorship, citizens live gray, fruitless, though comfortable, lives. Costume heros are a thing of legend (in fact, outlawed) and there appears to be no one with guts to lead the revolution.

Enter Bruce Wayne and his band of “reformed” street thugs.

Miller brings his unique vision to some old DC staples, like the Flash and the Atom. Most of all, Miller has breathed new lust into Wonder Woman’s tights. Boy howdy!

On the downside, this issue didn’t pack the same punch as the first issue of the last series. Part of this is due to there being almost no setup for the story; Miller is yarn-spinning at full-throttle. Also, the mood is not as brooding. This episode is the opening salvo in what promises to be a major ass-kicking superhero war. There isn’t a lot of time for introspection.

It appears after many years of neglect, I’m in love with comics all over again.

[Original use.perl.org post and comments.]