I’m Batman: Frank Miller’s Holy Terror Review

Wow. My two-day hangover tells me that Red Sox season finish was certainly worth staying up for. Let’s pretend that atrocity didn’t happen, and that even if it did that there was something we could do about it, and move back to comics, where the good guys always win, shall we? After all, if that kind of fantasy’s good enough for Frank Miller, it should be good enough for the rest of us.

I’m gonna withhold judgment for just this second as to whether Holy Terror is a good book or not and start with what will be obvious for anyone who reads it: this is a Batman story. It started it’s life as Holy Terror, Batman! when Miller announced it in 2006, and he maintained that it was Batman story until 2008, when he started telling people that it was about a “new hero [he] made up that fights Al Qaeda.”

Sure, Frank. A new hero. You made up. In a cape and a cowl. With a utility belt. And gadgets. And an archenemy who’s a cat burgler. With claws. Who has “nine lives.” And I’m sure it’s purely by coincidence that you technically pulled Batman out of your story about a vigilante who tortures and kills terrorists in 2008, when Warner Brothers was releasing The Dark Knight and making about a bajillion dollars. Sure you made it up, Frank… if by “you” you mean “Legendary Comics’ team of entertainment lawyers.”

So yeah, this is a Batman story. It started its life that way, and Miller clearly left the obvious parallels in there so we’d KNOW it was a Batman story. So let’s just treat it that way – none of the “The Fixer” or “Natalie Stack” or “Detective Dan Donegal” crap Frank ginned up to duck the lawsuit. It’ll just be Batman and Catwoman and Commissioner Gordon for the purposes of this review, partially because I think Miller wants it that way, and partially because I’m too damn lazy to keep flipping back through the book to remember pastiche names.

So anyway – here be spoilery chunks:

So the book starts with Batman chasing Catwoman for about eighteen pages before they start boning, which beats last week’s record by about a page, but at least spares us from Batman’s “Oops! This has never happened to me before, but I heard it’s good for your skin anyway” face. Then suicide bombers start blowing this shit out of Empire City – sorry, I promised no stupid stand-in names – Gotham City, and Miller shows us the human cost with panels of victims faces fading into two full pages of empty panels, which I bet Miller charged his full page rate for. Then Commissioner Gordon shows up to act all Commissioner Gordony for two pages before pretty much vanishing for the rest of the book. Then Batman and Catwoman torture some dudes, and Al Qaeda – best known for their improvised bombs – scramble their apparently improvised supersonic MiG-25 fighter jets and blow the shit out of the Statue of Liberty.  Then Batman nerve gasses the terrorists and Commissioner Gordon wakes up screaming. The End.

If that sounds simplistic, it’s because it kind of is. Miller’s said all along that he intended Holy Terror to be old school, pro-American propaganda, which is exactly what it reads like. The “good guys” are all good and totally justified in whatever they do because the “bad guys” are subhuman, emotionless monsters lacking only a fu-manchu to twist. It’s hard to call it bad, because it’s exactly what Miller intended to do all along. And if you ride along with it knowing that, you can appreciate it for what it is. If you can’t, then it’s gleefully jingoistic and racist… but it’s supposed to be.

Art-wise? Hey, it’s Frank Miller. If you like his post-Sin City style – all blacks and whites with huge silhouettes and simple, heavy lines – then you’ll like this. Strip the cowl off Batman and put a lasso in Catwoman’s hand and the book’s look could easily be Violent Marv and Nancy: That Yellow, Camel-Jockeying Bastard. I happen to like Miller’s art, so seeing it here was a treat, even if the story was…

Well, hell – what can we say about the story, in the final analysis? It’s simplistic, but it’s a Batman story meant to be like the old Captain America stories where he socked Hitler in the jaw – we’re not retelling Hamlet here. It’s racist, but again: racist in the way every Japanese person was portrayed in every comic book produced between 1941 and 1945. It’s violent, but violent in the sense that Frank Miller’s name is on the front cover.

This thing is what it is. If you’re crazy for Miller’s art, or if you must read every Batman story he writes regardless of quality (*cough cough Dark Knight Strikes Again cough*), or if you get half a stock over the idea of a terrorist – not a Middle Eastern gentleman, but a bomb-wearing terrorist – melting in nerve gas, then pick up the book.

If you don’t? Well, do what I’m doing with the Red Sox: get shitfaced and pretend it never, ever happened.