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Miller's early Bat stuff is still mostly mid-level, to me (including 'Dark Knight Returns') because I don't see the point in treating impact-at-time as anything that makes a work currently valuable (and not simply the existence of the work, which doesn't cost anything), with 'Year One' coming out clearly on top and beginning the Miller-love - to my knowledge - of the naked and bound in the snow.
'...Strikes Again' is entirely wonderful from page one through the end and Flash's bunny-ears. That's a folk hero moment right there, no doubt about it. Empowering and glib and impossible to the point of lovely.
To those who take umbrage or despair at the 'Dirty Harry' comment: Yes, Dirty Harry became a folk hero and worked himself right into a section of the populace. He did. Would you prefer Miller just say 'Robin Hood' or 'King Arthur' or 'Dick Turpin'? The James Bros. and Bowie, Bonnie and Clyde? Folk heroes aren't nice people, they're just vicious little empowering myths thrown sharp and hard in the direction we'd like them to go. They're weaponised memes. Placatory and vengeful fantasies.
And I agree with Miller's statement in one of the above-linked pieces, that you can't fight fundamentalism with fundamentalism. You can't fight idea for idea, but you can devalue an idea and you can attack individual human beings with ideas. Whether you should... I ain't gonna even speculate, because I'm petty and do it any time I get a glimmer of 'I'm smarter than you, cuter than you, and you're wrong, anyway' arguing with someone over politics or which is superior, chocolate or no-chocolate.
Batman versus Osama bin Laden is quite simply a vanity project. It's a vain response and it's intended to raise and encourage our vanity. Our meaning whomever the audience is, I suppose. But I mean, hell, 'The Invisibles' is a propaganda piece, Larry Hama's 'G.I. Joe' comics (and I love his statement, somewhere, that his 'Soldiers are meant to do the unspeakable and then go away,' was rewrit to some rightwing recruitment speech, and he'll 'just have to live with that for the rest of [his] life.'), or Warren Ellis' 'Bad World' are propaganda. They're selling us ideas and playing on our vanity, stroking our egoes to get us to agree with them. Which all educational-styled entertainment does, after it's fashion, from Dickens' serial novels to Darger's 'Vivian Girls' and any eight of a dozen pop songs you could randomly select.
You don't have to believe it to enjoy it, though. You don't have to buy in to be entertained. In fact, you don't have to be entertained and you don't have to buy. Hell, Peter Sotos has been preaching on paper for quite some time now, and I'm not buying his books any more than I am a Dick Cheney imploration to humanity and peace and love. Because I don't need that angle of vanity; got plenty in other directions, yes? |
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