Miller vs. Millar vs. Ennis

Me, I gotta go for Ennis. He can still write funny as hell comics with loads of thrills and exciting plot twists. And perhaps because of the criticism he got for his earlier works, he seems to have significantly toned down his homophobic tendencies, with some actual positive depictions of gay people in his recent comics. (He still seems to think all bisexuals are depraved, though.) And even his machismo-worship seems to have mellowed out, as with Wee Hughie in The Boys.

OTOH, The Boys also shows that he absolutely should not try to write "urban" black characters. The scenes with the "streetwise" black superheroes and the crack dealers, and the way Ennis writes their dialogue, are just embarrassing and quasi-racist.

^ surely not, from the creator of Barracuda?!

Sorry, I don't know which character that is?

http://www.be-something.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/barracuda-2.jpg

Haha, QED!

I still like a lot of Frank Miller's stuff, have never liked anything by Mark Millar, and find Ennis' limitations too annoying.

I loved Millar's run on The Authority

Kick-Ass and Wanted... not so much

I'll go with Millar, who isn't always on but whose work generally ranges from solid to quite good. Miller's done some decent stuff, but not in a long time. I've come to the conclusion that I kinda actively dislike almost all of the Ennis that I've read. Besides his tendency towards exhausting puerility and his love of hardman protagonists, his writing seems to constantly veer towards his comfort zone topics (the Irish and the military) whether or not it makes narrative sense.

Going by total bibliographies and not current work, I'd rank them Miller >>> Ennis >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Millar, but I haven't read a huge amt of Millar.

Plus I'll never forgive Ennis for ruining John Constantine. He took a great character he didn't understand and infused him with all of the dumb cocky bullshit that's become his unfortunate trademark ever since.

I haven't read all that much Ennis but I've never liked anything I've tried

tbh I would take Warren Ellis in a heartbeat over all three except MAYBE the original Dark Knight stories

I have major problems with Frank Miller but the other two on this list don't even rate as talented imho. Miller at least has Ronin and Elektra:Assassin to his credit.

Miller, but not without reservations.

I think voting the crappiest would be more fun. Millar sucks so much.

I GUESS JUST AS WRITers sorry caps i'd go with ennis over miller. obviously miller brings the whole package to the table with the drawin' and whatnot...

i still maintain that hitman is ennis' masterwork

Besides his tendency towards exhausting puerility and his love of hardman protagonists, his writing seems to constantly veer towards his comfort zone topics (the Irish and the military) whether or not it makes narrative sense.

I used to feel this way, but lately I've been positively surprised by both Crossed and The Boys... They still have some of his trademark schticks (most notably gross-out moments and ultraviolence, though at least with Crossed they're kinda justified), but like I said he seems to have mellowed out, so there's actually some criticism of the hardman worship, plus some genuine girly sentimentality and pathos too. And he can still write properly exciting plots; even if I'm not fond of his pet peeve subjects, I still find it almost impossible not to follow the story all the way through to the end.

Hmm, I suppose it would have to be Ennis by default.

I've never been particularly keen on Millar, in fact I'd say his output is the most egregious example of style over substance in comics today. I also find him a depressingly cynical writer, not in the sense of being disgusted at the world around him, but the way he churns out properties purely with film adaptations in mind. Whenever I read his recent stuff, I never get the impression that he's thinking "This is a great story that needs to be told," he's more likely to be thinking, "This is a fantastically marketable idea that is gonna bring in M£GABUCK$$$!"

(And even worse is that other writers have cottoned onto this now - the once great Pat Mills has apparently set up a publishing imprint purely for the purposes of creating properties to be pitched to film studios. The first of these, the woeful American Reaper, has already been optioned. But I digress.)

He's only gone down further in my estimation over the whole CLiNT fiasco. If you'll recall, CLiNT was launched on a platform of being a vehicle for new talent to break into the industry, but so far it seems the only guaranteed way of getting into the pages of CLiNT is to be a mate of Millar or Millar himself. Newcomers who were told their stuff would get published have basically been left out in the cold.

As for Miller, well, unfortunately he speaks for himself. And far too often these days.

Ennis' Punisher makes this a no-brainer.

I was thinking about mentioning The Boys in the "what are you reading?" thread -- it's a bit too grim to call it enjoyable, but I do think it's good work. There was a long multi-issue stretch of boring exposition, but the thrizzlepower has picked back up leading into the final story arc. But speaking of properties created with film adaptation in mind, it's always been a little irritating that Hughie was just Simon Pegg done in ink.

Maybe I should take that back now that I've seen Ennis' picture on his wiki page.

No matter what Frank Miller does these days, so much of his '80s and '90s work is classic. That said, Preacher is pretty damn great too.

If Miller had stopped with say, ELEKTRA: ASSASSIN or BATMAN: YEAR ONE, he'd be a searing, singular talent. As it is, he went on to do interminable MARTHA WASHINGTONs and kept doing SIN CITY after the first one (which is stellar from beginning to end, heights the follow-ons simply couldn't reach.) I think I have to go with Ennis on this one. CROSSED might be one of the best things he's ever done, and has ruined me on zombie comics completely. Millar is an also-ran in this three-way.

Just voted Miller, despite probably liking Ennis more. It occurs to me the sole reason for this is probably ELEKTRA: ASSASSIN.

First MARTHA WASHINGTON is good. The rest are horrid.

also, c'mon, THAT YELLOW BASTARD is almost as good as the original series, in some ways better i would say

In terms of actively unpleasant "You better believe yer gonna work for it, hapless consumer!" comics, Miller all the way.

miller, cuz at one time i did like his work (daredevil, elektra assassin, dark knight). can't say that about any of the others.

Millar seems to have turned into the UK Jeph Loeb lately

That might be the worst thing I've ever seen anyone write about another human being. Millar is a human being! With feelings!

And Jeph Loeb is making the gulf between them pretty clear by following Millar's still-entertaining Ultimates with his own terrible terrible version.

I might go for Millar actually, for his Swamp Things, and because he hasn't shit the bed nearly as much as Miller.

DJP OTM though about Warren Ellis >> all of these bozos.

Ennis is the only one I can imagine picking up future work by.

can't stand warren ellis' juvenile 'edgy' bullshit (swears and cigs, how RAD), just the worst.

also, much prefer garth ennis' hellblazers over jamie delano's overwritten 'poetic', cliche-ridden tedium.

basically, Ellis won me over for good after Stormwatch; the only things of his I've read that I've actively DISLIKED were his Wolverine and Hellblazer (and I LOVED his Excalibur, Stormwatch and Nextwave)

full disclosure - i sorta knew ellis back back in the day, before he became a 'pro', and he was easily one of the biggest wankers i've ever met through comics. maybe he's a great guy, nowadays. but also, the artwork on transmetropolitan is sooo horrible, i can't really face the stories (did read a few issues of the authority, w/ quite nice art from john cassady, that were ok-ish, tho' even then the conspiracy theory-superhero facism stuff seemed kinda overplayed and second-hand. Also didn't like Ellis' reliance on modish storytelling devices - ie no captions/thought balloons, 'cinematic' panel-to-panel continuity etc)

I liked Lazarus Churchyard when I was a teenage boy, don't think I've rly wholeheartedly enjoyed anything else he's done. And would probably not like Churchyard now.

Bought two issues of a three-issue series from a 50c bin a few years ago, drawn by Amanda Conner, that I totally loved reading while I was reading them, because Conner is a v good cartoonist. But didn't bother to track down the third to satisfy any narrative longing.

any comic drawn by Matt B will look good, at least

oh and the only almost-half-good thing by Bendis I've ever read was an eight-pager that Ellis wrote in Negative Burn, though again I couldn't promise to like it 17 years later if I read it again

xpost to Ward - and as it was Ellis' first thing ever iirc, he hadn't had any chance to develop tics or lazy habits

also, much prefer garth ennis' hellblazers over jamie delano's overwritten 'poetic', cliche-ridden tedium.

This opinion is the polar opposite of my opinion.

I think it's quite clear through Ellis's narrative voice that he's a total dick. That doesn't really impact my enjoyment of his stories because he writes with an easy sarcasm that I enjoy.

I liked Grant Morrison's two-parter, but I've always struggled stay interested in Hellblazer. I always sort of wish he was more like Willoughby Kipling.

delano hellblazers = zombie skinheads roam the mean streets of thatcher's broeken britain while a crimson sun scars the morbid skyline blahdiblah
ennis hellblazers = let's have a pint mate oh feck i've got the old cancer

lol otm

Delano's one-off return story about the monkey sticking a finger up Chas' bum was good though, and the Bad Blood mini about geriatric Constantine and regicide, drawn by Phil Bond, is enormous fun

I'm not the biggest fan of Ennis's Hellblazer, but I gotta agree with Ward that Delano's Moore-influenced purple prose in those early Hellblazer is hella grating. Because of that I've never managed to get past the first trade - does it get any better later on?

this is a hard poll, in that I have to decide if I'm weighing the highs of each, the lows of each, or trying some near-impossible averaging

Miller at least has Ronin and Elektra:Assassin to his credit.

Jesus, "Elektra: Assassin" is evidence for the prosecution. Or maybe I need to reread it.

does it get any better later on?

Obviously not a popular opinion, but Delano's Hellblazer is one of my favorite comic runs ever. And his dialogue is a good deal less purple than Moore on Swamp Thing.

ennis hellblazers = let's have a pint mate oh feck i've got the old cancer

OTM, but if he wanted to write that story, I wish he'd done his own thing and left Constantine out of it. Ennis and Ellis have both been guilty of hijacking existing characters as their mouthpieces by proxy. It's a really irritating tic.

Yeah, I'd heard that too. And as I recall, it was on the sort of the tail end of the whole ELSEWORLDS thing, which DC had slowed way down on in the early part of the 2000s.

It's certainly possible that it was part of a cash-in on Millar's name. Though my understanding of things was that Marvel had been courting Millar since the very start of him writing THE AUTHORITY and the ever-escalating insanity on the book was part of making him more marketable to Marvel.

I still wish that Morrison/Millar/Waid/Peyer(?) Supes team had happened

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Yeah, Peyer was the last leg in that. I suspect a lot of GM's contribution to that ended up in ALL-STAR, but still it would have been nice to have "the real" Superman go through those changes.

Morrison has said that All-Star was not the same ideas.

Ah, interesting. Now I want to dig that pitch up and read it over again.

However, in all likelihood, I'll end up distracted by the kids for two hours and forget all about it.

frankly, being able to draw is at least half the battle afaic

You have seen Dark Night Strikes Back or whatever it was called, right? Art was shit.

I wouldn't call it "shit", but I agree that it's far from his best work. Was clearly an experiment, his attempt to go pop. Not entirely successful, still somewhat interesting.

Warren Ellis is the third part of the triad that really fits on this thread with Millar and Ennis.

I can completely see some of the complaints that pretty much he writes comics almost just to get off whatever thing is on his mind, but man one thing I will give to Ellis is when he is on, the guy is about the BEST writer of a single issue comic book of any of these guys working now. He gets the format and really understands what makes it tick.

At their best, to me, I think Ellis and Ennis are both about the same level but really hit a different kind of visceral reaction. They got different kinds of obsessions, but when they work on a comic that means something to them, it's in there.

I definitely don't like all Ellis has done, as some of it seems like one good idea really stretched out. The guy has also maddeningly for whatever catastrophe befell the world left a decent handful of series left hanging dead letter office. Sick thing is some of them are really damn good (2nd arc Desolation Jones, Doktor Sleepless, Fell) and won't get finished. I suppose it comes down to that they never really sold big enough to make it happen, but it's sad, as there are more real ideas in those series in all of Millar's comics combined that I have read.

The Millar/GMoz Flash stuff is really pretty good, at the end of the day.

Aye, and that's the stuff I was talking about - it's allegedly 3 Millar / 3 Morrison / 3 Millar / 3 Morrison. Though they'd doubtless both claim a larger percentage was theirs, now.

with miller out of the running and accepting earlnash's sub of ellis, it's ellis in a walk. he wrote planetary, and that's enough for me. liked millar's authority more than ellis', but not enough to tip the scales. never been an ennis fan, the tone of his stuff just bugs me.

Planetary sucks an analogue of my balls.

AF re Flash - nah:

#129-#131 is co-written
#133 is probably 99.6% Morrison
#134 is co-plotted but written by Millar
#135 who gives a shit, this is the awful crossover with Architect Green Lantern and Young Green Arrow (OK it's co-plotted and then probably written by Morrison bcz he was using them all in JLA)
#136-138 is co-written but mainly Millar (this is assumption, based both on Morrison being gone before the end of the run, and on it being Sonic Vs The Flash, and Millar having written the Sonic comic for yonks, so)
#139-141 is solely credited to Millar.

The taking turns thing (on credited co-writes) was basically a 2-man American sitcom "writer's room" - they'd break stories together, work out plot beats per issue, then trade off issue-by-issue on writing a script, and bring it back for a two-man polish. Though usually Grant would parachute out once the plane was off the runway (cf Swamp Thing, Vampirella, this).

(Their falling out is generally largely traced to Morrison ghosting an entire issue of Millar's Authority run solo and a) Millar putting his own name on it, instead of a joke credit, and b) not telling anyone to pay Morrison instead of paying him.)

I would be amazed if The Human Race (136-138) was written by anyone other than Morrison - it has the childhood friend that turns out to be real _and_ the "now the humans save the heroes" ending that he re-used for JLA.

Haha that is a completely plausible way for them to fall out :)

Red Son doesn't hold up that well on second reading, great concept though. And I still love Comrade Batski.

this is a good voting result

Morrison was definitely still plotting and some scripting on The Human Race! I'm just betting Millar did more than 50%.

ha ha I looked it up and Morrison had suggested the Authority issue be credited to "The Mock Millar Experience"

http://www.clickhole.com/theysaidwhat/find-out-what-paul-mccartney-frank-miller-and-mich-1054

kinda shocked by how frank miller looks these days. (i guess i haven't seen a picture since robocop3)

It's sort've addressed in this Sean Howe interview piece:

http://www.wired.com/2014/08/frank-miller-sin-city-a-dame-to-kill-for/

he's looked really really bad for at least a decade

Never saw this thread before. I'd go with Miller obv for an extended, albeit long-past, period of greatness. I hate the other two guys completely.

Wow, that Wired portrait of Miller is brutal:

http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ff_frankmiller2_f.jpg

He looks like Richard Harris' corpse.

a cake after a night of rain

jesus christ, and i thought he looked broken down 10 years ago

that person is 57 years old, unbelievably

He's reached 'Peak Opinion'.

wired:
> Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, the sequel to the 2005 blockbuster that represents his last artistic and commercial success

300 was 2006, was that not successful?

i would say less so critically/artistically

> Zack Snyder's meticulous adaptation of 300 earned $456 million

sounds ok to me. i guess fm was less involved in the film but i'd still count that as his work and a success.

i didn't know about the spirit or the batman book that was immediately after it.

did just re-read DKR though and it felt like meeting an old friend.

he genuinely looks weeks from death

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd65/Buzzetta_photos/frank-miller-comic-con-sin-city-2.jpg

http://techchucker.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/2013-06-05-11-03-20.jpg

I'm planning to reread his (and nocenti's!) run on DD pretty soon. Psyched tbh. But idk if I'll ever revisit DKR.

Yeah, I was never particularly enthused with TDKR. Don't really get the hype (or at least the proportion of the hype). Year One is pretty great, though. And I do dig what I've read of his DD run (which I guess I'll also be reading in its entirety soon enough).

Meanwhile, the Syfy network has announced a series based on Ronin,

omg please no

sadly, probably won't be as good as Samurai Jack

But it'll be at least as good as Lavalantula, I'd think.

Not much is as good as samurai jack tbh.

true

Is it too nosy to ask whether something's wrong with Miller? Like, does he have a chronic disease or something? I know he's always been thin, but those recent Comic Con pics look do indeed look worrisome.

see Ward's post.

Yeah, I read that article, but it only has a short allusion to some vague rumours to explain his health. I guess it could be drugs, but it's kinda hard to imagine someone with a worldview like Miller's doing drugs... Though who knows?

I'm assuming there's the usual loophole where alcohol's not a drug?

I guess you shouldn't generalize, but in my experience alcoholics tend to look bloated, not gaunt.

yeah, that's not really true overall

There was this from a couple years back
http://nypost.com/2012/10/10/ex-staffer-sues-dark-knight-comic-creator-girlfriend-for-hostile-work-environment/

Jesus, just one of things would be enough to cause me to quit, amongst other things

They probably had a poster of a cat hanging in there to counterbalance.

Jesus, Miller looks 87, not 57. I don't much care for the man and his work now, but that is a shocking decline in the six years since this picture was taken.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/FrankMillerSanDiego_crop.jpg

the implication of drug use explains a lot

I'm repulsed by a lot of his politics but I feel really bad for the guy