Frank Miller on Why He’s Relieved There Are Fewer Comic Book Adaptations Now: They Were ‘Really in Danger of Losing Their Souls’

Comic book writer and screenwriter Frank Miller – whose work includes “300,” “Sin City” and “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” – returned this week to Lucca Comics and Games, an event that spans the gamut of geek culture and pop entertainment.

As well as speaking at the event, to coincide with the 40th anniversary of “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns,” Miller also introduced “Frank Miller – American Genius,” Silenn Thomas’ documentary about his impact on popular culture.

Variety spoke to Miller about politics, art and why he’s relieved there are fewer comic book movies this year.

Would you agree that there has been a slight dip in the comic book to movie pipeline?
I would hope so. Yeah, really. It had really gotten so out of control that comics had started losing much of their own identity. I have been arguing vehemently for comics to start asserting their own purpose again and asserting their own identity as a literary form.

Do you think there were too many comic book artists and writers aiming for movie and TV deals?
Oh, without question. Just because the appeal of not just the money, but the fame, respect and glory of working in the most powerful medium in history is undeniable, but I think that it was a little too heady a wine, in that comics were really in danger of losing their souls in the process.

It very much seemed to be superhero movies in particular.
Oh, that was all it was. It was partly because the technology caught up with us. So the one thing comics could do that nobody else could do was the ridiculous pyrotechnics and everything, right? But if you think of it, the die was cast back in the 1970s with the movie slogan “You’ll believe a man can fly” where they actually made Superman’s flight convincing, and now they can do, you know, virtually anything that can be imagined.

Some of your finest work has been inspired by cinema, but has not necessarily involved superheroes: “Sin City” and “300” for instance.
Well, yes, my entire oeuvre has been dedicated to defining and redefining the hero, and sometimes making him as ugly as possible, as in Marv and “Sin City,” and other times torturing the hero: as with Hartigan in the “Sin City: That Yellow Bastard” story. The exploration of the hero is just infinitely fascinating. Once you let go of the idea of the hero being society’s voice, it becomes more an examination of the human spirit.

As well as the heroes, you create astonishing, extreme worlds. But it seems that we live in a world which is almost impossible to exaggerate.
I often have remarked that doing the next “Martha Washington” would be difficult because the first one happened. And my parody of Ronald Reagan is now in the White House, right? But there’s always somewhere else to go. Now you would parody what my country has turned into, and what the world has turned into, it’s fascinating dark material, indeed.

It’s almost like Dante looking at hell and going, “I see some verses here.”
There’s no shortage of inspiration now. This is indeed a supercharged time, because in the course of the 20th century, there were two gigantic realignments, through the two world wars, particularly World War II, which was a gigantic, unifying event. World War II was the advent of American hegemony, but now we’re at the other side of the American hegemony. America has become much like Rome: spread so far and so rich and powerful that it has lost its center. It is no longer Thomas Jefferson’s country, for instance. It is no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. It’s become quite a bloated thing, and of course this is exactly when we start waving the flag more than ever, right?

When I see the MAGA signs I ask whether by saying “again,” you are saying that it’s not great. There are so many contradictions within all of that, but this is a global situation. The old order is, as Bob Dylan put it, rapidly aging, and so everywhere you look, there’s an empire crumbling. Look at the thrashing old Soviet Union, right? And what it’s dissolving into, when a tiny brave country is bringing it to its knees. China has become a paranoid concentration camp. So we’re definitely seeing a change in the matrix. Speaking of the Chinese, this does bring to mind the old curse: May you live in interesting times. We live in interesting times, don’t we?

Watching the documentary “American Genius” I noticed you didn’t seem to listen to music when you work.
I’ll either work and just have the street sounds, or I’ll have NPR on, listening to world news. That’s helpful to me, especially when I’m drawing. It helps me remove one sphere of my mind from play to a certain extent, and to let the verbal side of my mind be occupied, and let the freer, more relaxed, visually-oriented side take over because most of the drawing work is the actual clinical, decisive part of the illustration. I work that out on a sheet of tracing paper, and then when it comes to executing the drawing, I want to be as relaxed as possible and not be consciously thinking too much, revealing more. So if I’m drawing someone who’s angry, for instance, I’m striking the face with brush strokes that are angry ones. It gets into a more jazz rhythm. Whereas when I’m plotting a story or when I’m writing dialog that is verbal work. So I want to be focusing more on that side of my mind.

What next?
Well, I’m working with the great Italian artist Milo Manara, who is renowned for his erotic and often funny comic book work. He asked me on stage once if I would write a “Sin City” story for him. He’s the only artist I could ever imagine doing one with, because I’ve always drawn them all myself. But this is the one exception I’ll make because … I told him on stage, being glib: Yes, I’ll do it but he’d have to learn how to draw women.

[Miller also announced during his stay at Lucca that he would be collaborating once more with Japanese artist Peach Momoko with whom he’d previously worked on “Tears of the Spider Queen” for Marvel.]