Scans_Daily

Here's a link about the underwear scene. http://geoffklock.blogspot.com/2008/09/comics-out-september-24-2008-all-star.html

What struck me most about that--other than being appalled--was exactly what this guy addresses: the proportionality. Why so many pages in a book about Batman and Robin get the focus they do. Here's an excerpt:

The first issue has five full pages -- nearly twenty five per cent of the comic -- in which Vicki Vale dances around in bra and panties. It is the storytelling equivalent of drawing a woman with huge out-of-proportion breasts (a drawing style Jim Lee has some experience with): the time devoted to her is as out of proportion as Miller's women usually appear visually.

Exacerbated by the slow publishing of All Star Batman Robin has been in the car with Batman for 11 months of my life. And don't think it's just a publishing issue: even monthly, four issues is a long time to keep your two title characters in a car. Miller intended this. Drawing attention to the gap, Batman has grown stubble between issue one and two, though surely very little time has passed. That's how much of a man he is. Hilarious. Miller's jacks up his already famously hyper-masculine characters.

The writing is not just repetitive, its absurdly repetitive. To quote from the first issue (copying the book's repetitions rather than repeating myself), Robin says "They're always there for me. They always catch me. Mom and dad. They always catch me. They're always there for me. They're always there for me." The identical sound of "They're" and "there" makes it much worse; this is intentional. In the next scene Vicki Vale says "I'm having a date with Bruce Wayne. I'm having a date with Bruce Wayne. I'm having a date with Bruce Wayne. I'm having a date with Bruce Wayne. How cool is that? I'm having a date with Bruce Wayne. How cool is that?" Cut back to Robin: "They're always there for me. They always catch me." Cut to Vale: "I'm having a date with Bruce Wayne. Hot Damn." Miller wrote those words on paper before they were put in word balloons in the comic books. Try typing them out on Word, as I just did, and you will see that no one can write like that and intend it to be taken seriously. Miller knows what he is doing (which should not surprise anyone who has read Dark Knight Returns).

/End excerpt

Okay, sorry for the long bit, but I think Klock's got an excellent point. (He's a lit critic and professor who wrote "How to Read Superhero Comics and Why". I'm not saying that makes him the end authority, but I do happen to agree with him.)

Oh, and I still feel the portrayal of WW is worse (much worse and more derogatory) in WW: BN than Miller's treatment from the eight pages she showed up in in ASBAR.