Frank Miller

34:19The first thing that came out in comics that had not existed anywhere else was Superman. No one had ever seen a superhero. We so associate superheroes with comics, and it sounds like in some ways it defined the genre. Yeah, because it was something that no other medium could do. Yeah. I mean, they started moving toward it when there was the early 1960s Superman TV show with George Reeves and others that followed it. But it wasn't really until the 1970s when they unleashed the Christopher Reeve Superman movie that all of a sudden it became a genre in film. And that was really the biggest upheaval in comic book history.

35:04And that's only increased now that they've worked out the kinks and they can turn around superhero movies with seeming ease. And now the two major comic book companies have been bought by moviemaking corporations. Tell me about Daredevil. Daredevil was created in the early 1960s by Stan Lee and an old artist from way back named Bill Everett, whose work goes back at least into the early 50s. He was kind of the weak sister to Spider-Man, even though the great artist I've mentioned before, Wallace Wood, drew him and gave him the red costume we all know. He originally wore a circus outfit that was yellow and really silly looking.

35:52So it became a beautiful book. It had a series of really major artists, major talents in comics history. For the longest time, it was illustrated by Gene Colan, a very talented and kind of hard-to-define artist whose work had a great moodiness to it, even though his physical kinetics were not particularly exciting. It was as if he was one of the few superhero artists who had never seen Jack Kirby's work. It remained by and large a weak sister title to Spider-Man, but it was kept alive through the sheer vitality and sales of Marvel Comics. you know when I was first working at Marvel I wanted to have my own title to take over to really get things rolling and have something to commit myself to and Jim Shooter was keeping me busy saying that he didn't think I was ready for a title of my own but he'd keep me busy he was true to his word and one time I got to do the second string Spider-Man book which the spectacular Spider-Man.

37:04And in the story, the story featured Daredevil as a guest star. I see. And the two of them having a fight. And I got very intrigued by this blind guy. And the idea of a superhero's main feature was an impairment. Yeah. And I just drew the hell out of the story and added all kinds of plot elements and so on. And when I finished it, I told Shooter that if Gene Colan ever left the book, that I wanted him to consider me. When I said this in front of the staff, they all thought it was hilarious because, you know, what an uppity kid. But everything fell into place. And it turns out Gene Colan was really getting burned out on it and getting older.

37:49And Jim Shooter was of a mind. He liked the fact that I put so much labor into it, so much love of the city, so much understanding of the character. And also, frankly, that I listened to him so much because he was quite a teacher when it came to the fundaments of comic book storytelling and of dramatics, that he okayed me to come on as illustrator. And later I took over the writing as well. It was a wonderful journey. It was my baptism. You know, the very first time I wrote an issue, I brought in the character that I made up many months before of Electra, and she ended up changing the entire story.

38:33what had been a monthly comic book with monthly adventures that would occasionally be two or three issues long became a sprawling Greek opera that just the name Electra must have inspired it. I shamelessly stole the crime alert from Spider-Man comics, the Kingpin, just stole him cold and put him in Daredevil and decided it was a crime comic. decided it was going to be like the old crime comics and like the Mickey Spillane novels I loved so much and like the old movies I loved so much. And so it was my attempt to bring back, to bring that genre back into comic books. How important is seeing motion in comics?

39:22It's vital. And the thing is, it's like all the best things in comics. is vital precisely because it's the most impossible thing. It's like sound. We are a silent medium, but that's why if you look at us, we're so damn loud. That's why we're screaming all the time. That's why the sound effect is as big as your fist. That's why our idea of an action scene might involve an exploding planet, is that we don't think small, because if we get small and quiet, we can be a little too easy to ignore. Yeah. So because it's quiet, you have to make it loud. Yeah, it does get into Marshall McLuhan land here.

40:10Yeah. You know, it's not a hot medium. It's very cool. So you have to do a bit of Rothko there to get people's attention. When did you first come in contact with Manga? That was at the time I was working on Daredevil, and I was dating a woman whose father worked for oil companies, and he went to Japan a lot. She said, hey, there's a comic book from Japan. And it was a little samurai comic called Lone Wolf and Cub. And I opened it up, and I was immediately enraptured by it because the storytelling pace was completely different. The drawing style was completely different. There was an energy to the very strokes of the brushes on the pages that spoke to the emotional content of the scenes in a more intimate way than I was used to.

41:05It was more based on energy and flow than on form. So naturally, there's more a sense of continuous movement throughout it. It changed the whole way I've thought about comic books ever since. Wow. This was a case of my chosen medium changing before my very eyes. It couldn't have been more dramatic. Imagine walking into a theater and for the first time seeing D.W. Griffiths after what had come before. For me, it was like one of those moments. Have there been any other moments like that where you're seeing something that there's no context for it? earlier when I was a child. It was when I'd been growing up reading Superboy and Legion of Superheroes.

41:51And I was over at a friend's house and saw Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four. Yeah. And all of a sudden I realized comic books could explode and that if somebody got angry, everything in the room could flag around. Since Lone Wolf and Cub, there have been events where an artist like Dan Clowes will come along. I don't know if you're familiar with his work. The work has a very static look to it. It follows this almost metronomic rhythm where there will be exactly four lines of hand-lettered copy underneath each image. And it will tell you a deeply disturbing tale that usually includes no violence of any kind and leaves you unsettled.

42:41It's like psychological violence. Yeah. There's many others. I've got to mention Spiegelman's work. Spiegelman had always been a figure who would bring a very compelling passion to his work and a highly intellectual content to everything he did. But with Malz, he took brutal family history, and in a masterstroke that only a thinking man's artist could do, he turned them into mice. And that was at once a commentary on the fact that they died like rats. and it also distanced you enough from the horror by making them look like little animals in a Saturday morning cartoon that you were able to read the whole thing knowing you were reading an atrocity and not turn your head away.

43:39And it takes somebody who really knows what he's doing. Spiegelman knew exactly what he was doing and he executed it mercilessly because he does not waver in that. Has any of your work ever been censored or banned? Oh, yeah. One of my Daredevils was banned by the Comics Code back when that was around. It was rejected by the Comics Code. One of its rules was that one could never feature drug use in a comic book. I did this comic book during the Angel Dust business that happened in New York. It was an issue of Daredevil. And they brought out this fossil rule and said, we just can't let you do it.

44:23Wow. And so I said, I want to talk to him. And so it was arranged and I went and talked to him. I'm telling you, it was a moment I wish could have been filmed. Because I walked in and it was this little office that looked like it was 1954. Yeah. And the people that looked like it was 1954, I'm not talking like they looked like they were that old. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they looked like they were still dressed that way, and they were like relatively young people that way. Like the Beatles hadn't happened yet. Yeah. And this was in the 70s? Yeah. And I just sat down with them, and we all talked. And I had to tell them how the comic book market worked and what the audience was like now and so on.

45:09And I got to do my story. I mean, my story got to see a friend. that might have been the beginning of the end of the comics, because he was dead within a year. He got thrown out. Indeed. Do you ever read underground comics? Love him. I love him. Obviously, Crumb. You know, he was amazing. R. Crumb. Yeah, R. Crumb. And I think that Richard Corbin was one of the most astonishing talents to ever work in comics. Did your Batman have to look like the old Batman? The first thing I wanted to match was the silhouette. The massive square look to him, not just the Leonard jaw, but the impossibly broad shoulders and chest, the big hands, the big feet.

45:57He had to be replanted, and he had to look as if he could crush someone's head with his hand. I felt that he had gotten very long, delicate ears, which indicates bat ears, and I went back to the 1950s, chopped off little things to just keep a more formidable, brutish look to him. And he'd gotten so that his cape had become a parachute, made of parachute silk. It had been long and beautiful. That was the Neil Adams look that had dominated for so long. And not only did I not have the skills to imitate what Neil Adams did, I didn't have the desire really. I wanted to go for a much more rough and tumble look.

46:48And so I made his cape have weight for not to be very long, but for it to feel like it was made of canvas. and the same with that belt. Instead of being bright yellow, it was a canvas, like okra almost. And then I started playing with all the toys, the big pretty batarangs. I decided to bring in a bit of the ninja, touch them and make them absolutely sadistic, lethal, small things that could poke an eye out. And most fun of all was to take the name the Batmobile and turn it from a sports car into a tank. Did you have to get permission to do that? At first, the editor was nervous about a lot of things, partly because Danny O 'Neill was far from politically conservative, but as a man, he was a very conservative fellow.

47:49He didn't believe in taking too many chances. and also he had made his name on that character with a very different interpretation. And so there was some resistance there and in other quarters, but the boss, Jeanette Kahn, the publisher, she knew something new was coming and the editor-in-chief, Dick Giordano, who was a longtime veteran of comics, he had been tasked with turning Batman around. And he knew something bold had to happen. And they both invested themselves thoroughly. And luckily, basically, I had the support of the Top Guns. So we rolled ahead. Have that ever happened before in comics where a really loved character came back in a totally new light?

48:41I don't think it had happened before, I can recall. After that, it started happening all the time. But based on the success of The Dark Knight. I think it was people realized that this stuff could be brought back. Well, if people hated The Dark Knight, people wouldn't hop here. Of course, of course. Yeah, yeah. Every once in a while, it takes a shock to make a medium change course. No, those are all the best moments. We don't want more of the same. We want Elvis, you know? Tell me about working with Robert Rodriguez. Robert Rodriguez, man, that was just a kick in the ass. That was just great. As a fine collaborator, as good a man as you could ever find, he had a way of getting his guts into a project.

49:30Basically was a gut-first creative talent. He immediately saw Sin City as a series of technical problems to solve, and he loved technical problems. He's like a wizard at turning a complicated problem into a simple problem. Like he would often say things to me that sounded like guru-like, like you just got to shoot it backwards to make it work. And he'd be right. And so from the beginning, he showed his high concept for Sin City to me by saying, all these people for all these years have been adapting comic books to movies. This time we're going to adapt a movie into a comic book. Amazing. See, that simple inversion, and that explains Sin City.

50:20And it's so different. If you think of the history of comics turning into movies, I would say often unsuccessfully. Maybe Superman was successful on some level. I remember, like, Dick Tracy. What did he think? Tracy and Popeye were campy, nostalgic romps. Superman was actually a joyous celebration, that it was also in itself an exciting ride. It seemed like a regular movie. It didn't seem like a comic book movie. No. No, it didn't. One of the main reasons, too, is I spoke with Richard Donner about this. And he said that his main operating word, making Superman, was versimilitude. He said, take it seriously and get all the details right to give you every evidence that this is really happening.

51:20Take it seriously. There can't be a dust spot that isn't evidence that this is really going on. Yeah. I believe that's why it had the perfect tagline with you'll believe a man can fly. and you're watching that movie and the movie is more than half over when he first takes off. That's how long it takes to lift him off the ground. I mean, that's how much work it is and should be to do fantasy. My biggest reservation about the current crop is you go in and it is like a Saturday morning cartoon. It's like everybody can do all this ridiculous stuff. And I don't feel wonder because there's no frame of reference.

52:08Yeah, and it makes it seem like what they're doing isn't difficult. That's right. It's just presented as extraordinary. Yes, yes. And it's also almost a desperate need to clutter the screen with so much of it all at once. rather than bring out the wonder of a single element against a more recognizable setting and cast.

52:44LMNT. Element electrolytes. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? Do you want to maximize your endurance and feel your best? Add Element electrolytes to your daily routine. Perform better and sleep deeper. Improve your cognitive function. Experience an increase in steady energy with fewer headaches and fewer muscle cramps. Element electrolytes Drink it in the sauna

53:23Refreshing flavors include Grapefruit, citrus, watermelon And chocolate salt Formulated with the perfect balance of sodium Potassium and magnesium To keep you hydrated and energized Throughout the day These minerals help conduct the electricity That powers your nervous system So you can perform at your very best Element electrolytes are sugar-free, keto-friendly, and great tasting. Minerals are the stuff of life. So visit drinklmnt.com slash tetra. And stay salty with Element Electrolytes. LMNT.

54:10Tell me more about Electra. When did the character come to you? Oh, way back when. When I was a kid drawing comics that were little black and white crime comics that I did that published in a school newspaper. So you had first drawn her then? I had a character named Elektra. And she had the black hair and the intense eyes and all that. But it was me drawing as an amateur. I mean, I couldn't draw much of anything then. And I always knew I wanted to use that name, but I had already decided that I would be a comic book professional, but I was always just making up characters right and left. Since I had studied the whole story of Agamemnon and House of Atreus, and Agamemnon's daughter, Electra, was really one of the most frightening characters in mythology.

55:03and the original scary avenging Dark-Eyed Daughter. That was her real beginning. When I developed her as a comic book character, I was just beginning as a professional writer, so I did what any sincere artist does. I looked around for who to steal from, and I looked to an idol and mentor of mine, Will Eisner, and his masterwork, The Spirit. And perhaps my favorite story in it, which was one called Sans Serif, which was about the Spirit's first girlfriend, the love of his life, who fell into a life of crime. And a little eight-page story breaks your heart as she's the one criminal he lets go. It's not just for old times' sake.

56:00It's for passion's sake. And I took the structure of that little eight-pager and made it a 21-pager or whatever it was and made it my first writing job. Then it turned into its own thing. It turned into a martial arts adventure character who ended up having weird relationships with the Antichrist and all kinds of stuff. But that's how it began. Are there a finite number of stories? Do all stories break down into a handful? I don't know if so. I mean, I've heard that said. I've even thought it myself. But the more I do of it, the more I believe that the beauty in what we all do is chaos. The accident, the thing that's not supposed to happen but works anyway.

56:48And there'd be no reason to make stories if we were just kicking out an algorithm. If you use the language of our time. Explain to me what a graphic novel is. Okay, graphic novel is a term that was coined by Will Eisner in the 1970s. And he did this because he was so impressed by the European bande dessinée. Eisner was out to make comic books. He always wanted to make them compete more with literature, which is very different than my goals. But he also thought that the term comic book was essentially derisive, that it meant it was dumb stuff for little kids. And so he coined the term graphic novel.

57:40I've never made much use of that term because I don't care what they're called. A song is a song is a song. But in terms of format, that's where I really wanted to push the handle up. What would you say the delineation is between the comic book and the graphic novel? First and most physical version is page count. Graphic novel in America has always been between 48 and 64 pages long. I did not find that acceptable. I've gone more into multiples of 100 pages. That's where you can really tell a story and let it breathe. American comics have been too constipated and congested for way too long. Too many damn words and not making really good use of the form itself.

58:27Instead, making it look kind of like illustrated books or just repeats of the sad old time that were made back in the 1940s to the 1960s. Tell me about comic book stores. I love comic book stores. I think they're a miracle that I saw being born. that comic book publishers were going out of business. The sense of doom when you entered the offices was palpable. Why did that happen? Here I've got to backtrack a bit, and you are hearing my interpretation of history. Yeah. In the 1950s, when we all got investigated by the Senate and accused of creating juvenile delinquency and all of that. The government went after comic books?

59:16Yes, yes. I don't know about this. Oh, yes. They were called the keyful for hearings. I've read the entire transcripts of these hearings with a great comic book publisher, Bill Gaines of EC Comics, who was the first one to be on trial because the whole thing was a setup to put him out of business. He was up there speeding on diet pills. That's the myth, okay? But no, he was up there defending comics vociferously, and they were charging them with everything. They said that Batman and Robin were a homosexual couple. This was, of course, in a time when homosexuality was considered the equivalent to child molestation.

1:00:02And all of this was generated by a pop psychologist looking to make a name for himself named Frederick Wortham, who wrote a truly execrable book called Seduction of the Innocent, about how comic books were poisoning and perverting the minds of children in America. Yet in order to survive, the comic book publishers, authors of all these heroes who never gave up, abjectly surrendered and apologized in public and paid for the strictest censorship board in American history. He made the Hays Code look gentle. I had no idea. Yeah. It's like a family scandal that nobody talks about. And this Cold War relic existed and stayed in place into the 1970s.

1:00:57Wow. Yeah. And it was completely irrelevant. I mean, it included— So were the people making comics, like, afraid? Everything was still submitted to them. And you were told by your editor, you can't do that. No comic book show used the word horror or terror in its title. It was a rule, and it was enforced. But you could see a movie with horror or terror. Or you could read a book with heart. This is comic books? Anything. Yes. There were comic books that were kind of spooky and had the supernatural in them. But they were called mystery comics. They couldn't call them horror comics. Were ghost stories allowed?

1:01:35They did allow some ghost stories because it didn't specifically outlaw ghosts. Everything was followed to the latter. It also had a lot of religious stuff in it. that, of course, there's always a lot of that in any censorious crap. And, of course, anything to do with sex or nudity. The prohibitions on violence were much milder. Of course, because the war machine must go on. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. And largely, we got by by ignoring the damn thing, mainly because it was run by a bunch of people who were totally out of touch. And we didn't really step right on it. you were going to get away with it.

1:02:16But I was exactly the agent of the temperament to step right on it repeatedly. Because I wanted to crush this thing. It's not good to just have a tumor on your butt and not do something about it. So we were getting to comic book stores. Industry is folding. Let's just put it this way. Dasping for air, I think is a good way to put it. It's getting sad and old. And these bright little comic shops, I think it started in California, most things do in entertainment. They started just setting up deals with the publishers where there were no distributors. The stuff would just be shipped directly to the stores.

1:03:00The way it became set up was that new distributors moved in and they would simply buy books from the publisher. They wouldn't say, we'll buy these and return the ones they didn't sell. They'll say, no, we're taking this 40 ,000 copies of this comic, and we'll take the risk, but we want this slice of the pie. And so you had an entity as a middle man, because these were comics fans who were doing it, so they were much more in touch with what would be sellable and so on. And then you had all these bright new comic shops popping up, They were beautiful. They were nice, clean places. They weren't the little drugstores with the spinner racks.

1:03:44And they sold lots of toys and all of that. So they had a real good retail base. And they'd come in and they'd have a relationship with the customers. So when the customer came in, he wouldn't just go and buy Spider-Man and ignore everything else. There'd be someone there who'd say, hey, you know, that guy from Spider-Man, he's on a new book here. And then, of course, the good ones like Golden Apple would get the idea of saying, hey, they really like this guy's drawings, so let's have him come in and sign the books here. And that'll be an event that'll sell more books. And it all became more and more of a community.

1:04:23Meanwhile, these conventions were happening, which people were showing up in costumes and the joyous events. And those started a long time ago. So let's start with science fiction people and continue with comic book people. The term I've been using again and again over the past few years is tribe. Yeah. Because I love tribes. I love the existence of them. I love seeing gamers, their passion, the intensity and the creativity they bring to stuff that I have no fucking idea what you're doing. But I like to see what their minds are doing. with comic book people, they don't have to be making them to be creative.

1:05:05The debates, because I'm a devoted debater. So it's like that, to me, that sort of thing is what makes basically human life worth living. It's like a fraternity. Yes. And the argument part of it is a big part, important part of it. Yeah. I do think that as a society, we've gotten so gun shy about even disagreement that we are deadening ourselves, debilitating ourselves even, by acting like it's rude to say you're wrong. What was the first comic book convention you ever went to? The first comic book convention I ever went to was a San Diego convention. I was invited to a San Diego Comic-Con. I had no idea what they were like.

1:05:53It was back when it was a very small convention. It was completely contained in one hotel, the Westgate Hotel, like a real old-fashioned California hotel. I went to it, and I believe I was 24. I was probably drawing Daredevil at the time. And at that convention, I remember I walked into a room and met Jack Kirby. I met many other people at that same convention, but that to me was just like, My God. And I meet him and he's this sweet guy. And he was a ball of fire. To the end, he was a ball of fire. But at that point, he was not an old man. Even though you'd think he was ancient because he'd been working for so long.

1:06:41He was young when he started. I remember sitting down and talking with him. And as soon as I would throw an idea at him, it would come back to me. re-envisioned, strengthened, and blossomed in 18 ,000 directions at once. Wow. I was witnessing genius in action. Everything he saw and heard was being processed by an engine of creative intellect like I'd never seen before. So at these conventions, there would be talks? All the time. They would sell collectible comics? That was mostly what they did. Trade comics, sell comics. Most of the convention, it was all in one hotel, and they would take the bottom floor of the hotel, and there would be a bunch of people sitting on folding chairs at collapsible tables with cardboard boxes full of old comic books that they were selling at either slight markups or lower prices than comic books.

1:07:49Like a flea market just for comic books. And then somewhere along the line, before I ever got into the thing, they got the idea of, hey, this guy lives in town. Let's have him show up and have everybody meet him. And then it's the people behind it knew that something was growing in there. Yeah. There was a lady who I've known for years now. Jackie Estrada is one of them. And she would just cheerfully introduce people, and then we'd end up on stage together, swapping jokes and things. And eventually it started growing into something else, where issues of the day would come along. Sometime in the 1980s, when comic books started growing up, with things like Dark Knight and Watchmen coming out, when everything starts going right, come on.

1:08:42You're a little bit acquainted with entertainment. You know what I'm talking about. What do people do? They shit their pants in fear. Instantly people are saying, well, we need a rating system like they have in movies. Come on, man, you know what that means.

1:09:02There's a long tradition of reading sacred text slowly, allowing each word to settle, echo and reveal meaning over time. Rather than rushing to conclusions, this practice invites reflection, listening and attention. For centuries, this repetition has been used to stay close to wisdom. Not by studying words as information, but by receiving them as something lived and experienced over and over again. This tradition is known as Lectio Divina. Emerging in early monastic life, it engages scripture through four gentle movements, reading, reflection, repetition, and rest. A short passage is read, a single phrase is held.

1:10:03Silence becomes part of the practice, creating space for insight to surface naturally. Lectio 365 brings that ancient rhythm into the present moment. Designed for modern life, it offers brief, guided, scriptural reflections throughout the day. to begin with intention, pause at midday, and wind down at night. The readings are less about information gathering and more for returning to wisdom again and again, letting familiar words meet new moments. A modern way to keep biblical wisdom close, quietly present, steady, and alive within everyday life. Lectio 365 is a free resource. Find inspiration there, now and always.

1:11:04Learn more at lectio365.com.

1:11:16How would you compare your work to, say, Alan Moore or Grant Morrison? Very different animals. Particularly in the case of Alan, we arrived at similar times. We approached the superhero with similar notions superficially, but profoundly, diametrically opposed points of view. His work was an autopsy on the superhero, and mine was an attempted resurrection. I was kind of like the witch doctor calling lightning down to bring the thing back to life. And he was the clinician saying, this never should have lived. It was just a very different, even though we became fast friends, we loved so much of the same stuff.

1:12:09Between the two of you, you were the kings of the graphic novel. For a while there, it was like that. And as the counterpoint to us, the dramatic counterpoint was Spiegland. Yeah. Because he was coming in from the literary world. But it needed all three of us for that kind of magic moment to happen. And had you and Alan not been so diametrically opposed, you both didn't need to be there. That's the way it works. It's like you need those counterbalances and the different points of view. That is one of the one quarrel I have with our current age is people have now come to think conflict is a bad thing.

1:12:50They think they're all supposed to be the same. And I don't think conflict's a bad thing at all. I think conflict is how things get defined. So we went from strips to books. Yeah. That was a moment. And then from books of strips to single-subject books. Since that, what have been the biggest breakthrough moments in comics? The biggest leap to me has been, in terms of format, it's what's now called the graphic novel. Because that, for the first time, declared that we're not simply something that becomes a collectible intake. That we can seek permanence. And we can seek legacy. It's not disposable anymore.

1:13:41No. Nor is it precious. That's a big difference. It's a big difference. Yeah, but it also ignores it precious. Yeah, because it's still comics. But what I mean, though, is that it's not precious because a copy of Farewell More Lovely is not precious because you know you can get another one. Are you saying wider distribution is part of what makes it not precious? We might be using precious in different ways. Okay. By precious, I'm using precious as a pejorative. I'm using it to mean that it's a dainty thing that has to be— It's like fussy. Or kept in a plastic bag or something worse. Yeah. I'll be sitting signing comic books and someone will bring one that looks like the dog ate half of it and it's been pissed on and so on.

1:14:27And I'll say, this is the proper condition of a comic book. It's been read to death, you know. And those are the ones I do the free drawings on. I believe that what we do only exists in that it interacts with humanity. You know, it's not a jewel that's to be worshipped. Since the graphic novel, have there been any breakthroughs? People would immediately bring up computers when you ask that, on comics, etc. I won't join that crowd. I mean, I think that obviously it's the entering other media, but that isn't really a breakthrough that's being adapted. Can you imagine any way that a comic could become a movie that hasn't been done that you'd want to see?

1:15:12Whoa, man. Why'd you give me one of these smart ones? I've often wondered what it would be like to bring in some of the methodology of improv to explore things with actors and let it take unexpected courses and then build your whatever effects you needed or whatever around that. I am in love with actors. I mean, they have been the most thrilling part of working for the screen. They're the special effects. We know they're not human. Okay, we know this. It doesn't have to be discussed. They are different creatures. To see what would come out of them by testing and taxing them and make directing become much more participatory and challenging task so that the division of labor wasn't so much a division of labor between script, writer, comes in, drops his piece of genius, his immutable piece of genius, and then each person does their immutable piece of genius and make it more what you see people do when they workshop a play.

1:16:37I'd love to see something develop in cinema that would be like that. And it sounds like that has the potential to capture what you described about Jack Kirby of it being more alive. Yeah. And the idea of doing it, but doing it with a writer always there. Someone who would know how to take, because, you know, almost no actor can really ad-lib. You know, it's not what they bring to the table. They can express the feeling they have that gives me the nod. And that's a very valuable thing to do. Tell me the story of 300. It's as simple as this. I was a very, very young boy. And my father took me and my older brother Steve to the movies on a Saturday at the Capitol Theater in Montpelier, Vermont.

1:17:29And we saw the 300 Spartans, a 1962 Richard Egan classic that told the story of the Battle of Thermopylae. fought in 480 BC. Now, the story told in that movie is fundamentally historically accurate. Although it was all done in very 1960s, we really wish this was Ben-Hur kind of posturing. It was perfect for a little boy my age and for one of my brothers' age. And I sat there in theater. This whole wonderful story unfolded where these handful of men with spears were fighting an unspeakable horde of enemies defending what would become democracy and science and all of that. And then at the end, they got betrayed and then encircled and brought down by arrows.

1:18:31And they died to a man. and I sat there next to my brother and we talked quietly with each other and one of us dared the other to ask dad something and I said to my father, dad, did the good guys die? And he said, I'm afraid so, son. And in that moment, in that amazing moment, my entire concept of what a hero was changed forever. A hero was no longer the shining figure who could fly through the air and could get bullets bounced off his chest and would save the day every day and would win. A hero was someone who was willing to commit to the death, to failure and death. Could be the martyr. Yes, yes.

1:19:23But was willing to go that last bloody distance in the effort to achieve something. And that has informed everything I've done ever since. Wow. Have you ever had a hero die and then figure out a way to do a second story after they're dead with that character or no? Well, I'm not going to have people come back to life if I'm doing just in-city. And I don't really like supernatural stories all that much. Have you ever had anyone come back to life in anything or no? Yes, I did with Elektra in the Daredevil comics. I brought her back to life. When you killed her, did you know you were going to bring her back to life or no?

1:20:04No. I killed her. Then I got the idea, partly because I was working on a book, and I kind of missed her, and the book was really not getting fun to do anymore. And I thought, well, I'll try this. Maybe it'll be really cool. And did you explain her coming back, or was it like a cartoon where— No, it was done with mystical ninja tricks, man. You made sense of bringing her back. It's not like you ignored the fact that she was killed off. I did, and I almost instantly realized I'd made the biggest creative mistake I'd ever made in my life. And so once I realized that error, it being comic books where you can do anything, I did a big old fancy pants graphic novel called Electra Lives Again, where I really killed her, and there was no doubt that this woman was dead.

1:20:55Well, until you bring her back next time. No bringing her back after that one, no. So you saw the movie 300, and then what happened next? I'd already told my parents I was going to be a comic book artist. And I said, when I get good enough, I'm going to make a comic book. And when was that? After I'd done Sin City. I decided, okay, I'm good enough now. I'd done Dark Knight. I'd had all the success that you can get in comic books and all that. But I realized I'd been putting it off, and it was time to really take the challenge on. And you wrote it as a graphic novel? Yeah, I wrote it as a graphic novel.

1:21:32I intended it for that horizontal format. But at the time, the only way to really make a nickel doing comics was to have them be in the standard comic book format. So I got clever, and I decided to format the entire thing for double-page spreads and did it as a regular comic book. planning it to be published in the horizontal format as a hardcover. Had anyone ever done that before? No. And I decided there would be no softcover edition because I didn't want there to be a cheaper version or a compromised version. And I'm glad there wasn't a softcover. There wasn't some of the European ones, but I couldn't really control that.

1:22:15How did that end up becoming a movie? That was my call because I owned the property. I was very protective of it. Zack Snyder wanted to meet me. I was living out in Los Angeles at the time. I met with him, and he came, and knowledge of the battle was encyclopedic. And he had already done some tests that he wanted to show me of the way he would do the visual effects to supercharge the action and so on. and that way he could get across the scope of the Persian army with various computer duplication figures and such. And I saw it was in very good hands. So I approved the project. After that, I visited on set, but I was not in any way a principal production.

1:23:04What's it like seeing something that you write turn into a film? It's as simple as this. If it's good, it's really nice. Is it surreal? Yeah. I'm sitting there and it's just biting my lip and going, God, did that work? Was that right? And then very early on, I'll get the feeling this is missing the point or I'll know the central meaning has been lost or something like that. What does push the wall mean? it's got multiple meanings but it essentially means to test boundaries of the medium itself and to defy and trample traditions i would have never understood that if you didn't tell me that right now really i had no idea what it means okay hey we really bombed on this one so that's what rick rubin says we got a lousy title no it's i didn't understand it okay and And I thought maybe it had some personal meaning.

1:24:06Well, the personal meaning is that I've always felt that it was my role in comics to be pushing the walls. Yeah. Pushing against the walls in a very sort of constipated, tradition-bound medium that should be a joyous explosion of creativity. Tell me about writing the book. Fun and strange. Did you remember a lot of the things in it, or did things come to you as you were writing that you didn't remember that you remembered? Yeah, a lot of it also came from—because this book was often done in the form of a dialogue where I was being asked questions, and it was translated back into as if it were all something that I composed.

1:24:49Lots of things came up that I hadn't particularly remembered. There were vivid memories that I've never lost, like the business of falling through the ice as a child, which was a very formative thing in my life that I think actually was character-forming for me. Just to come that close to apparent death at that young an age, I've always been someone since who's very aware of the possibility of cataclysm. that I will walk into a room and imagine, what if that fixture isn't so good? For instance, one of the things I find myself thinking about a lot these days is following what's going on and observing what I see in our politics and everything else.

1:25:39I see very fundamental mechanisms of society and how the mechanics of life are breaking down. How much would you say you were influenced by television growing up? A lot. A whole lot. Starting with Saturday morning cartoons. What were the cartoons you grew up with? Superman. The original Vyster Brothers Superman. That was the one I watched the most. But I ate up all kinds of things like Johnny Quest and all of those. But then I went on to follow fantasy on TV. You obviously think it's like Star Trek and all of that. But, you know, Western shows when they were on. And then later, when I was still a kid, I became totally enamored with the old show Kojak.

1:26:30Great show. And it was another thing that made me fall in love with New York without having been there yet. Yeah. That Kojak show was the first police procedural TV show we ever had. And with one of the most amazing heroic actors we've ever had. because anybody that ugly who could play a hero that pure, he was such an ancient Greek hero. He really brought the Greek to that character in a classical sense as well as a police sense. What makes a story great? A story's got to have one thing to make it great. I'd say, for me, a story has to involve a test of the human character. and a definition of that character through the test.

1:27:20That's why the hero is always, to me, the subject, is because a hero is a character who is endlessly tested. This goes all the way back to the earliest heroes. Is there always one hero, or can it be more than one? Well, surely there can be more. I mean, there can be more than one. And I don't know if you always want to go for the Avengers, though, because the heroes should never outnumber the threat there is. Jason and the Argonauts is a wonderful story about heroes. 300 has got 300 of them. So, no, it can certainly be. And if you think about Robin Hood, that's a story about many heroes. There just happens to be one title character.

1:28:07Tell me about the decision for Batman to sacrifice Robin. Sacrifice Robin? Didn't your Batman kill off Robin? Oh, yeah. Yeah, he did. That's a big choice. That's a big move. Yeah. Yeah, but he'd gotten really bad. I see. How did Robin turn bad? He could never measure up. He idolized Batman. Everyone considered him the heir apparent. It's the story of Satan. And he couldn't measure up, and the old fuckers wouldn't die. So it's like he grew to hate him. It's basically, it's a study in sin. Envy killed him. He didn't want to live in the shadow of Batman. That's right. It's like, well, it's like the play Amadeus.

1:29:06It's the oldest story in the world. So you might say he had the Salieri complex. Yeah. Do you remember when the idea hit you for that to happen? I don't remember exactly when that hit me, but I remember... It's a big idea. Just if you look at our life with Batman and Robin forever, it's a really big idea. It's a push-the-wall idea. And the line that really hit the editor, Bob Shrek, the hardest was when Robin says to Batman, I love you. And then Batman just responds like just something completely snarly and gnarly and, you know, just doesn't give an inch back. Because, come on, that guy was out slaughtering people.

1:29:53You know, Batman's got kind of a thing about innocent people being slaughtered. Batman couldn't for a second in countenance having an ounce of feeling for someone who did exactly what that nameless mugger did to his parents. Yeah. And doing it with joy. Was there ever any consideration of creating a new villain instead of going with one of the classics? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just the problem with the classical villains were so goddamn good. But, I mean, I could. It would be fun to do sometime with one of those. Does it make it less Batman if it's a new villain? That all depends. That all depends because, like, my attention has gone elsewhere in so many ways that I really feel like I want to spend most of my energy to making up stuff that's pulling us in new directions rather than pulling the old stuff in fresher directions.

1:30:55I'd rather be like starting some new gardens rather than killing old ones. How important is it for stories to be timeless? If you think about that, you're killing yourself. If you do something topical based on what's going on in the world today, does that make it too disposable? A tale of two cities is topical. Herodotus is topical. If you do a story about something that's going on right around you, you're still doing a story about people facing conflict, facing trials, making decisions, and dealing with the twin natures of the human and the natural. And these things are immutable and unchangeable.

1:31:41And so I don't think there's a distinction there. What's the relationship between free speech and comics? Same as the relationship between free speech and any other story form. Same as the relationship between free speech and any conscious life. It's a function of thinking freely. It's a prerequisite to living freely. And if we don't have that, what's the point? There is none. If there was a piece of advice you could give your younger self about stories, what would you tell him? Move back to Vermont, pump gas. Good one. You'd be right. What would I tell them now? I'd probably just give tips on how to save time.

1:32:31Don't go down these particular dark alleys. But mostly it would just be take the chance. Do not think about trends or... Do not ever think of people like it when, or that sort of thing. See which bug in your gut. Tell that story.

1:33:22Tetragrammatin is a website. Tetragrammatin is a whole world of knowledge.

1:33:36What may fall within the sphere of Tetragrammatin? Counterculture. Tetragrammatin. Sacred Geometry, Tetragrammatin. The Avant-Garde, Tetragrammatin. Generative Art, Tetragrammatin. The Tarot, Tetragrammatin. Out-of-print Music, Tetragrammatin. Biodynamics, Tetragrammatin. Graphic Design, Tetragrammatin. Mythology and Magic, Tetragrammatin. Obscure Film, Tetragrammatin. Beach Culture, Tetragrammatin. Esoteric Lectures, Tetragrammatin. Off-the-Grid Living, Tetragrammatin. Alt spirituality. Tetragrammatin, the canon of fine objects. Tetragrammatin, muscle cars. Tetragrammatin, ancient wisdom for a new age.

1:34:23Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day. Take a breath and see where you are drawn.

1:34:41Thank you.