I like to mark these occasions with something special and it occurred to me that it’s been a while since my last post celebrating the Caped Crusader’s tendency to acrobatically kick – or sometimes knee – his opponents in the head. It’s a trope that never gets old, as it plays to the strengths of both artists (who get to draw Batman pulling off incredible moves) and letterers (who have a chance to go nuts with their sound effects). Plus, writers sometimes join the fun by giving the Dark Knight a badass one-liner to accompany the aggression (like the classy pun ‘Too bad I can’t kick his addiction.’), thus supplying the lyrics to go with the artists’ dance choreography and the letterers’ music.
Here are yet another fifty examples of extravagantly performative violence:
Batman #264
Batman #269
Detective Comics #339
Batman #330
Detective Comics #483
Detective Comics #551
Batman #385
Batman Annual #10
Batman #385
Batman #396
Batman #406
Detective Comics #577
Detective Comics #580
Bride of the Demon
Legends of the Dark Knight #25
Legends of the Dark Knight #31
Legends of the Dark Knight #25
Batman & Robin Adventures #10
Batman / Phantom Stranger
Batman & Robin Adventures #10
Resurrection Man #7
Batman Adventures (v2) #1
Outlaws #2
Legends of the Dark Knight #91
Outlaws #3
Batman Adventures (v2) #11
Turning Points #5
Batman Adventures (v2) #16
Batman #608
Gotham Knights #31
Batman #618
Catwoman (v3) #22
Detective Comics #791
Gotham Knights #41
Detective Comics #800
Batman #634
Batman #640
Batman #642
Gotham Knights #60
Forever Evil Aftermath: Batman vs Bane
Kings of Fear #1
Batman Annual (v3) #1
New Year’s Evil #1
Batman: Universe #1
World’s Finest (v4) #1
Batman: Universe #1
World’s Finest (v4) #2
One Dark Knight #1
World’s Finest (v4) #11
…and let’s wrap up with something a bit more elaborate:
War and comics tend to be a generative combination. The former has triggered politically charged works, it has shaped the background of popular characters (especially superheroes), it has inspired bonkers tales that counterintuitively mix fun and horrific elements , and – as repeatedly showcasedon this blog – it fueled powerful images in the likes of Star Spangled War Stories. From the early 1950s to the mid-1970s, this series delivered some of the most stirring artwork out there, nailing the adrenaline, pathos, and horror of military combat.
Looking at the issues’ covers today, I cannot help but to appreciate the sheer craft on display, even if it’s hard not to feel depressed – and scared – over the fact that such carnage isn’t confined to the past… or to the awesome drawings of comic books.
As much as Frank Miller milked Superman’s symbolic potential, I also appreciate how much his comics simultaneously ‘humanized’ the character as well. Miller’s interpretation of the Man of Steel may be eccentric, but his Superman is an actual individual and not just a mouthpiece for themes and ideas.
For all of his fascination with over-the-top figures, at his best Miller tends to display a talent for giving his cast gripping individual voices and a believable interiority. If we go back to The Dark Knight Returns, Superman is never *just* a distant symbol. In fact, in one of his first scenes we get to briefly see the world through his perspective, sharing both his sight and his frustrated inner thoughts…
The Dark Knight #3
The book is full of touches like this one. When Superman gets blasted by the nuclear warhead, we feel his pain, confusion, and overall vulnerability (rendered even more striking because of the grotesque way Miller draws him). His future daughter might find it pathetic, but I think there is a beautiful sort of despair in Superman’s thoughts as he begs Mother Earth for understanding towards these ‘tiny and stupid and vicious’ humans who ‘can split the very fabric of reality’ with their nuclear conflict.
While searching for sunlight stored in a flower, Superman seems to be reasoning and negotiating his commitment to his host planet and its inhabitants, conveying the sort of conflicted feelings that make for a more nuanced characterization than DKR is often given credit for.
The Dark Knight #4
In fact, even with that final fight against Batman, Superman is never entirely unsympathetic. Hell, Clark even knowingly helps cover up for Bruce’s fake death at the end!
By the early 2000s, though, Frank Miller pushed Superman’s character traits so far that he almost seemed to be parodying his earlier work. If this was true of The Dark Knight Strikes Again, it was even more so in the case of All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder. In that infamous series, everyone came off like a caricature – if not visually (Jim Lee’s pencils were much more conventional than Miller’s), at least in the way they were written. So, it’s no surprise that the Man of Steel was reduced to a poster boy for blind obedience to authorities, as made explicit by (a similarly caricatural) Wonder Woman:
All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder #5
(Check out Plastic Man’s own visual mockery of Supes’ chained condition…)
As I mentioned in the last post, the critique of Superman for failing to stand up for himself was formulated from a libertarian and objectivist viewpoint, creating a facile contrast to a Batman who wasn’t ashamed to flaunt his superiority.
And yet, even a dreck of a comic like All-star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder managed to give readers the impression that there was something more hiding underneath the surface. Sure, Superman was defined – negatively – by the fact that he abdicated from using his full might and greatness… but that determined restraint also created a suggestive tension. If, on the one hand, the Man of Steel appeared to reject his own strength, on the other hand the very act of holding back required its own type of (physical and psychological) force:
All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder #5
This notion paid off near the end of The Master Race, when Miller – and Batman – finally acknowledged Superman’s awesomeness. As described by the Dark Knight himself, the Man of Steel now seemed impressive both because of his ability to kick ass and because of the sense that, all this time, he had been hiding from us the true magnitude of his abilities, thus retroactively conveying a gigantic strength of will and self-control.
Drawn by an Andy Kubert trying his best to channel his inner Frank Miller, the result was an archetypical ‘fuck yeah’ moment.
The Master Race #9
Which brings us to Superman: Year One, 2019’s prestige mini-series chronicling Clark Kent’s childhood and youth, leading up to his early days as Superman. This was Frank Miller’s longest exploration of his take on the Man of Steel, properly fleshing out the motifs that he had been gradually developing for decades.
Unfortunately, it’s a pretty clunky affair: a lot of the writing is corny and heavy-handed, and I don’t much care for John Romita Jr’s artwork either. I much, much prefer Miller’s and Romita Jr’s 1993 collaboration Daredevil: The Man Without Fear, which was a more inspired reimagining of a superhero origin. In fact, even some of the high points of Superman: Year One seem like riffs on that earlier comic, such as the scenes about a young boy adjusting himself to his intrusive powers:
Superman: Year One #1
Daredevil: The Man Without Fear #1
Nevertheless, we do get a deeper dramatization of Superman’s relationship with self-restraint. Clark Kent’s impulses to use his superhuman strength are counterbalanced by his mother’s liberal values (‘Nobody’s really bad, darling. Some people just get confused.’) and by his father’s pragmatic pleas for him to stay grounded (‘If you go and start thinking you’re better than everybody else… well, there’s nothing good can come of that’), although the latter also gives him an opening to act exceptionally against injustice when push comes to shove (‘First you talk to them… then you flatten them…’).
It becomes a matter of figuring out the correct strategy and proportion of force. For instance, Clark acts to prevent the gang rape of his high school sweetheart (yep), but he doesn’t kill or maim anyone. Thus, arguably, Frank Miller’s objectivist convictions give way to a more nuanced search for balance, although, in fairness, Ayn Rand’s philosophy also placed a high value on self-control (seen as a triumph of reason over emotionalism).
The first issue of Superman: Year One is ultimately a coming-of-age tale about controlling one’s body and one’s emotions…
Superman: Year One #1
It’s by issue #2 that things get weird. Even if you disregard the fact that Clark Kent hooks up with a mermaid (like he did in the Silver Age, only more so) and spends dozens of pages fighting the krakens of her incestuous father (Poseidon), you have to cope with a storyline about him joining the US Navy and learning to respect military men, who are ‘fragile’ (compared to him) but nevertheless ‘work so darned hard.’ Frank Miller even shoehorns a SEAL Team Six mission against Muslim-looking pirates (uncomfortable echoes of his Holy Terror!) before having Clark move on to less murderous conceptions of heroism…
Now, for a general Superman story, this is a terrible move. Although he was raised as an all-American farm boy, Clark is so intrinsically defined by his ethics and respect for life that it’s very hard to swallow him enlisting in the US military (except perhaps during World War II), even if driven by a curiosity to see and experience the rest of the world beyond Smallville (it’s much easier to imagine him becoming a reporter in West Africa trying to grasp the complexities of human conflicts, like in Mark Waid’s Birthright).
However, if you accept Superman: Year One as the origin of the Millerverse version of the Man of Steel (the same that shows up in DKR, etc), then I suppose this helps establish Superman’s upcoming relationship with the armed forces, as he continued to identify with their values, accepting orders in the name of the United States’ interests (including acts of war). It’s as if you took Clark out of the military, but not the military out of Clark.
Superman: Year One #2
Not that the continuity fits very smoothly… Among other inconsistencies, the future technology of The Dark Knight Returns looks rather quaint compared to the one on display in Superman: Year One, although comic book fans are used to sliding timelines, so it doesn’t require too much imagination to wrap one’s head around it.
The main connection is in terms of spirit anyway: these works speak to each other. For example, the confrontation between Batman and Superman near the end is clearly intended as a reversal of DKR’s climax, with the Man of Steel now appearing as (supposedly) more dignified and badass and the Dark Knight as somewhat pathetic and ineffective. Either that or Miller was actually taking the piss out of Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, treating both characters like jerks while coming up with even more awful dialogue…
Superman: Year One #3
Batman looks particularly off-putting. I don’t mean the visual, which combines various designs (including the notorious gun holster he sportedback in 1939, when Bob Kane and Bill Finger were still figuring out the character). I mean that he sounds stupid and much less cool than in either DKR or Batman: Year One… although it’s not that far from his characterization in All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder.
I suppose ridiculing the Caped Crusader (if that is indeed what Frank Miller is intentionally doing, which I’m not sure) helps make Superman less of an easy target for Batman’s objectivist voice. In turn, Miller transfers some of that voice to Superman himself, as the latter constantly weights whether to crush or to save humanity.
In other words, at the end of day, Miller turns the Man of Steel into the Dark Knight. Or, better yet, into Rorschach:
We’ve arrived at the end of Gotham Calling’s long-running Cold War cinema retrospective… And if you think depictions of the conflict were winding down in the final years, you’re in for a surprise. This is probably the bloodiest – and certainly the most testosterone-heavy – installment on our list!
In contrast to the kind of mature, experimental cinema of the 1960s and ‘70s, Reagan-era productions largely reduced the Cold War to teen-geared, over-the-top (if narratively conventional) popcorn blockbusters full of sound and fury, perhaps to compensate for the anti-climactic real-world denouement. What happened outside of fiction was in many ways mind-boggling, world-changing, and certainly fascinating (see, for example, Lea Ypi’s highly amusing and thought-provoking memoir Free, about seeing the transition in Albania through a young person’s eyes), but most popular films I know weren’t quite ready to imagine a new reality… and so, while the Cold War did not end in a bang after all, there were still plenty of explosions on the screen.
111. The Blob (USA, 1988)
This fun horror comedy about – you guessed it – a killer blob engages with the Cold War in a pretty direct way about two thirds of the way through, when we finally learn a bit more about the titular mysterious organism. Yet there is also a meta level: like much of eighties’ American culture, The Blob is a throwback to the fifties (it’s a remake of a 1958 B-movie), but by adding a satirical element – as well as a few echoes of The Crazies – the film ends up underlining the gap between the alleged consensus of the early Cold War (which Reagan sought to recapture) and the more cynical attitude of subsequent generations.
112. Miracle Mile (USA, 1988)
Because nuclear fears were a part of the zeitgeist practically until the very end, in the final years of the Cold War you could still find an urgent sense of existential anxiety in films like Miracle Mile, a quirky (yet very dark) indie one-crazy-night romcom/apocalyptic thriller about a shy trombone player trying to track down the girl of his dreams even as the world seems about to get blown away.
113. Rambo III(USA, 1988)
The one where one-man-army John Rambo fights alongside the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan! I had to include at least one of Sylvester Stallone’s iconic anti-Soviet trilogy – along with Rambo II and Rocky IV, this film is the epitome of the Reaganite macho action cinema mocked by the Dead Kennedys, although I still find it comparatively less campy than its immediate predecessor, perhaps because of all the gritty neo-western imagery, complete with a proto-cavalry climax in the desert… Fans may appreciate the subtle nods to the previous Rambo movies, even if an earlier monologue further subverts the spirit of First Blood (‘We didn’t make you this fighting machine. We just shifted away the rough edges.’). At least as many are bound to laugh, not just at the sheer over-the-topness of the whole thing (the laconic hero speaks almost exclusively in badass quips), but at how poorly its propaganda has aged (including the scene were a dead-eyed Stallone learns about the brave Afghans’ ‘holy war’). Plus, there is one more layer of irony: Rambo III was shot in Israel and it’s full of Israeli actors pretending to be Arabs fighting against invaders of their land.
114. Red Heat (USA, 1988)
It’s perestroika as a buddy cop action comedy, with stoic Soviet officer Ivan Danko teaming up with a sleazy jerk from Chicago PD and the two learning to sort of begrudgingly respect each other despite their differences, much like the superpowers were doing during Mikhail Gorbachev’s leadership. That very specific moment of rapprochement is signaled not only by the fact that the film was partially shot on location in Moscow itself, but also by the decision to depict Schwarzenegger as a heroic embodiment of Soviet strength and honest conviction (as imagined by Americans) rather than as a defector (like in the next movie on this list). Indeed, while Red Heat is all about thick national stereotypes, the result practically feels like an inversion of Hollywood’s traditional propaganda: the United States are a dirty hellhole where cops envy the Soviets’ authoritarian methods (‘Do you know Miranda?’), openness to the West has mostly served to flood the USSR with cocaine, and Danko doesn’t fall in love with consumerism, Ninotchka-style, although he does get a lesson on Marxism from an African-American gang leader in a scene that has to be seen to be believed.
115. Red Scorpion (USA, 1988)
From the Congo Crisis to the Ogaden War, postcolonial Africa was certainly a key geopolitical battlefield, yet there aren’t many movies about it… One brazen exception is yet another exponent of the golden age of absurd macho bullshit: giving Rambo III a run for its money when it comes to warnography, this revisionist version of the Angolan Civil War pits pure-hearted African freedom fighters against sadistic Cuban occupiers. Ingeniously, Red Scorpion focuses on a Spetsnaz operative (the gigantic Dolph Lundgren, still in Rocky IV mode) who first pretends to desert and then truly deserts, so that he spends both the initial and the last stretch of the film massacring commies *and* we still get a classic ‘anti-authority conversion’ story out of it. Sure, above all this is an utterly tasteless piece of exhilarating exploitation (one of the characters, played by M. Emmet Walsh, even risks his life during an explosive chase scene to ensure there’s kickass music playing in the soundtrack, Baby Driver-style), but it’s hard to deny the film’s agenda, as it shamelessly reduces the MPLA to mere puppets, thus implicitly endorsing the support to UNITA provided by the Reagan administration and by South African troops… Indeed, the politics here are so comically grotesque – and so in-your-face – that it hardly comes as a shock that the production itself, shot in Namibia, broke the international boycott against apartheid South Africa.
116. Bullet in the Head (Hong Kong, 1990)
Maoist protesters, the Vietnam War, and the specter of the CIA have all shown up on this list before, but Bullett in the Head provides an original perspective, looking at them through the eyes of three friends from Hong Kong fighting their way through southeast Asia in the late 1960s. Don’t be fooled by the cheesy opening: this is a deliriously violent epic and, for my money, John Woo’s greatest masterpiece. (As far as I can tell, though, there is no connection to Rage Against the Machine’s awesome song that came out just a couple of years later.)
117. The Hunt for Red October (USA, 1990)
Set in 1984 (i.e. pre-Gorbachev), this submarine spy thriller shows Hollywood trying to hold on to old narratives in a rapidly changing world. Still, as far as spectacle goes, The Hunt for Red October does the job: John McTiernan, who feels at home directing spatially-defined narratives where he methodically moves the pieces around, confidently interweaves sub battles and diplomatic maneuvers, piling twists on top of twists.
118. Robot Jox (USA, 1990)
A delightfully cheesy update of The 10th Victim-style strand of futuristic narratives where nuclear confrontation is superseded by other forms of competition: in this case, international disputes are resolved by one-on-one combat between mecha fighting machines (rendered in adorable stop-motion animation). Suitably for this closing era, Robot Jox feels like you’re watching children of the Cold War playing with their toys and inherited stereotypes (from the cruel, Russian-sounding antagonist to the simplistic espionage subplot), reproducing the conflict’s cycle of one-upmanship while also making it seem childish and ridiculous. I wonder if the final shot is a ‘fuck you’ to the opening of Rocky IV…
119. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (USA, 1991)
In isolation, 1984’s awesome sci-fi/horror/action classic The Terminator did not add much to existing Cold War narratives (its spin on familiar fears about AI-based defense programs was that this time the result was not only atomic war, but the rise of human-enslaving machines). When taken in conjunction with its first sequel, though, we get one of the great meta-texts about the Cold War’s endgame: while the original has a foreboding sense of imminent doom (personified as a badass time-travelling cyborg killer) that seems quite appropriate to the rising tension in the early Reagan years, Terminator 2 is ultimately about moving on from nuclear nightmares towards an open-ended future. So, yes, James Cameron addressed the Cold War more directly in The Abyss (especially in the extended version), but T2 is the perfect coda to this cinematic journey.
120. Tribulations 99: Alien Anomalies Under America (USA, 1991)
Tribulations 99 is surely the weirdest damn film on this entire list, but I can’t think of a more suited endpoint than a trippy collage of footage from old movies documenting an alternative history of the Cold War in Latin America that stitches real-world events (from the coup in Guatemala prompted by the United Fruit Company all the way to the invasion of Panama) with all sorts of conspiracy theories, thus recognizably framing the Red Menace in a continuum with tales of flying saucers and lizard people. I think of it as a prelude to The Department of Truth.
Pre-Crisis Wonder Woman comics (from the 1940s to the 1980s) were marked by constant experimentation. Perhaps unsure about what to do with the character, creators kept throwing her into all sorts of genres, from war to fantasy, from adventure to sci-fi, from Silver Age surrealism to Bronze Age horror, not to mention espionage and straight-up superheroics… You can see the ensuing versatility plastered all over her covers:
Although Frank Miller is best known for his world-shattering – and controversial – takes on Batman since the 1980s, he has been doing comics about Superman for just as long… and his approach to the Man of Steel is actually quite thematically rich in terms of his depictions of both the ‘super’ and the ‘man’ sides of the character.
Let’s start with the ‘super’ angle – that is to say, with the dimension that transcends humanity. I don’t mean the super powers, like flying or shooting lasers out of the eyes; I mean Superman’s larger-than-life symbolic potential, which Miller began exploring as early as his masterpiece The Dark Knight Returns, back in 1986.
Revealingly, in Superman’s first appearance on that classic mini-series, all we see of him is, precisely, the symbol:
The Dark Knight #2
I’ll point out the obvious: by smoothly transitioning from the US flag to Superman’s costume, this sequence suggests a continuity between the two symbols – a point reinforced by the dialogue, with a subservient Man of Steel (‘your time is precious’) at the direct service of the president (‘I like to keep you out of domestic affairs…’), who considers him a ‘good boy…’
In the story’s world (a then-future DCU), superheroes have been shunned by parents’ groups and by a political sub-committee, allegedly because regular humans felt intimidated by these powerful beings who rose above them. Supes explains the process in terms that would make Ayn Rand proud: ‘the rest of us recognized the danger – of the endless envy of those not blessed.’ He therefore gave his obedience to Washington in exchange for a license to continue to save lives, invisible to the media.
From the start, then, Superman represents the power of the state, enforcing the will of the US president (unnamed, but clearly Ronald Reagan, as evinced already here by the way he disguises authoritarian ticks through a folksy, cowboy-allusive rhetoric). It is heavily implied that Superman even helped hunt down and imprison the heroes who resisted the new status quo (including by amputating Green Arrow’s arm!).
The notion that the Man of Steel is essentially a manifestation of an abstract entity (in this case, state power) is reinforced by the fact that, initially, Superman – much like Batman himself – is not shown, but merely suggested. Diegeticaly, this makes sense because, as mentioned, Supes has become a secret government operative, so he’s meant to act without being seen… But it’s also a way for Miller to tease us, drawing on our knowledge of the character’s powers and of the franchise’s signature catchphrases to build up our anticipation.
The Dark Knight #3
I guess it’s also Frank Miller showing off his technical prowess, as he keeps coming up with inventive ways of insinuating Superman’s presence: a beam of blue light, an unseen barrier stopping bullets, an ellipse preceding a twisted metal pipe and a burned-up machine gun…
When Superman does fully show up, as Clark Kent, he comes off as a telluric Adonis, embodying not only the US government but the Earth’s life force as a whole. Not only is he framed from a low angle (which makes him look strong and heroic), but it looks like nature is sprouting around him, as underscored by Batman’s narration:
The Dark Knight #3
The character’s magical aura and godlike qualities are reinforced by the way Frank Miller plays with Superman’s iconicity. It’s not just that we recognize his costume or the references to the famous opening of the 1940 radio show The Adventures of Superman. It’s that Miller weaves in all these intertextual nods to convey the sense that the Man of Steel really is the stuff of legends – a kind of mythological figure deserving of awe.
This culminates in the first full-page splash showing readers a clearly visible Superman (no more hints, no more silhouettes), which evokes the cover of the character’s very first issue, 1937’s Action Comics #1… but, instead of a car, now Supes is lifting up a damn tank!
The Dark Knight #3
The fourth issue of DKR brings together all these symbolic dimensions (Reaganite policy, earthly elemental, cultural icon) in two unforgettable sequences.
The first one is the follow-up to the scene you see above, where Superman – ordered by the president – fights off the Soviets from the island of Corto Maltese. In retaliation, the USSR launches an advanced nuclear warhead, which the Man of Steel manages to divert to a desert, where the detonation seriously fucks him up. As argued here, in just a few pages Superman thus simultaneously allegorizes the US military machine (and foreign intervention), Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (and its limitations), and the environmental collapse derived from nuclear war… And all of this is made particularly forceful by the contrast between the iconic Superman (shown above) and the disfigured creature practically destroyed by the atomic blast (which I’ll revisit in an upcoming post).
But it’s the other sequence that would turn out to be the most influential: the ultimate fight between the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight, which inspired countless riffs over the years (on the pages and on the screen). Because this was Batman’s book, the deck was stacked against Superman – and, indeed, in part the fight served to show off the awesomeness of a courageous, resourceful, defiant human going up against a god…
The Dark Knight #4
As stressed by Batman’s words, at the end of the day Superman didn’t represent divine power as much as he represented the federal government, especially since the very reason he fought the Dark Knight was because the latter refused to bow down to the authorities. In other words, in order to make Batman a libertarian underdog, Frank Miller ended up reducing Supes to a mere stooge.
A big part of the vilification of Superman entailed the charge that, by agreeing to remain invisible and bowing down to the government, he was undermining Randian ideals, which brings us back to objectivism… According to this philosophical system – which Miller has acknowledged as a major influence – the highest moral purpose in life is to enjoy one’s own productive achievements, as opposed to conforming and compromising to the oppressive hostility of the ‘looters’ who want you to sacrifice for society’s good (here seen as the good of undeserving weaklings who exploit the genius of the strong).
I’m going to let Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey explain it better:
Action Philosophers! #2
You can hear Ayn Rand’s whisper when the Caped Crusader, speaking for the true heroes, condemns the Man of Steel for giving in to the looters: ‘You sold us out, Clark. You gave them – the power – that should have been ours.’ Later, Batman adds: ‘I’ve become a political liability… and you… you’re a joke…’
He’s not wrong. DKR’s Superman is a joke, in the sense that there is something amusingly iconoclastic and subversive (at least at the time) about beating up such a respected boy scout figure. Miller then expanded the joke in 2001’s sequel, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, where the Man of Steel now got humiliated both by the villains (Lex Luthor and Brainiac blackmail him by holding the Bottle City of Kandor hostage) and by other heroes:
The Dark Knight Strikes Again #1
You can also sense Frank Miller having a naughty, irreverent laugh when he depicts Superman impregnating Wonder Woman as they have aerial sex and then fall into the ocean, causing a tsunami, a volcano eruption, and a massive hurricane (‘The Pentagon denies any thermonuclear deployment’). It’s an incredible, visually arresting sequence whose impact derives, in large part, from the fact that it flies against the character’s wholesome connotation. (You can find a more elegant version of this scene in ‘The View from Above,’ from Astro City (v3) #7.)
As the New York-based Miller was working on The Dark Knight Strikes Again, however, the 9/11 attacks happened. This had a profound effect on him, resonating in Miller’s comics – and in his public statements – for years to come. One of the first things he did was to use Superman and his beloved cast to render gravitas to a potent tribute on the pages of the series’ final issue, where a Metropolis devastated by an alien monster blatantly stands in for the ruins of the World Trade Centre:
The Dark Knight Strikes Again #3
Notice how the Man of Steel now looks like Sin City’s Marv, albeit with laser-red eyes highlighting his rage. Indeed, these events, along with the influence of his daughter Lara (that’s the creepy girl you see hovering on the pages above), pave the way for Superman to become much more assertive, unashamedly embracing his power while crying out for revenge.
Rather than accepting it as a mere character arc, this shift can be read by taking into consideration Superman’s wider history, namely his association with the so-called ‘American Way.’ As he raises himself above humanity, then, the Man of Steel appears to be embodying a chauvinistic post-9/11 discourse about the USA aggressively reaffirming its superpower status above other nations…
The Dark Knight Strikes Again #3
To be fair, Frank Miller eventually addressed the fascistic implications of this transformation. Twelve years later, he co-wrote with Brian Azzarello a third installment of the Dark Knight saga, suitably titled The Master Race, which now used Superman as a vehicle to confront the rise of the far right (a topic that became even more relevant throughout the series’ publication, from 2015 to 2017).
The premise of The Master Race was that Lara, who despised her father’s submissive attitude (‘Why did you let the ants knock you from the sky?’), managed to restore the inhabitants of Kandor to full-size (because ‘they’re tired of being small’) – but this time we got to see the dark side of such an ideological stance, as Kryptonian supremacists proceeded to terrorize and enslave humanity.
And so, for once, these comics actually endorsed Superman’s humanism. Rather than a foe, the Man of Steel was now treated as Batman’s ally in the resistance against Kryptonian tyranny. Hell, the series actually finished with an inspirational monologue in which Superman praised humility, altruism, and solidarity, teaching his daughter that, rather than proudly tower above regular people, they should admire and learn from them. At the very end, Clark Kent’s glasses thus became an anti-Trump metaphor:
The Master Race #9
In a couple of weeks, we’ll see how Miller, having explored the symbolic potential of the Man of Steel, also dug into his personality, in Superman: Year One.
We are now entering the final stage of Gotham Calling’s mega-list of Cold War cinema… and we are firmly in Reaganite territory, including an obsession with foreign intervention along with a vigorous resurgence of nuclear panic.
101. Threads (UK, 1984)
Let’s start with a very, very different approach to apocalyptic nightmares than those of thelast post. This is the most violent – and certainly the most maximalist – of the early 1980s’ cycle of realistic docudramas drawing on cutting-edge nuclear and social sciences to present a credible speculation about the effects of an atomic exchange (a la The Day After and Testament). Threads starts off as a low-key kitchen sink TV movie about Sheffield’s working class paying little attention to an international crisis brewing over Iran until it gradually (and literally) blows up in their face… and then the film just keeps going and going, relentlessly envisioning the breakdown and possible evolution of society in fiercely uncompromising terms.
102. Top Secret! (USA, 1984)
I’ve written before about this absurdist comedy in which a version of Elvis Presley gets entangled in foreign intrigue during a trip to East Germany, spoofing the spy genre while throwing in a bunch of further oddball references (from The Blue Lagoon to The Wizard of Oz). As I mentionedat the time, the movie‘derives most of its gags from playing with cinematic language in general (constantly subverting typical shots, sounds, and editing in unexpected ways), including a remarkable scene at a Swedish bookshop shot backwards (because everyone knows backwards English sounds just like Swedish!). Yet there is an additional meta element that arises precisely from […] amalgamating WWII and the Cold War (not only do the East Germans dress like Nazis, at one point Elvis joins the French Resistance… in the GDR!). The result places Hollywood propaganda in a continuum, ultimately mocking its long tradition of caricatural approaches to international politics, but also paying homage to the industry’s willingness to throw good taste and logic out the window in the name of thrilling fun.’ (One of the co-writers and co-directors, Jim Abrahams, went on to do Hot Shots! and its sequel, which hilariously spoofed two epitomes of what has been labelled Reaganite ‘warnography’: Top Gun and Rambo III.)
103. Kiss of the Spider Woman (USA/Brazil, 1985)
Just to jarringly shift gears once again, here is an intimate, bottom-up perspective of the Cold War as experienced, not by larger-than-life heroes, but by those who nevertheless had to make brave choices every day. In Brazil, one of the many right-wing dictatorships fostering – and fostered by – the anti-communist crusade, we zoom in on a prison where a flaming homosexual entertains his cell mate – a macho Marxist political prisoner – by recounting old movies (you know I’m a sucker for stories about the power of imagination…). And no, despite the title, Kiss of the Spider Woman does not feature Jessica Drew.
The West had no monopoly on soul-crushing post-apocalyptic fiction, as seen in Czechoslovakia’s minimalist Late August at the Hotel Ozone or the USSR’s sepia-tinged Dead Man’s Letters. In fact, Eastern Bloc filmmakers used futuristic dystopias to work around censorship and comment on current politics, making a case for peace while visualizing the destruction of their respective countries. My favorite of this lot is O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization, about a community of survivors of nuclear war stuck in a decrepit shelter and trying to remain sane while clinging to the hope of being saved from the surrounding radioactive fallout. It’s a majestic piece of neon-lit sci-fi surrealism whose themes are simultaneously universal (faith, social control, state propaganda) and allegorical of Poland’s own authoritarian regime falling apart. (Writer-director Piotr Szulkin had already pulled a similar trick a few years before, with The War of the Worlds: Next Century, a twist on H.G. Well’s classic that doubled as a satire of Soviet occupation and subsequent dictatorship, but that one was so blatant that it got immediately banned.)
105. The Delta Force (USA/Israel, 1986)
I guess I should include at least one of Cannon’s B-movies starring Chuck Norris, whose reactionary politics put Red Dawn to shame (and which apparently were quite popular in Romania, via smuggled, dubbed VHS tapes). And since this was also a time of airplane hijackings, post-Carter reaffirmation of US might, and rampant Islamophobia, I might as well go with The Delta Force, which is a fascinating picture on multiple levels. One layer of propaganda urges for a tough-on-terror policy through an alt-history of the highjack of flight TWA 487, recreated, up to a point, in almost docudrama detail (but with the terrorists now led by Robert Forster in brownface). In this timeline, US special forces, still frustrated over the failed Operation Eagle Claw (in Iran), instead of leaving it up to politicians to negotiate a solution, sneak into the Middle East to kick some ass. A second layer has to do with Israel, where the movie was shot (and whose IDF supported the production), with writer-director-producer Menahem Golan presenting his country as an example (especially Operation Entebbe) and as a strategic ally in the fight against a common enemy, namely clichéd Muslim Arabs shown as cruel fanatics threatening sympathetic passengers from other religions, particularly Jews (a simplistic narrative that continues to resonate uncritically in many people’s imagination, with devastating effects… and which has somehow become even more tragic and revolting in these past few months). As manipulative and racist as it is, Delta Force’s first half nevertheless delivers a taut, tense Airport-style disaster drama (it even features George Kennedy!), including shameless – yet still effective – references to the Holocaust… And then the second half gleefully embraces such cartoony violence (Norris rides a super-motorcycle!) that one wonders if the filmmakers were more committed to their hawkish agenda or to the joy of blasting the screen with slam-bang action over a catchy soundtrack. The display of fighting skills and technology is surely meant to instill a form of gung-ho catharsis, but the result can be baffling: at one point, near the end, there is a mano-a-mano combat that feels so disproportionate that it’s almost as if they’re teasing you to root for the underdog villain. That said, don’t doubt for a moment that the picture will end on the schmaltziest of notes!
106. Platoon (USA, 1986)
The best companion piece to Apocalypse Now is not the string of right-wing revisionist movies about betrayed POWs (the likes of Missing in Action and Rambo II), but rather this more autobiographic approach to the experience of US soldiers in the Vietnam War, written and directed by a veteran clearly struggling with his own ghosts. Instead of Martin Sheen, this time it’s his son Charlie who serves as our entry point into the struggle for the US soul being fought in the jungles near the Cambodian border… The atmosphere and action are just as immersive in their own way, yet Platoon oozes authenticity and treats its characters as actual human beings rather than operatic figures in a grandiose epic.
107. Salvador (USA, 1986)
The manic foreign correspondent Richard Boyle (a slimy weasel if there ever was one) travels to 1980 El Salvador and finds a manic place (one of the most terrifying pits of violent chaos ever committed to the screen) in this manic film, revealingly set against the backdrop of Ronald Reagan’s first presidential election. With righteous anger, a fair amount of sadism, and not without racism, Salvador rubs in viewers’ eyes the viciousness of the very bloody civil war (treated as a ‘proxy war’ by Washington) and the notorious death squads of the US-backed military dictatorship. Like Under Fire (which I recommended weeks ago), this movie looks into the recent tragic past of Central America through the eyes of a journalist (the real-world Boyle co-wrote the script), yet it’s more ruthless in denouncing the ignorance and acquiescence of the press and, ultimately, of the public itself: along with Platoon, this is part of Oliver Stone’s one-two punch to US foreign policy via the lost naiveté of North-Americans acknowledging their brutal role in the Third World.
108. No Way Out (USA, 1987)
It seems like No Way Out’s protagonist can’t catch a damn break: not only does he get involved with the lover of the Secretary of Defense, he also gets embroiled in a murder *and* in an investigation into a mole at the Pentagon. This horny, labyrinthine mix of sex and political intrigue cleverly updates classic Hitchcockian trappings as filtered by the conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s and seasoned with a generous pinch of its era’s cynicism. And what an ending!
109. Predator (USA, 1987)
Two awesome Cold War movies for the price of one. The first part of Predator, which follows a full-on military mission carried out by a US rescue team who gradually suspect they’re getting embroiled in someone else’s dirty op, is packed with references to real-world conflicts. The rest of the film veers into sci-fi adventure/horror territory, but it provides its own geopolitical echoes in the form of a grisly life-or-death fight against a terrifying adversary hiding in the Central American jungle. Damn quotable.
110. Wings of Desire (West Germany/France, 1987)
Melancholic, quasi-plotless until the final stretch, and (mostly) shot in gorgeous black & white, Wings of Desire is an extended mood piece that follows a couple of angels in West Berlin voyeuristically gazing into people’s inner thoughts and personal dramas (and into concerts by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds). Besides providing a beautifully immersive experience if you’re in a contemplative frame of mind, the film belongs on this list for the way it portrays divided Berlin as a resigned status quo: the Wall has been integrated into the city’s sadness, but there’s hardly any overt anticipation that in just a couple of years people will actively tear it down. Then again, the angels’ free movement is obviously an enduring fantasy of freedom and circulation… and this proto-fairytale does involve separate entities ultimately coming together, as suggested by Solveig Dommartin’s haunting monologue near the end. (Wim Wenders did an underwhelming sequel a few years after the fall of the Wall, Faraway, So Close!)
One of the greatest additions to Batman comics in the 21st century was the introduction of Bruce Wayne’s hyper-arrogant, borderline psychopath son, who went on the become a particularly offbeat version of Robin. In fact, as flawed and uneven as Grant Morrison’s run certainly was, it earned a lot of goodwill from me because of Damian Wayne, a walking – and jumping and kicking – reminder that you can’t give too much power to an actual child. Hell, Damian proved to be such a hilarious character that artists soon jumped at the chance of spotlighting his original physique and personality in a series of awesome covers:
