Monday, June 9, 2008

I shall be a bat.





It was St. aXXo who said "Blesseth is the torrent that bringeth to thee what thoust wants. And blesseth is he who hath chanced upon the blesseth torrent."
And I is the blesseth.
After running through a bunch of forums of useless hosting searches, it was a blesseth torrent that brought me to what I wanted. Frank Miller's work, not all of it, but most of it at least. I'm still on the look-out for The Ronin series and Elektra, minus Jennifer Garner.

But I believe all of the Sin City yarns should keep me busy for some. And I haven't even touched them. The first book left me stunned. It's called The Dark Knight Returns (or DKR) and Miller's work on Batman is absolutely brilliant, as you can see on the images above.

Batman's always been a different super hero. No super powers. No alien guises. No flying. No killing. No man of steel. No South American references. OK, a troubled past maybe, but surely you need something!

And DKR is about his return and final end. The story is wonderful. The human element that Batman evidently has, is so brilliantly exploited. The way he's separated as a superhero from Superman, how his belief that after all, they are all criminals is cemented. Of course there are the sceptical believers. But believer nonetheless. Its a great scenario and I most probably enjoyed it more than any Batman movie. And in case the first line was too much of a spoiler, then I may go ahead and tell you it's then end of Batman, not Bruce Wayne.

Also done by Miller in the Batman series is Year One. Again very nice. After DKR, Year One was fun as it had a refreshingly young Batman, still learning, still protecting. And the brand new Lieutenant on the job, Gordon.

I also got my hands on Miller's RoboCop, not a big RoboCop fan, but lets see what it looks like.

The wonderful thing about Frank Miller and all of his collaborations is the detailed style he pumps into everything he does. He turned an old retro The 300 Spartans into 300. Which then turned into the movie which has EXACT comic panel scenes. He created Sin City. And all this while, you can see his trademark film noir style that goes into everything. How the shadows play on human contours and how expressions change. And of course the silhouettes. I wish there was more Batman done by him, but the end of DKR makes that an almost impossible prospect.

Sigh.

5 comments :

  1. Anonymous said...

    i wanna read!
    u better bring them bk to collg! :)

  2. Anonymous said...

    sure pa

  3. Anonymous said...

    Oye... I didn't know you were a big fan... I have a huge collection of DC comics on my comp. You could've taken it any time... :)

  4. Anonymous said...

    Nooooooo! Tell me you have them now!
    Actually I'm not very fond of the normal DC stuff.. like the special series they come out with cause they really put effort in to that.

    Still it would be nice to have them.

  5. Anonymous said...

    Yes, yes, i have them... but in chennai. :) And as we all know, i'm currently in baroda. So... i'll mail them in a couple of weeks i guess... And yeah, i have a lot of the special series stuff only... I like the normal stuff too, but i figured you'd prefer the batman hush, DKR, etc, and there's some brilliant superman stuff which is way different from his good-triumphs-over-evil stuff...

    Weird... I find comic book nuts in the oddest of places... :P