A Knight to Remember

Image credit: Frank Miller: ©DC Comics 2001

And Batman is still as driven, single-minded, and violent as ever. In fact, through the prism of Sept. 11, the Caped Crusader's modus operandi can come off as a bit extreme. ''Obviously, he's not willing to slaughter innocent people to achieve his ends,'' offers the 44-year-old Miller, who just moved back to New York City after a stint in L.A., ''but I have referred to Batman as a terrorist on our side. His motto is to strike terror into the hearts of villains. It's very strange to be referring to Batman and Osama bin Laden in the same sentence, by the way.''

''In the second issue there are a couple of moments where you're gonna go, 'Oh my God, he clearly was reacting [to Sept. 11].' Not at all,'' says editor Bob Schreck, who's worked with Miller on the award-winning ''Sin City'' continuing series and 1995's ''The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot.'' ''I swear to you, the first two issues were done before the 11th. As with any good work of fiction, with time and distance, you [should be able to] look back and go, 'Man, did this guy have a time machine?'''

Not quite, but the intervening years have had their effect on Miller, who continues to both set and buck trends in the comics biz. ''I've gotten a lot better,'' he laughs. ''It gets back to being away from this material for 15 years. Back then, I was struggling to break out of the handcuffs, but also struggling to make people take this stuff more seriously. And so it was a very angst-ridden kind of book; [Batman] was a tormented soul, the world was an apocalypse. This time I've learned a lot more, and since I've been doing all these crime comics in my 'Sin City' series, I'm able to look at the guys in tights and realize just how much fun I can have cartooning them.''

One wouldn't think that DC Comics would be so thrilled to have anyone come in and ''cartoon'' one of their tentpole characters. ''The way it's been told to me,'' says Schreck, ''if anybody's gonna get away with anything, it's gonna be [Frank], because he works with these characters from a place of respect and understanding. Still, there are things [in ''Strikes Again''] that you wouldn't see in your average, regular monthly comic book.''

That kind of controversy is a big part of why advance sales for ''The Dark Knight Strikes Again'' are in excess of 150,000 copies. That may not sound like much in a world dominated by Oprah's Book Club, but in the comic-book universe, those are Harry Potter numbers. ''Based on the level of preorders we've got in hand,'' says Paul Levitz, DC Comics' executive vice president and publisher, ''it clearly will be the best-selling comic book of the last five years.''

With figures like that coming in from comic-book retailers nationwide (and you might even have to venture into a comic-book store to buy ''Strikes Again'' -- don't worry, they won't bite), it's clear that a whole lot of people are jonesing for this revisit to the wonderful world of Gotham City. After all, the last time Miller toured this territory, it all but changed the face of graphic literature. But can ''The Dark Knight Strikes Again'' ever live up to expectations? ''It's impossible for the experience of being 14 years old in 1986 and reading ''The Dark Knight Returns'' for the first time to happen again,'' says Schreck. ''It can never be like your first time. But it can be your best time.''

(See Pages 1 and 2 of the first installment of the three-part ''Strikes.'')