With all of the news of the death of Osama bin Laden’s death, I thought it would be an interesting blast from the past to look back at the time Frank Miller was going to have Batman fight Osama bin Laden.
Back in 2006, Frank Miller announced that he was working on a propaganda piece where bin Laden’s Al Qaida attacked Gotham City and Batman took the fight straight to bin Laden. He was quoted as saying, “It is, not to put too fine a point on it, a piece of propaganda… Superman punched out Hitler. So did Captain America. That’s one of the things they’re there for.”
Some criticized the book, including Grant Morrison who said that having fictional heroes fight terrorists cheapened the struggles of those doing it for real.
Miller worked on it for a while before ultimately deciding it wasn’t as much of a Batman story as a new character he created that was more like Dirty Harry.
I think it would have been great to have a picture of Batman punching Osama the same way Captain America and Superman both punched Hitler, but ultimately, it was probably a good thing the book fizzled.
Then there was another time when President Obama did punch Osama bin Laden in comics. I present the cover of Savage Dragon #145:
Trying to stay as apolitical as I can here, but what do you guys think about real world threats appearing in comics as propaganda?