The Pulse

DC launched All Star Batman and Robin: The Boy Wonder with much fanfare. Not only did they sign Frank Miller to write it, they also promised a dramatic retelling of the story of how Batman gained his famous sidekick.

The story opens with a character not seen in comics for a long time - Vicki Vale, the sassy journalist who was Bruce Wayne's flame around the time he met young Dick Grayson. However, Frank Miller decided to add a new... dimension to Vicki's character. The comic opens with the following splash.

Umm... so apparently, high-profile journalists like to walk around their apartments in lacy lingerie and high heels while sipping a martini and dictating their articles. (Mental note - ask Motheater, eM, Mangs, et al). This is an interpretation of Vicki we haven't seen before - at least Frank's keeping his word on the dramatic retelling part.

Having treated us to a long shot, we now get a close-up of Vicki's cleavage.

followed by a shot of her sucking on her finger for no apparent reason,

finishing off, quite naturally, with a butt shot (yeah, I know you want to see this one).

Hmmm.

I hope nobody missed the innuendo in the text panels. I knew you were too busy gawking - go back and read them.

Now lets get something straight - Frank Miller is famous for this kind of blatant sex-and-violence approach to comic writing. All his men are remorseless killing machines, and all his women are hyper-sexualised pin-ups. However, while this formula was extremely successful in the dark, noir Sin City, it falls completely flat here. Sin City's Basin City was a decadent hellhole where every kind of perversion flourished and the characters beautifully exemplified the depths of its depravity. Batman's Gotham is crime-infested but not nearly as far beyond redemption. While his darker take on Batman himself is a good step, he spoils it all by throwing in the cheesecake - sex has NEVER been a driving force in Batman's life, and Miller should know that, having written the classic Dark Knight Returns and Batman:Year One. Also unlike the women of Sin City, Vicki is not a pole dancer or a two-bit whore - she is a rich, successful professional in a relationship with the city's richest and most eligible man. WHY was it necessary to write her as a sexpot?

The trail doesn't end there. After five pages of Vale in Victoria's Secret, we are treated to an extra-long sequence of her picking out a dress to wear to a date with Bruce Wayne, that is straight out of Betty and Veronica. In the end she chooses the dress that makes her look the most like a Vegas hooker, and heads for the circus. Then artist Jim Lee restores the gender balance by drawing a Robin who seems far too well-developed to be 12 years old (Nope - no pictures).

Towards the end of the book there is another de rigueur scene that harks back to Sin City - corrupt cop bitch-slaps the prostitute with the heart of gold. Take a look at this,

and now this.

Please note how he still hasn't given up on the innuendo.

I'm sorry Frank, but this book needs to be published with a large red 'R' posted across the cover. What happens in Sin City should stay in Sin City.