Once You Get To Know Him…

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I guess Frank Miller views the Internet as one big, rickety porch he can sit on, balling his fists and shaking a rake at “those damn kids” while incomprehensibly ranting heavenward about “rapists” and “whores,” and “Islamicism,” and “lawns,” “getting off of said lawns” and “all the XBox’ing.” It’s a shame when you have to reevaluate your respect for art when you find out the artist is a bit of a deranged, racist prick. I suppose Frank Miller’s more d-bagged tendencies are well know throughout those that follow comics proper. I was well aware of his “influential comics dude” status, but more so with his name being attached to movies that I rather enjoyed. Maybe each of his adapted works should include an asterisk after his name.

Frank Miller’s* Sin City
*That guy is a cantankerous fuck

COMMENTERS: Feel free to post your general thoughts on Frank Miller’s OWS rant. Is it harder to enjoy art when you learn the creator is a rapist, thieving lout… I mean, an asshole?
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54 Comments

  1. Frank Miller is just lashing out at the world because of his giant hand deformity. Of course, being raised by a cadre of prostitute assassins didn't help either.

    • When I was drawing I just started making the hands SUPER big and for some reason it seemed fitting. Like he was SO angry is limbs started to swell.

      • I thaught it was a Dark Knight Returns/Strikes Again referance, cause Batman in that has huge arms. Seriously, bigger than the ones in this comic, he's like popeye.

        • Luthor had huge hands in Dark Knight Returns too. In fact, a lot of male characters in Frank Miller comics have massive hands. I think even most of the "average" male characters in Miller's comics have hands about as big as their heads.

      • So, you inadvertantly, perhaps subconsciously, mimmicked Frank Miller's drawing style. Interesting. And how does that make you feel?

        I'm sorry, our time is up for this session.

  2. "Lords of warcraft " I love it when they totally lose their marbles
    and say nonsenses as such proving they lost touch with reality.

  3. Now that is not fair! I'm sure Frank Miller is fine with the Pilgrims. By which I mean to strongly insinuate that I suspect Mister Miller's recent antics have a strong bias on the basis of skin colour. I mean, I'm just saying, if he wants to make racist comic books, we should at least have enough respect to notice!

  4. You know I like how DC have finally realised Frank Millar is bad publicity and not let him use Batman as the moutpeice for his insanity anymore. It took ten years to repair the Batman franchise after The Dark Knight Returns, goodness knows what Holy War would have done if Frank had been alowed to slap the Bat-logo on it.

    Oh, yeah. And he's racist. That's bad too. Bad Frank, no movie adaptation.

  5. Oh, don't be so hard on Frank. It's a generational thing – he was raised that way. What's that? You say that Frank Miller is not, in fact, 85 years old? Oh. Well then… Hey, look! A distracting thing!

    Love the giant hands. This should really be all B&W though, no grays. And maybe a red necktie. (Fun fact: Will Eisner's Spirit wore a bright blue tie, and Frank did screentests with blue but said "it looked stupid" and went with red instead. Whew, that was a close one, huh? The movie might've ended up looking stupid.)

  6. I have this theory that Frank Miller was secretly replaced by a clone/alien double a couple of years back. This was right around the time I saw The Spirit… Still feel like FMiller owes me the hour and a half of my life back I wasted on that film – especially given how awesome the old Eisner Spirit was.

  7. I try not to let the creator's personality get in the way of my enjoyment of the work. I mean, I picked up the comics because the stories were compelling, not because I thought the writer was a pretty cool guy.

    • John Byrne would like you to continue overlooking the personality flaws of comics creators. Dave Sim, too.

      Regardless of Frank Miller's politics, I wrote him off entirely a few issues into All-Star Batman & Robin.

  8. I don't let the views of any artist change my views of their art. Most of the webcomic artists I know have said something (whether in a comic or on Twitter) that I disagree with. Sometimes even finding it offensive. But I don't follow them (yourself included) for their political views. It also doesn't keep me from buying their artwork etc, though I obviously wouldn't buy a T-Shirt they made that I thought was offensive(though I know none who have).

  9. Miller's views aren't really that much of a surprise to me, nor are they entirely divorced from his work. After all, Dark Knight Returns toys with a kind of messianic authoritarianism that is disturbingly close to fascism, and 300 is nothing but absurd glorification of militarism and mindless machismo. Frank Miller's comics mirror his politics quite closely; the only surprise is that he really believes these things, while most of us who enjoy his comics enjoy them at least semi-ironically (I hope).

  10. I have to say, those 99% guys didn't do any research. It's a 53% to 47% split, not 99% to 1%. I'm going to go out with an inverted Guy Fawkes mask and hold up a sign saying "Things are pretty okay. Who's up for some Table Tennnis later?" (it's my personal rule to say it as table tennis, courtesy of a crazy-yet-awesome British gym teacher that made you do push-ups if you said ping-pong.) Not that what Miller says is very nice either. But the inverted-Guy-Fawkes-thing should prove interesting.

    • Excellent! Can you also be persuaded to pronounce the words 'al-u-min-i-um' and 'bow-ie' correctly?

      Watch out on the inverted V mask thing though (because most of those wearing them only know it from V for Vendetta, they wouldn't know who Guy Fawkes was otherwise) because Alan Moore has proven time and again that he doesn't like people touching his things. And I'm pretty sure he's killed more than a couple of guys over the years. Plus I heard he can do magic. Evil magic.

    • I'm not really sure you have the right figures there. The top 20% have 87.7% of the nation's wealth which would be a more significant figure, but "we are the 80%" probably isn't as catchy. If you want a things are pretty Ok sign, you could try "65% of 15 trillion ain't that bad"

    • That 53%/47% split is a crock of crap anyway. Many Americans with a job don't pay federal income tax because of low tax rates and the Earned Income Tax Credit. And those without a job still pay the gasoline tax, excise taxes, and a whole raft of state and municipal taxes (which are extremely regressive, meaning the middle class and poor pay a much bigger fraction of their income). So how about this, 53ers: a small tax increase for the people you see as unfairly untaxed, and a big one for the wealthy, who actually have much of the income and wealth?

    • Elfman explained, way back in the 80s, that the lyrics were a response to seeing wannabe movie producers in LA driving around with really young girls and how it disgusted him. It's not autobio, it's just commentary. And a great song.

  11. Nicely done Mr. Watson! I'm a big fan of Dark Knight Returns, etc. Yet I never realized Frank Miller was such a cranky old man. The fact that this comic was also hilarious was just icing on the cake.

  12. You mean you don’t have any of John Wayne Gacey’s clown prints proudly displayed in your lobby, i mean boot room/trailer door?

  13. ah, the filter of time.
    an artist who has slight leanings towards a view in their youth, gets older, and having only heard praise in their careers imagines that the praise is universal to all aspects of their lives, then they want to share all their ideas, because that has gotten them so much praise. In short he's been getting stacks of crazysauce. Frank Miller and Alan Moore these days are best viewed through the cinema. Go ahead and read the early books, but don't talk to them because they aren't the same person anymore.

  14. This is totally opposite of the bouncy, happy-go-lucky author I imagined when reading the likes of "Sin City". Seriously, though, I think he coined the term "whore-splosion".

  15. I need a pair of Frank Miller hands to go with my Hulk hands. When you hit things with them, instead of making smashing sounds, they hurl invective at you.

  16. Whether I fully agree with his stance or not, I have to give a lot of support to the guy for saying, "Join the military or go home."
    It's a weird sort of fight-for-the-right-thing, but I think part of the "America is too soft" sentiment is true.

    Unfortunately what's actually at play is neither entirely economical nor entirely military. (and mostly it's not military at all)

    • See, the thing is, joining the military won't change any of the issues at hand. If he had said something along the lines of "Run for office or go home", I might be inclined to agree with him. However, as it stands, he's just spouting jingoistic nonsense.

      • I tend to agree. The protestors aren't rallying against our multiple wars (not directly at least). I dont see how joining the Armed forces would contribute to a more even distribution of wealth in America or an end to the interests of corporations taking precedent over the best interests of the people.

        Miller just has a boner for killing Muslims. Im sure if his DVR accidentally forgets to record his favorite show, he blames Al-Qaeda.

  17. Maybe Frank Miller went method actor when he wrote 300, and never stopped hating Persians…or anyone from that region. I can definately get turned off of an artist's work after finding out more about the artist, so I typically avoid reading interviews with artists/musicians/poets/etc. Or, I should say I avoid reading interviews with any artists I actually like.

  18. It's absolutely harder for me to enjoy someone's work once I've found out they're a prick in real life. Like when I found out Michael Bublé is an egotistical d-bag and Sean Connery thinks women need a good slap now and then.

    But the opposite is also true: I like HE more when you say something I agree with (like the occupy pizza comic). Hopefully it's mostly because we believe the person is truly good-hearted or mean-spirited instead of just whether they agree with us or not.

  19. This isn't going to be a popular opinion, but he was somewhat correct. I mean, obviously not everyone at OWS is a lout/thief/rapist, and it doesn't make any sense to say join the military in this context. And his racism against Muslims seems pretty bad. But his comments about louts, rapists, etc are actually grounded in fact. There was a rash of sexual assaults all across the various Occupy camps, and the protesters' response was almost always either (a) chase the dude away and encourage the victims not to report it because it would make them look bad, or (b) claim the victim was just a plant sent there to claim rape and make the protesters look bad. So there's rapist and lout, right there. Thief I think comes from what happened in Oakland, where a hot dog vendor stopped providing free hot dogs because he couldn't afford it anymore and the protesters trashed his cart and stole a bunch of stuff.

    So again, the racism isn't cool, and his military comment makes no sense, but there WERE rapists, louts and thieves out there in the crowd. OWS isn't just some group of perfect people singing Kumbaya. Though obviously the violent people seem to have been the minority thus far.

    • I agree. I do like that some of the OWS groups formed safe areas for Women to sleep in, instead of staying in denial about it being a possible issue… I'll leave it unsaid the rash of large organizations that don't acknowledge it….

    • That's why all the "poors" should just give all their money to the rich people: they know how to handle themselves. They will take care of us.

  20. The fact that I still enjoy the music of Oasis and the other projects or the quote obviously insane Noel and Liam Gallagher reminds me that you don't have to like or even respect the artist personally if the product is worth liking or respecting on its own merit.

    Man are they douchebags…

    • Exactly. For me it's less a matter of how douchy an artist is and more a matter of whether an artist's douchiness comes through in his/her artistic product (as I find in the case of Mr. Miller it does).

  21. anyone else struck by the irony of the CREATOR OF SIN CITY coming out on the side of the 1%? cause honestly it is REALLY making my head hurt

  22. "I guess Frank Miller views the Internet as one big, rickety porch he can sit on, balling his fists and shaking a rake at “those damn kids” while incomprehensibly ranting heavenward"
    Wait… you mean it's not?

  23. As a jounalist, I've met and interviewed a number of Occupy Cleveland protestors, and from my experience, I'd say Frank is right on the money.

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