Forget Frank Miller's corrupt priest from Sin City. With Holy Terror, the comics visionary becomes a pure propagandist.
Image courtesy Dimension Films

The Dark Knight was evidently unable to properly kick al-Qaida’s ass for Frank Miller’s forthcoming graphic novel Holy Terror. Now the job falls to Miller’s new antihero, The Fixer.

Miller’s long-simmering revenge fantasy, which started out as a Batman story, has finally found a home and a release date, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The trade publication reported Tuesday that the 120-page, landscape-formatted Holy Terror arrives Sept. 14, mere days after 9/11’s 10th anniversary.

The book will be the first publication from Legendary Comics, the new imprint of The Dark Knight and Man of Steel movie-production powerhouse Legendary Pictures.

“The graphic novel is a no-holds-barred action thriller told in Miller’s trademark high-contrast, black-and-white visual style, which seizes the political zeitgeist by the throat and doesn’t let go until the last page,” Legendary Comics’ Editor-in-Chief Bob Schreck said in a press release. “A fast-paced, biting commentary on our uncertain and volatile times, told with some of the most gut-wrenching, iconic images he’s ever produced.”

That’s hot marketing for noobs, but standard operating procedure for anyone who knows anything about Miller’s instantly recognizable work, as seen in his 1986 limited series Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. It’s logical to assume that the writer’s seizure of, and commentary on, our political zeitgeist will, like reality itself, result in lots of body bags tagged with hard-to-pronounce names. After all, Miller said in 2007 that Holy Terror would be “pure propaganda” — and that’s back when the book was known as Holy Terror, Batman! and had The Dark Knight on board.

The fact that DC Comics never let Batman near Miller’s vendetta comic seems to indicate that the publisher wisely decided that the volatile bleed between 9/11’s reality and hyperreality was too complex to accommodate another one of the author’s hyperviolent escapades.

Still, replacing Batman with The Fixer — a special-operations adventurer in the mold of Dirty Harry who only really fights crime “to keep in shape,” according to Miller — is a bit like removing a bomb from the kitchen and putting it in the garage instead.

“[The Fixer is] very different than Batman in that he’s not a tortured soul,” Miller told Hero Complex superfan Geoff Boucher last July. “He’s a much more well-adjusted creature even though he happens to shoot 100 people in the course of the story.”

So there you have it. Miller’s commentary on 9/11, a decade after the terror attacks, is a Dirty Harry-like avenger who is barely interested in fighting crime but remains galvanized by violent, patriotic payback.

Hey, can we have our tortured soul back?

While we’re asking questions, can Miller’s Holy Terror bring anything new to 9/11’s table? Or are you just fine with a revenge fable featuring a high body count? Can the comic scale the heights of The Dark Knight Returns, or will it scrape the depths of Miller’s screen adaptation of The Spirit? Let us know your take on Miller’s comics propaganda in the comments section below.