The Superchix Dark Night Strikes Again

Batman: The Nighttime Knight Strikes Once again, besides known as Night Knight two, was a three issue Batman mini-series written and illustrated by Frank Miller with Lynn Varley in 2001–2002, the sequel to 1986's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.

Set up 3 years later the events of The Night Knight Returns, the world has managed to become downhill since and then—the President is a simulated, and the police state of a world is run by Lex Luthor and Brainiac, who has many a hero enslaved.

Of form, Batman won't be having that, and then he and his allies—Catgirl, the Green Arrow, and his Batboys—set out to change the earth by judicious application of violence. Only kickoff, they demand allies—and they need to bargain with Superman, who is still in the thrall of the government...

Overall, it goes further off the deep end than The Nighttime Knight Returns, almost to the point of beingness a Deconstruction of the Darker and Edgier nature of the starting time story though, naturally, not everyone thinks that makes information technology any good. The color palette is much more varied than The Dark Knight Returns' muted colorization, taking it to an well-nigh garish degree, that takes a petty getting used to (many reviewers termed it ugly). Information technology was somewhen followed starting in 2022 by Dark Knight Iii: The Chief Race.

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This miniseries contains examples of:

• Adaptational Ugliness: Nobody is particularly good-looking in this comic, but Lex Luthor takes the cake: while rather presentable-looking in the main comics continuity, Luthor hither is fatigued every bit a morbidly obese hunchback with a pointy, crooked nose.
• Ambiguously Gay: Dick Grayson of the Depraved Homosexual variety
• Aluminum Christmas Copse: At least ane commentator regarded News in the Nude with incredulity, apparently being unaware of Naked News . At the very least, though, the latter's a paid subscription service.
  • The sex work industry becoming more or the mainstream, particularly among the sexy Cosplay of superheroes, seemed ridiculous for the time both in and out of universe.
• Fine art Shift: When searching the ruins of Metropolis, Superman discovers a locket containing Gilt Age pictures of him & Lois Lane.
  • The art in general is too very unlike from the first volume. The coloring is the most obvious change (from muted and muddied to garishly brilliant) but everybody has really exaggerated figures either in terms of proportions or angles. Lex in particular looks like a shaved gorilla.
• Author Tract: Apparently Miller doesn't like trends the media are taking.
• Best Her to Bed Her: Wonder Woman.
• Beware the Superman: At the terminate of the series Superman rules the world with his girl, Lara.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Lex Luthor and Brainiac, with New Joker every bit The Dragon.
• Brother–Sis Team: Hawkman and Hawkwoman's children.
• Butt Brand: One event features a woman with the Business firm of El sigil stamped on her ass.
• Butt-Monkey: Superman. It actually gets to the betoken where y'all recollect Miller has something against the grapheme.
• The Cameo:
  • Alfred E. Neuman appears as 1 of the talking heads in outcome two.
  • In a blink-and-you'll-miss it moment, Kara Zor-El makes an advent ◊ leading the Kandorian rebels. In that scene Brainiac gloats over belongings Superman's cousin hostage.
• Cat Girl: Carrie Kelly, the quondam Robin.
• Character Evolution: Of a sort. In All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder, Batman was a gruesome individual. He treated everyone in the story similar dirt, insisted that Dick swallow a rat for dinner, threatened Alfred for feeding him a proper meal, slapped Dick for crying over the loss of his parents, and gleefully killed (dirty, some willing to murder kids) cops chasing him and was overall a deranged, loathsome bedlamite who ironically gained some humanity from Grayson.
  • Batman: The Dark Knight Returns could exist interpreted as Bruce Wayne existence older, wiser, and struggling to hold on to his humanity and/or sanity. By The Nighttime Knight Strikes Over again, Bruce Wayne probably reverted back to his personality in All-Star Batman & Robin, the Male child Wonder. In short, what you lot have here is one seriously messed-up human who is not as rational and logical equally he thinks he is.
• Coitus Ensues: Superman and Wonder Woman had several pages dedicated to them having sex for no reason other than to make Superman feel ameliorate.
• Comic-Book Time
• Crazy-Prepared: Naturally enough, Batman. To the signal of having glowing dark-green boxing gloves.
• Creepy Kid: Saturn Girl.
• Decoy Leader: The President was a decoy for Luthor.
• Defiant to the End: Batman, when captured past Luthor.
• Depraved Homosexual: It's implied that Dick Grayson had the hots for Batman, merely was rejected past him, which led to Dick condign a villain. At the end of the comic Batman taunts him with all sorts of quasi-homophobic euphemisms relating to his supposed "sissiness". And since Dick is the villain, apparently Miller thinks we're supposed to side with Batman here.
• Destructo-Nookie: Superman and Wonder Woman accept sex and so over-the-top information technology alters the earth's atmospheric condition patterns.
• Distracted by the Sexy: More or less the bespeak of "News in the Nude".
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Hawkman and Hawkgirl, ingloriously nuked off-panel. Captain Curiosity had a longer sequence where a giant building was dropped on him.
• Expy: A weird inversion, or something. This story's The Question is basically Rorschach from Watchmen, and Rorschach himself was a Captain Ersatz of the original Question, and so this makes this version of the Question closer to the original Ditko Question and oh no, we've gone crosseyed.
• Flat "What": "It's about to accident! ◊"
• Gang of Hats: The Batboys.
• Gonk: There are some seriously ugly graphic symbol designs here, especially Lex Luthor, an iconic Diabolical Mastermind, Übermensch and Man of Wealth and Taste who for some reason is depicted as a cigar-chomping, hulking neanderthal with huge hands and a hunchback, to the betoken that it looks as though his easily are physically weighing him down, forcing him to walk with a hunch and thereby making him a literal knuckle-dragger, causing one to wonder if he is really meant to be physically deformed. The Gonkishness is mostly limited to the elderly males of the cast (which there are a ton of) but fifty-fifty the ostensibly pretty females have weirdly angular faces.
• Hamster-Cycle Ability: This is what the Wink has been up to lately.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Ane of the cooler bits of the series is that Miller really woke people up to only how utterly, insanely ''powerful'' Plastic Man is. A lot of comics released after this seemed to run with Miller'south clarification of Plas as a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass of epic proportions.
• Hypocrite: Catgirl berates i of the 'Batboys' in issue one about killing some soldiers and fifty-fifty beats him up for information technology. Even so in event iii she clams to have killed the Joker imposter "without an ounce of remorse" and "without a shred of regret" with an pointer through the caput. True he couldn't die from that, but she didn't know that at the time.
  • The beating itself at to the lowest degree is justified past the fact that the Batboy himself reverted to his more than psychopathic mental attitude and threatened to suspension her bones first. Now the whole killing merely not killing on the other hand...
• Intimate Healing: Superman is completely healed of his injuries after having sex with Wonder Woman. According to Miller himself, this was done to highlight the fact that women are "nurturers and life givers".
• Invincible Hero: Batman. By the time anyone comes upwardly with annihilation he's already twelve steps alee of them. Superman heading for the Bat-Cavern? No problem! Just use the gigantic Kryptonite gloves over in that location! Got captured? No biggie! It was part of Batman'due south plan all along. It gets so bad that Batman can literally storm into Luthor'southward base of operations of operations, shell him upwardly, cut his confront, and just go out with admittedly zero consequences. In the folio epitome, he spells out why—he wanted to inspire terror in Luthor, to let him know that his empire was crumbling. And he wanted to requite Hawkboy the honor of killing Luthor.
• Impale Information technology with Fire: Dick Grayson has become a Nigh-Invulnerable Monster Clown super-assassinator that tin can survive all attacks, but is finally destroyed in one case and for all when he falls into the Lava Pit that formed in the destruction of the batcave.
• Kryptonite Ring: More than than a ring—endeavor Kryptonite napalm, Kryptonite power fists...
• Losing Your Head: Dick Grayson. He reattaches it.
• Monster Clown: For once, there was a reason to highlight this. Information technology's not the Joker, information technology's Dick Grayson.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Hot Gates, the porn star who dresses as Big Barda, is a shout out to the recurring theme of Thermopylae that appears in Frank Miller's work. She was likewise proper noun dropped in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and so it's as well a Call-Back.
  • The President has the final name Rickard, equally in Prez.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands:
  • Luthor's nanites removed all the Martian Manhunter's powers except his ability to come across the time to come. A power he'south never actually had before.
  • Superman can now absorb energy from the Earth to heal himself and replenish his powers. It was always the Power of the Sun before.
• No Name Given: Nosotros never learn the names of Hawkman and Hawkwoman's children. Only that their son is chosen Hawkboy.
• No One Could Survive That!: Saturn Daughter has a vision of Catgirl beingness murdered by the New Joker. Catgirl isn't besides worried, equally she shot the New Joker with several explosive arrows, and and so went to piece of work on him with a hatchet.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Happens to pretty much every character, good or bad. Batman is at his sorriest-looking state always by the cease, going well past "beaten upwardly" and into "disfigured."
• Old Superhero: Pretty much the unabridged cast, with a few exceptions, such as Carrie Kelly, or the new Supergirl (daughter of Superman and Wonder Adult female, the fan-send of many an Elseworlds author).
• Our Wormholes Are Different: A throwaway line during Hal Jordan's journeying back to Earth most the wormhole being where he still left it implies he tin create or move them.
• Physical God: Wonder Adult female calls Superman this.
• Popular-Cultural Osmosis Failure: It'due south implied that Carrie doesn't actually know what the Zorro Mark is, just that information technology ways something to Batman.
• Ability Dynamics Kink: Implied if not outright stated to be the case of Superman and Wonder Adult female's relationship. Her response to Superman feeling down most Batman beating him (again) is to punch him in the confront and say, "Where is the man who threw me to the footing and made me his prize?".
• President Evil: Actually a hologram controlled by Lex Luthor.
• Puny Humans: What Lara Kent believes.
• Retcon: Of sorts. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns treats the absence of superheroes (and Superman having "sold out") as a consequence of a Super Registration Human activity, with the unnamed president strongly implied to be Ronald Reagan, who's super-anile and losing his sanity. Here, information technology's revealed that the whole scenario is due to Lex Luthor and Braniac holding the world (and Kandor) hostage via orbiting cannons and a hologram of the president (whose proper name is stated to be "Rickard", a reference to the comic Prez).
• Retraux: Superman looks more than like his Golden Age version than the one used in DKR.
• Sacrificial Lion: The Guardian, the Creeper, and the Martian Manhunter all dice in horrible ways to prove how dangerous this "New Joker" (Dick Grayson) actually is.
• Sexposition: Part of the arc's Bad Futureness is "News in the Nude," the only news worth watching. Guess Frank Miller had never heard of Naked News.
• Sibling Squad: The original Militarist and Dove are inspired to kickoff fighting injustice again past Batman's speech, just they're a scrap out of shape (even if that probably won't affect their powers much), and Don argues that they spent nearly of their time as vigilantes arguing with each other.
• Signature Style
• Strawman Political: The Question is a radical Libertarian, Green Arrow is a radical Marxist. Miller didn't give us any clue which he agrees with, and which, if either, is meant to be correct.
  • Fake Dichotomy. Both characters are shown to exist ridiculously over the pinnacle in their antics. The Question refuses to apply annihilation more technologically advanced than a typewriter (though that could exist Properly Paranoid given the setting), and Green Pointer is a hypocritical billionaire Marxist hippie who presumably spent a fortune to go a cybernetic arm when the earth is in the throes of a nuclear winter.
• Swallowed Whole: Carrie accidentally swallows Ray Palmer early on, leading to a Vomit Indiscretion Shot.
• Have That!: Word of God says the book every bit Frank Miller'south reaction to the Dark Age Dork Age he helped inspire.
  • Which leads to some Fridge Logic when combined with All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder. For case, this comic lauds Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) specifically as a noble hero exiled past the petty people of Earth, but who is shown to be absolutely worthy of godlike power. In contrast, the Goddamn Batman once lured Hal into an deadfall and shell him savagely with little provocation. The beating occurs canonically earlier he entrusts Bats with a means to summon him, but was written afterward.
• Technical Pacifist: Batman at this indicate is only one out of keeping his word. He conspicuously does not intendance most killing enemies anymore, letting subordinates use lethal force liberally, and actually shows a disturbing amount of glee over Hawkboy brutally murdering Luthor. Eventually, he opts to pause his code altogether when he happily kills Dick Grayson himself.
• Together in Death: Hawkman and Hawkwoman were killed in a armed services strike ordered by Lex Luthor, embracing each other in their final moments.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Batman.
• Villain Decay: Brainiac and Lex Luthor aren't nearly as smart in TDKSA as they are in other stories. In fact, some of the decisions they make are downright moronic.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Green Pointer and The Question, in that one wants Marxist Socialism, and the other Randian Objectivism.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to Mary Marvel? Information technology was never revealed if she was rescued or not.
• Wife Husbandry: Dick Grayson implies that this is what Batman is doing with Carrie, though Word of Miller denies this vehemently. Also, Dick Grayson was batshit insane at that point, and had just spent a practiced amount of time mutilating Carrie out of psychotic jealousy. He is an unreliable source, to say the least.
• Willfully Weak: This is apparently Batman'due south (and Miller's) main trouble with Superman, as he stops being treated as a Barrel-Monkey once he starts taking the attitude to friction match his power equally a Physical God.
• Winged Humanoid: Hawkman and Hawkwoman gave their children wings while living in Costa rica.
• You Killed My Father: Luthor killed Hawkman and Hawkwoman. Their children, Hawkboy and his sister, want revenge.
• Zeerust Canon: Published xv years later, merely just takes place two years later.
• Zorro Mark: Batman carves 1 onto Lex Luthor'due south face.

  Catgirl: "The Boss leaves his mark. [nosotros see Batman use a batarang to make the iii quick slices] Information technology must mean something to him... "

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/TheDarkKnightStrikesAgain

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