Friday, March 2, 2012

comic review: Holy Terror

When I first flipped through it last year on the shelf, I was pretty impressed, thinking "Frank still got it", due to pages like this:

I didn't know a lot going into it, only that Frank Miller is a legendary comic book creator, known for having re-defined Batman and Daredevil for a generation, and creating Sin City. Apparently this book was originally supposed to be a Batman story about fighting al-queda. Turned into generic Batman & Catwoman archetypes fighting generic Muslim extremist archetypes.

I might have sounded like a fool to the comic shop owner when I remarked how awesome the book looked. In hindsight, I was only right about the first half of the book. For the first part, the art was gritty, but dynamic, with a great white ink effect of a rainstorm throughout. About halfway through...I don't know what to say. I would never normally have the arrogance to say I could do better than an artist of Frank's reputation, but...

I don't like to say negative things about a creator's work. It was just too much difference in quality, I've never seen anything like this before. I feel confused. The story even started off strong with a fun (and maybe a little disturbing) Cat and Bat...I mean Fixer chase across the city rooftops. They quickly discover suicide bombings all over the city, and it gets pretty cliche' from there. I can only compare the story to a loved one who loses their mind in old age. Choose to remember the good times when they were young, forget the bad.

Going to go read the Dark Knight Returns and pretend this didn't happen.

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