If Frank Miller seems everywhere this summer, it may be because he has been everywhere this summer. The comic book legend known for Dark Knight Returns and Sin City has been on a multi-hemisphere, multi-city book tour for his memoir/creative manifesto, Push the Wall: My Life, Writing, Drawing, and the Art of Storytelling, sitting down in front of audiences for talks with collaborators Zack Snyder and Robert Rodriguez and fellow authors Scott Snyder and Joe Hill.
The book, which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, debuted in the top 15 on the New York Times best seller list and Miller has no plans on stopping his book tour just yet.
Miller was also at San Diego Comic-Con and then showed up to the premiere of Spider-Man: Brand New Day in Los Angeles. The movie features his ninja clan creation The Hand as one of Spidey’s antagonists.
“It was a hoot; they did a lot of clever stuff with it,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter of the movie. Regarding the Hand sequences in the movie, he adds, “they clearly had seen a lot of the Hong Kong movies that I’d seen over the years.”
Miller has also been catching up on his moviegoing, and had seen Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which he calls “extravagant.” The creator behind Spartan story 300 knows his way around an ancient Greek myth or two (he can easily slip into expounding on Corinthian style helmets and their influence on Sparta) and says the movie “really did an awful lot right.”
Tuesday sees the wide digital release of Frank Miller: American Genius, the documentary made by his creative partner Silenn Thomas, which doesn’t just look at his career and work but, as he puts it, delves into “this wonderful subculture that we all share of comic book and how it celebrates itself all over the planet.”
But this is no farewell tour. The 69-year old Miller no plans on slowing down and is pushing ahead on a new Sin City book as well as a few others. “I feel like I’m just now freely exploring where I wanna take this medium. There’s no reason not to keep going,” he says.
Amid his movie watching and globe-trotting, Miller hopped on the phone with THR to talk about the influence of mentor Neal Adams and Jim Shooter, why he didn’t leave (but still left) Marvel in the 1980s, and why he’s returning to Dark Horse for his latest book, Invasive Species.
Your book is part memoir and part lessons in creativity. Why do it this way?
I got my career started by calling up Neal Adams’ office and getting a meeting with him. Neal Adams was the premier artist in comics at the time, and his art had a great effect on me as a child. And he was listed in the phone book. And I got to meet him that day, an hour after I called. And he looked over my drawings and told me they were terrible and sent me off. I redid them and I saw him again and again and again. And he was always a harsh critic, but every time he taught me more and more, sometimes doing drawings over them. And, and as the months went by, he got me my first job and he continued to be a sensei and an advisor to me on things professional and on how to deal with being an artist in the world and many other things. Years passed and I became successful. And one time, Neal and I were at a comic book convention and I just took him aside and I just said, “Neal, how do I thank you for what you’ve done for me? You’ve never asked me for anything.” And he said, “Oh, there’s only one thing you can do. Do the same thing for the next guy.” Well, this book really is my attempt to do the same thing for the next guy. And to commit to paper my experiences, my observations and, and the lessons learned in making comic books.
Speaking of mentors, Jim Shooter (the wonderkid who became Marvel’s polarizing editor-in-chief through the 1980s) was also one. Do you remember the first time you met him?
My first memorable encounter with Jim was at the Marvel offices. I basically came in and was sort of selling my services. I’d gotten some little job, doing some little three-pager of something like Doc Sampson and that had gotten his attention enough to want to keep me around. And, he gave me his lecture on storytelling. Everything was always storytelling with Jim because he felt comics had really lost track of their basic mission, which was to enchant and compel young readers with gripping stories.
He came in on a fairly loose pack of people who were all over the map creatively. And he worked to pull it all together into a more cohesive unit.
There were a lot of writer-editors and little fiefdoms at the time.
Right. He focused more than ever on the concept of a Marvel universe.
How did you guys work together?
He was eager to change things and I was eager to learn. And we both had strong opinions. I think one of the reasons we got along was we were both up for a good argument. Arguments can be a very creative thing and a very good thing.
You left Marvel in a pretty high profile fashion twice. And I say high profile because your profile was very high and you were creatively cresting, twice with Daredevil. What caused you to leave that first time?
Well, I didn’t leave anybody. I chose to take a project to another publisher who was more amenable to kind of freedom I wanted to do it with. The message underneath all this was that it was important to demonstrate that talent is portable. Let me say that. When a publisher is releasing your work, that does not mean you’re saying an oath of allegiance to a military operation. It’s not a marriage.
Well, you came back, proceeded to do Born Again, then left again.
No, no. I proceeded to do work that was not for Marvel Comics. (Laughs.) We can’t keep on referring to me coming and going. I didn’t come and go. I stayed exactly where I am. I didn’t move where I lived. Nothing like that.
In any case, it was teased at the time that after Born Again there would be a Daredevil story with Walter Simonson.
It’s taken us an awful long time to get that done, I’ll admit to you. (Laughs.)
Is that ever going to happen?
Why not?
Uh, speaking of stories that never happened, what happened with the Doctor Strange run you were supposed to have with writer Roger Stern?
On that one, I really had come to realize that I was just dying to write my own material. And, I couldn’t wait anymore. I had to start writing and drawing my own comics and, you know, start being a cartoonist rather than just an illustrator.
Miller meeting director Destin Daniel Cretton at the premiere of Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Yvonne Bennett
In the ’80s, with Dark Knight and Batman: Year One, you were elevated to art icon. You weren’t just comic book famous, you were art world famous. How did you handle that kind of fame?
As well and as poorly as anybody. (Laughs.) I’m not go into the long and gory biography of my life, but it does create all kinds of wonderful highs and dismal lows to go through that sort of thing. It transforms you.
The time of Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen and Maus is looked at like a revolutionary era at this point where comics were reinvented. How healthy is the comic art form now? Is the wall still being pushed?
Sure it is. I mean, it’s easy to look back on that time and say, “Wow, what a sunburst. That changed everything.” But in fact, that was a pretty small amount of work that we’re talking about that caused a big splash and that’s what people remember at the time. Because people tend to remember the stuff that really made a splash when they think back on a given period. We certainly have a pretty wildly diverse amount of stuff coming out now.
What do you like to read or what artist are you following?
I tend to hunt down the people whose work I like so I can work with them. I’m really, really excited by Peach Momoko’s work.
This year, there was upheaval at Dark Horse Entertainment, the home of your Sin City books. But you announced a new book that you’re writing, Invasive Species, with them. How did you decide to stay at Dark Horse for the new book and not take it elsewhere?
Well, the relationship was a good and strong one, and it served us all very well. I met with the people there. The philosophies of the company seemed to be close enough to what I’d always known them to be, and they certainly had the infrastructure to do a good job at it.
Going back to Sin City, the only thing happening now is the Western that is being drawn by Milo Manara, right?
Right now, yeah, but I’ve got a dozen ideas for new ones. Sin City is my life’s work, more than anything. Milo is well along. I just gotta teach him who to draw girls. (Laughs.)
Last question: What’s been your favorite character to write and draw after all this time?
I fall in love with each of them. I really do. I mean, you have kids?
Yes.
Which one’s your favorite?
Depends when you ask me.
Okay. We’ll go with that.
Courtesy of Subject
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