Sunday, July 20, 2008

FRANK MILLER: READ, DON'T WATCH


Klaus Janson, Lynn Varley, Frank Miller.
Masters of the shadow. The glorious B&W.
Long before tradepaperback. The single issues.
The cover art. the glorious B&W. the inks.
Long before 300 and the masturbating horde of delirious acolytes!
Long before Rodriguez's Sin City.
Long before purist tantrums and ultimatums!
The man, Miller.
The movie is to be played in the mind.
The schema is straightforward:
Let the shadows reveal the stories.
Let the dirt show the truth.
Let the darkness open the portal
to the world that was:
The stories of hell's kitchen
where 300 warriors stood and fell
where one knight dispensed, justice
where the darkness reveals law
where one man defy his humanity
where one man stood for his honor
where one man send up the system
in the only way he knows:
by tearng down the edifice of lies, lies mocking truth,
truth that had died in his hands.
where one man deny death to settle one last score
where one man unleashed the big fat kill
by standing where the 300 stood.

sometimes you can beat the odds...
with a careful choice of where to fight.

3 comments:

Edmund Lau said...

Is this coincidence or synchronicity? I just picked up Miller again yesterday and marvelled at the fine line-work.

Miller himself commented that his comics take a lot to read. Each line is a story in itself. Each panel an epic captured and contained within a box - along with all the accompanying passions and pains.

Have you read "Elektra: Assassin"?

~ Edmund

pltypus said...

I can't help it, all I have in my collection are the superior craft. (Yeah, smug. Can't help that too.)

Elektra - Sienkiewicz. The companion piece to DD and the best drawn Wilson Fisk. I still have the EPIC edition DD. (very smug!)

Are you still holding my Miller/ Varley: Elektra Lives Again? Big white HC superior craft with art to die for?
(If you say you trade that for food, then 10,000 venomous rabid sex crazed squids will enter your dreams to penetrate you in all available orifices.)

Edmund Lau said...

Those were rough years. 2003-2005. I sold off so many pieces of treasures in exchange for food. Yes, including my oversized hardcover of "Elektra: Assassin" and "DD: Love & War". Unfortunately, I also had to sell off "Elektra Lives Again" along with all my "DD: Frank Miller Visionaries" volumes. Came down to KL with next to nothing. :(

Thankfully, I picked up the DD Companion Omnibus. It's got the Romita mini, Love & War (Sienkiewicz) and Born Again. Hope to pick up the Elektra Omnibus in November (Assassin + Lives Again).

~ Edmund