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New Images from THE AVENGERS [Updated With High Resolution]Comic-Con 2011: Frank Miller on HOLY TERROR: “I Hope This Book Really Pisses People Off”
by Hunter Daniels Posted:July 23rd, 2011 at 7:54 pm
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In what was almost certainly the most uncomfortable panel of Comic-Con the newly minted Legendary Comics brought Frank Miller to the stage to discuss his controversial new superhero comic, Holy Terror. Additionally, the new company also announced a pair of projects from Paul Pope and Matt Wagner.
Hit the jump for a description of Pope and Wagner’s projects and a few choice quotes from Miller.
This panel was announced as a forum solely for Miller, but shortly after it began fans were treated to a pair of surprise guests in the form of Pope and Wagner, both of whom announced new projects.
Pope’s book, titled Pulphope is as a 200+ page non-narrative retrospective on his illustrious career, featuring images ranging from advertisements, to album covers, to pages from some of his early comics.
Wagner’s entry will be called The Tower Chronicles. Details remain slim but the cover art on display implied a period piece with a look similar to that of Assassin’s Creed.
The main event, of course, was comic’s own L’enfant terrible, Miller. His new book, Holy Terror began life in 2006 as Holy Terror, Batman! and was to detail Batman’s battle against Al-Qaeda-style terrorists after an attack on Gotham City.
According to Miller – who was rumored to have received a seven-figure advance from DC – as the project evolved he decided it was not a good fit for the Dark Knight.
“I’d pushed Batman as far as I really felt like he deserved pushing and this wasn’t Batman. So I reconfigured the character.”
Other rumors indicate that in a post-Iraq, post-Bush Doctrine world the idea of a project that Miller once proudly proclaimed as “a piece of propaganda” lost favor with higher brass at the original publishing house.
But whether it be for reasons of personal taste, corporate politics, or a combination of the two, Batman became The Fixer, a new Dirty Harry-inspired, superhero.
“This character is much more well adjusted in committing terrible acts of violence on very evil people.”
The presentation included several strange and even offensive images from the comic including a close-up of a masked character who resembled Watchmen’s Rorschach with an oversized Star of David on his mask.
“I hope this book really pisses people off,” said Miller with a knowing grin.
“I was raised Catholic and I could tell you a lot about the Spanish Inquisition but the mysteries of the Catholic Church elude me. And I could tell you a lot about Al-Qeada, but the mysteries of Islam elude me too.”
And while there was noticeable discomfort from many in the audience at Miller’s words and drawings, which have always played heavily on hateful and bigoted images, often to great artistic result, there was also strong and vocal support from other contingents.
Several questions invoked ‘Fascism’ to describe Miller’s stances, questioning how his with-us-or-against-us attitude is philosophically distinguishable from that of the faceless ‘them’ to which he alluded throughout the panel, but Miller remained staunchly oblique about his attitudes toward his characters and their connections to the real world.
When the final questioner asked if Miller was concerned that this divisive new work might make future readers reconsider his oeuvre in a more harsh light, Miller curled his lip into a cocksure smile befitting of the Joker.
“Not at all.”
And the crowd went wild.
Holy Terror hits stores on September 11, 2011.
Click here for all our Comic-Con 2011 coverage.
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- Comic-Con 2011: Jonathan Nolan, Jim Caviezel, Michael Emerson, and Taraji P. Henson Talk PERSON OF INTEREST & the Creepiness of Modern Surveillance
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“I hope this book really pisses people off,” said Miller with a knowing grin.
You mean like I was after I read The Dark Knight Strikes Again or after I watched The Spirit? Like that?
really? i loved dark knight strikes again.
his all-star batman and robin, on the other hand…
Perhaps my expectations were set too high. I love Miller’s work, for the most part…but it’s been a LONG time since he blew me away (like he used to).
@Goobity: good point.
i can’t say whether or not this work evokes fascism because i haven’t read it and wasn’t at the panel.
BUT i find that the word itself gets thrown around far too much. i doubt that most people who use it have carefully thought about what it means. same goes for the accusations of socialism that get thrown at obama.
I would agree with both sentiments, but I think that the fascism talk came from other quotes in the panel and his work as a whole.
I didn’t include it in the article because I didn’t get all of what he said, but here is one ROUGH quote
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We’re in the midst of a very long war. We can use our symbols and create our own symbols but the enemy we’re up against is pernicious (and vile and a few words I missed totally) and wants nothing more than to destroy us.
–
I also don’t think anyone called Miller HIMSELF a fascist, just that his artwork (of which I am a fan, for the record) contains strong fascist elements.
And this is not necessarily a bad thing. Annie Leibovitz’s lover Susan Sontag wrote an extraordinary essay on the subject, using Leni Riefenstahl’s work as a case study.
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/33dTexts/SontagFascinFascism75.htm
I cannot recommend reading it highly enough. It changed the way I view media, permanently.
Hunter, thanks for the link to that essay. i’m supposed to be working at other scholarly pursuits at the moment, so i only skimmed it. it was a fascinating read and it does help me get a foothold into your report on Holy Terror.
i hope you didn’t think i was saying that YOU were calling him a fascist. when i read your report i imagined that people in the audience had, and since i had heard this claim made about Holy Terror in the past i was expecting it to come up.
i see your point now about the difference between “fascist art” and “art that contains fascistic elements.” when you say that Miller’s artwork contains some of the elements of fascism, i’m curious as to which ones you mean.
for instance, clearly, he does not idealize the body and i’ve never associated his work with beauty. the raggedness of the bodies, for instance, suggests naturalism to me. and certainly, in naturalism, there’s an emphasis on the group over the individual, but without the hierarchical elements of fascism (if we’re basing our definition on Sontag’s essay).
on the other hand, i can see why reducing people to a faceless mass–a “them”–would be in keeping with certain elements of fascism. i’m curious to see if, in the actual book, how nuanced the representation of “the enemy” is.
i suppose when he means the enemy were up against are vile and pernicious he means the global elite mega rich neo cons the real enemy not the muslims we have been fooled into thinking are.
Sounds to me like a lot of you need to grow a pair…your manginas are lonely…
Politically, Miller’s a bit of a blowhard. He really ought get back to telling s-t-o-r-i-e-s, instead up just amping up the bizarre.
Frank Miller’s gotten pretty pathetic. He’s dropped all pretense of a deeper purpose to his writing and is just trying to shock people. His relevancy to the comic book industry passed a long, long time ago, and he needs to accept it.
And he needs to understand that his relevancy to the film industry was never there to begin with. Move along.
I’m going to go read Ronin and be sad Frank Miller’s a sad caricature of himself now.
Go read something like, Plato’s APOLOGY or — oh, wait, you probably have no idea about why it is relevant. Nevermind. Sending you a copy of HT for free so you could read it for yourself? That’s not going to help either, is it?
Actually, I think forgetting about Frank Miller all together will help your pain the most. Unless, you enjoy this. (It’s okay to admit it. You’re not alone. But if you’re still not ready, that’s okay, too.)
FU H8ers and Lemmings
Plato’s Apology is very interesting, but do you really think that Miller is equivalent to Socrates? Is writing a comic book really equivalent to drinking the hemlock?*
I’m always happy when real philosophy comes up in Collider comment sections, but I don’t think this is a fair comparison. At all. Miller’s stances are not those of an outlier. They are not even that fringe. Rush Limbaugh says much more extreme things five days a week. (I know because I listen to Limbaugh almost every day).
The more pertinent text might be Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. If you agree with Miller, he is the one standing up and seeing that it’s all just shadows on a cave wall. If you disagree his views are predicated upon the basic misunderstanding of reality of those still in chains.
Personally, I’m a bigger fan of Plato’s Symposium. But that might just be my affection for Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
*Insert your own ‘drinking-the-kool-aid joke here, if you wish.
@Stewie, have you read HT already? also, could you expand on the connection between the Apology and HT? i’m a little confused by that. is Miller = Socrates in this example, as Hunter suggests? furthermore, i’m not sure i understand what reading the Apology will do for someone who believes that Miller is no longer relevant. maybe i’m just not seeing it.
@Hunter, good point about Socrates being an outlier, while Miller’s stances are much less so–although I think it’s fair to say that he’s pretty out there among his peers and PERHAPS among comic book fans or even his fans from back in the day.
This coverage of the panel insults the entire comic book industry, its audience and your readers. You know exactly what I am referring to in this piece. You know where you got your information mixed up and where you deliberately made-up “rumors,” all to serve what purpose? Personally, because I watched the panel live and all you got from it was ( | ) what you just wrote?
How you choose to spin it, is how you will spin it. My comment won’t change that. If misinforming your readers helps you get more hits, then, hey, what’s the big deal, right?
Maybe one day you will realize that it is much easier to trash something or someone than to actually write an intelligent article. Until then, do watch your Ps and Qs. Karma is a bitch. You didn’t have to get so nasty on top of twisting and falsifying information.
I’m with MaryJanesUncle on this one. Seriously, let those balls drop. You might be able to write for Variety one day and get paid, too.
Now I am totally confused. You invoked Susan Sontag’s essay on Lenni and by doing so, invoked Antonin Artaud. I don’t understand. What was your intent covering the panel in this manner?
(ps. Recommend you read her Artaud Anthology published in 1984 if you have not already.)
I didn’t make up anything. What’s more, I actually asked pertinent people if there was truth in the rumors to which I allude.
I could not quote my sources because they requested anonymity and are bound by NDA’s which prevented them for giving me all of the details. If using anonymous sources makes you a bad journalist than I guess we should take back Woodward and Bernstein’s Pulitzer, eh? And strip Gary Webb of his, posthumously. Chuck Philips already got screwed. I’m certainly not anywhere near these four, but I think you get the idea.
In 2006 Miller was on a hot streak. With the release of Sin City and 300, he was no longer just a big name in comics, he was becoming a force in Hollywood. Obviously DC stood to make a lot of money from a new Batman comic from Miller. Furthermore, Miller understood that he was in a unique position to demand a lot of money. He certainly got a large advance. I heard it was about a million bucks. I had someone confirm that this figure was not ‘out of the realm of possibility.’
The reason that the advance is important is that it helps to frame Miller’s motivation. Does he believe what he is saying, or is he playing the provocateur? Thus, my usage of the phrase L’Enfant Terrible. I would certainly not be the first to question if Miller is pulling a Lars Von-Trier.
Furthermore, the advance is relevant because it gives context to the release of the book. DC is a business. They signed contracts with Miller. They likely built their release model around when and how they would release Holy Terror, Batman! Even if it turned into a non-Batman story, DC would still retain the underlying rights because of their contract.
DC is NOT releasing this comic.
What’s more, the comic was on and then off and then on and then off and then canceled and then back on. Clearly, there was some type of problem with the release of this book. I’m certainly not the first person to question if maybe after Iraq DC got cold feet.
If DC thought Holy Terror was still a winner, they would be releasing it. So either Legendary Comics paid more money than Holy Terror was worth because they wanted a name attached to their first release to help establish themselves in the industry, (like when supermarkets sell certain products at a loss to get consumers into the store), or DC was uncomfortable with the material for political or economic reasons.
The situation is not dissimilar from that of Bret Easton Ellis and the release of his Magnum Opus, American Psycho. The political landscape of the early 1990s made his publisher chicken out, after giving him a massive advance. A second publisher stepped in and released the book. I think time has proven the second publisher right. I sincerely hope that this is the case with Legendary Comics and Frank Miller.
Did anyone ask him where he got that bullshit about Iraq declaring war on us? That’s what I’d really like to ask him.
Never truly understood “nerd rage” until I read this comments section.
My fellow grown men…it is a comic book.
A comic book.
Remember?
It’s a comic book.
Relax.
Nerd rage? If anything, I was impressed by the reasoned and articulate discussion that ensued. I mean, out of 19 comments only 2 engaged in misogyny and homophobia. There were far more references to specific works by Plato, Socrates, Leni Riefenstahl, Susan Sontag and literary theory than to anything geeky.
If Frank Miller writing something like this can get people talking about philosophy texts, then I hope that it’s a huge hit and he makes 10 of ‘em.
Seriously though, I sincerely hope that this book is a brilliant and challenging work that will prove all of the so-called haters wrong. I wasn’t being glib with my B.E.E. comparison, I think that that book is a profound and important commentary on modern America that has only proven to be more prescient with age. There is a distinct possibility that Miller has done the same thing here.
I know I’ll be just a wuss by saying this, but I don’t really care if Miller’s Holy Terror starts flame wars or starts some new hate or love for something. It’s a new comic book about someone who was big on the comic industry, it’s still big, and thought it’s a real controversial guy in and outside the comic books, it’s worth reading about his news. His late work has sucked, true. The guy has a political and social sense that its basically fascism with other name, disguised under a mask and behind two ink pistols, certainly. But me, I’m just gonna sit and wait for the launch, read the comic book, and I won’t let Mr. Miller enrage me with his remarks, rather I’ll enjoy that Miller is doing a comic book, and I’ll tell if the story, action and characters are worth the ink and paper its impressed.
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