cognitive dissident

Regarding the All-Star Spirit movie, I don't have a problem with directors of adaptations putting their own spin on the comic book material. In fact, I encourage it. For all the fanboy whining I hear about Tim Burton's Batman movies, I love the fact that he made Tim Burton's Batman instead of a slavishly faithful, fanboy-pleasing "translation" of the comics, like the complete waste of time that was the Sin City movie.

But it was still a Batman movie; Burton had enough respect for the material to make it his interpretation of Batman instead of just making a Tim Burton movie that just happened to feature a guy in a bat costume*, which is exactly what Miller's done with All-Star Batman and The Spirit. The Dark Knight Returns was Frank Miller's Batman; All-Star Batman is Frank Miller's Sin City featuring a guy in a bat costume, and The Spirit, by all accounts, will be Frank Miller's Sin City featuring a guy pretending to be Denny Colt. Really, the only thing bigger than that stupid fedora that Miller wears these days is his ego.

Oh, and Miller insisting on calling the movie "Will Eisner's The Spirit" is an insult. A full-blown, digging up the corpse, having sex with it in every way imaginable, and then pissing on it insult.

I'll have to do some research to find a Spirit collection that suits me, but I'll put it high on my buy list. I've been procrastinating too long. And I need to kick my habit of buying every hardcover Batman story arc that's even halfway decent. "Hey, it's Lovers & Madmen. $17 for the hardcover? Well...alright."

* Though I'm sure plenty of people would like to argue this in regards to Batman Returns.

I had read some early comments about the slow pace of ASBAR, so I deliberately avoided it until the first book came out. (At this pace, I guess we can expect the second one in mid-2011…unless the royalty checks are enough of an incentive for them to speed things along.)

There are only a few of the Kitchen Sink reprints of The Spirit in my collection—along with some other Eisner stuff—but I had a serious attack of book-lust when I saw a whole shelf of the Archives hardcovers at my local comics shop.

(BTW, the thought of a Miller All-Star Spirit may turn me into a raving purist about only the original creators writing and drawing their characters…)

I've tried to remain optimistic, believe me, but it just got too tiring waiting for Miller to get to the point. And the fact that the book is only published once every million years certainly doesn't help. (Only ten issues of this "monthly" title have been published since it debuted three years ago.) And looking at the diminishing quality and coherence in Miller's work, culminating in his embarrassing Batman vs. Al-Qaeda comic, I doubt he's ever going to have much of a point ever again. I hate to "give up" on an artist, but there's just too much good stuff out there for me to be wasting my time and money on this tripe anymore. Kudos for sticking with it, but I really don't think I have that kind of patience.

I'm just theorizing, but I think Miller going so far downhill can be blamed on his fame and clout. He wasn't able to turn Daredevil or Batman into an ultra-stylized Dirty Harry rip-off because he wasn't able to get away with it. I think he's a great example of an artist who needs a good editor for his genius to get onto the page, to spray him with a water bottle when he gets too rowdy. He's like a dog who's obedient and loyal and loving, but take him off his leash and he's mauling the mailman to death. I think he's much more interested in style than in substance, and when The Dark Knight Returns and Year One turned him into a superstar, his editors stopped forcing him to include substance and just let him write whatever he wanted. I think All-Star Batman is the Dark Knight Returns he wanted to write but couldn't.

I actually admire how bizarre some of his recent stuff is -- specifically, the art style in The Dark Knight Strikes Again -- but he just seems so rambling and incoherent. A political message here, some character development there, but then it's back to the corruption and the whores and the "cool" dialogue that only an eight year old would find cool and the eight pages of Superman and Wonder Woman humping.

By the way, I think I'll take you up on that idea of buying a Spirit reprint collection. I've always had at least a lukewarm interest in the character, but I never got around to actually buying anything. It'll certainly be a better investment than Miller's All-Star Spirit.

Miller’s All-Star Batman is no masterpiece, but I’m not quite ready to call it a train wreck…although I can certainly see why you do. (I reserve the right to second your assessment when the whole series is complete, given the flaws I’ve already noted.)

I definitely don’t think it’s satire, or Miller wouldn’t have written any moments of regret into Batman’s narration. I’m with you on not being bothered by character reinventions, as I’ve always thought of superheroes as mythic archetypes anyway…not sacred histories to be neither reworded nor reworked. I might have a different take on it if I were more immersed in the DC universe, and actually cared about the characters and the continuity…but I’m only an occasional visitor there, and pick up titles when something grabs my attention. (Miller succeeded at doing that much, at the very least!)

Yeah, I saw the trailer for The Spirit…and was made painfully aware that Miller had driven straight into the brick wall of self-parody. It did indeed look like the Sin City movie, which made me wonder if Miller is now able to only tell his stories in the same manner—or worse, the same story over and over again. If the trailer is representative of the film, I’m glad that Will Eisner isn’t around to see it. (Have you seen any of the Spirit Archive books? Maybe we should each buy one in lieu of movie tickets…)

I was entranced by Miller’s early work: I began reading Daredevil shortly after he began his legendary run, when his stuff stood out from all the boring books on the spinner racks. Although his art left a lot to be desired back then, his books were exciting enough to keep me paying attention through Ronin and Dark Knight as his rendering caught up with his page design and he created some genuine masterpieces. I loved Elektra Lives Again and the early Sin City books, but his art gradually went from loose and expressionistic to sloppy and disappointing. 300 and the Dark Knight sequel were frequently cringe-inducing, and his writing on the Martha Washington series was only sporadically interesting.

Miller may feel—or be treated—as if he’s a prospector mining for gold, but lately he just seems to be digging deeper into a rut. His once-mighty pencil might still hit another home run, so I’m inclined to read his work with an attitude of optimism…although perhaps not for too much longer.

I agree that it's "compelling," but only in the sense of a fascinating train wreck you can't help but watch. The book is just awful. There are plenty of zealous Frank Miller fans defending it as some kind of satire, and they're more than willing to condescendingly tell you that you just don't "get" it, but I think it's a load of crap.

I don't think there's anything deep about this book. I think the situation is actually rather simple: Miller has no interest in writing about superheroes. He wants to write Sin City stories. DC came along and offered him a solid gold dump truck full of money to write a Batman title, and he took it. But he wrote the Sin City story he wanted to write, and dressed it up in a Batman costume.

(He's doing the exact same thing with the movie version of The Spirit that he's directing. Have you seen the trailer? It's a Sin City story in looks, atmosphere, tone, and dialogue, just dressed up as The Spirit.)

And why should DC bother editing him? His name is on the cover, and that's all they care about, because he could write 30 pages of Batman dancing in a mariachi hat and it would sell a million copies. And at least a dozen people would write poorly-spelled and incoherent essays on their blogs about how brilliant it is and how anyone who criticizes it is just too dim to recognize Miller's genius.

But it doesn't really work even if you give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it's a satire. If it is, it's automatically a failure simply due to the fact that Miller doesn't do a good enough job of getting that point across. When 99.9% of your audience has no friggin' idea what you're trying to say, you've failed. I've tried to be positive and open-minded, and I've tried looking at All-Star Batman from every angle, trying to see the genius that the smug zealots insist is there, but it's just a crash and burn failure morning, noon, and night.

(As a sidenote, it's also alarming that the All-Star books are supposed to be the DC equivalent of Marvel's Ultimate books, designed for casual comic book fans who just want to read and enjoy a comic without needing encyclopedic knowledge of the decades of continuity just to understand the story. Can you imagine a casual Batman fan spending money on this and enjoying it?)

I can usually respect a new take on Batman since, unlike a lot of fans, I don't feel there's a "true" and definitive version of Batman. I don't feel offended or insulted by All-Star Batman; I don't feel like Miller is pissing on my childhood or the perfect and ideal Batman that I've created in my head, or something. But it's just so terrible. It's awful taken seriously and it's awful taken tongue in cheek.

Miller's next project is a Batman vs. Al-Qaeda comic called Holy Terror, Batman!, which he already admitted will simply be a piece of propaganda and won't actually say anything or have any artistic merit. Do I really need to say any more? It's funny how some artists get less mature as they get older. Miller's in his 50s and comes off as an obnoxious child crying out for attention. Of course, it'll sell a million copies when it comes out, and we'll be hearing the same nonsense from the fanatics about how it's bold and daring and brilliant and how anyone who dares to speak ill of Miller's genius is an idiot.

Yikes, that was long. I need sleep.