(Not to be confused with Batman: Holy Terror, a 1991 story by Alan Brennert and Norm Breyfogle.) How do you solve a problem like Frank Miller? His early work-- Daredevil, Batman: Year One, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Martha Washington, Ronin and others-- is resonant and powerful, a proud part of comics history. Even somewhat later pieces like Sin City and 300 were entertaining in a rock-em-sock-em, pulpy way. But even as Netflix's Daredevil and Batman v. Superman bring some of his old ideas to the screen, Miller has gone back to those old ideas with diminishing returns, putting style so far over substance that it's practically become the substance, if not abstract expressionism. 300 and The Dark Knight Returns got sequels that are better off ignored, and later this year, Dark Knight Returns will be getting another, with the worrying subtitle "The Master Race." That subtitle leads us to the other problem with Miller: he was always a little right of center, but has become so politically inflexible that it's colored some of his work in retrospect. There's nothing wrong, necessarily, with making Islamic terrorists your villains: they're certainly despicable enough. There's something considerably more wrong with writing a superhero story that is simply anti-Islam, conflating 1.2 billion people with the actions of Al-Qaeda or ISIS, reducing all Muslims to faceless Chitauri and making an outright cartoon of the war on terror. But that's exactly what Miller did, and in his early drafts, he was going to use Batman to do it. Odds Of Being Good:Incalculably Small.Odds Of Being Published... Actually, this story barely qualifies as unpublished-- a version of it did see print as Holy Terror, and it's pretty clear that the main protagonists are Miller's Batman and Catwoman with the serial numbers filed off (especially if you've read Miller's All-Star Batman and Robin, where they act similarly). Even so, it's easy to imagine how much worse this would have been if marketed as an official Batman story by one of superhero comics' biggest stars, or even as part of Batman's canon. Though DC Comics was not interested in publishing the result, Miller presented the decision to turn Holy Terror into a non-Batman story as his, not DC's. If that's true, then it is the only thing about this project that shows any kind of restraint. He also said the book was "guaranteed to offend just about everybody." Mission accomplished. What are your favorite comics, Batman-related or otherwise, that never reached issue #1 and therefore, technically, do not exist? Ponder the philosophical implications of that, then let us know in the comments!
T Campbell has written quite a few online comics series and selected work for Marvel, Archie and Tokyopop. His longest-running works are Fans, Penny and Aggie-- and his current project with co-writer Phil Kahn, Guilded Age.
