Neither can I, DickWith at least one proviso and one addition -- I believe Frank Miller lost the capacity to write an existing, mainstream character competently years ago, and the note that I haven't been putting out any money for this series, respectively -- I wholly endorse Protoclown's review of the first four issues of All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder.
Protoclown develops a solid case against this series as anything but, as he notes, it's "a fascinating train wreck." He pulls specific material from the issues, including panels, and notes the flaws from neraly everything being gratuitous to the lax, getting-paid-by-the-page pacing that takes what could easily have been covered in a single issue and stretching it out over four.
A busy day here, but this was a quick post with an entertaining link, even if you're not into Batman and/or comics. If you're a comics fan who, based on Miller's more recent work and/or general reviews and/or some other reason (I don't care for "out of continuity" items, seeing them as refuges for sloppy writers looking for an easy assignment), skipped this series, here's substantial validation for your decision. Frank Miller's "fresh" take on Batman and Gotham is to repopulate it with variations on his Sin City characters.
The only really frightening part for me is that this series apparently has some ardent fans who take it all at face value.
Now, wait... how old is young Dick Grayson in this story again..?
Comments
This entire DC crossover event thing right now seems to be trying to "undo" the damage caused to the batman character - bgun in Miller's original Dark Knight.
Whatever, whatever, right/
To hear the people at DC talk, though, I don't get much of a sense that they've felt Batman is damaged. He's simply such a focus of attention for them -- one of their most universally-identified characters, and thus one of their greatest financial resources, that there's a continual process of... something between re-invention and re-setting.
From what I gathered at the convention an upcoming arc will focus on the introduction of a son for Batman -- presumably arising from a slightly modified version of the events in Son of the Demon, where Bruce and Talia (Ras Al Ghul's daughter) had a son whose existence was hidden from Bruce. Since that story was rendered non-canonical over a decade ago (wasn't it one of the Zero Hour "fixes"?) it begs the question of how permanent the character will be once he's introduced.
I do think that someone should keep Frank Miller away from a movie script after witness the fiasco that was Robocop III.
I will admit that I've found my view of much of his work this century colored by his post-9/11 statement that now "we're all Israelis," a statement I find offensive and repugnant.