All-Star Batman and Robin #7
DC Comics
Writer: Frank Miller
Penciler: Jim Lee
Inker: Scott Williams
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| Batman keeps Gotham safe from unattractive hobos. |
In this seventh installment of Miller and Lee’s landmark Batman series, Batman finally meets Black Canary, Robin meets his parents’ killer, and people get beat up while being burned alive. Oh yeah!
The Obligatory Warning: sex, blood, a close up of a man’s jaw getting sliced up.
Miller’s Batman is decidedly unrepressed. None of the usual gruff stoicism, here-- Batman quips to his criminals as he burns them with clorox and thermite, Beavis and Butthead style. He’s a superhero who appreciates the subtleties of the Anarchist Cookbook. This Batman never heard of stealth, either-- he stomps about Gotham making more unwanted noise than a middle school chorus. He also does the horizontal hokey-pokey with Black Canary, who’s Irish, for godknowswhy, and gives a twelve-year old the chance to behead someone.
This is all to say I’d love Frank Miller to appropriate the Sweet Valley Twins, or the Choose Your Own Adventure books. That’d be a hoot. To behead the scheming, murderous call girl, go to page 138. For limb-by-limb dismemberment, go to page 52. Oooh…maybe not.
Jim Lee ventures beyond his comfort zone to accommodate Miller. Jim Lee’s style is always graceful. Even Wolverine is balletic in his hands, which helps explain why Lee enjoyed drawing Psylocke so darned much, back in the day (the early 90s, youngsters. History’s good for you!) In All Star B & R, Jim Lee takes a detour, drawing people in ungraceful positions. The good news? Lee’s adapted to Miller better than Tom Wolfe adapted to fiction.
Worth the money? For the art, yes. Very little happens, plot wise, in this issue.
