Thursday, March 12, 2009

Frank Miller's Charlie Brown

For the comic book fans, hat tip to Andrew Sullivan:Frank Miller is the comic book artist and writer behind The Dark Knight, a bunch of great Daredevil comics, Sin City and 300. He got into film when director Robert Rodriguez invited him to co-direct the film adaptation of Sin City (Well he also wrote the screenplay for Robocop 2 twenty years ago, but the less said about that the better.), the most faithful adaptation of a comic book ever. Miller went on to direct the overwhelmingly panned Spirit movie - as one fan of the Spirit comics said when they heard Miller would be adapting it "But the Spirit isn't about whores!" Well, it didn't used to be.

He was at one point, one of the most brilliant, cutting edge, transgressive artists working in the comics medium but has spiraled into bizarre self parody and Ayn Randian Islamaphobic crankiness in recent years. Doubtless though, he's making enough movie moolah that he doesn't care what I think.

2 comments:

Niles said...

Miller rose to his level of incompetence during the same period extolling the ur-warrior machismo of his country's political leadership. His fanbase reads like the usual suspects at the 'conservative' shrines.

Heckuva job Frankie.

Someone mistook his graphic style for actual story and turned it into the illustrator version of Bill O'Reilly fiction. And like O'Reilly, he's got the money to prove how right he is.

What that says about what he's got in the closet...but it's a very BIG closet, stuffed with fake weapons collections.

Cliff said...

That's absolutely what he's become, but there's a raw power to some of his early work that shouldn't be discounted, Dark Knight was great and Year One is simply the best Batman comic ever (At least half the credit should go to artist David Mazzucheli for that, as well as their other collaboration Daredevil: Born Again). Yes he's coasted for years and his Batman and Robin book with Jim Lee was beyond bad - really just had to be a sick joke.

Popular Posts