Why is Superman so much weaker in Dark Knight Returns?

Its stupid writing on Miller's part who doesn't know a damn thing about Superman's abilities or he doesn't care. I hate that fight. You were suppose to believe those lame attacks weakened Superman throughout the battle. There is no way the general audience would believe that fight on the movie screen so I am happy knowing it will never get done that way. Also that Superman must have been a dumbass. That's the short story.

I think you all may be coming down a little too hard on Frank. The plot of the story explains the fight in context, and you can't just skip to the fight scenes and comparing feats. The discussions and relationship they had made me read that fight as Supes really could have beaten this easily, but he was pulling his punches. It was like fighting his kid brother, he wanted to make a point but not actually hurt him.

I wouldn't describe it as Miller doing bad writing. Its just writing aimed at telling a story rather then functioning as a canon debate on who would win.

Still, a lot of the blows Batman gives to Superman could quite easily have been dodged or deflected by the Man of Steel. This version of Superman is pretty evil anyways, so he shouldn't have been holding back as much as he did. Doesn't Frank hate Superman anyways?

omfg: yeah the nuke thing happens in the comic too, as does the thing after where he powers up by draining the kife out of nearby plant-life. Though yeah, even not at 100% none of old Bat's really do any lasting damage. A few hits stun him, but Supes ia never really down for more than like 10 seconds(and in the animated version that most effective move was frying him with the city's power grid). Really after that, I think Bat was stalling for that kryptonite arrow assist so he commited to a full offense, no matter how ineffective it was and Supes was not worried in the slightest.

@potter: while later portrayals of more straight laced superheroes in his stories (thinking Dark knight strikes again and all star B&R) are...umm, not well recieved you can argue here. My interpretation is as of current, Superman in this universe is a tool for the government, but as said above he really doean't want to hurt Bruce because of their history/ hes trying to talk him down even as he's shot at because he's not impressed by the arsenal to the point where he'll take most of the hits as a way to say "this will only go on until you run out of toys, Bruce". If anything, Id say he is pretty strong and could have sent batman into the stratosphere if he wanted to...he just didnt. the only point of contention is how fast the kryptonite arrow worked...and thats not something Im going to touch given the inconsistency of how fast green kryptonite works. But back to supes, something happened offscreen in the past where Supes willingly becomes a patsy for the US and does what they say (even if it means ripping his friend's arms off...) and you can argue how ic this wud be for Superman and maybe that's a creative license Miller took but I thought it worked well enough in context of the story....even if only this story- there are works of Frank Miller I definitely don't like.

Eh, we've still got DKR and Year One. That's how I'll remember him, regardless of what he's doing now. And I'll just pretend Holy Terror never happened.  

I kinda thought this Story ran with the Kingdom Come story. Similar plots anyway.
Government is tired of all the destruction/killing so makes Superheroes illegal.
Superman being Superman is allowed to be a hero as long as he does what America wants.