Holy Terror by Frank Miller

Category: 50 Books

I don’t read a lot of comic books, but even I have heard of Frank Miller and of how awesome he is. I’ve seen his movies. I know he does the noir superhero kind of thing, I can dig it.

This book was supposed to be a Batman comic where he beats up Al-Qaeda. That sounds normal to me, I mean, weren’t there tons of comics back in the day about superheroes beating up Nazis? But Miller decided it wasn’t a Batman comic and he made it into an original character, an original character who is just like Batman, and another original character who is just like Catwoman. Meh. The Batman guy is called The Fixer and the Catwoman lady is called Natalie Stack. She has big boobs. Get it?

So The Fixer is chasing Natalie because she’s a thief, right? He catches her and they start to make out and then Empire City starts blowing up from a terrorist attack. Natalie and The Fixer work together to stop the terrorists.

First of all, I don’t care about the propaganda-ness of the whole concept. That doesn’t interest me. What would have interested me was if there had been a more compelling story. Miller gives you no background on these Batman/Catwoman rip-offs. He gives you no reason to care about these two people; they’re just as anonymous at the end as they are at the beginning.

Second of all, the artwork seemed slapdash. I’m not saying it wasn’t good because it wasn’t super-polished and sleek like a regular superhero comic, nay, that’s fine. But half of the panels seemed so overworked you couldn’t tell what the hell you were looking at. And sure, if that had been the explosions panels then yeah, I get it, but it was chase scenes and the make-out part and it felt lazy. Panels that are gritty and splattered and scratched up are fine, but you have to give me SOMETHING to look at, isn’t that the point of a graphic novel?

Thirdly, I read somewhere that this book had been in the making for something like five years. I realize that doesn’t mean he steadily worked on it for five years in a row, but still, knowing that, the whole book seems more like a first draft than a five-year old.

If you’re a huge Frank Miller fan you’ll probably get this book and be disappointed, but you’re a fan and you’ll forgive easily. If you’re not a fan, I doubt you’d casually pick this one up anyway.

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