Amph All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder

At first, I was seriously annoyed at this series. It made Batman into a self-parody. Batman picking Dick Grayson up and asking him if he was retarded. And the way that the term "the ******* Batman" is used about fifty times a book came across as stupid to me.

But you know what?

The book is pure awesome.

Yes, Batman is an ass. A huge ass. Take a line in the latest issue for example, about Hal Jordan:

"Hal Jordan. Green Lantern. The Ring of his is the most powerful known weapon in the galaxy. If he thinks something up, it just plain happens. That makes him the Milky Way's Top Cop. His alien mentor was looking for a man of superhuman will - and a man without fear. The mentor's job description for Hal didn't seem to factor in smarts. He's dumb as a post. I've seen more intelligent hockey pucks.

The series is wonderfully dumb fun.

"It that your car? Does the ***damn batman have himself a ***damn care?"

"Not one word. It's my ***damn care and I will call it the ***damn batmobile if I want. I'm the ***damn batman and I'm tired of people giving me grief about the ***damn name."

Greatest series ever.

I bought the first couple of issues, the art was pretty good. But I didn't particularly like where Frank Miller was taking the story or the characters it was pretty bad so I dropped it. I've thought it was a pretty big lost oppurtunity to showcase Batman and bring in new readers by starting afresh.

I've been meaning to get into this series. It makes sense, in some ways, for it to be sort of a dumb parody of Batman. Year One and Dark Knight Returns are awesome books, and this is the same continuity. Dark Knight Strikes Again is crap, and some of what I saw in there looked like it was at least in part parody. Frank Miller's Joker is one of the best though.