It’s been a while since I read that issue so correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought there was a pretty strong implication (heck, I think the lawyer actually says as much) that she only ended up there because he put something in her drink.

Yeah, that’s there, but it spoils the fun of missing the point!

The secret is that Miller is actually a pretty bad writer and especially bad at character development.

There’s development in All Star.
But who was in it for development?
It’s Frank Miller and Jim Lee doing Batman… what the heck else did people expect when this book came out?

Miller managed to do so in Daredevil, especially in the “Russian Roulette” issue. He even had Carrie Kelly react to the dangerous new world into which she was thrust in DKR. In Sin City, the good-ish guys win (before they’re killed) and the bad-der guys get what’s coming to them. I wish Miller could get out of that mentality, as well as presenting that which is feminized (especially a feminized male) as weak (Catwoman in DKR) or corrupt (Joker in DKR, Xerxes in 300).

What about Robin in DKR?

But here’s the main difference: with an old friend with schizophrenia, you still care for them (or at least I have). With Frank Miller I’ve given up.

It cracks me up when people get shocked by pointless violence and misogyny in Miller books… that’s what his books are all about!

After 1995 or so. Before then he also had the capacity to write moving, nuanced stories like Born Again.

I look at Miller’s work now and it’s like meeting an old friend who’s been now developed schizophrenia: you see flashes of the thing that you used to love, but mostly it’s repulsive and scary.

Pointed?

Pointful?

It’s been a while since I read that issue so correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought there was a pretty strong implication (heck, I think the lawyer actually says as much) that she only ended up there because he put something in her drink.

Creepy Rohypnol Joker? Oh my!

by the way, i really liked Miller’s take on Joker here…i’ve always wondered how these crazy ass Gotham hoods get underlings, especially the Joker, because he’s like King Crazy…he’s got to be able to put on the charm, or no one would work for him…for someone well versed in the criminal element, a “crusading lawyer” perhaps, there must be something nigh irresitable about the Clown Prince…

For example, just about everything that happens to Sue Dibny in Identity Crisis is textbook WiR. If she were a man and/or Ralpher were a woman, those scenes would have, at the very least, been written much differently and expected to have a much different impact on the reader. On the other hand, there was a storyline in the original New Warriors comic where a gang attacked the families of all the New Warriors – shooting Firestar’s dad, kidnapping Nova’s brother and cutting his finger off, blowing up Rage’s grandmother, etc. The only point behind Rage’s grandma getting blown up was Rage’s reaction to it, but to call that a WiR moment would seem, to me, to be saying that it’s just fine to kill, torture, and maim MALE relatives just to get a reaction from heroes, but women are off limits. When people use something like that as part of a WiR argument, that’s when the message starts sounding like “all violence against women is misogynistic.”

Yup.