Batman: Year One (Frank Miller)

Color me unimpressed.  Batman needs villains, and he didn't have any here.  The whole thing felt like it never got off the ground.  Yeah, yeah... Batman needs to be created, and he doesn't quite know what he's doing at first.  But ultimately, nothing is at stake except for some (mostly) petty crime.  I needed a bigger conflict to hold my attention.

I suppose this was a good exploration of the psychology of Lt. Gordon.  If that hadn't been delved into before, it was very nicely done.  And it nicely wraps together a whole slew of characters that I recognize from other references-- Harvey Dent, Carmine Falcone, Catwoman, and Det. Flass among them.

But Batman needs villains.

Though the overall theme made for one helluva movie.

The Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller)

This is the first graphic novel I've ever read.  And it's the first comic book I've read since Dennis the Menace Learns the Our Father (the Protestant version, anyway).  The plan is to get a feel for the format with a few Batman titles before diving into Watchmen.  In any case, I'm impressed.

What surprised me the most was the inferences I had to draw as the reader from very few details in each panel.  And yet, the the implications were all fully there on the page.

Another aspect that I enjoyed: the critical commentary about many elements of modern society that I privately rail against as well.  Unserious media, relativistic reluctance to name evil as evil, hippie parents, therapeutic solutions to spiritual problems... it's all there.

I love Batman making fun of Superman.  Come on, you pansy.

So apparently it's well-established that Frank Miller wrote Batman as an explicitly Catholic character.  To that end, I loved the shout-out to Catholicism's devotion to absolute truth in the face of ever-changing worldly fashions:

The Pope today declared that the Church's stand on contraception will not change, despite yesterday's firebombing of St. Peter's Square.

That's right.