Frank Miller's The Dark Knight III: The Master Race

I really like Frank Miller's work when it comes to comic books.  Not only does he push the envelope with his story telling, I mean he basically rewrote the entire mythos for Batman back in the 90's, but he doesn't draw his characters in the "classical" sense.  He exaggerates the features to fit the characters personality.  In some of the cover art that has been released for the upcoming series The Dark Knight III: The Master Race, Batman's fists and feet are way out of proportion to that of a regular person's, but it's to convey the fact that he will always stand his ground, and that he is a fighter.  You see what he's doing?  Not only is he telling us who his characters are through dialogue, but also through the physical appearance of the characters themselves.  He did the same thing with Superman in the cover art that he did for the upcoming mini-series featuring The Atom.  Here, check it out:





Look at his face.  He's got a huge jaw-line, his teeth are clenched, and his fists are huge!  This is to tell the reader that this version of Superman is a brute that only gets things done with his fists.  There's also a lot of controversy on the web about the fact that Miller drew Superman a, um..."bulge."  This was done on purpose.  To quote Devin Faraci over at Birth.Movies.Death., he says:

"This is an image of Superman as hyper-masculinity run wild, it's a critique of the character."

He also added:

"While Miller's post 9/11 politics have leaned decidedly neolithic, his TKDR (The Dark Knight Returns) Superman was always a government stooge, a brutal enforcer of the US will abroad.  Miller is leaning in to that, going cartoonish with it.  Superman's fists are exaggerated both to underline how he solves problems but also to bring to mind the forced perspective of Jack Kirby."

Faraci concluded his description by saying:

"His body is splayed in a way that denotes an utter lack of control.  It's messy and weird looking and I love that about it."


I thought he did a great job in explaining how he views Miller's work.  The way he critiqued his drawing makes perfect sense.  Let's go back to what I was saying about the Batman picture.  Not the one up above, but this one here:




Like I said before, do you notice how his fists and feet are exaggerated?  Also, look at how he's crouched down, making himself a harder target to hit if you are shooting at him.  He also looks like an animal ready to pounce on his prey.  His face is almost grinning, like he's enjoying the fight, too.  Absolutely incredible.

It should be noted that the while Miller did draw the Superman art up above, Miller is not drawing The Dark Knight III this time around due to his failing health.  This time around the art work is being done by Klaus Jansen and Andy Kubert, and they have been able to tap into Miller's style with incredible ease.  The comic will be an eight issue mini-series and is due to begin this November.