BEHOLD THE GRIMACE: The Frank Miller Poll

i expressed admiration for DKSA itt too, but it's a hideous book! year one is gorgeous. I totally hear you re: the irritating Millerisms though.

in retrospect i should've voted for Spawn/Batman

Yeah. Year One is super swell, no mark against it - I like Ace In The Hole's off-hand comment that it may be the only bit of restraint Miller's shown in his career.

i expressed admiration for DKSA itt too, but it's a hideous book!

Hideous? Different strokes for different folks.

Actually I didn't mean to be that dismissive. I'm sorry about that. It's just... I don't know how to qualify it as "hideous". I mean, lately I've been reading POWR MASTRS and BJ AND DA DOGS and lotsa Dikto SPIDER-MANs and a few other things and I could see how an immediate glance at those things might not reveal those things to be the most appealing items but put two panels together and you're hooked, ready to accept the work on its own terms.

And really I have my own standard for "hideous" and well, it's not DKSA. It's loud and garish and it really does shimmer, every panel fully committed to popping off the page, the nervous energy never letting up.

Clearly I'm prone to reverie.

Was looking at DK2 again tonight -- it's a big fun stoopid mess. I wouldn't call it hideous, but Lynn Varley is as much a downside in this one as she was an upside in DKReturns.

I thought I'd voted for Year One, but obviously I forgot.

always wanted to read ronin, plot sounds cool and liked what i've seen of the art.

is it worth £15?

no

yes

(says the guy who doesn't own a copy)

I only paid like twenty american dollars, so I don't know what to tell you.

Have seen plenty of library copies of Ronin in Scotland, might be worth ordering?

not miller, but over xmas at the parents' house i found my old copy of batman year two. it is terrible for the most part.

(says the guy who doesn't own a copy)

would you pay 15 quid for a copy?

Whoops, I thought I voted for Year One, but I guess I also forgot. So maybe it should get "3" counting me and also-forgetful Chap.

Is Year 2 the Barr/McFarlane thingy with the baddie who looks like a Warhammer figure?

Yeah, it is. The only redeeming bit is the first issue was drawn by Alan Davis. I always liked Davis' Batman.

yeah davis' art is great -- mcfarlane's is really terrible. not even just in a mcfarlane way, but kind of in an inept way.

^^^in batman year two i mean

In McFarlane's defense, it's pretty early in his career;he'd done a year or two on Infinity Inc and maybe an issue of Hulk. All I remember from it is how "Cape Crazy" he made Batman - that panel at the graveyard with the forty feet of cape and cowl flowing out in front of him is burned in my mind.

I probably would have voted Year One too, if the poll had been clear enough

xpost, yeah, mcfarlane's proto-spawn batman is cool looking, i just have grown to hate the way the dude draws faces tbh. and this is coming from someone who as a preteen loved the hulk/spiderman stuff he did.

McFarlane is not a completely bad artist, but his style influenced so much shitty 90s art (Liefeld & co) that he kinda gets damned by association.

Agree that his faces always look kinda weird and inhuman, and the way he drew Mary Jane's hair in Spider-Man is pretty ridiculous too.

would you pay 15 quid for a copy?

I don't even know what 15 quid is so yeah sure

I'd pay 15 squid.

But I think Ronin's kinda shit, honestly.

Matt Fraction on Ronin

You’ll see Japan in these pages, you’ll see France.

yeah, that's what struck me when I was flipping through it the other day - he's always been a pastiche guy, but there's a metal hurlant feel to it that you never really got from him anywhere else and it's pretty startling.

he's kinda wrong about the story not mattering though, because it's flat out boring to read. i'll stand by that.

I don't even know what 15 quid is so yeah sure

you're forty years old and you've never heard of other countries having different currency to yours?

anyway the fact that you've not paid $7 less than list on Amazon for it in the last ten years makes me disbelieve that you'd pay $4 over list for it today, pwned

what's a country

who's a Black Sheep

Bit bored by the first Daredevil Visionaries so far. Can I just skip straight to the issues when Miller's writing, or will I miss something important?

Not much, if memory serves.

And when I'm re-reading those, I often skip all the text but for the dialogue. And sometimes I even skip that.

Note that by the end, Miller was only doing breakdowns and Janson was largely responsible for the rendering.

The Elektra cycle is the big story in Miller's run.

That said, I always dug the issue in the McKenzie written issue's where Matt Murdoch gets totally clobbered by the Hulk. I think it is always a good Marvel trope to have someone battle where the characters fight where it isn't a usual matchup. I think the Spider-man rumbles with Firelord and the Juggernaut are popular and fun for the same reason.

Re-read Ronin - still excellent. Probably the most "mature" Miller ever got - questioning escapism/fetishism rather than leaping headlong into beloved tropes to the point of overindulgence. Not that they're abandoned - the ending is easily read as accepting them for the sake of empowerment - but it's interesting to see it acknowledged.

Plus it's got a fantastic beat.

ALSO: Odd references to big two heroes throughout - Storm, that green clad lady with one arm sleeveless who used to pop up in X-MEN (I think?), Captain Marvel. That's always bugged me.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/27w11e/i_am_frank_miller_artist_cartoonist_creator_of/

Oy at the OWS subthread.

Also that weirdly rambling answer about his feelings about Superman as a character.

Sigh. I really loved this guy's work once upon a time.

Same. Probably would've voted for E:A or DKR.

Ronin is the correct answer

i haven't read miller in years but will always look at any book he draws.

I'd say Holy Terror has special significance, though I doubt anyone would have voted for it.

I wonder if I voted in this? Probably would've gone for Year 1.

I recently reread both Dark Knights and Year One, and Born Again for the first time. Also bought a used Ronin tpb - I read that as it came out and then gave up on comics for my teenage years before the final issue came out - haven't cracked it open yet.
Of those I would have voted for DK1. I really like his artwork at that period. In DK2, he's just finessing it.

Jack Kirby was originally Jacob Kurtzberg, Stan Lee was Stanley Zeiber, and Bob Kane (who created Batman), his real given name was Eli Katz.

It's Stanley Leiber, and Bob Kane's real given name was Robert Kahn - Eli Katz was Gil Kane's real name.

I can't help but think it would be a different world today if he'd been called Stan Zee.

Born Again, for me.

I really like his artwork at that period. In DK2, he's just finessing it

First time anyone's ever used the word "finesse" to describe the DK2 art ^

Born Again is p good but so much of that is down to Mazzuchelli imo. DK2 is fun in a silly way, which makes it preferable to po-faced DK1.

The part in DK2 where Batman is cheering on hyper violence in the service of vengeance is always o_O and kind of liberating at he same time

Saw a story yesterday that Ben Wheatley and Tom Hiddleston want to do Miller/Darrow's Hard Boiled. I hope that one never gets out of development hell.