A review by clarks_dad
All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder by Frank Miller

1.0

I completely and utterly disapprove of the way Millar portrays Batman. He comes off as a raving lunatic and has spouts cheesy Spiderman-like lines as he beats up bad guys. I sometimes got confused and thought that it was Wolverine in a Batman suit, with all the "bub," "kiddo," and "snot-nosed punk" dialogue. I'm pretty sure that he or somebody else says "Shut up!" like 900 times in the 200 or so pages that the story takes to unfold. And nothing really does unfold at that. This is mainly the reinventing of the story of the Boy Wonder's recruitment into the Bat family and it starts with Batman kidnapping and psychologically torturing Grayson after the hit on his parents. Miller's Batman is a disgusting, unlikable brute with none of the detective skills or sense of morality that separates the Dark Knight from a street thug. Maybe that's what he was going for, but I found it dispiriting and utterly unheroic. By the end, I found myself in complete agreement with Clark that Batman had to be stopped and that he was more dangerous than some of the criminals on the street. He laughs like a lunatic as he springs into action, takes joy in how many bones he's broken over the course of the evening and says things like, "I love being the goddamn Batman." Maybe that works for the Punisher, but I like my Bruce Wayne to stick a little closer to the light side of the gray line.