All-Star Batman in the Wall Street Journal

Imagine you are in the midst of getting mugged and Batman -- as improbable as this might seem -- swoops upon the scene. What sort of personality do you think he'd display?

People who know the character only from Saturday-morning cartoons, Hollywood movies and a campy TV series that aired in the 1960s would probably picture him as tough but fair, dispatching the criminal with a few hard rights and a deft judo kick. Frank Miller, a comics writer who has a long association with the character, is portraying him as unhinged, and suggesting this iconic hero borders on being a psychopath. Mr. Miller's Batman laughs maniacally to himself while on patrol; saunters about unshaven; beats criminals bloody; and kidnaps a young boy to groom him as his sidekick, Robin -- despite protests from other superheroes.

In short, Mr. Miller's Batman, currently gracing the panels of a series of comics called "All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder," isn't someone who would make good company at a ballgame or the local watering hole. In one issue, a crook stopped by Batman from assaulting a woman asks: "Why can't I feel my hand?" To which Batman replies: "It's called a compound fracture, rapist. It'll never heal. Not right it won't. Not nearly right. You'll remember me every time the air goes wet and cold." While this all may prove shocking to people who have come to know the character as a reliable do-gooder, it's also refreshing, adding a much-needed belt of reality to a genre founded on escapism.

The characterization is raising eyebrows. "I see him as being portrayed as over the top and maniacal," says Nickie Phillips, an assistant professor at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, N.Y., who studies representations of crime and justice in comic books, and who has read the series, published by Time Warner Inc.'s DC Comics. "Batman, he seems to be driven by his obsession and passion for what he considers justice -- but it's really extralegal justice." . . .

Mr. Miller's Batman seems less out of place than he might have decades ago. Older readers have returned to comics in recent years, and the stories have become grittier and more realistic. There's not as much derring-do. In one recent issue of DC's "Justice League of America," Red Tornado, a lesser-known character, has his arm ripped away by a brutish villain. Over at Marvel, another big comic-book publisher, heroes have wrangled over whether to register as operatives of the U.S. government, or be treated as criminals and act as fugitives. Mystery men and swashbucklers would seem silly and out of place to today's more sophisticated readers.

As "All Star Batman" continues, readers will discover reasons for the character's off-putting behavior, suggests Paul Levitz, DC's president and publisher. Even so, as Mr. Miller's story makes clear, fighting criminals is nothing to crack wise about, and certainly not fun. If someone put on a costume to fight crime and swung through city streets in our world, he'd probably be trussed up for the psychiatric ward. It takes someone a little crazy -- and willing to break society's rules -- to get the job done. No wonder Mr. Miller's Batman seems perturbed.