Some people may recall Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, the masterfully-written comic book miniseries (or graphic novel, as some would prefer to call it) written by Frank Miller, the guy who would bring us Batman: Year One, Daredevil: Born Again, Sin City, 300, and… All-Stars Batman and Robin, the comic book run that is probably best known for this little gem:
I’ve heard people say that Miller lost his ability to write truly compelling Batman around the time The Dark Knight Strikes Again came around (yeah, that one’s a bit of stinker) and that the All-Stars Batman & Robin series is nothing more than a farce of an actual Batman book… funny considering the direction it would go whenever issues would actually appear on store shelves after painfully-long delays per book.
To anyone who actually think Miller lost his mind in regards to Batman storytelling in the 2000s… I submit to you today’s subject matter; the 1994 one-shot graphic novel, Spawn/Batman.
Just to be completely clear on what is actually being reviewed, the book is explicitly titled Spawn/Batman. There is another one-shot comic called Batman/Spawn: War Devil, which is a completely different book altogether… and presumably a much better book than this one… at least, I’d like to think so.
I’d like to bring up some good points in this story, but unfortunately, I’d be hard-pressed to actually find any. I guess I could say that Todd MacFarlane’s art is nice to look at half the time… but that would be lying. In all honesty, the art is probably the only really high point of this book because it is pretty decent for the most part… whenever I can clearly decipher just what the hell is going on, which is… well, half the time. I suppose I wasn’t too far off in that estimate.
The story – or what is laughingly referred to as such – involves Batman fighting high-tech terrorist robots, acting like a complete doofus, calling Spawn a punk on numerous occasions, and all in all being a complete and total departure from what we already know about the character. And yes, I know that this is supposed to take place in Frank Miller’s own “Dark Knight” continuity… but even THAT version of Batman had some spark and relation to the Batman most people are familiar. This one doesn’t. I’m sorry, but Miller dubbing this story as part of Dark Knight continuity or not part of DC canon does not equal “write Batman as poorly as humanly possible.” Aside from the clichéd “two heroes fight each other first before teaming up against the bad guys” drivel that permeates one too many crossover storylines, here are also voodoo doctors and a couple panels of Spawn puking. Brilliant.
Look, I know people loved Miller’s old stuff as opposed to his newer stuff, but this book is proof that not all of the older Miller stuff holds up particularly well – and even back in the day, this wasn’t much of a below-average read. If you’re looking for a good Batman story or a good Spawn story… don’t get this.
dtm666 