Comic book writer and screenwriter Frank Miller – whose work includes “300,” “Sin City” and “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” – returned this week to Lucca Comics and Games, an event that spans the gamut of geek culture and pop entertainment.
As well as speaking at the event, to coincide with the 40th anniversary of “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns,” Miller also introduced “Frank Miller – American Genius,” Silenn Thomas’ documentary about his impact on popular culture.
Variety spoke to Miller about politics, art and why he’s relieved there are fewer comic book movies this year.
Some of your finest work has been inspired by cinema, but has not necessarily involved superheroes: “Sin City” and “300” for instance.Well, yes, my entire oeuvre has been dedicated to defining and redefining the hero, and sometimes making him as ugly as possible, as in Marv and “Sin City,” and other times torturing the hero: as with Hartigan in the “Sin City: That Yellow Bastard” story. The exploration of the hero is just infinitely fascinating. Once you let go of the idea of the hero being society’s voice, it becomes more an examination of the human spirit.
As well as the heroes, you create astonishing, extreme worlds. But it seems that we live in a world which is almost impossible to exaggerate.I often have remarked that doing the next “Martha Washington” would be difficult because the first one happened. And my parody of Ronald Reagan is now in the White House, right? But there’s always somewhere else to go. Now you would parody what my country has turned into, and what the world has turned into, it’s fascinating dark material, indeed.
Watching the documentary “American Genius” I noticed you didn’t seem to listen to music when you work.I’ll either work and just have the street sounds, or I’ll have NPR on, listening to world news. That’s helpful to me, especially when I’m drawing. It helps me remove one sphere of my mind from play to a certain extent, and to let the verbal side of my mind be occupied, and let the freer, more relaxed, visually-oriented side take over because most of the drawing work is the actual clinical, decisive part of the illustration. I work that out on a sheet of tracing paper, and then when it comes to executing the drawing, I want to be as relaxed as possible and not be consciously thinking too much, revealing more. So if I’m drawing someone who’s angry, for instance, I’m striking the face with brush strokes that are angry ones. It gets into a more jazz rhythm. Whereas when I’m plotting a story or when I’m writing dialog that is verbal work. So I want to be focusing more on that side of my mind.
What next?Well, I’m working with the great Italian artist Milo Manara, who is renowned for his erotic and often funny comic book work. He asked me on stage once if I would write a “Sin City” story for him. He’s the only artist I could ever imagine doing one with, because I’ve always drawn them all myself. But this is the one exception I’ll make because … I told him on stage, being glib: Yes, I’ll do it but he’d have to learn how to draw women.
[Miller also announced during his stay at Lucca that he would be collaborating once more with Japanese artist Peach Momoko with whom he’d previously worked on “Tears of the Spider Queen” for Marvel.]
