What a shame
Wow. I've been a fan of Frank Miller since the early Marvel work, but I could hardly bear to read all the way through this. For all he's done, from Ronin to 300, you really want to give the guy a pass for his lesser works (Dark Knight 2, or the film Robocop 2), but then something like this comes out that's so bad... it just leaves you in a place where you find it hard to defend the creator.
Holy Terror - where to begin? Let's start with the artwork. If you're a Miller fan, you saw his artwork evolve from simple, 'immature' Marvel standards up through the first batch of Sin City, most of the time doing things no one else was. The style was always recognizable, and often just genius. And no matter the content, the storytelling was always accessible and brilliant. No longer - the work in Holy Terror is so convoluted that I have a hard time understanding what's happening. Miller tries so hard to make it look arty that he's far past the point of being innovative, now he's really detracting from our ability to follow the story.
And the story is just terrible. It's 9/11 with a super-hero response... Batman and Catwoman fighting silly Jihadists. There's no mystery, no development, barely any existence of characters at all... just two vigilantes who experience terrorism and then go on a killing spree. The message here is that terrorists need to be hunted down and killed - and it's not hard to extrapolate plenty of other messages. Sure, I get it: if someone attacks your city, you go fight back... but the tableau here is far too simplistic and ham-handed to be taken at anything other than face value.
Holy Terror is Miller's comic book peer to the movie of The Spirit - a completely indulgent waste of time that makes us want to mourn the loss of the giant that used to be Frank Miller.
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