Once upon a time, Frank Miller was a name worth respect
He got his start at Marvel, revamping Daredevil into the gritty red hero we all know and love. He revived the idea of Batman being a more serious hero to the mainstream with "The Dark Knight Returns". Then he wrote "Sin City", and since then he hasn't stopped writing it. It became his style of writing and his art started to become more cartoonish and blocky. He returned to work with Batman with "The Dark Knight Strikes Again " and "All Star Batman and Robin", both are extremely love it or hate it. However, he's lost his defenders that to this book. This book was meant to be a Batman comic in a "parody" of propaganda comics (there's a reason parody is in quotations). He supposedly took Holy Terror to another publisher because he decided it was "not a Batman story". Reading the book makes it more like DC flat out refused to publish it after Bob Shreck, the only person who supported it, was laid off because they didn't want Batman, their cash cow, to be a racist. And yes, that is the word to describe this book, racist. The Fixer, yes, that is our "hero" in this book, is Batman in all but name. Not the Batman Frank Miller once said is "as good and pure a superhero you can find". This is his post-Sin City work Batman, a Batman who is misogynistic, rude, violent, sociopathic, psychopathic and clearly cares more about hurting the bad guys than actually being a hero. He is nothing more than a bigoted brute who gladly hurts them in ways not dissimilar. This book depicts all Muslims as members and/or followers of Al-Qaeda, there are no good Muslims or misguided Muslims. It treats mistreatment of them as good and treating them with kindness as naivety that gets you killed. Even the propaganda comics he's supposedly "parodying" didn't treat their crimes with such hostility. And yes, that's the main problem, this book fails as a parody because it treats the enemy and how to combat them as serious, no irony or attempt to make any commentary. This comic was released 10 years after 9/11, we live in a time where we know that treating all Muslims with such cruelty is horrible and hypocritical because we know not all are members of any terrorist organization and judging an entire religion and ethnicity because of what one guerilla force did is stupid. Frank Miller hasn't...
