How will Frank Miller be remembered in the future?

[Aaron Kashtan]

Frank Miller will be remembered as a great writer and artist who, later in his career, went completely insane.

[dupont2005]

He will be remembered favorably for his early work on Daredevil and especially The Dark Knight Returns. And to a lesser extent for Sin City and 300, because they were turned into movies. The rest of his work will be largely forgotten, except by hardcore comic fans. They will remember that hilariously bad All-Star Batman and Robin, especially the line, "I'm the goddamn Batman."

Im betting a lot of people who like Sin City have no idea he ever worked on Daredevil.

[Buried Alien]

Frank Miller will be remembered as a great writer and artist who, later in his career, went completely insane.

He's the comic book world's Mel Gibson.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[CrazyOldHermit]

He'll be remembered for being a crazy, overrated asshole of a hack. I've already heard tons of "His DD work was overrated," "TDKR sucked because Batman was mean" and "Sin City had no story and the art sucked." This bugs me because Miller is one of my personal heroes (except for the crazy part. I've already got enough crazy going on to need some of Miller's mixed in).

He's the comic book world's Mel Gibson.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

Thats funny because its true.

[thwhtGuardian]

I doubt the craziness will be remembered, like anything only the memory of the greatest hits will endure.

[berk]

Looking at his best work, I think he should be recognized as an important artist, but a limited writer. Perhaps I should withhold judgement myself, though, until I read Martha Washington, if I ever get around to it.

[Parch]

Im betting a lot of people who like Sin City have no idea he ever worked on Daredevil.

Probably. I did know of his work on Daredevil first, and to be honest I couldn't think of anything else besides Daredevil and Sin City when I saw the thread title. I think these two titles would be his legacy, and they couldn't be any more different could they?

[foxley]

He'll be remembered as the guy with a pen in his head in the Daredevil movie.

[LEADER DESSLOK]

Frank Miller is one of my favorite cartoonists so I'm not ready to write him off yet. He's just going through a dry spell. Maybe personal issues have affected his work lately, I don't know I just know that Marv Wolfman once suffered through a weak period but he recovered with a brief return to the Teen Titans and a run on The Adventures of Superman where he helped refine and improve on the Lex Luthor character--a model which has now become the standard for a character nearly 70 years old.

Miller will be remembered for redefining Daredevil and moving him out of Spider-Man's shadow; his Dark Knight Returns will probably never go out of print and will continue to entertain Batman fans as long as there are Batman fans and "Sin City" has its devoted fans, some of whom may not necessarily be interested in comic books in general. I think he will be remembered just as he is now--as an outspoken cartoonist with a corky drawing style who always tries to push the medium beyond the boundaries in which some people want to confine it. Whether the finished product is good, bad or excellent--it's never indifferent. Miller never "phones it in!"

[Francis Dawson]

I'll throw this out to the classic comic board. Being a guy that grew up in the 80s a die hard comic fan, it was always so weird to get back into it all a few years back and four of the big 80s comic icons (Frank Miller, Dave Sim, John Byrne & Alan Moore) were all kind of oddball exiles from comics to an extent. All of them either turning their back or flipping a middle finger back at where whence came.

So true. In the case of Moore and Miller both have become lightning rods for ritual denigration by fanboys - in most cases by the selfsame individuals who once revered them. A while ago Matt Seneca wrote an illuminating essay drawing on the thought of Georges Bataille and Rene Girard in which he argued that comics fandom sustains and renews itself by ritually expelling / sacrificing individuals or movements that come to have an excess of signification, a 'too much of a good thing' kind of an aura. Although what is expelled instantiates the most important values of the community at the same time there is a threatening excess that the community must define itself against - by drawing a line in the sand, by saying "this far and no further".

Here's how I think this plays out with Moore and Miller: They were the 80s poster children for superhero comics with some claim to literary seriousness. Both pushed the parameters for the levels of violence and brutality acceptable in superhero genre. Whilst Moore characteristically applied the self-consciousness of the literary novel to his superhero material, Miller was more interested in returning the comics to their amoral pulp roots. By the end of the decade US superhero comics were a little more literary and much, much more violent.

Moore and Miller have been expelled from the community because they don't take superhero comics as seriously as fans do - or, more accurately and more troublingly, they take them seriously in a different way. Moore is miles away from the reverential, gnostic attitude towards the superhero idiom adopted by Grant Morrison - let alone Geoff Johns! Moore is a lot more reserved and chilly towards the politics and ethos of the superhero. Watchmen properly understood wasn't the starting-off point for the revival of the superhero but the terminus of the whole genre - its reductio ad absurdum. The fan hive mind recognises this and is threatened by it:

Matt Seneca, "In the masterpieces Watchmen and Miracleman, superheroes were painted as decidedly inferior to, and indeed unworkable within, this new intellectualized approach to action comics. This was the part everybody missed, and despite the occasional brilliance of Moore's post-'80s work outside the corporate genre comics, the overwhelming fan support has never followed Moore into alternative comics. In recent years Moore himself has lashed out at the questionable business practices and low quality native to the superhero industry in a sequence of bewildered, frustrated, but generally eloquent and well-reasoned interviews, fan reaction to which has been overwhelmingly negative. Basically, the comics community has turned its back on Alan Moore, with current fan darling Jason Aaron delivering a hilariously childish, generally well-recieved attack on Moore and literary-superhero-writer heir apparent Grant Morrison making reductive comments about his work into a minor cottage industry. The same people that elevated Moore chose to stay behind rather than follow him beyond the small-minded kind of stories he made his name by reconsidering, and in his absence he's become a mockery, an example of the bad things in store for those who question the governing paradigms of comics, both in fandom and industry. Moore was lauded for telling comics to reach higher, but at some point he just went too high for most readers' comfort."

Thoughts on Miller to follow soon - have to get hold of a copy of All-Star Batman.

http://deathtotheuniverse.blogspot.c...acrifices.html

[Francis Dawson]

I want to reply at some length to this thread but I'll defer until I've read ASBARTBW.

He's a devoted student of the medium and he's added much to the superhero comics gene pool. He was well ahead of the curve with his borrowings from Manga. DK2 was, with the possible exception of some of the work in Solo, the best superhero comics of its decade by a factor of about one million.

If that were true -- thank god it's not even remotely within the realm of rationality -- I'm pretty sure I'd happily burn my collection. And then I'd fling myself into the flames, preferably after bathing in gasoline.

Heh, I thought that would ruffle some feathers. YMMV and all that but for me DK2 is an amazing formalist art comic that is also, on a content level, hilariously provocative towards its audience. I think critical opinion towards it has shifted considerably in the last few years and it has found its readers who largely aren't super-invested in whether Dick Grayson is acting "in character" or not.

http://seantcollins.com/2011/02/comi...rikes-again-2/

[CrazyOldHermit]

I don't think theres any book I hate more than The Dark Knight Strikes Again. I'm one of those narrowminded folks that wanted it to be more in the vein of its predecessor, or at least I would be if I had wanted it to be made at all.

[Aaron King]

Heh, I thought that would ruffle some feathers. YMMV and all that but for me DK2 is an amazing formalist art comic that is also, on a content level, hilariously provocative towards its audience.

No, really. They're great. The first two issues are soooo bizarre and animated and incendiary. The final issue is pretty much shit... but maybe we could ignore it.

Where DKR is Reagan rampaging across American freedom at sixteen panels a page, DKSA is like the Jurassic Park dinosaurs stomping across my understanding of superheroes, eating leaves off of Fox News and Photoshop and... I don't know. Everything. Then 9/11 ruined it.

[dupont2005]

Probably. I did know of his work on Daredevil first, and to be honest I couldn't think of anything else besides Daredevil and Sin City when I saw the thread title. I think these two titles would be his legacy, and they couldn't be any more different could they?

I never read his Daredevil. I knew he did it, but the character never interested me. I have read about the first half of Sin City and loved it. Read DKR and thought it was overrated but had good art. Just started reading his Wolverine and can't say I'm all that into it. I've been reading the trade for like a month now so I'm obviously not diving into it.

[MRP]

Maybe his lasting legacy should be the guy who wrote and drew the comics that Eastman and Laird spoofed to create the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Ronin-the true origin story of the TMNT.
-M