Tags
2014, 21st century, 8*, breath, communication, cubism, feet, green, hands, Have, humanity, ideas, identity, infection, law, living, love, madness, public service, sex, society, talking, thinking, thought, war, words
The Dark Knight Strikes Again (2002); writer: Frank Miller; artists: Frank Miller, Lynn Varley
plethora: the Dark Knight Strikes Again (2002)
human store
bloated to homunculean proportion
when glimpsed
human whore
clenched to butt-round shouldn’t tantalus
when communicating
human law
infected with green lobes and infinite pixels
when serving
human war
sputum-bilious from the love which couldn’t Have
when living
human core
mad as a food whisk masticating what it speaks
when speaking
human spore
profligate of claim and statement to Have as currency
when building
with hands that span
and feet that stand
the planes that ‘scape and kaleidoscope
breathlessly
thought contorts and twists
involuntary-contrary to the atomic space it seeks to bridge
free for those who ride the writhe that releases when
the atoms disperse
as they always do
as they always will
vain and vein to the maintenance of world
and self
beings talk with thought
creatures think with will
and denizens of the 21st century Have everything
but ideas
no wonder
everything is so big and gaudy
————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–
breath wormhole: … walking down the street
communication & Have & identity wormhole: poessay VIII: / educational behaviourism
feet wormhole: the Avengers
green wormhole: 1966
hands wormhole: dream / 130207
living wormhole: “I think I’ll have a nice sandwich”
love & talking wormhole: axis: bold as love
society wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
thinking wormhole: gazing at the night / as my eyes passed the jagged hole / my head disappeared
thought wormhole: as they wish
war wormhole: 220712
words wormhole: window
mlewisredford 
Well, I’m sorry I missed this. My disdain for the Dark Knight Strikes Again is legend amongst my circles. I hate it. I have never been so let down by anything. I consider the Dark Knight Returns to be high art, as profound and moving as any literature I have ever read. It speaks of some desperation, some meloncholy, that sneaks up on us all if we allow it – and so often do. But the struggle for rebirth, to find meaning again, to find the hero, is such a noble quest to me. Fighting against the impossible to bring back the child that dreamed of nobility and heroism, these are essences we must not forget.
But the sequel trashed it all. All of it. It took away the striving and made a parody of itself. A replication in many parts, but much poorer. I will say this. I think your poem captures the essence of what I wanted the sequel to be, how I wished it to have been. In that sense, you’ve done a better job here than that bloody graphic novels. You’ve honoured the sentiment in the original, where thoughts do contort and twist, and one man’s atoms disperse into a form that he used to own.
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DKII was certainly different from DKI in both art and craft (and I certainly don’t want to leap to the blind defence of Miller whose reaction to 9/11 and the tantrum over ‘Holy Terror’ was just so … un-wise, if not embarassing) but I don’t think the 1986 story could be straight-forwardly sequelled 15 years later.
The Batman of Dark Knight had been ‘retired’ for ten years (… since the ‘mid-70s; I know it’s ‘set’ in the ‘future’ but Batman happens/publishes in realtime in the real-ding world no matter what time it is set in); individualistic heroism against (whatever/whichever) Machine was aging by the mid-70s and bought-out by the mid-80s when the Dark Knight returned for the inevitable denouement (‘I knew it would be you, Bruce’); by 2001 everything was bought-out, even heroism (Ralph Dibny, ‘the years have not been kind’, ALL of the ways that heroes had been neutralised/compromised), the way to exist in this world was to BE bought-out (there was no longer even the option for not being bought-out (featured by the insanely invidious omnipresence of Brainiac with no ‘centre’) unless you were (seemingly) dead); within a whole world where everything is bought-out, principle, ideal and the heroism to meet them just cannot exist, there is only the Message, there is only the Message; in this world Batman can only appear (briefly) looking like an over-stuffed toy (soo yesterday) and can only use guerilla, and a-principled, tactics (principle bought-out, remember) in a world used to round-butt News and digital Presidents; this world can ONLY appear garish and fractured/cubist in this time – any other way of being is not possible …
certainly DKII was different and was not a likened-sequel to the first (and therefore not as good because of that?), but I don’t think it could have been in the likened form and kept its integrity and was therefore a fitting sequel to the first; it was different, but developed, without compromise
thank you for reading and the discussion
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Wow, you are passionate about this, and I have not seen it that way. Would it have been trite and possibly unauthentic to replicate the tone of the first one? Possibly. But what is fitting? Was this the only alternative? I don’t know that it was. I don’t know that it really said anything about where we stand or who we are. It didn’t speak to me. It didn’t feel like the world I know, or rather the one I fear.
Good discussion, my friend. Yours is by far the best insight into the sequel I have heard.
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Epic
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