Frank Miller’s Batman can make you smile. The kind of smile that remains on your lips long after you have closed the book. When I wrote about Miller’s The Last Crusade, I said it was a sad book. I was looking for fun, and it was a sad book. But this next one made me laugh.

In Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight: Master Race, Bruce Wayne is still old, bruised and stubborn to an almost unreasonable degree. Though unlike The Last Crusade, Miller eventually finds a way to renew Batman’s body. This is not a story limited to Gotham. The scale is grander. The fate of the planet is at stake.

Master Race operates at an exaggerated scale. Governments across the world panic. And you get panels of a Trump lookalike announcing his inanities, as always seems to happen. It starts with Kryptonians who have been miniaturized and preserved in a miniature world. Eventually the technology exists to restore them. And once they stand beneath Earth’s sun again, they arrive at a fairly predictable conclusion. They are the superior race. The world should belong to them.

The scale of the book is curious that way. Miller gets you to witness Kryptonians descending from the skies, entire cities standing close to collapse. Everyone speaks in the language of power, destiny and survival.

But somewhere in the middle of all the chaos, Frank Miller also seems to be enjoying Batman. And when you encounter this version of Batman, you will enjoy him too.

There is a sequence where the Kryptonians issue an ultimatum to humanity. Accept us as gods. Worship us and we will spare you. Refuse, and prepare for annihilation. The deadline passes and the Kryptonians begin their version of hell. But then, almost at the same moment, green rain starts falling. Suddenly the gods are powerless. Ordinary people can beat them up.

And then there is this page where Kryptonians are falling from the sky. There are two small panels embedded in the page with Batman in them. And you get the explanation:

“Seeding clouds is an expensive undertaking. Keeping drones in orbit over Gotham… and undetected… takes money.
I have money.
Regardless, seeding clouds with synthetic kryptonite takes an enormous leap of faith…
I have synthetic kryptonite.”

There is something deeply amusing about that line. That smile, take a look.

Gods are preparing for war and Batman remains Batman. A wealthy old man sitting underground making contingency plans.

Miller’s Batman feels more like an expression of pure human stubbornness. Everyone around him possesses powers, alien biology or political influence. Bruce Wayne has preparation, experience and an almost irrational refusal to surrender the field.

And perhaps that is what makes him compelling in these stories.

He knows he is outmatched physically. That realization appeared long ago. But he continues anyway.

In my previous post I said that I was exasperated by his refusal to quit. But then, Batman’s confidence never really comes from believing he is the strongest person in the room. He behaves like someone who has always assumed that raw strength alone is not enough.

The larger conflict in The Master Race revolves around Lara, the daughter of Superman and Wonder Woman. She spends much of the story caught between humanity and Kryptonian superiority. There is a distance in her attitude toward ordinary human beings, almost as if she sees them as fragile creatures clinging to relevance in a world that no longer belongs to them.

And honestly, from her point of view, the thought is understandable. If we move to the mythmaking that DC does every once in a while, then she is a daughter of gods. I am sure we all recall our cringe at Russell Crowe repeating multiple times — he is a god among them — in Man of Steel. I don’t know about you, but I had thought: why do you spell this out? Isn’t that the whole point, that I think about this on my own?

Anyway, getting to the other “gods”. The recently released Kryptonians. In this story they see power as justification. If some beings are vastly stronger than others, why should they not rule? Why should weaker people shape the direction of civilization?

While reading Lara’s arc, it increasingly felt as if the story was less interested in power itself and more interested in what gives power direction. Lara possesses immense strength very early in the story. For much of the book, she feels far closer to the Kryptonians than to humanity.

There are conversations between her and Wonder Woman across the book. And in those conversations you see how she keeps drifting away from humanity and closer to the potential power. Only when she witnesses the wrath of that power she realises her folly.

The story ends with Superman introducing humanity to Lara.

This version of Superman is older too. But he still carries an unusual attachment to humanity despite having every reason to detach himself from it. Physically, he has long outgrown human beings. Emotionally, he keeps returning to them.

Superman’s defining quality has never been strength. He doesn’t get called god among humans for being the alien with super powers. Plenty of powerful people in the comic universe have those kinds of powers. What defines Superman is restraint. The continued willingness to care for fragile people living fragile lives.

Batman arrives at something similar from another direction.

Even at their age, Superman continues returning to people, while Batman continues preparing for disasters that may never arrive. Both carry their beliefs almost like habits now.

Superman holds on to humanity through compassion. Batman does it through involvement. Through refusing to withdraw from the mess entirely.

The Kryptonians in Miller’s world become dangerous because they begin seeing humanity as abstraction. Similar to what we do to animals. Recently, on an episode of the Radiolab podcast, I heard about a man who picked up two piglets from a pig farm and named them. While the story was about the cruelty done to these animals, what stayed with me was this movement from abstract to concrete. It is a good story if you are into podcasts. It is called What is a Pig Worth?

Superman and Batman resist that instinct to see humanity as an abstraction in their own ways.

And somewhere beneath all the darkness and spectacle, what remained with me was that panel. An old Batman smiling beneath the cowl, still preparing for impossible fights.

Bruce Wayne probably understands the limits of preparation better than anyone else in the story. And still he prepares. There is something strangely admirable in that.

And yes, this one was fun.