The voiceover that Miller can’t do without is also present, and is everything the dialogue is but multiplied by ten. The story itself is surprisingly engaging, and Miller has managed to make a group of characters that we already know better than ourselves new and unpredictable again.

Batman is insane. Or only half-crazy as he puts it. He is far more violent than he is in the regular DCU, and actually enjoys inflicting pain on his prey, smashing their teeth out, letting them fall from two storey buildings and setting them alight to name but a few. Some crooks actually die whilst fighting him, and although his hands are not bloody (well, they are literally, but not in a metaphorical sense), the fact that he would allow them to be gunned down on his watch shows an even darker side to the Dark Knight. And there is no way of telling if the men he lit up were alive or not at the end of that particular brawl… He has also taken to laughing maniacally in the face of danger, and not in the Errol Flynn sense. In All Star, Batman leaps into a storm of bullets with the kind of panel filling “Ha Ha Ha’s” you would expect from the joker. If fear is Batman’s greatest weapon, then Miller & Lee’s Batman would kick the regular DCU Batman’s arse. Bruce Wayne is still a genius though. As is evident by the fact that he knows everybody’s secret identities before he even meets them. That’s Bats for you.

Robin gets the Hal Jordan “How awesome are you?” treatment, with every other Robin scene in the comic containing at least one reason why the original Robin is the ‘goddamn best’. Batman claims that Dick actually scared him once, and the Boy Wonder beats the Holy High Hell out of an A-List Leaguer.

Miller’s “This guy is harder because I’m writing” approach doesn’t stop there. Alfred looks particularly kick ass and the Commish in All Star acts like the Jim Gordon who appeared in Year One. Miller has chosen to write All Star Batman in the same continuity of his other Batman yarns.

Other characters that appear in the series have also been changed to fit the new status quo. Black Canary is terribly violent and has taken a severe disliking to the term ‘sweet chunks’. Wonder Woman hates everyone with an XY chromosome and is prepared to go as far as it takes to get the job done. Green Lantern is not the sharpest ring in the corps; Batman even calls him a retarded demigod at one point. Finally, you have the Joker. Again, Miller has brought back his own, unsmiling take on the Clown Prince of Crime from the Dark Knight Returns. There’s nothing funny about this Joker.

It’s not all dark and gloomy though. There’s buckets of humour here as well, with characters making fun of everything from the camp of the Caped Crusader’s tools and wardrobe, to the giant dinosaur in the bat cave and Hal Jordan’s complete lack of imagination.

There is one major draw back to this otherwise great series. Deadline setbacks. With less than a dozen issues out so far, the comic that began way back in 2005 is not doing so well as far getting issues out is concerned. This is understandable, considering that Frank Miller is directing the Spirit movie (with another two rumoured to be in the pipeline, as well as a Hard Boiled movie and maybe even Buck Rogers), and Jim Lee working his ass off as an editorial director at Wildstorm. Understandable, but still disappointing.

Overall, the series is awesome, with new takes on multi dimensional characters, a good story and a suitably dark-yet-funny feel (as any Batman and Robin comic should be). With an expected 22 comic run though, I can only hope that they can get it completed before I die.