And yet in North America, people have spent more than half a billion dollars this summer to see a version of the Batman that was marked as parents being strongly cautioned, as some material may be unsuitable for pre-teens.

“Then I was sold a bill of goods. Because I wasn’t interested in a parody and no one mentioned that it was supposed to be a satire.
Personally, I don’t find it funny.”

Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough. As I said, it’s *Titan* who labeled it a parody. In the UK Titan publish Batman Legends monthly which reprints All-Star Batman along with the other Batman comics in a 76 page comic. DC did not, to my knowledge, call it a parody.

This is solely Titan’s take on it to explain to their readers why everyone in All-Star Batman is acting like a jerk I guess.

# AndyD Says:
09/10/08 at 8:01 am

“Who in his right mind sees All Star Batman as a kids comic in the first place? This is absolutly ridiculous.”

Who except comic book fans see All-Star Batman as an adult comic? All of my friends outside of comics consider Batman to be a children’s character. (Merchandise from Batman lunchboxes to Batman costumes for five year olds tends to reinforce that image.) It’s therefore not unrealistic to then expect those people to see All-Star Batman on the shelves and think it’s ok for kids. Particularly when the trade dress favours Robin over Batman.

There certainly seem to be people who bought issue after issue of a book they didn’t like. I’m really not clear why they bought it if they disliked it so much. Dislike the first issue, sure, blame the writer. Dislike the first nine issues, I think you only have yourself to blame…

Readers got what they asked for, they just didn’t realize what they were asking for.

I think some people are misunderstanding the work, possibly due in part to the art style. They act like it’s an insult to say it’s a parody or a comedy…. as if this was Miller trying to write Year One again and failing. No, this is the Miller of Hard Boiled, of RoboCop, and yes, of the Dark Knight volumes. This is satire via excess and extremeness.

If that’s not what you’re looking for, there is no shortage of other Batman books to read.

Silly bunts.

With all respect to the talented Mr. Lee, I’m buying it because of Miller.

My 10-year-old self remembers rushing home with Dark Knight issue 3 and reading the commissioner yelling over her walkie-talkie for a helicopter to “Come in low and blow this shit away”. Is this not in the subsequent trade reprints?

Funnily enough, here in the UK, Titan have been referring to All-Star Batman as a parody when they reprint it in Batman Legends. That’s one way of looking at it I suppose.

That’s my point! Since when ISN’T All-Star Batman And Robin The Boy Wonder NOT an all ages book? It wasn’t solicited as an “adult” book and there was nothing to indicate that it was intended to be anything BUT an all ages book, until the “God-damned Batman” stuff started popping up. Well,…that and the guy wearing the cowl’s over all shitty attitude. This version of the character SUCKS!!! This book isn’t selling because of Frank Miller,…it’s selling because of Jim Lee. Miller owes the Batman audience an apology and as far as I’m concerned you can scrap the whole story and just publish the artwork with empty word balloons so that we can all make up our own crap. Why should Miller be the only one who works out his neurosis here?

Also, it’s not a case of the audience’s sensitivities, - it’s the trouble that pressure groups and the like could kick up. Kids in the Fifties loved horror comics, - it was “well meaning” outsiders that closed them down.

Whatever. I wasn’t aware of them wanting the aesthetics of the letter edges. I guess this is why I don’t buy ASBAR - or really much else in the way of mainstream superhero books these days.

Mine will be on eBay tomorrow.

And then they accidentally go and put the lettering layer on top of the bar layer, knock out the black there, and the curses are clearly readable in reverse. (And it looks like they also wanted the edges of the letters visible, and white wouldn’t have that effect.)

The right way of doing it is to do whatever method you’re doing correctly.

But yeah, what Adair said. Propping up a non-existing story with gutter speak is the mark of a 13-year old who thinks this is how grown-ups talk. Strangely enough, 1986 Frank Miller didn’t need that at all. But 2008 Frank Miller has obviously gone off the deep end.

*snark* It happens when you do coke with Ben Silverman and the rest of the Hollywood crowd *snark*