The Dark Knight Strikes Again 2001 Issue 3

Batman: The Night Knight Strikes Again, too known as Dark Knight 2, was a iii consequence Batman mini-series written and illustrated by Frank Miller with Lynn Varley in 2001–2002, the sequel to 1986's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.

Fix 3 years subsequently the events of The Dark Knight Returns, the world has managed to go downhill since and then—the President is a fake, and the police country of a world is run past Lex Luthor and Brainiac, who has many a hero enslaved.

Of course, Batman won't be having that, then he and his allies—Catgirl, the Green Arrow, and his Batboys—ready out to change the globe by judicious awarding of violence. Just get-go, they need allies—and they need to deal with Superman, who is still in the thrall of the regime...

Overall, it goes further off the deep end than The Night Knight Returns, almost to the bespeak of existence a Deconstruction of the Darker and Edgier nature of the first story though, naturally, not anybody thinks that makes it whatever good. The color palette is much more varied than The Nighttime Knight Returns' muted colorization, taking information technology to an virtually garish caste, that takes a lilliputian getting used to (many reviewers termed it ugly). It was eventually followed starting in 2015 by Nighttime Knight III: The Chief Race.

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This miniseries contains examples of:

• Adaptational Ugliness: Nobody is particularly proficient-looking in this comic, but Lex Luthor takes the block: while rather presentable-looking in the chief comics continuity, Luthor hither is fatigued every bit a morbidly obese hunchback with a pointy, crooked nose.
• Ambiguously Gay: Dick Grayson of the Depraved Homosexual variety
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: At least ane commentator regarded News in the Nude with incredulity, apparently existence unaware of Naked News. At the very to the lowest degree, though, the latter'due south a paid subscription service.
  • The sex work industry becoming more or the mainstream, especially amongst the sexy Cosplay of superheroes, seemed ridiculous for the time both in and out of universe.
• Art Shift: When searching the ruins of Urban center, Superman discovers a locket containing Golden Age pictures of him & Lois Lane.
  • The art in general is besides very different from the beginning book. The coloring is the most obvious modify (from muted and dirty to garishly bright) but everybody has really exaggerated figures either in terms of proportions or angles. Lex in particular looks like a shaved gorilla.
• Author Tract: Plainly Miller doesn't like trends the media are taking.
• Best Her to Bed Her: Wonder Woman.
• Beware the Superman: At the cease of the series Superman rules the world with his daughter, Lara.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Lex Luthor and Brainiac, with New Joker as The Dragon.
• Brother–Sister Team: Hawkman and Hawkwoman'due south children.
• Butt Brand: One issue features a woman with the House of El sigil stamped on her ass.
• Butt-Monkey: Superman. Information technology really gets to the betoken where yous think Miller has something against the grapheme.
• The Cameo:
  • Alfred E. Neuman appears every bit one of the talking heads in result ii.
  • In a blink-and-you'll-miss it moment, Kara Zor-El makes an appearance ◊ leading the Kandorian rebels. In that scene Brainiac gloats over holding Superman'southward cousin earnest.
• Cat Girl: Carrie Kelly, the one-time Robin.
• Character 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 Dark Knight Returns could be interpreted as Bruce Wayne being older, wiser, and struggling to hold on to his humanity and/or sanity. Past The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Bruce Wayne probably reverted back to his personality in All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder. In short, what yous have here is one seriously messed-up human who is not every bit rational and logical as he thinks he is.
• Coitus Ensues: Superman and Wonder Woman had several pages dedicated to them having sex activity for no reason other than to brand Superman feel better.
• Comic-Book Time
• Crazy-Prepared: Naturally enough, Batman. To the point of having glowing dark-green battle 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 by 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, apparently Miller thinks we're supposed to side with Batman here.
• Destructo-Nookie: Superman and Wonder Woman accept sex so over-the-pinnacle it alters the globe'due south weather patterns.
• Distracted past the Sexy: More 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, and then this makes this version of the Question closer to the original Ditko Question and oh no, we've gone crosseyed.
• Flat "What": "It's about to accident! ◊"
• Gang of Hats: The Batboys.
• Gonk: There are some seriously ugly character designs here, especially Lex Luthor, an iconic Diabolical Mastermind, Übermensch and Man of Wealth and Gustatory modality who for some reason is depicted every bit a cigar-chomping, hulking neanderthal with huge easily and a hunchback, to the point that it looks as though his hands are physically weighing him down, forcing him to walk with a hunch and thereby making him a literal knuckle-dragger, causing one to wonder if he is actually meant to exist physically deformed. The Gonkishness is by and large limited to the elderly males of the cast (which in that location are a ton of) but even the ostensibly pretty females have weirdly angular faces.
• Hamster-Cycle Ability: This is what the Flash has been upward to lately.
• Heart Is an Crawly Power: One of the cooler bits of the series is that Miller really woke people up to just how utterly, insanely ''powerful'' Plastic Man is. A lot of comics released afterwards this seemed to run with Miller's description of Plas as a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass of epic proportions.
• Hypocrite: Catgirl berates one of the 'Batboys' in effect one about killing some soldiers and even beats him up for it. Yet in outcome 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. True he couldn't die from that, simply 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 mental attitude and threatened to suspension her bones first. At present the whole killing but 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-Cavern? No trouble! Only use the gigantic Kryptonite gloves over in that location! 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, vanquish him upwardly, cut his face, and just leave with absolutely zero consequences. In the page epitome, he spells out why—he wanted to inspire terror in Luthor, to let him know that his empire was crumbling. And he wanted to give Hawkboy the honor of killing Luthor.
• Impale Information technology with Burn down: Dick Grayson has become a Nigh-Invulnerable Monster Clown super-assassinator that can survive all attacks, merely 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—endeavor Kryptonite napalm, Kryptonite power fists...
• Losing Your Head: Dick Grayson. He reattaches it.
• Monster Clown: For once, in that location was a reason to highlight this. It'southward non the Joker, it's Dick Grayson.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Hot Gates, the porn star who dresses as Big Barda, is a shout out to the recurring theme of Thermopylae that appears in Frank Miller's work. She was also proper name dropped in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, so it'southward also a Phone call-Back.
  • The President has the terminal proper noun Rickard, as in Prez.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands:
  • Luthor's nanites removed all the Martian Manhunter'south powers except his power to see the future. A power he's never actually had earlier.
  • Superman can now absorb free energy from the Earth to heal himself and replenish his powers. It was always the Power of the Sun before.
• No Name Given: Nosotros never learn the names of Hawkman and Hawkwoman'due south children. But that their son is chosen Hawkboy.
• No I Could Survive That!: Saturn Daughter has a vision of Catgirl beingness murdered by the New Joker. Catgirl isn't besides worried, every bit she shot the New Joker with several explosive arrows, and then went to piece of 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 state e'er by the end, 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 Woman, the fan-ship of many an Elseworlds writer).
• Our Wormholes Are Dissimilar: A throwaway line during Hal Jordan's journey back to Earth about the wormhole being where he nevertheless left it implies he tin can create or movement them.
• Physical God: Wonder Woman calls Superman this.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Information technology's implied that Carrie doesn't actually know what the Zorro Mark is, just that it means something to Batman.
• Power Dynamics Kink: Implied if not outright stated to be the case of Superman and Wonder Woman'south relationship. Her response to Superman feeling downward about Batman beating him (again) is to dial him in the confront and say, "Where is the man who threw me to the footing and made 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") every bit a event of a Super Registration Human action, with the unnamed president strongly unsaid to be Ronald Reagan, who'due south super-aged and losing his sanity. Hither, it's revealed that the whole scenario is due to Lex Luthor and Braniac holding the earth (and Kandor) hostage 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 one used in DKR.
• Sacrificial Lion: The Guardian, the Creeper, and the Martian Manhunter all die in horrible ways to testify how unsafe this "New Joker" (Dick Grayson) really is.
• Sexposition: Part of the arc's Bad Futureness is "News in the Nude," the only news worth watching. Approximate Frank Miller had never heard of Naked News.
• Sibling Squad: The original Hawk and Pigeon are inspired to start fighting injustice once again past Batman's oral communication, but they're a bit out of shape (fifty-fifty if that probably won't touch their powers much), and Don argues that they spent most of their time as vigilantes arguing with each other.
• Signature Style
• Strawman Political: The Question is a radical Libertarian, Light-green Arrow is a radical Marxist. Miller didn't give us whatever clue which he agrees with, and which, if either, is meant to be correct.
  • Faux Dichotomy. Both characters are shown to be ridiculously over the acme in their antics. The Question refuses to use annihilation more than technologically avant-garde than a typewriter (though that could be 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.
• Accept That!: Word of God says the book as Frank Miller's reaction to the Night Historic period Dork Age he helped inspire.
  • Which leads to some Fridge Logic when combined with All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder. For instance, this comic lauds Greenish Lantern (Hal Jordan) specifically as a noble hero exiled by the petty people of Earth, just who is shown to be absolutely worthy of godlike ability. In dissimilarity, the Goddamn Batman once lured Hal into an ambush and crush him savagely with little provocation. The beating occurs canonically before he entrusts Bats with a ways to summon him, but was written afterward.
• Technical Pacifist: Batman at this point is simply one out of keeping his word. He conspicuously does not care about killing enemies anymore, letting subordinates use lethal force liberally, and really shows a disturbing amount of glee over Hawkboy brutally murdering Luthor. Somewhen, he opts to break his code altogether when he happily kills Dick Grayson himself.
• Together in Decease: Hawkman and Hawkwoman were killed in a war machine strike ordered past Lex Luthor, embracing each other in their final moments.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Batman.
• Villain Decay: Brainiac and Lex Luthor aren't about as smart in TDKSA as they are in other stories. In fact, some of the decisions they make are downright moronic.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Green Arrow and The Question, in that one 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. Too, Dick Grayson was batshit insane at that point, and had only spent a skilful amount of time mutilating Carrie out of psychotic jealousy. He is an unreliable source, to say the least.
• Willfully Weak: This is apparently Batman's (and Miller's) main problem with Superman, every bit he stops existence treated every bit a Butt-Monkey once he starts taking the attitude to lucifer his power as a Physical God.
• Winged Humanoid: Hawkman and Hawkwoman gave their children wings while living in Costa Rica.
• You Killed My Begetter: Luthor killed Hawkman and Hawkwoman. Their children, Hawkboy and his sis, want revenge.
• Zeerust Canon: Published 15 years afterward, just only takes place two years later.
• Zorro Mark: Batman carves one onto Lex Luthor's face.

  Catgirl: "The Boss leaves his mark. [we see Batman use a batarang to brand the 3 quick slices] Information technology must mean something to him... "

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