Batman versus the man.

• Author: Williams, Kristian

Batman has been imagined as a vigilante, an ingenious detective, a crusading knight, a psychopath, and now--a revolutionary! In The Dark Knight Strikes Again (DC Comics, 2001-2, three volumes), Frank Miller presents us with an aged Batman, coming out of retirement to lead a guerrilla army of teenage thugs and washed-up superheroes.

In the background, we catch glimpses of a society where the president is, literally, a digitized puppet, corporations are run by criminals bent on increasing their power, and civil rights are but vague memories. But does the series represent an infusion of radical politics into the world of Gotham? Or is it just another costume for the same macho, militaristic, conquest fantasy that dominates so much of popular culture?

One thing is certain: This is not the Batman you grew up with. It's not the comic strip crusader or the (Zap! Pow!) Adam West farce, not the Superfriends cartoon character or the haunted hero of Tim Burtons films. Whatever your idea of the Dark Knight, this three-part graphic novel will represent a departure.

The rules are different: The superheroes are old, the government corrupt, right and wrong don't stand out on the page in lurid color quite the way they once did. But the biggest difference is the heroes' attitude toward crime. When Batman laments, "We spent our whole careers looking in the wrong direction! I hunted muggers and burglars while the real monsters took power unopposed!"--it's clear that something has changed. The scope of "justice" is suddenly a whole lot wider; its defenders realize that the real crooks are in the halls of power.

A the same time, the comic depicts a brave new world of nanobots, "News in the Nude," genetic engineering, and public apathy. This mundane dystopia of The Dark Knight Strikes Again may echo our own entertainment-obsessed consumer culture, but Batman's revolution will seem unfamiliar--and uncomfortable--to most people involved in contemporary leftist politics. Batman's war on tyranny proceeds unaided by consensus-driven processes, protest rallies, passive resistance, or the other trappings of our current activist culture. Batman gives orders, and his troops take them. When conflict erupts, it is always somewhere on the shouting/fisticuffs/ laser-cannon continuum.

So is this just another conquest fantasy? The book does have its objectionable elements. For one, there's the scene where Wonder Woman asks a sulking Superman: "Where is the man who stole my...