Holy Terror

Comic legend Frank Miller's latest is a superhero fighting al-Qaida.

From a piece in the Guardian...

Set for release around the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the long-awaited comic – "a dark, uncompromising superhero tale for the modern era", according to its publisher – was originally intended to feature Batman taking on the terrorist group, and was called Holy Terror, Batman! "Superman punched out Hitler. So did Captain America. That's one of the things they're there for ... It is, not to put too fine a point on it, a piece of propaganda," Miller said in 2006 at a comic convention where he described the book as "a reminder to people who seem to have forgotten who we're up against".

But the author of The Dark Knight Returns and 300 told the LA Times's Hero Complex blog last year that he had "decided partway through" that the graphic novel was not a Batman story. "The hero is much closer to 'Dirty Harry' than Batman. It's a new hero that I've made up that fights al-Qaida," he said. Told in the author's iconic black-and-white style made famous by his Sin City series, Holy Terror "seizes the political zeitgeist by the throat and doesn't let go until the last page", according to its publisher Legendary Comics , a subsidiary of Legendary Films.

Miller said The Fixer was "very much an adventurer who's been essentially searching for a mission". He told the LA Times that he was "very different than Batman in that he's not a tortured soul". Instead, "he's a much more well-adjusted creature even though he happens to shoot 100 people in the course of the story".

The Los Angeles Times also takes a long look at the piece and Miller's career, here.