Frank Miller

Biography

Frank Miller was born in Olney, Maryland. He would soon move to Montpelier, Vermont where he would grow up becoming a comic fan and eventually became an artist. Frank received his first gig as an artist in 1978, drawing The Twilight Zone for Gold Key Comics. This opened more doors of opportunity for Frank as he would soon be offered various jobs from DC Comics and Marvel Comics. Eventually Frank would stay with Marvel Comics and became a regular fill-in and cover artist. One day, Frank filled in for Spectacular Spider-Man #27 and #28. Daredevil was a supporting character in these two issues and currently had a poor selling title. Frank would ask Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter for the opportunity to work on Daredevil, Jim agrees and Frank becomes the penciller for Daredevil.

He started his career drawing with Marvel's Daredevil title in the 1980's. He worked along side writer Roger McKenzie and would insert his style of art into Daredevil. This proved successful as Frank soon became one of Marvel’s brightest rising stars. Frank would eventually meet Neal Adams and would get the chance to learn from him. Frank made Daredevil so successful that it was upgraded to a monthly comic, whereas it used to be bi-monthly. Frank took over full duty as both writer and penciller in issue 168, this was the first appearance of Elektra. Frank’s comics started becoming darker and in issue 181 he kills off Elektra, at first Frank had intended for Elektra to stay dead but eventually he would revive her himself. With Daredevil now one of Marvel’s best selling characters, he ended his run on issue 191 and moved on to produce a "Wolverine" miniseries with Chris Claremont. Miller's next project was his own creation titled "Ronin", where he began to show the beginnings of a new style in storytelling and artwork.

Perhaps his most well-known and influential work to date was his next foray into writing/penciling; the seminal miniseries "The Dark Knight Returns" where Miller told the story of an older and darker Batman coming out of retirement to save Gotham City yet again. The Dark Knight Returns would become one of the biggest selling trade paperbacks and would remain on store shelves for over 20 years after its original publishing date. This miniseries had one of the biggest impacts in not only Batman titles, but the entire comic industry. However it changed Batman comics forever, as it made him become a darker character and also removed the 60’s television Batman from the image of Batman overall. It also revived Batman’s best friend relationship with Superman.

Frank would later return to draw and write more Daredevil stories similar to DKR. Daredevil: Born again would soon be published and it explores Matt Murdock’s religious background and the beginning of his war against Kingpin. Another Daredevil title called Daredevil: Love and War would be released afterwards where it explains Kingpin’s side of the story. In 1987 Frank returned to Batman comics with the story arc Batman: Year One. This story arc was Frank’s retcon on Batman’s origin so it would connect with the Dark Knight Returns. During his time at DC Comics, a new rating system for comics were about to be put into use, however Frank disagreed with the censorship and would leave and begin working for Dark Horse Comics. While working on projects for Dark Horse Comics, he would also join Epic Comics to begin writing and drawing a story about Elektra’s revival entitled Elektra Lives Again. This was the start of Frank’s new drawing style that would also be used in Sin City stories. Frank also continued his work with Dark Horse Comics.

Frank went on to write scripts for RoboCop 2 and RoboCop 3. However, these two movies did not do well in the theaters and were received heavy criticism. Frank would go on to write a comic series entitled “Frank Miller’s RoboCop” and drawn by Juan Jose Ryp. Frank would return to Marvel comics to team up with John Romita Jr. and create a miniseries entitled “Daredevil: Man Without Fear” where it would retcon Daredevil’s origin similar to Batman: Year One. Frank began working on his Sin City stories in 1991 for Dark Horse Comics.

During the 1990's Miller started up one of his most-read titles "Sin City" published by Dark Horse Comics, now a major motion picture co-directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller.

Sin City is a moody, violent crime drama set in a fictional version of Las Vegas where corruption and greed have a strangle-hold on local authorities and a unlikely cast of anti-heroes must take care of themselves...and each other.

In 1998 Miller released the five issue miniseries "300", based on the ancient Greek telling of the Battle of Thermopylae with the main protagonist being the Spartan King Leonidas. This book was made into a major motion picture that was released in the summer of 2007.

The Spirit