LUDIC LOG

The reputedly long-awaited sequel to "Batman: the Dark Knight Returns" is out. "The Dark Knight Strikes Again" (or "DK2", as it is known, in keeping with the 'lame, rad-sounding abbreviation that presumes you know exactly what we're talking about' marketing rule of the day), by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley -- it's nice to see coequal billing given to someone doing a job that, in the comics world, is increasingly being done by machines -- is a three-issue miniseries, of which the first two issues have just been released, and which I naturally snatched up immediately.

It doesn't compare, on first read, to the original -- an eternal problem with sequels is that the characters and setting is known, and the element of freshness of the first installment is gone. But the art is phenomenal -- Miller has progressed more than perhaps any mainstream comic artist save Bill Sienkiewicz. His composition and bizarre, distorted line and perspective are breathtaking to look at, and inimitable enough that he hasn't spawned imitators, so seeing it still feels new. He's more an iconographer than an artist, and I mean this absolutely as a compliment. Lynn Varley deserves her name on the cover in big letters, too: her colors and shadings are tremendous and add an almost Catholic dimension to Miller's splash pages. His figures dominate the center and draw the eye, and her colors make them resemble some sort of alternate version of votive candles with Wonder Woman playing the role of the Virgen de Guadalupe.

The story, on the other hand, has flaws. It delivers what the fans want (and sure, I count myself in that number): Batman is an utter badass. All the heavy hitters make an appearance. We get a pair of terrific, menacing villains. There's a bunch of fascinating plot points (the Atom, his memory and identity destroyed, trapped in a petri dish; the Flash, forced to run like a hamster in a treadmill to power the West Coast; the inventive slang of the Batboys). And there's lots of entertaining black humor (various riffs on the media, including the hilarious "Super Giant Manga Big News"; cameos by a thinly veiled George Will and other professional pundits; the president's cabinet all having corporate sponsorships instead of names). But still, the story seems a tad disjointed; characters appear and disappear, with fantastic introductions but little explicatory background and no follow-up (the faux-Joker; the Hawkchildren). There's an assumption of geekiness that, while justified on, say, my part, may not appeal to the casual reader that's so necessary for the mass-market legitimization of comics, of which books like this should be the vanguard; assuming an encylcopedic familiarity with the characters (and the subsequent oh-cool frisson when they appear) doesn't work with the average reader. There's a strange continuum of characterization; while it's nice to see the Question turned into Rorschach -- considering Rorschach was supposed to be the Question to begin with -- it's rather disorienting to hear Braniac and the Martian Manhunter talking like street thugs from the Bronx. And most of all, like a lot of the current comics avant, it mistakes a fashionable, quasi-cynical anti-Americanism for political sophistication. Sure, I'm a big fan of America-bashing, Republican-blaming, and fascism-decrying, but like "The Authority", "DK2" has a certain political naivety that allows the authors to seem sophisticated (the fightin' liberal stance never goes out of style) without having to really think outside the "find the guy responsible and punch him" paradigm that have been at the heart of comics since the 1930s.

Don't get me wrong; I really enjoy the book and will certainly get the third issue, and I feel certain it will be one of the best, if not the best, book of the year. And I'd certainly rather see this sort of plot than the content-free writing of comics in the '80s or the reactionary politics of comics inthe '60s. But until creators grow up a little, allow themselves some command over moral ambiguity and sophisticated characterization, and learn not to be, as George Carlin puts it, "nothing more than cheerleaders attached to a specific, wished-for outcome", we'll still be able to count the truly great comics writers on the fingers of one of Homer Simpson's hands.