BEHOLD THE GRIMACE: The Frank Miller Poll

lol wut

I liked Ronin, but I also have rose-tinted glasses. It's pretty much a rip on a lot of manga ideas, for sure.

I can't believe I haven't read Elektra: Assassin. Going to try to fix that this weekend.

I stand by ELEKTRA, DV, but I didn't like it for its nuanced characters or intricate plot (though the first chapter is as straight-up experimental as anything Mr. Miller ever wrote) but because it is totally and completely mental. Granted, I was much younger at the time and that meant a lot more to me.

Subtle, it ain't.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

iirc The RoboCop vs Terminator thing had Walt Simonson on art... It's getting on for 20 years ago now, so I could be mistaken.

tbh It would be either Batman: Year One, Elektra: Assassin or Hard Boiled for Millar in collaboration with a stellar artist, and the first Hard Boiled (I refuse to call it The Hard Goodbye) or DKR for the whole Millar Art/Scripting package. It's a crying shame that Hard Boiled quickly turned into a ridiculous pastiche of itself.

Hang on I wanted to say something slightly different there... It should be Sin City in the second bit not Hard Boiled. For some reason I seem to have confused the two... I'll put it down to senility...

yeah so I didnt reread Ronin - I flipped through it though and the art's great! way better than i remembered. the story's just boring though.

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

i was the only vote for year one? really? i do like the daredevil stuff i've read, but i guess i need to read more.

year one's a classic, judging by DKSA's showing there were a lot of challopollno poppers consumed here

yeah was kinda o_O at that placing too

My vote for it was no challop, as explained by my post above.

A bunch of us stated our love for it. Not surprised at all.

Pretty much my main reason for doing this poll - seeing how many people were like me and thought DKSA was the bee's knees. I like to imagine - in the future, when I've lost any semblence of sanity - I'll find myself uttering Batman's final words in that comic without a trace of self-consciousness.

I like Year One too, but that's more due to Mazzuchelli than Miller. Not that there isn't good stuff in his plots there, but you can also see a lot of his irritating Millerisms being solidified.

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.