Frank Miller - literary chat

The literary and artistic merit of Frank Miller’s work has been discussed to death almost everywhere.

The comics establishment loves him.
The comic fans not so much:
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It might be a case of a Dark Age writer, who produced Year One in 1987, writing after the end of the Dark Age in 1996 after Kingdom Come provided a deconstruction of 1987's Watchman. However, if works should be judged for their time, then surely Year One should be reviewed in context of the Dark Age, and equally surely his later and current works should not.

So, dear readers, have at ye.

 

Ok, I'll bite.

Frank Miller should be seen as one of the more celebrated comic books creators whose influence has to be recognised from the works he created in not just helping to usher in the Dark Age of comic but being at the forefront of it. The fact he manages to rile so many people just shows what impact he has had.

If he was some two bit hack - noone would care. But he isn't, and they do.

Trying to judge his works as part of a particular era doesn't make any sense, surely they should be judged against the genre to which they are part of. It's not like you try and judge a Western against Romances to see how it fits. If the tale is dark and edgy as so often his work is, then it should be judged against other comics of the same type.

Now whether, his work has lost relevance or has been de-constructed by others, sure, a lot of works over time have that done to them. Doesn't mean they aren't great pieces of work in their own right.

Let's look at what he gave us. With Marvel, he took Daredevil from a Spidey ally to his own series and a popular one. He wrote some of the finest Batman stories going, Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year one in his own style. Hey even ASB&R still sold like hot cakes, even though its perhaps not as good. His own stuff is still incredible and few people have matched the style like Sin City.

Few other people can do gritty film-noir comics like Miller. So it's got a lot of swearing and violence and general all round nastiness, well take a look around, it's probably a little closer to life than a lot of comics. So its an exaggeration of current life, a lot of works are like that: take something at push it to extremes. Are you gonna say it's alright for some but not others.

For some, they just don't like his portrayal of characters that they see as different, instead of the characters he writes. Tough, that's just having an opinion.

Has the Dark Age of comics passed. I don't think so, I think it's always gonna be around much like any genre. Is it gonna fade in and out of popularity, sure what genre doesn't. But, at some point, it will be back and Miller will be recognised as one of the best of them.

 

It is not true to say the genres are static over time. You mention Westerns' but the 1920's Lone Ranger where movie cowboys never bled and you cheered the hero shooting the bad guys is not the same as the John Wayne movies, is not the same as Clint Eastwood's harder edged seventies work, and certainly different to Unforgiven and Deadwood. What you cannot do is judge a western from one period by the standards of another.

There's a case to be made that Batman Year One was what the industry needed: a gritty dark re-imagining of the dark knight. At the same time, there's no indication that it was meant to be permanent. Catwoman, epitomy of the classy cat-burgler in it for fun, reimagined as an abused prostitute was new and a real shake-up to readers. Now unfortunately we've seen that this could be said of almost every female lead he writes.

In my mind, this is in some ways a real problem with Miller's work for DC. He doesn't write characters or personalities, he writes archetypes. The idea that a woman might not be a in job that revolves around sex and display of assets never seems to happen in his worlds, which lessens the impact since it is reduced to a checklist. His Natalie Stack, his Catwoman, his Black Canary, are all largely interchangeable - they react the same way, say the same things, get annoyed by the same things... Likewise his male leads are all gritty anti-social types. It does not matter if you were the last son of Krypton raised on a farm or the orphan child of millionaires, the hot buttons are the same thing, and in the same position they take the same actions and speak the same words. The notorious quote could as easily be "I'm the G*****n Superman". The supporting cast are a little cardboard, the women mostly T&A, the men mostly there to be outdone or murdered by the leads, and everyone is corrupt whether you are in Sin City or Gotham city.

The question has to be whether, for Batman, a twenty-year-old re-imagining is still fresh and new, and if a writer can't produce a new vision, is it time for a new writer?

 

I've not read much Frank Miller, but I thought the problem was his politics, a nice way of saying all the -isms.

 

Dunno but slightly off point, are his views as bad as Orson Scott Card? When he was going to write Superman, it got put on hiatus due to the backlash.

 

If you search for "Frank Miller" politics, you'll find a lot of links about his hyper-US-conservative views, possible sexism, and sometimes accusations of fascism or racism (e.g. having the Persians in 300 be black and the Greeks white). For an idea of his politics have a look at "the Fixer", originally meant to be Batman but allegedly DC refused to let him have the character, and recall his view of the comic:

"a piece of propaganda … a reminder to people who seem to have forgotten who we're up against" Frank Miller The Guardian Newspaper

While an author is separate from their work it is hard to apply "death of the author" when the author is standing there, waving the book proudly, and shouting "yes, this is exactly what I meant."

 

There are always things that can be judged regardless of which era they come from, where what you have to take into account is the style in which they are written.

If someone writes in a grim and gritty style, you judge it as that.
If someone writes a comedy, you don't judge it as grim and gritty, you judge it as a comedy.

What the era of comics is may have changed, but that just represents the overall trend of what most of them are like. Whether it's Silver Age, Golden Age, Dark Age or whatever.

If he's still writing grim and gritty, judge it under those criteria. If it still holds up, what's the problem.

 

The problem is that as Reader said about Westerns "grim and gritty" changes over time. Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe were grim and gritty and still are. The Crow, that came out in 1989, is still "grim and gritty".

The problem is that Frank Miller's stuff isn't. Adding sex and blood doesn't make a book mature, it is the way those things are handled. The ones I mentioned have real impact, you feel every death, while other authors just have a high bodycount and lose all the impact. There is a difference between mature and adolescent, and unfortunately his recent work has been closer to the latter.

Some leaked script pages make it quite clear the views are entirely his own. Have a look below:

http://benurich.blogspot.co.uk/2006/03/soundbytes-2.html

 

My problem is really that he is telling what is basically the same story over and over again. The original, Batman Year One, may still be creative, original, and unique, but the retellings aren't.

 

Well if Miller is not mature, then neither is a large portion of his audience. With that Vicki Vale stuff, he knew what his fans wanted, so he gave it to them, that's why it was a big seller.

Besides, it's his re-imagining of the character, just like loads of other writers have done before. You don't have to like it, in fact feel free to criticise and do you own version, just like some of the others.

Anyway, rather than judging his works by what is the flavour of the month, they should get judged by the genre they are under.

I'm not gonna say all his works are good, everyone gets to have a bad story once in a while, but if he's got a style he's famous for, why shouldn't he keep using it.

May as well ask Tim Burton to do a comedy.

 

Nightmare before Christmas.

Even judged by the genre, issues like plotholes, character, and awful artwork, don't help his work stand out. He's just doing a softer version of the stuff that Image and TopCow churn. All-star Batman seems to wish it was Spawn but doesn't have the edge.

 

Alright, walked into that one. Good film too.

 

Frank Miller may have been ahead of the game, but now he's just one of the pack who all learned from his style and then went one better leaving him behind.

You know what would be really impressive. If he shows some range, does a comic where he goes against type and still makes it a good read.

 

Dunno if I would go that far, he's still a major player and as good as any of them. It's just that there is a lot more work in his style in the market, so the quantity of choice is greater. Same goes for the quality as well.

Is there going to be people better than him? Yeah at some point it's gonna happen, mayhave already happened, but I'd bet there are a whole load of copycats in his style who are a whole load worse.

 

J.O.Barr's work made me cry, and was far darker than Miller's. Perhaps because it had good and evil characters and Miller only ever has evil ones, even the heroes. Not sure how to get this across, what I'm trying to say, it's cliche but you need light to show the shadows.

 

I think what you are trying to say is that you need light to show how dark the shadows are. In twilight all cats are grey, and in Miller's work all the world is much the same muddy grey and deaths don't change the world's shade. In J.O.Barr's there are good people and innocents, and when they fall it is a tragedy because the light goes out and the world is left darker.

Is it not a disturbing thought that The Crow would hunt Miller's Batman along with the thugs he fights?

 

I love you.

 

Now why would the Crow do that, it's not like the people Batman goes after are innocents are they?

Miller's Batman is more a "Fight Fire with Fire" kind of character rather than the cold, calculating detective that others have written.

He may be vicious, but he's going after scum worse than himself. Surely the Crow would be alongside helping him?

 

Wow, he's now on Villains Wikia:
Batman (Frank Miller)

Wouldn't any members of the Superchix who crawled out the grave be hunting him for causing their death? The Crow went after Top Dollar who set up the circumstances that lead to the death, not just the guys that did the killing, and then let millions die.

The crow doesn't protect innocents or hunt the wicked. They just kill the people responsible for their death.

 

Yeah ok, so in some of them he's more Crazy Steve than what is expected of Batman, but only Year One is considered canon. He certainly wasn't going with the standup hero he usually is, more the damaged sociopath he could be given some situations. Don't forget Owlman is a Batman as well, just in an alternative reality.

That aside, is it a good comic? I've not read the later stuff, so I can't comment, but compared to some of the other works around in that genre, I'd be surprised if it was the worst, especially since half of them, were probably inspired by Miller in the first place.