The world has changed in 10 years and so has Bats. No more Mister Quiet Nobility: he snaps bones with a grin and snarls with happy rage as he maims the scum of Gotham. "He never used to make noise," whimpers one doomed wrongdoer. "Welcome to Hell," replies the Caped Crusader.

This Batman does not joke. This Batman does not have bat-devices for every conceivable need--he carries pain killers and ampules of nerve gas. He is vicious, self-destructive, haunted by the memory of the murder of his parents--the source of his vengeful inspiration.

And this Batman is not welcomed by a grateful populace. "Think of the noise that came from what Bernie Goetz did," Miller told Los Angeles Times, "and imagine if there was a very powerful, terrifying figure doing that on a regular basis." Television screens stream across the pages of The Dark Knight, constantly reporting--and creating--the public reaction to Batman's sensationally violent exploits.

The "Council of Mothers" wants him arrested, a pop-psychiatrist explains his dangerous effect on the maladjusted in a televised debate with Lois Lane, "managing editor of the Daily Planet." And man-on-the-street interviews: "Batman? Yeah, I think he's okay. Hope he goes after the homos next."

The Dark Knight, printed in a 45-page format on heavy paper, is intended to be a cross-over work, to break out of the adolescent market and into the big-time of popular adult fiction. It might even, in a medium stretch of the imagination, be called literature.

The clever, literate, elliptical writing is the best in comics today. The art is a departure from the flat, lurid drawing associated with comics ever since Roy Lichtenstein made his fortune with it; Miller uses shadows and suggestions to conceal the absurd aspects of his medium--we all saw how silly a man really looks in a Batman suit--and inventive panel arrangement to exploit its strengths. Klaus Janson's inking adds depth to the art, and the coloring, by Lynn Varley, is subtle and effective.

A good comic book is like all the best shots from an impossibly exciting film, arranged in a way that leads the eye from text to scene to text again. Perhaps comics are doomed forever to the same fantastic subject matter, as it is essentially an unrealistic form. Life is never as well designed as in the comics, the shadows never fall in the right place for dramatic effect, and you never have the chance to narrate your own exploits in polished prose.

But Frank Miller is a master of this peculiar form and has achieved greatness. The Dark Knight is a meditation on comics themselves and the heros that populate them. Is Batman a sociopath? Is Superman a facsist? It may revolutionize the industry.

And if you don't like thinking about such things, it's also a rip-snortin' adventure; I suspect the Joker is coming back in the next issue and I can't wait. Holy Breakthrough, Batman, I think it's art.