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"Sin City" Minimates


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Miller seems to be a guy, and there's a couple from his generation (John Byrne and Dave Sim, namely) that took all that fawning a little too seriously, and started to believe "I'm a comics genius. I can do no wrong". It hasn't proven to be true for any of them.

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"The Dark Knight Returns" grabbed my attention and kept me anxiously awaiting each (ridiculously late) issue.

"Batman: Year One" got me back into collecting comics for years.

His run on "Daredevil" and Elektra books were fun.

"Ronin" was enjoyable but "Sin City" was more of a guilty pleasure.

"The Dark Knight Strikes Again" pissed me off. I suffered through the first issue and decided to pass on the rest. Miller's writing and line work were lazy. It really made me miss Klaus Janson. But his wife's amateur digital coloring was nothing but cornea gumbo. She should have stuck to traditional painting because this was clearly her first time coloring pages with Photoshop.

"All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder" just seemed to make a lot of Batman fans angry. I never read it because the book got horrible reviews and was notoriously late. Didn't sound like a fun time for me, even with Jim Lee's art.

I heard "Holy Terror" was supposed to be another Batman book but plans changed. Good for Batman, from what I hear.

As for his film career, I hated RoboCop 2 and never bothered with its follow-up. I didn't read "300" but I did see the movie. It was interesting from a technological perspective but I'm not planning to see the next installment. Same with Sin City. It was a nice exercise in slavish adherence to the source material and visually interesting.

Then came The Spirit, Miller's bastardization of Will Eisner's best known work. No respect for the source material evident on screen at all from what I could tell. Visually it came off as a Sin City sequel so it probably duped half its audience with that trick.

The guy seems to be a pale shadow of his former self who's resting on decades-old laurels. I don't like his current writing, art, or even politics. His early work earned my praise when he was at the top of his game but I'm not a fan of the man.

So, you know... Sin City Minimates. Good luck with that.

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"The Dark Knight Returns" grabbed my attention and kept me anxiously awaiting each (ridiculously late) issue.

"Batman: Year One" got me back into collecting comics for years.

His run on "Daredevil" and Elektra books were fun.

"Ronin" was enjoyable but "Sin City" was more of a guilty pleasure.

"The Dark Knight Strikes Again" pissed me off. I suffered through the first issue and decided to pass on the rest. Miller's writing and line work were lazy. It really made me miss Klaus Janson. But his wife's amateur digital coloring was nothing but cornea gumbo. She should have stuck to traditional painting because this was clearly her first time coloring pages with Photoshop.

"All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder" just seemed to make a lot of Batman fans angry. I never read it because the book got horrible reviews and was notoriously late. Didn't sound like a fun time for me, even with Jim Lee's art.

I heard "Holy Terror" was supposed to be another Batman book but plans changed. Good for Batman, from what I hear.

As for his film career, I hated RoboCop 2 and never bothered with its follow-up. I didn't read "300" but I did see the movie. It was interesting from a technological perspective but I'm not planning to see the next installment. Same with Sin City. It was a nice exercise in slavish adherence to the source material and visually interesting.

Then came The Spirit, Miller's bastardization of Will Eisner's best known work. No respect for the source material evident on screen at all from what I could tell. Visually it came off as a Sin City sequel so it probably duped half its audience with that trick.

The guy seems to be a pale shadow of his former self who's resting on decades-old laurels. I don't like his current writing, art, or even politics. His early work earned my praise when he was at the top of his game but I'm not a fan of the man.

So, you know... Sin City Minimates. Good luck with that.

My thoughts are nearly identical. Except I would say that the book 300 was pretty good. When it first came out, I was impressed by the quality and overall presentation. Historically inaccurate, but, you know, that's not what I go to Frank Miller for. I still don't understand TDKSA, and if it weren't labeled as a sequel to TDKR, I wouldn't have guessed that's what it was.

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I am a fan of Millers early stuff. Back when he was just another writer. DKR is still one of my favorite books and his Daredevil run is great IMO.

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"All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder" just seemed to make a lot of Batman fans angry. I never read it because the book got horrible reviews and was notoriously late. Didn't sound like a fun time for me, even with Jim Lee's art.

I heard "Holy Terror" was supposed to be another Batman book but plans changed. Good for Batman, from what I hear.

The problem with All-Star is most people were reading it as a serious comic when it’s really supposed to be a funny book. It’d be like watching Batman 1966 and expecting Dark Knight Rises, you’re gonna be upset he whips out the Shark Repelent and runs around with a bomb he can’t get rid of because it’s silly and you were expecting grim-dark... It’s DC’s own problem this happened too, they said the All-Star line was going to be “classic stories told by their best talent”, Grant Morrison apparently held up to that, Frank Miller decided to write a campy prequel to DKR were Batman’s a murderous psychopath

I’ll still say the proof it’s intentional comedy and some crazy old man writing what he thinks is a gripping epic is Vicki Vale calling Batman “a goddamn Batman” in the first issue. It slipped my attention on the first read through, but when I read the trade it hit me like a ton of bricks... “Goddamn Batman” became a little meme when the internet decided it was absolutely insane, in later issues it seems like Frank was running with that having everyone drop a GD with Batman’s name every chance they got, but because it’s first mentioned in passing in the first issue it’s clear: we weren’t laughing AT Frank Miller, we were laughing with him!

(also the lateness of the book is ALL on Jim Lee, Frank’s script was completed and Jim just had to draw it, which he couldn’t do because he had to redesign everyone for DCU:On-line, then after the relaunch was announced he got sidetracked again with Nu52... if the “Before Watchman” books are any indication though, I don’t doubt we’ll see the rest of them someday... Frank’s script is done and the other books sold very well, if nothing else they’ll wait until Miller dies and have some lesser artist churn it out as his “famous lost work”)

Batman: Holy Terror wasn’t just supposed to be another Batman book, it is a Batman book, erasing the ears on Catwoman and Batman doesn’t make them new characters... and honestly I’m most pissed I was lied to by Miller about the content of the book. He made it sound like he reworked the characters because the story was so much “more” then a Batman story, but no he just erased some ears probably so he could call it original and keep the movie rights, the characters have ZERO backstory in the comics (he said in press “Fixer” was ex-CIA and just being a superhero to keep in shape... this is not mentioned in the comic, he’s just Batman without ears in the comic) It sounded like it was going to be over the top comedy Batman form All-Star hunting down and killing Osama Bin Laden on a globe spanning adventure... what it is instead is Batman shots a bunch of Arabs who are in Gotham in the face.... add to s**t story the fact the book is oversized for no reason (it’s like 12 pages long but 2 feet wide for some reason) and sh**ty quality (it’s got a Little Golden Book style cardboard cover with tissue paper thin pages inside, and while some of Miller’s B&W in the first few pages is Sin City good again, the book was clearly intended for color and looks unfinished after the first explosion without it)

There were two things that could have been used to good effect in a Batman book one is when anyone dies their portrait is shown, to humanize the death. When Batman The Fixer beats up and then shoots a couple terrorist in the head their portraits appear just like the victims... if this had been Batman who only used his fist the image of a Batman so angered by terrorist attack he doesn’t hold back, punching and punching the men the behind it until we see them represented the same way we saw the victims rather then their mangled corpses, it would have been a powerful image showing Batman had broken his own moral code to avenge his city (Granted I don’t think Miller would have done it that way, he probably would have shown Batman break his moral code by shooting them in the head, as his Batman murders without question, but in the hands of a writer who can still write a good epic story that would be a great thing to use.) The other thing is, since I was playing Arkham City at the time I thought the terrorist headquarters was supposed to be Wonder City which would have meant Ra’s Al Ghul was their leader, I thought it was an interesting twist, but I later found out Wonder City is made up for Arkham City and thus it was just a dumb ending to crappy book.

TL;DR: All-Star is hilarious, read it thinking it’s a comedy and not the next DKR (which I’ll agree, Miller does not have in him anymore) and it’s an afternoon well spent. Holy Terror is as awful as people think All-Star is without the redeeming “let’s laugh at this old guy!” quality the internet loves about it, it’s ugly in every sense of the word and should be avoided at all cost.

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I'm not sure if Frank Miller is just trying to get a rise out of people for kicks, or if he is a genuine sociopath. Neither one excuses his lazy and offensive writing. I think he's gone so far down into his "dark and gritty" sewer, he doesn't know which way is out anymore. I would certainly not label B&R:AS as comedy, aside from the fact that it's kind of funny that DC tricked people into paying money for it after the first issue.

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Well, comedy is subjective, of course. I can only say that I didn't find the bits of ASB&R that I read to be even remotely funny. Also, if I were creating a book I intended to be thought of as a comedy or parody, I wouldn't get JIM FREAKING LEE, possibly the least nuanced artist in the history of comics, to draw it.

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My thoughts are nearly identical. Except I would say that the book 300 was pretty good. When it first came out, I was impressed by the quality and overall presentation. Historically inaccurate, but, you know, that's not what I go to Frank Miller for.

I'll admit to flipping through it briefly at my LCS when it first came out and breathing a sigh of relief that Varley had painted it rather than Photoshop'd it with default filters. She's very talented.

I still want that Spirit set too... sad.png

Same here. That was disappointing.

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i guess im the only person who loved ASB&R... dont get me wrong, I dont see it as an acceptable mainstream continuity, but I loved it as an elseworld

ofcourse I also didnt think All Star Superman was good...like at all (it was just crazyness) so maybe im just crazy :P

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Then came The Spirit, Miller's bastardization of Will Eisner's best known work. No respect for the source material evident on screen at all from what I could tell. Visually it came off as a Sin City sequel so it probably duped half its audience with that trick.

The guy seems to be a pale shadow of his former self who's resting on decades-old laurels. I don't like his current writing, art, or even politics. His early work earned my praise when he was at the top of his game but I'm not a fan of the man.

Nailed it right here for me. Miller can do what he wants with his original work, but he claims to respect Eisner while turning his work into a Sin City rip-off. And I really don't believe that Miller is in on the joke with All-Star Batman & Robin, I think they play that up now because that's the only way to enjoy the book, but nothing Miller has ever done seems to lend credence to this theory that he's doing it for a laugh, and I think his notes to Jim Lee that were printed in one of the trade paperbacks are further evidence of that. I think the guy started drinking his own Kool-Aid a long time ago, and thinks everyone else on Earth is crazy, not him.

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So much of Frank Miller (and Grant Morrison's) later work reeks of chemical impairment. They seem very inconsistent, and seem to suffer a flight of ideas, most of which are not adequately carried forward to the comic pages. They just don't convey their ideas as well as they used to, which really makes me think they are drunk or high while writing. Or too full of themselves and think that everything is flowing perfectly.

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I think Morrison claims to be drug free though, doesn't he? I agree that his work is often just obtuse and confusing for the sake of being obtuse and confusing, though I think All Star Superman is pretty darn perfect. Honestly, the two All Star books always amazed me, because you've got maybe the best Superman story and maybe the worst Batman story side by side. At least, until DC let Kevin Smith write a Batman story.

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I'm really looking forward to that All-Star Wonder Woman story Adam Hughes is working on.

That and the third issue of "Big Numbers" from Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz.

That last one exists, though... sort of. Long story.

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Regarding Frank Miller, i don't let who an artist or writer is as a person affect me liking or buying their work; if they can produce good stuff, who cares what they do or say in their free time. Being in the public light doesn't exclude someone from having a personal life. (That doesn't exactly give an excuse for Holy Terror, but i digress). If their okay with the criticism and potential backlash for their actions then so be it. It's not just Miller either.

All-Star Wonder Woman and Earth One Wonder Woman are my most anticipated DC books right now; two great teams, one great character, can't wait.

I don't know if i'd buy Sin City. I don't hate it and i like most of the designs. If DST could match the style, then i'd seriously be considering it. If it's the movie...that's probably less likely.

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