In what issues are Batman and Superman fighting, is it the strikes back 1-3, and what did you guys think about the fight?

It happened at the end of DK2 issue 1. A brief recap: Superman, in the future, is in the pocket of the government and Lex Luthor. Luthor dispatches Superman to take the returned Dark Knight and his army (who would all make swell generic "trooper" 'clix, by the way). When Superman breaches the Batcave, all hell breaks loose. He gets attacked by a Bizarro, Batman drops part of the cave on him, Green Arrow hits him with a Kryptonite arrow, Flash plants like a 100 explosive mines on him, Atom goes inside his head and knocks his inner ear around and, finally, (as portrayed by the Unique Batman) Batman puts on his new gloves and kicks him out of the cave. And that was the last good thing about that miniseries. The rest is an incomprehensible mess.

Why were all those great heros after the man of steel, wht did supes do that caused a lot of people to attack him?

Ah, well what did he do? He annoyed Frank Miller by existing.

I loved DK, still think it's one of /the/ required reads in comics (along with the Watchmen) but DK2 just struck me as appallingly wretched.

Now Supes deserved the butt kicking he got in DK. He earned it. In 2, it was just Miller deciding to kick Supes butt with Bats again to show how cool it is that Batman can beat up Superman. Make a DK3 where Clark shows up and rips out Bruce's lungs for being a jerk. That I'd buy.

I disagree. Partly, anyway.

One of the dramatic conflicts in the original Dark Knight series had to do with Batman's code of ethics vs. Superman's.

Superman believed it was necessary to obey the law, to work within the system, to respect temporal authority. Period. When superheroes had been outlawed, regulated... Superman agreed to become a government agent in exchange for the right to continue to operate as a superhero... albeit secretly. He still wanted to do good, to save lives.

Batman retired. Green Lantern left the planet. Other superheroes went off their separate ways.

Miller's storyline here implies that society is flawed, and that the system doesn't always work -- the Mutants are loose, raising hell, and the Joker, rather than being executed for his hundreds of murders, is still alive (although catatonic in Arkham Asylum). This is reiterated when they think they've "fixed" Harvey Dent... only to find that Dent is even crazier now than before they started on him.

Miller is saying that sometimes one must defy law and authority and MAKE things right with the strength of one's own arm... at least, that's how I interpreted it.

This is supported by the fact that the government, as portrayed in DK, is appallingly corrupt... and yet, Superman continues to serve it. He has compromised himself, morally, in the pursuit of a "greater good."

Batman, on the other hand, refuses to compromise. He will fight his own war, his own way, period. He is driven in his own way to impose order, however he can, whatever it takes.

Naturally, this leads Batman and Superman on a collision course, ending with the super-battle in Crime Alley at the end of DK. Batman knows, though, that he can't really fight City Hall... at least, not yet... and after stomping Superman, he fakes his own death and disappears into the lower caverns of the Batcave along with his former Mutant recruits and the new Robin.

This was a fine, powerful story, and many credit it with convincing Hollywood that there could be a new Batman movie that didn't follow the old comedy Adam West pattern.

DK2 began with much the same idea... and introduced the idea that the corruption of the government has allowed Lex Luthor and Brainiac to take over... and that Superman is now their unwilling pawn, chained by the fact that the last city of Krypton -- Kandor -- is the bad guy's trump card, their hostage.

...and Batman and his new army are now in a position to come out and set things right, defying unjust law, defying corrupt authority. This is not a new theme, and it's heady stuff. Issue #1 wasn't bad. Issue #2 wasn't bad, either. It made even MORE of the idea that most Americans don't pay any attention to their government, their laws, their system, or their world, so long as the TV works and their paychecks keep rolling in. Altogether, this wasn't bad, either. It's parody. It's satire. It's comics.

...and then... issue #3 came out, many months too late. What the heck had happened? No one seemed quite sure... but Issue #3 was NOT what we had expected.

Rather than the idea that the end of issue #2 had set up -- the idea of the people seizing power for themselves, a sort of Superhero American Revolution -- we go in for an incoherent mishmash of ideas and rehashes, ending in the idea that Batman was right all along, and we shouldn't bother thinking for ourselves, but simply take orders from a spooky guy in a cape. Meanwhile, Batman oversees the assassination of various bad guys, arranges for Kandor to be freed, kills the first Robin (who was stuck in there as a sort of new Joker character for reasons I have yet to figure out) and generally sloppily wraps up the loose ends as if he ran out of ideas and just made it all up as he went along.

Disappointing... and ultimately, self-betraying. The first series' main message seemed to be that we should PONDER our authorities, our laws, our restraints... and honor them only so far as our conscience allows.

The second series' message seems to be that we should just find some big smart charismatic guy and follow him blindly.

Bleh.

Superman's buttkicking in issue #1 of DK2, though, wasn't wasted. The idea was to show that Superman is utterly dependent on his superpowers. He's not a tactician, or even particularly smart. Batman, on the other hand, is supremely smart, and a master planner. It wasn't a bad fight at all.