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| Holy Terror |
Perhaps one would have expected nothing else from Frank Miller. The author and illustrator of such seminal graphic novels such as "Sin City" and "The Dark Knight Returns" (German: "The Return of the Dark Knight") is regarded as one of the central figures in the history of the medium. But today the 54-year-old subtlety American has never won. And he does so with such sensitive issues such as the American 9/11-Trauma and the general helplessness in dealing with the Islamic culture, especially one thing: He bangs on it vigorously.
"Holy Terror" is the recently released in the U.S. large-and landscape-format album that consists almost entirely of full-page drawings. A cartoon in Cinemascope. With this format, Miller had already worked in "300", his Spartan graphic novel that Zack Snyder brought successfully to the movies.
"300" but was drawn into a clear stroke. Like a Wagner opera staged Miller's epic battle of Thermopylae, with recurring leitmotifs as graphical marching soldiers and arms outstretched in the air. He expressed purely for the reader's favorite topics of stamina and machismo in all clarity.
"Holy Terror" is, however, especially in the first half, an orgy of streaks, lines, speckles. Probably fairly clear about the pencil drawings Miller has laid a thick fog graphical Sperenzchen. As you can see, you see nothing: everything blurs in the dark, ambivalent.
George W. Bush is attending
This makes it difficult to follow the action. As a superhero, fixer is called, following a netzbestrumpften thief who stole a brooch. Somehow they have sex, then a bomb goes off, and the Muslims are attacking. And it makes all the Fixer.
It is an associative game. In the actual event, so thin it is, Miller scattered images of people and events that are commonly associated with 9 / 11 and the resulting political culture: George W. Bush, Michael Moore, Barack Obama. They swim in the fog, appear and disappear without explanation just as quickly.
It also highlights the Fixer, who with his fists and heavy weapons for order, ultimately, another of those hard about is vigilante supporters that are found in almost all Miller comics to have the absolute insight.
Ultimately reads "Holy Terror" So almost like a parody of the Tea Party movement, on people who get their information from right-wing TV channel Fox News and Sarah Palin worship. But is this intentional?
Completely broken types
In fact, Miller has never been known to be particularly sensitive. His comics, including the seminal "The Dark Knight Returns" or as a tribute to classic hard-boiled movies and novels to read "Sin City" consist primarily of breathtaking chases and fights, the focus completely broken types. There is no single Miller comic with a positive or even lovable hero.
Especially in the last decade, a notable tendency crept to the provocation. When Miller after years of begging from the publisher was persuaded by one million fee to write a continuation of his "Batman" saga, became the the complete self-parody: a candy-colored story without hand and foot, full of abstruse ideas like that of the super hero Flash - the fastest man in the world - on a treadmill with Dynamo concerned the power of the United States. In "All-Star Batman," a ten-part mini-series to date, the action consists largely in the fact that the main character in the Batmobile driving around aimlessly. In between there are pictures of Catwoman's ass in thong.
Possible that the U.S. publisher DC Comics this continued provocation, where he earned ample, despite the high fees, simply was too much. Because Miller was originally intended to appear as the new "Holy Terror, Batman". It is not difficult to recognize as the Fixer massive shear Miller Batman character - and the thief as Catwoman. Anyway, the title changed in the middle of the publisher, around sometime around the period when Miller announced to make a "propaganda-Comic", a book, "which is just about every piss."
At the beginning of a old men's sex fantasy
It is also conceivable that DC was afraid of the reaction from the radical Islamic camp. For Miller, the antagonist, the Gotham City - sorry, it's called Empire City now - lay in ruins, all available as stubborn, uptight radicals dar. more, they are not particularly wise: you can not do it again, a bomb right round up. The book is devoted to Theo van Gogh, murdered by an Islamist in 2004 the filmmaker.
It is therefore no question that Miller really any band with this occurs in the shins. Especially the American left and Muslims. Miller said in interviews that he had found his patriotism. "For the first time I know how that feels a fundamental threat," he told National Public Radio. "No wonder we call it terror," no wonder we call it terror, is the last sentence in the comic, with the Miller apparently seems to handle, especially his own feelings.
Apart from that, is "Holy Terror" is not particularly well-told comic: The dramaturgy is - with the old men's excessive sex fantasy at the beginning, the unmotivated chase in the middle and finally the hastily cobbled together explanations at the end - menacing wrong. Once the narrative falters, and she often does, Miller leads a new character or defining the role of a previous character from scratch.
So what remains? Perhaps it is best to read "Holy Terror" as a piece of camp. As a mixture of "artificiality, frivolity and naive middle-class arrogance" defined the U.S. critic Susan Sontag in the sixties this style. Nothing says "Holy Terror" better.
