o
ne ofthe fant
comtcs
creatorswho
hasbecome
his own
brandwriter-artist
Frank Miller first made
his markwith a gritty,
film-noir toke onMar-
vel Comics"'Dare-
deviL" Hewent onto
pop-culatre stordom
withDC Comics"'The
Dcrk Knight R eturns,"
al9S6miniseries envi-
sionB s bitter, reac-
tionary Batmanaf*t
decodesfromraw,
frhtiry cgcinst a cor-
ruptworldassem
throrqhMiller's Ayn
Rand4qotee eyes. IIis
vbionhelpedinqire tlta
similarly darkBr:tman
movies, ottdtlt.pless-
success/ul " Dar e dstil"
film(2003).
Miller went onto
suchcreator-owned
comics os "Sin Cify'
from inde-
and "300,'
r. pendentpublislw Dark
Horse. Eachbecame the
i. basisofapopular
movie,withdirector
RobertRdriguez
gratingMiller co4irrc-
tor ueditforhis help on
"Frar*Miller's Sin
City" Q005).
Nowlyingsolq
MiIIer,9,lus adapted
s. "TheSpirit,"Wiil
. 194G9 comics series
that appeared os seven-
page stories in Sunday
n€wspopers. (The
movieopercThurs-
day.) I* tales of an
average-loe-masked
crime-fighter in arun-
pledsuit, encotntenng
bothEverymancrimi-
nals qtdexotic intqrr,-
tional thin e s, becarne famous
for both their lwnanistic fablu
a
ond. Eisnu's pioneering tech-
niqrcs. Miller r&mtly spke at
k. tlrc W aldorf-Astoria with fr e-
EMx contribaor F r orlk Irn:, er:e.
For those poor, deprived
t,. souls who don't know his
l. work, what makes WillEis-
ner so important to comics?
Well, it's like asking what .
Thomas Edison did for the
lightbulb. Eisner was one of the
people who created [the medi-
umofl comicbooks.Hewas
one of the first people who ever
tookcomics out of the four-
panel strip and showed the
possibilities of the fullpage.
i. And so he was one ofthe foun&
ingfathers. It's like askingwhat
Thomas |efferson had to do
withthe Constitution
s cinderblock to the head better
Producer Mike Uslan [the
It "Batman" movies, "Crnstan-
tine"l approached you at
Eisner's memorial serYice in
Manhattan in 2(X)5 to ask
you to adapt "The Spirit."
S. Did you tCl yourrdf,'Gooz,
we're at my friend Will's
memorial. Couldn't they wait
and call my agent?"
No. The only thougbt in my
mind was, "It's too big
- I can't
possibly do ir" And I refused-
And about three minutes later,
as Iwas at the doorway, I
turned around and sai4 "No'
body else can touch this," and I
agreed to the job on the spot.
One of the hallmarks offis-
ner's Spirit is that he's an
ordinary guy without super-
powers or Batman-like gad-
gets. The moviegives him a
self-healing superpower, like
Wolverine orthe Hulk. What
was the reasoning behind
that?
WelL I read a lot of Spirit com-
ics when I was growing up, and
he seemed to be able to take a
than anybody I ever heard of.
And I iust thought that he took
unusual punishment was a fact
ofthe character tbat should be
explored" And it dso made for
some wonderfi.rl Tex Avery
kind of scenes early in tbe
NEWSDAY PHOTO,/ VIOREL FI-ORESCU
movie. [Animation director
Averywas famous forthe
exaggerated action in his
l94os-50s MGM cartoons in
particular.J But it dso raised the
mysteryofri'hohe isand. .
whyhe could take so much
punishment.
Eisner was perhaps using
comic exaggeration rather
than saying the Spirit hdd a
superpower. Do you antici-
pate taking any flak for this
from fans?
I assume I will get a lot of flak
for a lot of things, and frankly,
I don't give a damn-
What else do you think you'll
get flak for?
Because he doesn't have a blue
zuit, which would have looked
silly. That [zupporting charac-
'ter
and love interestl Ellen
Dolan isn't iust alittle simper-
ing daughter to sonebodp
she's a surgeon I don't know
wbat lll get f,ak for I lust do
-
the stuffI dot. . . Comics fans
are wonderfrrl, sincere people,
but the1l can be a littb arch.
D
n
NEWSDAY.COM
,/MOVIES
ffi
Catch "The
Spirit," but
first catch the
trailer.
What'swith allthe
cats in the movie?
They even had credits.
Yes, all my cats got
credits.
They're your cats?
I figured anybody who
lived in a mausoleum
would have two things:
averminproblemand a
lot ofcats. I just thought
that was a detail that
Eisner left out, so I put a
lot of cats in his place.
I'm reverent but not
faithful! (smiles)
You're working on the
graphic novel "Holy
Terror, Batman"?
Yes. It's about 40
pages from finished
now; it's 122 pages.
lBatman is) fighting
al-Qaida
Speaking of which: You
engendered some controver-
sy on a radio show, compar-
. ing our invading lraq with
our response to Pearl Har-
bor. Since lraq didn't aitack
us, did you really mean to
say that? T
{{
Whenthe U.S. was attacked at
Pearl Harbor, we didn't just 5
o
declare war on fapan" we de- to
c!l
clared war on Germany. It was
:l
an international fascist effort. o
And so when I said that the 3
attack on Iraq made sense, it
was the sanewaywehad to
zm
attack not iust Afghanistan- €
Instea4 we had to attack the 0
center of Islamofascisrn
cz
Germany and Japan were
allied; Afghanistan and lrag a
aren't. But moving on: I may
be your only interviewer 0
r
r.)
who, like you, wrote for m
Marvel Comics. @
We dlhave our sins inthe past m
v
N
That's why we live in Sin N
City! Goth laush)
o
o
o