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Booze, Broads, & Bullets: MoCCA

April 14th, 2010 Posted by david brothers

Why should you read the transcript of this panel with Frank Miller, Paul Pope, Kyle Baker, Jaime Hernandez, and Dean Haspiel from MoCCA last weekend?

MILLER: Let’s get to my central gripe about superhero costumes: Shoes. Why do these people go out in loafers while they‘re running across rooftops? What would you wear? I’d wear something with some tread. At least wear a pair of Converse All-Stars, or Air Jordans. Combat boots are my favorite.

Yes. I need a Teen Titan or Young Avenger in some Jordan XIIs as soon as possible. Maybe put Danny Rand in some Air Yeezys. If I can color coordinate, so can some of these heroes.

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Booze, Broads, and Bullets: Spawn-Batman

April 14th, 2010 Posted by david brothers

Sean Witzke on Ronin? Please and thank you! Chad Nevett on The Big Fat Kill, my favorite yarn? Yeah, I’ll read that! Booze, Broads, & Bullets week continues apace! Dig into the index if you’re new around here and need to get caught up.

With Dark Knight Returns and Year One, Frank Miller left what turned out to be an indelible mark on the character. He made Batman his own in a way that, say, Neal Adams or Jim Aparo, both incredible artists, didn’t. Two short works injected his vision of what Batman is, was, and how he came to be into the minds of comics fans, and that’s been his corner of the universe ever since. He’s only gone back to that well precious few times, with a cover for Batman: Black & White, a brief entry in Evan Dorkin’s World’s Funnest one-shot, a pinup in an anniversary issue or two, and All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder. Save for the latter book, there is nothing of length, nothing of note. With one exception: Spawn-Batman, a 1994 collaboration with Todd McFarlane.


It’s easy to organize the Miller universe. Year One kicks it off, ASBAR is the tale of Batman becoming a human being, Dark Knight Returns is his return to form, and Dark Knight Strikes Again is his settling into a brand new role in a new world. Spawn-Batman fits comfortably between Year One and ASBAR, with a Batman that’s good at what he does, but insufferable while he does it. He hasn’t gone through the humanizing process that Dick Grayson is going to push him through, so he’s cold, arrogant, and a blowhard.

This is about as good as McFarlane’s art has ever looked. It’s cartoonier than I remember his early Spawn work being, with a Batman that’s all shadow and angles and a Spawn that’s all cape. It’s a fairly standard early Image book for the most part, with pages that lean more toward pinups than, y’know, actual storytelling. It’s plenty entertaining, though, and McFarlane fits the bill.

Miller’s story is where all the fun is, though. He’s coming on Claremont-wordy this time, with Tom Orzechowski stuffing captions, sound effects, arrows, and word balloons all over the page. The captions begin as your usual omniscient third-person narrator, but then partway through the book they shift to Jeph Loeb-style dueling thought captions. He’s got a lot to say.

Which is fitting, considering that this book is all the way turned up. The first page has nineteen captions, most with 2-3 words, setting the stage for the book. At first glance, this is Miller at his worst– overly serious, hammering the point home again and again, and aping the wordiest man in comics. But, no, keep reading and you’ll find that isn’t true. It’s wordy, wordier than any comic has a right to be, really, but Miller is having fun here.

His Batman is impossibly gruff. At one point, he orders Alfred to patch up his shoulder because “the blood’s getting in my way.” Alfred spends the scene urging Batman to drink some chamomile tea. He says that it “is sure to prevent nightmares. Even the self-inflictedvariety.” Batman’s response? “I don’t get nightmares. I give them.”


The rest of the story is enjoyably over the top. He and Spawn get into the traditional meet-and-fight that forms the crux of 90% of these crossovers, and Batman takes genuine pleasure in the violence. When he realizes that Spawn is superhuman, he thinks “No reason to be nice” and turns up the violence again. Every third word out of his mouth is punk, and while he tells Spawn to “count your blessings I let you off so easy,” it’s clear that Batman was severely out of his league. He only gets away after dosing Spawn with nerve gas, causing him to vomit.

This isn’t the hyper-competent Grant Morrison Batman, the one with plans for plans and a hairy chest. No, this is your picture perfect Frank Miller Hero: Beaten bloody and senseless, completely out of his league, but with guts for days. A few bandages, a couple splints, and he’s ready to get into it with Spawn again. Having a power glove helps, of course– he lays into Spawn with renewed vigor in their rematch, and the dialogue goes monosyllabic on both parts.

“Idiot. You’re an idiot. I’ll tear you apart.” “In your dreams.” “Break you in half. I’ll break you in half.” “Sloppy. Stupid fighter. No discipline.” “Talking trash. You’re talking trash. It won’t help you.” “No discipline. Stupid fighter. Stupid punk.” “Had it. You’ve had it. You’re done.” “Just warming up you stupid punk.”

It turns into an orgy of sound effects, Orzechowski laying them out Adam West-style, until they trade five (five!) sound effects at once and collapse. They pause to catch their breath and continue their repartee.


“Give it up, punk. You’re finished. Just look at you. You’re finished.” “Look at you. You can’t even get up. You’re the one who’s finished. khoff.” “I’ll rip you to pieces Undisciplined slob. khagg” “Catch my breath. Just catch my breath and I’ll break you in half. kheff

And then robots come and beat Batman basically to death, forcing Spawn to save his life with a little hellfire. While bleeding to death, shaking in the grime of an alley, Batman is still going. “Magic tricks. No way to fight. No discipline. hukkk” Spawn saves his life again, forcing a bit of a mind-meld, and Batman’s response? “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a dead punk that won’t shut up. We’ve got work to do. Let’s go.”

For about ten or fifteen years, Batman was a douchebag. He was rude to his friends, mean to his family, and everyone sat there and took it because he was Batman and Batman was right. This book, and ASBAR, show you what it looks like when Batman is a douchebag to people who won’t take any of his crap. Batman and Spawn fight like cats and dogs even when infiltrating the stronghold of the bad guy. At one point, Batman says that Spawn is even dumber than Clark. “Who’s Clark?” Spawn asks. “None of your business.” Later still: “Just smash cyborgs and shut up. I’ll do the thinking here.”

There’s your Alpha Male Plus.

(For the record, the villain is Margaret Love, a mad scientist who Al Simmons knows of old. She’s gone completely genocidal and appears on seven pages of the book. She’s alive for five of them, looking death in the eye on the sixth, and launching a missile on the seventh. She isn’t the point of the book. She’s just there to facilitate the fight-and-team-up formula of crossover books.)


Spawn-Batman isn’t an essential piece of the Dark Knight Universe, but it is a fascinating one. It reads like a rough draft for ASBAR, with its sense of scale all thrown out of whack and pumped full of testosterone. I remember reading in an interview, one that I of course cannot find right now, that Frank Miller has said that you wouldn’t want to be Batman’s friend. It makes sense- considering his mission, his trauma, and the way he’s basically a pulp character gone superheroic, I don’t think that he should ever be Mr. Sunshine and Light. He has to play a role, a role that Alfred sees right through, by the way. Batman has to be the guy lurking in the darkness, laying in wait to pop a mugger’s spine entirely out of place. He’s mean, and he has to be mean, because that’s what his city requires.

At least, until Robin arrives. We’ll talk that out on Saturday, though. Miller’s doing something interesting with Batman, and it only really became clear in ASBAR.

Spawn-Batman, though? It takes itself just seriously enough that both characters are recognizable, but not so seriously that you’re beaten over the head with the import of the situation. It’s stupid. It’s very entertaining.

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Booze, Broads, & Bullets: Dark Knightrolude

April 13th, 2010 Posted by david brothers

Tucker Stone threw this up on Twitter, and I’ve gotta share it. It’s the Bushwick Book Club on Dark Knight Returns and it is fantastic.

One of the cats, Breez Evahflowin, is a guy I’ve dug ever since I used to go around calling myself a def jukie and was backpacking hard. He’s down with Cannibal Ox, Stronghold, etc etc. He’s nice on the mic device, is what I’m saying. Here’s his extended piece:

I’m new to Susan Hwang, but her joint ruled, too.

“Batman! He won’t go out for ice cream, has no time for movies, isn’t good at having fun!”

I love that this exists. I wish I could’ve gone.

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Booze, Broads, & Bullets: Man Without Fear

April 13th, 2010 Posted by david brothers

Booze, Broads, and Bullets continues! Tim O’Neil takes on the Tao of Miller! Tim Callahan posts a scan of Tales of the New Gods: Nativity by Frank Miller and then analyzes it in When Words Collide: Frank Miller’s New Gods! Chad Nevett looks at A Dame to Kill For! Check the index for the full slate of posts!

Frank Miller’s Batman doesn’t kill. He decided to, he wanted to, in Dark Knight Returns, but chose mercy for the Joker instead at the last possible moment. In Dark Knight Strikes Again, Batman condones killing, and is happy when Lex Luthor gets maced by Hawkboy, but the only life he actually takes is Dick Grayson, and he regrets that choice. The heroes of Sin City are something else entirely. Marv, Dwight, Gail, the girls of Old Town, Miho, and almost every character has a body count by the end of their run. Life is cheap, and their bullets are nameless. Miho is especially brutal, not being averse to toying with a man before he dies. Miller’s got no problem writing people who think that killing is as easy as breathing.

Daredevil, though, is something different. In the classic final issue of his run on Daredevil, “Roulette,” Miller has Daredevil place a gun to a helpless Bullseye’s head. He thinks over their past, and eventually proclaims that, when it comes to killing Bullseye, his “gun has no bullets.” He can’t murder him in his bed, no matter how much he wants to deep down inside.

Frank Miller’s Daredevil has two aspects that make him so entertaining. One is his intense sense of morality. He believes in the law and the rules, and works in his day job to prove the supremacy of those rules. The other is his flawed nature. His nighttime gig allows him to make shortcuts to, or circumvent, the law as he likes, dispensing justice at the end of a baton or his fist. This causes him no end of internal strife, and the crux of “Roulette” is that his morality is greater than his weakness.

Man Without Fear, Miller’s 1993 retelling of Daredevil’s origin with John Romita Jr, shows the kinds of situation where Daredevil will kill. The last action scene in the book is a chase, with a pre-Daredevil Matt Murdock fighting to rescue a young girl who has been kidnapped by a goon. One man dies by accident at the beginning of the fight, and Matt’s forced to stab another with his own knife while fighting underwater. What’s key is what he thinks as he’s killing the man: “A knife– no choice– give it back to him.”

Murdock is practical. When there’s no other choice to be found, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. He leaves the rest of the men unconscious or broken. There is a very controlled application of force to be found in Murdock’s style of crime fighting. While he occasionally loses it, or gets wrapped up in his own arrogance and goes too far, Daredevil generally knows exactly how to walk the thin line of being a vigilante.

Later in the book, Murdock intentionally kills a man. He’s put in a situation where he dies, the girl dies, or the villain dies. He begs the villain to stand down, saying, “I don’t want to kill you. Let her go.” The villain pops a shot off, winging Murdock’s arm. Murdock repeats his plea. The man fires again, and again, and Murdock swats the last bullet back at him, hitting him square between the eyes.


Mere moments before their encounter, the man kills a cabbie. He tells the horrified little girl he’s kidnapped that “It was nothing.” Four pages later, he’s dead and the contrast couldn’t be clearer. He killed because it was convenient. He took the path of least resistance. Murdock, on the other hand, only did it when there was no other option. It isn’t a habit, it isn’t something he’s proud of, it’s simply something that has to be done.

Miller’s Murdock is the hero who will make the hard choice, who will weigh his options, who knows his limits, and will not hesitate when it comes to doing a bad thing in order to do the right thing. It’s a refreshing change from most of the hardline “heroes don’t kill!” interpretations you see in comics. When given a choice between a child and a murderer, he chose the child. He didn’t waffle when faced with the choice. He told the man what would happen, he gave the man a choice, and the man chose poorly.

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Booze, Broads, & Bullets: Elektra Lives Again

April 12th, 2010 Posted by david brothers

Go read Chad Nevett on Sin City: The Hard Goodbye. I’ll wait. Promise. I got plenty of booze and broads right here, but the bullets are in my other jacket pocket. Index of posts here.


Elektra Lives Again is a Frank Miller/Lynn Varley joint from 1991. The title really says it all. This is the story of the return of Elektra, who died in Miller’s classic run on Daredevil, and the effect she has on Matt Murdock’s life. Elektra Lives Again is about obsession, in other words. Murdock doesn’t mourn her so much as he is haunted by her. The Hand want revenge on her for her disrespect, and will stop at nothing to get it.

Why is this book significant? It was Miller’s first stab at the character since 1986’s Elektra Assassin with Bill Sienkiewicz. Miller has admitted that his writing that book adjusted the way he approaches making comics due to the back and forth and explosion of ideas between Miller and Sienkiewicz.

Elektra Lives Again comes after that, and after that time Miller dropped four classics between 1986 and 1987. Nearly ten years had passed since his run on Daredevil began. Elektra Lives Again, like Dark Knight Strikes Again ten years later, was Frank Miller coming home again, going back to what made him a name.

Like Ronin, Elektra Lives Again is on another level visually. While all comics are group efforts, this is one of those that simply wouldn’t be the same without Varley’s painted colors. Miller is credit with script and line art, which I assume means that he inked himself. Most of the definition and shading seems to be courtesy of Varley, whether it is the diseased flesh of the zombies who hunt Elektra or Murdock’s feverish face while he dreams.

Ronin had a palette that brought to mind decaying organics and broken futures. This book, on the other hand, has a subdued palette. Even scenes that are lit by flames are dark and dreary, perfectly reflecting Matt Murdock’s mental state. Lynn Varley counts, though most of what i’m about to say is about Miller in particular.


There is a sequence of pages in this book that I’m in love with. It is the first of perhaps three major action scenes, and begins after Murdock has tried to heal his pain through sex with a client. It didn’t work, and he calls it “a sad thing.” He goes walking in his underwear, wrapped up his own thoughts, and ends up at her grave. Ninjas attack, demanding to know where Elektra is, and then Elektra rises from the ground, literally rising from her grave, and laying waste to the ninjas. Murdock and Elektra meet face-to-face, neither speaking, before Elektra makes her getaway.

It’s standard when spelled out, but the execution is obscenely beautiful. Miller lays out the page with enormous panels, generally two to a page and stacked vertically. They are packed with detail, whether that’s the intricate brickwork on Murdock’s brownstone, the constantly shifting graveyard, or the various weapons the ninjas use while attacking. Miller keeps the camera in motion during the fight, zooming in or out as needed, while leaving the background fluid.

But the mind-blowing part, the part I keep coming back to, is page twenty-three. Murdock hops off his railing, lands on a wire, and bounces to a rooftop. Anyone who has read a Batman, Spider-Man, or Daredevil comic knows it well, but I bet you’ve never seen it rendered like this. Matt’s form is practically angelic as he comes off his railing, and the only hint that he is in motion is the splash of snow he left behind.

He hits the wire and we capture a perfect moment between moments. Murdock is still in the process of landing on the wire, a split-second before his muscles shift and he launches himself upward to his next perch. In that split-second, we see that the snow that rested on the wire is still in mid-air, and he’s split it perfectly.

This is poetry in motion, one of those scenes that makes you pause and marvel. There’s a later page that is almost as amazing. Page 30 features Elektra pausing and then punching through a ninja as his momentum carries her off the hill. It’s great, but panel two, page twenty-three is king. It has a message, and that message is this: Frank Miller knows exactly what he is doing, and he is very good at what he does.

Look at the figures. There is none of the verve, none of the unlikely acrobatics that normally illustrate these kinds of scenes. There is no foot swung out wide, bat-symbol boots on display. No spider-web tangled and looping through and around the scenery. There is just a listless man, broken-hearted and blind with grief, going through the motions of what he does. But, despite the rote nature of the act, there is a certain level of beauty to be found there. There is grace.

Miller undoubtedly drew scenes like this hundreds of times in his career at this point. It is a classic superheroic action. Leaping from rooftop to rooftop is how everyone from Spider-Man to Speedball to Batman to Captain America gets around town. If you can’t fly, if you don’t have a fancy car, you take to the rooftops. It doesn’t get more superheroic than a hero on a roof.


But this isn’t superheroic at all. Murdock is just a man here. It’s something different. This is Miller pushing his limits. He’s done straight superheroes. He’s reinvented the biggest cape in the business. He got to have his cake and eat it, too, and then he blew your mind with Elektra Assassin. Ronin showed a certain restlessness in his art, a refusal to settle down. Elektra Lives Again is another signifier of that restlessness. This could’ve easily been just another Daredevil comic, but instead, it feels vaguely European. The storytelling is all wrong, the panels too big, and the star of the book too broken and haunted.

Murdock’s body language on the line, the broken snow, the enormous panels that waffle between claustrophobic and spacious– Miller is refining his art and growing up in public, here. This kind of graceful hero doesn’t really show up again in his writer/artist work, or at least not as blatantly as it does here. His Sin City yarns are big on bombast and not so much on the subtle storytelling. Perhaps in 300, but nothing comes to mind.

Panel two, page twenty-three keeps coming to mind when people talk about Frank Miller having lost it. It means a lot, more than I thought it did when I first read Elektra Lives Again a few years back. It’s a clear sign of a man pushing his craft forward, experimenting with new things, and breaking out of an old shell. It’s a killer page, and a small part of a beautiful book.

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Booze, Broads, and Bullets: Ronin

April 11th, 2010 Posted by david brothers

It’s 1983 and you’re fresh off a break-out run on Daredevil and an acclaimed Wolverine miniseries. Everyone wants you to revolutionize their books like you did Daredevil. What do you do? If you’re Frank Miller, the answer is to produce Ronin, a deeply weird samurai/sci-fi/cyberpunk love story, with DC Comics.

I’m convinced that, as a career milestone, Ronin may be more important than Daredevil. It was composed of ideas that were completely Miller’s, rather than derived from the minds of Stan Lee, Bill Everett, Chris Claremont, or Len Wein. While Miller clearly had a large amount of freedom on Daredevil, it remained a Marvel comic and had to conform to those standards. Miller has said he never had censorship trouble on Daredevil, barring a brief spat with the Comics Code Authority that resulted in an anti-drug issues being shelved for a couple years. Other than that, he described his time on the project as fairly painless, due in part to his relationship with his editor and Jim Shooter.

So, what does Miller do when he can cut loose without worrying about ruining someone else’s copyright? He does something very, very weird, and yet undeniably Frank Miller. While it is interesting to read, the most interesting aspect of the book is how it serves almost as a blueprint, or at least loose notes, for Miller’s later work.

There is a kernel of the woman worship that informs much of his Sin City work lurking in the subtext of Ronin. Casey McKenna, head of security for the megacorp that provides much of the drama for the book, is cast from the same mold as Gail, Martha Washington, and even Carrie Kelly. She becomes the object of the ronin’s quest, desire, and obsession partway through the book, after he spent the series being pointedly chaste. Casey fulfills a fantasy that the ronin has of heroism and love. This is a familiar fantasy and one that is echoed throughout Miller’s body of work, whether via Goldie from Sin City: The Hard Goodbye, Ava from Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, or even little Nancy Callahan from Sin City: That Yellow Bastard.



Miller’s also known for putting his heroes through their paces, above and beyond what normal heroes go through. His heroes go through their own personalized passion plays, and always with gritted teeth, stoic expressions, and muttered threats of revenge. While the ronin is mostly mute, he takes punishment like a champ, always rising above his pain to destroy those who hurt him. Sometimes this means coming back from a traditional beating, and sometimes, the ronin finds himself with several limbs missing.

Despite his intimate relationship with violence, the ronin has a very specific code of honor and seeks to do right by everyone he can. There are lines he won’t cross, and when he is tricked into using a racial slur to provoke a fight, his first move is to apologize. When that apology is rejected, he severs the man’s hands. When Casey is sent under the streets to be killed, he risks his life to go and rescue her.
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Booze, Broads, & Bullets Index

April 11th, 2010 Posted by david brothers

Frank Miller’s career has spanned over thirty years, with a number of bona fide classic runs and books under his belt. From Daredevil to Sin City, Dark Knight Returns to 300, Miller has changed the face of comics. If comics had a hall of fame, he’d be a shoo-in.

This week, I tapped a few of my favorite people to see if they had anything to say. Luckily for me, they said “Yes,” so here we have it: Booze, Broads, & Bullets. A series of posts on a number of blogs over the next seven days focusing on various aspects of Frank Miller’s body of work. The Portfolio Review last week was just a prelude. I’m going to keep this post updated with links to the new posts, as well as adding links to their posts from my own.

I hope you dig it.

4thletter!
Booze, Broads, & Bullets: Ronin
Booze, Broads, & Bullets: Elektra Lives Again
Booze, Broads, & Bullets: Man Without Fear
Booze, Broads, & Bullets: Spawn-Batman
Booze, Broads, & Bullets: Sin City: The Big Fat Kill
Booze, Broads, & Bullets: I’m sick of flags.
Booze, Broads, & Bullets: All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder
Booze, Broads, & Bullets: Every 4th Quarter He Likes To Mike Jordan Them

Chad Nevett
Booze, Broads, & Bullets: The Hard Goodbye
Booze, Broads, & Bullets: A Dame to Kill For
Booze, Broads, & Bullets: The Big Fat Kill
Booze, Broads, & Bullets: That Yellow Bastard
Booze, Broads & Bullets: Family Values
Booze, Broads, & Bullets: Booze, Broads, & Bullets
Booze, Broads, & Bullets: Hell and Back

Tim Callahan
Tales of the New Gods: Nativity by Frank Miller
When Words Collide: Frank Miller’s New Gods

Chad & Tim
The Splash Page Podcast Episode 12.1

Tim O’Neil
Tao of Miller

Sean Witzke
Emma Peel Session 30 – IF YOU INTEND TO DIE, YOU CAN DO ANYTHING.
Emma Peel Sessions 31 – make em laugh! make em laugh!
Booze Broads and Bullets week mini-review!
Emma Peel Sessions 32 – Egg Salad
Emma Peel Session 33 – armageddon in effect
Emma Peel Sessions 34 – ain’t flingin tears at the dusty ground

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Portfolio Review: Frank Miller

April 9th, 2010 Posted by david brothers

Frank Miller, ably assisted by Klaus Janson and Lynn Varley.






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Hot Wondercon News

April 3rd, 2010 Posted by david brothers

Just so you know, Comics Alliance is the place to go for hot off the presses Wondercon news. Two bits of note for Friday:

Greg Rucka is done at DC Comics and his Batwoman? Well, y’all are gonna be waiting a while. I have more details in the link.

-Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder is back on track. It hits again in February 2011 under the name Dark Knight: Boy Wonder, a six-issue miniseries. I can’t even front, that news is super exciting. I can’t wait to see more of Miller/Lee’s take of the Dark Knight universe. Grant Morrison has faltered for me, due in part to the on and off art, and Dini is writing the kind of comic book you use to break up weed on. Miller/Lee’s ASBAR was like a chilled shot of vodka– something bracing and surprising, and something that’ll rock your world when you least expect it.

More on that later, though. Stay tuned, true believer 🙂

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Frank Miller on Geeks

March 23rd, 2010 Posted by david brothers

One thing that really bugs me when I’m signing comics for folks at a shop or convention is how some of you all refer to yourselves as “fanboys” or “geeks,” calling yourselves all kinds of bad names and making it sound like loving comics means being something less than human. I’ve met a lot of you, thousands of you, over the years. You’re a smart bunch, a literate bunch. You’re fun to talk with. The bad eggs, and the much-mentioned crazies, are few and very far between. I’m lucky to have the readers I have, and I’m grateful for your attention and loyalty.

A self-contempt, even a self-hatred, suffuses our amazing little field, expressed as often by publishers and writers and artists as by readers. The origins of this industry-wide inferiority complex are historical and foolish. Yes. We are a bastard industry, much maligned. Ours is a story form considered by many, even most, as juvenile and unworthy. So was the novel, once. So were the movies. And maybe people in my position, writers and artists, haven’t yet produced enough superior work to make the rest of the world think better of us. But superior works have been done, and more are in the pipe. The field is rich, very rich, in talent. The art form is unique in its capabilities. Our best days are ahead of us. Comics readers are likewise ahead of public perception. You know you love this stuff. Give the rest of them time to catch up, sure, but don’t think you’re a geek because you love good drawing or a good, dramatic story told well.

We must admit our love for our crazy little business of comic books. Screwy as our history is, unjust and splattered with the lifeblood of our best as our history is, we must move forward, unashamed, even a bit proud. Only that history can drag us back, and down. Only old, bad habits. Only that old, stupid self-contempt.

We’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.

-Frank Miller, from the letters pages in the fifth chapter of The Big Fat Kill. (That issue also included this excellent and NSFW Sergio Aragones pinup.)

I’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with the way comics fans embrace nerd and geek as descriptions of a subculture. It feels a little self-loathing and a little high school. I don’t know that I can eloquently articulate why I feel this way, just that it rubs me in a weird way. I think Miller hits it closest when he mentions the self-contempt. Maybe that’s my issue.

Anybody have thoughts?

(While we’re talking Miller, The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century, the Miller/Dave Gibbons satirical future epic with one of the best black females in comics, is getting a softcover release in June. 600 pages. 20 bucks. You do the math.)

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