Frank Miller on Push the Wall, Batman, and Having No Plan B

0:01James Altucher:What if your favorite way to unwind could actually reward you? With MistPlay, it can. Stop scrolling social media for nothing. MistPlay lets you earn points just for discovering and playing mobile games. Redeem them for gift cards from brands you love, simply for doing what you already do to relax. Download MistPlay today and make your downtime more rewarding. From Taco Night in Tulum to Sushi in Tokyo, every bite is rewarding and post-worthy with Amex Gold's four-times membership rewards points at restaurants worldwide. Wherever you dine, points are piling up. So bring your friends along for your next course because it's not all about the posts.

0:48James Altucher:It's about the company and the memories. How can gold from Amex sweeten your next food moment? Learn more at AmericanExpress.com slash Explore-Gold. Terms and points cap apply. With the American Express Platinum card, I can unlock experiences like no other. Since I'm always booking my next trip, I love that I can earn points on travel. Plus, I get a resi benefit, so you know I'm hitting the restaurants everyone's talking about. And you can find out your welcome offer after you apply, which could be as high as 175 ,000 points. For experiences like no other, there's nothing like Platinum. Learn more at AmericanExpress.com slash explore dash platinum.

1:27James Altucher:Terms apply.

1:31James Altucher:this isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host this is the james altucher show

1:49James Altucher:there's only been three or four times in the 10-year history of this podcast that i had the opportunity to sit down with one of my heroes. And this time, it's the legendary Frank Miller. I've been a huge, huge Frank Miller fan since I was a kid. When I first picked up Batman, The Dark Knight Returns back in 1986, it completely blew my mind. It wasn't just a comic. This was a revolution. Like every page, my eyes were wide open. I couldn't believe it. I mean, And Frank took Batman from the campy, colorful character I grew up with and turned him into something dark, mythic, obsessed, terrifying. He basically split the entire comic book industry into before Dark Knight Returns and after Dark Knight Returns.

2:39James Altucher:And every Batman movie you've seen since then carries Frank's fingerprint on it, whether the filmmakers admit it or not. He didn't just change Batman. He changed all storytelling and comics forever. He brought mature, painful, epic arcs to the medium and showed us that superheroes could be real myths for adults. And just from a storytelling perspective, like I love telling stories, whether it's comics or writing books or writing articles or, I don't know, just the way I live my life. I love good storytelling. Frank Miller is the master of storytelling. So getting to sit down with Frank, talk about the art of storytelling, his incredible career, his new book, Push the Wall, and The Art of Creativity.

3:21James Altucher:This is honestly a dream come true for me.

3:32James Altucher:Today, I'm here with the legendary, iconic, Frank Miller, comic book legend. And first off, Frank, do you feel funny when people just call you a comic book legend? Because you said earlier, like, oh, I'm always stuck with this one. I'm holding up in my hand, Batman, The Dark Knight Returns. like you said you're stuck with this one. And also I'm going to stick you with it too, because I feel like when you wrote Batman, the dark night returns, and this was around 1986. When you wrote Batman, the dark night returns, there was the whole comic book industry divided in half. There was before the dark night returns and there's after the dark night returns.

4:06James Altucher:And just to say a little bit, what I mean, every single Batman movie, whether you like them or not, everyone has the, your fingerprint on them. It has that dark night fingerprint on it or attempts to, at least I will say, and comics in general went from being almost like vanilla in their storytelling, like every comic was a full story from beginning to end, and then the next month would be a new story. You created like an arc, and often painful arcs, whether it was Daredevil, Batman, Ronan, Sin City, and so on. You changed every aspect of storytelling in comics, art in comics. And so now you have your new book, which is sort of an autobiography, but sort of also a guide to your creativity.

4:47James Altucher:It's Push the Wall, My Life, Writing, Drawing, and the Art of Storytelling. Such a great book for me to read as such a fan from way back when. The first thing I want to ask you is Batman himself. Okay, I got to go to The Dark Knight Returns. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, okay. Batman himself. He was like the Adam West, kitschy kind of, you know, he was a detective who was rich, playboy, billionaire. You kind of did away with all that. you turned you almost turned batman into a psychological condition and you know he was obsessed he was he was terrifying you know and we'll talk about you did to other heroes as well but you know what brought you to that what made you kind of define batman in this way when when dick giordano first said hey do batman what what were you thinking what was the first ways you wanted to change it and why change it i i remember distinctly my first impulse was i wanted batman to become a myth i didn't want to be just one among many of these weird guys in tights who ran around i wanted to just stand tall with the other pulp myths like the shadow zoro and all these old heroes at the same time i was at the time entranced with movies like dirty Harry and so on.

6:07The real hard-edged, tough guy heroes. And all of this was blowing around my brain. In top of that, I had a tremendous desire to push comics, to pull comics out of their eternal childhood and at least shove them into adolescence.

6:28James Altucher:It's true. The Dark Knight Returns I would say was the first time DC, or at least that character attempted an adult-style story. Like, Batman is dark in that comic in a way he hadn't been before. Yeah. He's obsessed, too. He's obsessed. Yeah. I've never seen a superhero obsessed until then. But the material was all there. Even if you go all the way back to 1938 and see the earliest stories of him. I mean, he's the only one whose origin, it isn't an exploding planet. It's a double murder of his own parents right in front of his eyes when he's a little kid. And he doesn't get any powers or anything.

7:17He just works out a lot and educates himself.

7:21James Altucher:That's always the criticism of Batman is that, oh, he doesn't have powers. And yet, he is powerful. That's what makes him cool. Yeah. And also, I like to always say, he needs a car. Superman doesn't need no car. Or else these guys didn't need a car. But Batman needed a car to get around. Superman was kind of this inspirational hero. He would soar high into the sky. You even see this in the movies sometimes. Almost like Jesus kind of iconography around Superman. and Batman is more about, he has a brand. He's like, I'm going to mess you up. Like, I'm dark. I'm terror in human form. Yeah, if Superman wafts down from the heavens, Batman gorges up from the bowels of the earth.

8:10James Altucher:A lot of the superheroes that were at that time, they wanted to go back to their normal life. Like, Spider-Man always wanted to have a normal life. Even Daredevil, often, he wished he could have a normal life. Superman always wants to be human in some sense. But Batman, Bruce Wayne never really existed. Bruce Wayne was the fake character. Oh, philanthropist, billionaire. That's right, yeah. But you really brought this home. And I like this concept of Batman as a myth. Obviously with mythology, like you mentioned Odysseus, Dirty Harry, there's Sherlock Holmes. There's sort of characters that go beyond the generation they were born in.

8:49James Altucher:The same with Batman. what makes a character a myth like if you're if you're writing now in a character how would you make that character into a mythic creature it's finding a theme finding something about the character that you can sum up in maybe one word with superman for instance it's hope you know with batman you might say vengeance you might say justice those are the great characters the ones that can have a simple central theme. And really, everything is bound around that. You know, that why, for instance, Superman is always a creature of light. You know, he descends from the clouds. We have sunlight around him.

9:31You know, Batman's the scary one. Batman's also the effort character. You know, he works harder than anybody else. Yeah. And he's got to be the smartest kid in class. And so what you have to do is find central values these characters have that every other part of the character springs from. This is ultimately very simple stuff. But the real work of it is placing it in enough of a human context. That's where the complexity comes in because this stuff is on the face of it preposterous. but if you do it well enough if you treat it seriously enough and if you if you get all the pieces right it doesn't feel preposterous at all and in the book push the wall you refer to other

10:22James Altucher:kind of mythologies that have turned into great stories in our current age for instance you talk about king harthur with the the sword you know pull the sword from the stone or the sword rising from the lake and how luke skywalker now has his lightsaber and you know batman has his utility belt or whatever whatever it is we have to recognize what lucas achieved was that he introduced a new mythology that captured first one generation and the success of generations and he's further embroidered it and has spun out new realms of fantasy that have people as and raptured as anything before it. You know, it's interesting.

11:05James Altucher:So you basically took these, I'm not saying you took these ideas from Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell first spoke about how, you know, there's these story archetypes that run through every story. And you definitely apply that to turning from Batman, from a character into an archetype, turning Daredevil from a character in this yellow suit into an archetype. And, but you do other things that are very interesting. You took the form of comic books and changed it. So instead of being, you know, this three by two panels on every single page, so six panels on every page with very clean, everything stays within the borders, you know, very clean storytelling.

11:43James Altucher:You completely threw that out the window. Again, building on the shoulders of those who preceded you. There are people well before me who smashed those barriers. Yes, I mean, Jack Kirby, of course, took the page-by-page narrative and all of a sudden ripped it across two pages at a time. And Neil Adams shattered the panel border at will. I mean, anytime he wanted to have somebody's hand poked through it, he did. And there are many other examples. And it was just following in their footsteps and in a tradition of revolution. You know, it took me where I've gone. I like that phrase, tradition of revolution.

12:25James Altucher:So as an artist, should you always be part of a tradition of revolution? You should always be creative. And being creative involves breaking a few acts. Instead of just being the words telling a story, the shape of the panels started to tell the story. So if you have Batman kind of across two pages in this larger-than-life picture holding, let's say, the wounded Robin, that's part of the storytelling, even if there are zero words. Yeah, if that's where you decide to innovate, it could be that you could take the most conservative apparent use of animal shapes and all of that. And what you do in the details, in the mannerisms, is where you're really innovating.

13:11There are a million different ways to be creative and a million different reasons to be creative. The wonderful thing about it is the complexity. it's like this is an art form in a story form in any case in any form it's too complex to sum up in a few glib sentences i used to be like saying here you got mozart you got beethoven and you know who did the better transitions the beauty of art is its is its complexity and its mystery. And also, so many of the decisions that artists make are intuitive that there's just a lot of unknowables out there.

13:58James Altucher:Let's say someone came up to you today and said, look, we've been retelling Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns forever. Take Batman, just do something new with it. What's your intuitive first reaction to that? You mean, what would I come up with? Yeah. Oh, there's about a dozen different things that come to mind. But I've got to say, I think the basic stuff of Batman is strong enough and good enough. So I see no reason to go back and reinvent the wheel. And, you know, set it in some other century or, you know, turn heroes into villains or villains into heroes or any of that. I think it would be rather to find a good story.

14:42It's always what it's about.

14:43James Altucher:and also i like how you've often brought in elements of your own life into these stories so for instance daredevil was one of your very first early projects that you're working on yeah and you know you lived in live in hell's kitchen in new york city which used to be now is the called the theater district but used to be very i lived there too when i was much younger and uh and it used to be kind of a darker area of the city yeah and and that's what you did for the daredevil world is that you you you had daredevil move into your town right right and instead of him just fighting like space aliens or whatever he's fighting like you know criminals and you know the kingpin and all this so do you feel like artists are almost too afraid to break convention they're too afraid to bring their own life into the character like how important was this for your characters oh i think that there's fear on every level you know sure somebody somebody coming in might be a little nervous about doing something, but even if they aren't, the editor they're working with is likely to be very nervous about something.

15:49And then the editor's boss is likely to be nervous about something. And then whoever's bossing around whoever, and all of this stuff's part of huge media conglomerates, there's just an awful lot more free-floating bosses out there.

16:06James Altucher:Is that why there aren't really any new stories in the comic book world? Like, I feel like every movie is still retelling stories from the 80s or even the 60s. Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, you've got to look for the jewels when they come. They just might not be coming from predictable places. The creative energy is there. The comics industry is loaded with talent. and I've worked enough in Hollywood and to know that there is a tremendous amount of talent and expertise there. And so it's, a lot has to do with what the political climate is at the time and what the trends are of the time and so on and what kind of business decisions people are making.

16:53But the energy and the intent is there. So I think I'm enough of an optimist think that whatever lulls you may perceive as being there right now are temporary because the creative spirit on one hand and the demands of the market on the other hand will make for better product if time goes by i wonder because there's so much stuff out there now that it's

17:20James Altucher:hard for like comic books back then an issue if it was good would sell two three million copies that week that was in the 40s in the 40s yeah comic books died in the 50s they just plain died because of because they were shoved underground by a relentless campaign against them yeah by pop psychologists who said they were bad for kids and they they were revived by innovations like Marvel comics and talents like Jack Kirby, who got teens into them again. And by the underground comics of the 1960s, who I'm sure you're familiar with, Robert Cromwell, who got the hippies into them. Eventually, these hippies started selling comics in places that sold pot and paraphernalia, and they developed a whole distribution system there that saved comic books.

18:20So this scruffy little form has survived many a declared death.

18:25James Altucher:Yeah, and I feel like by the 70s and early 80s, there were so many comic book shows and conventions, it was becoming a collectible. And then, correct me if I'm wrong, what seemed to happen was, oh, X-Men's popular, so let's make X-Factor and New Mutants and this and this. There's just too much supply to meet the same demand. Kind of like what's happened with Batman, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, and I see that happening maybe even with television now, like with Netflix and Amazon and Apple, everybody's putting out TV shows. Something's got to happen. There can't be that much demand for, you know, it's going to be harder to find the good stories.

19:01Well, that's where you kind of have to depend on the audience to step in. And the talent, it's what it really gets down to. And the talent includes the wiser, you know, producers and studio heads and publishers and editors as well.

19:16James Altucher:And so like if you were, let's say you were 20 years old today, you're just starting out, you know you have ability with the drawing, with the storytelling. What other skill did you have that you would need now? What other skill other than the storytelling and drawing helped your career find success? Determination. It's a test of wills and of stamina as much as anything else. but do you think determination came from a vision like you had a particular idea about how things should be I think it came from a need this is what I wanted to do since my earliest memories and I didn't have any concept of failure I had to do this because I did not have a plan B from that point of view the old line failure is not an option it turns out I did have certain innate sense of storytelling of how to use images next to each other with energy my drawing wasn't any good at all and my writing was rudimentary and those were the two areas where i had to train and study the most and so you differentiate the writing from the storytelling oh yes because in comics so much of the storytelling is done in the pictures right i'd say the majority of it easily i feel like you also had an ability to find the right mentors to attach yourself to so like neil adams is the one who would critique your drawings for you and he's the one of the most classic comic book artists yeah he was listed in the phone book i looked him up and then i ran into will eisner you know at a comic book convention in san diego and uh you know and and really after that it was it was much easier to meet people they were also gracious enough to help you or they saw some talent in you or what like neil adams you connected very well with him like how did you and he again was would do all sorts of critiques on your work really trashing you well yeah yeah but but as far as far as how it was to to have the meeting and how to get him to talk.

21:31Well, you've only known me for a few minutes, but you can kind of tell we love to talk about ourselves and our work, don't you? But yeah, Neil was tough, but he was the classic tough sensei in that part of his method of training somebody was to make it a test of character. That if you weren't tough enough to come back, then you'd never survive in the industry anyway.

22:01James Altucher:And this determination, you have one point in the book where you say how finally you drew something where Neil Adams said, okay, this is maybe a little bit good, something like that. Yeah. And you had to have a big enough ego to keep coming back. Absolutely. But not enough ego to quit once he criticized you. Yeah, it takes egoism, but not egotism. Egoism, but not egotism. I like that. Did you just come up with that? That's very good. Thank you. I'm going to steal that. Oh, which is another point. And I actually really think this is really important. You basically say steal, and this is related to the mythology.

22:39James Altucher:You basically say steal from the greats. And this is very important to you or to artists in general. Well, yeah, I was using that word to be dramatic, but it's everybody learns from previous practitioners. It's part and parcel. One does not get a heavenly touch come down and anoint you and give you powers that no one's ever had before. Drawing and writing are both crafts that are learned piece by piece, and you really got to learn how to build the damn thing with, you know, like a Lego set. While there is mystery and magic to it, That's, that's, it's mostly machinery. Like Edison once said, Thomas Edison once said that, that, that genius was 1 % inspiration and 99 % perspiration.

23:34James Altucher:Take a quick break. If you like this episode, I'd really, really appreciate it. It means so much to me. Please share it with your friends and subscribe to the podcast. Email me at Alcantara at gmail.com and tell me why you subscribed. Thanks.

23:55James Altucher:Look, most of the customer service bots out there are 15 years old. They're horrible. You're constantly trying to reach a real person. I could tell you from personal experience that Decagon is not like that. And look, if your team is dealing with more support tickets, more channels, and higher expectations from customers, you've probably thought about using AI for customer service. but most of the options out there are either too limited or take way too long to set up or are just old school. They don't work that good. And that's why I'm excited to tell you about Decagon. Just check it out. If you have a company and you need customer service, just check this out.

24:34James Altucher:Decagon helps companies create personalized concierge style customer experiences with AI agents across chat, email, voice, and SMS. They're available 24 seven. They feel natural to talk to and can resolve customer requests on their own so businesses can keep up with requests without losing their personal touch. Decagon plugs directly into your existing systems so agents can get live quickly. And because workflows can be updated using natural language, teams can make changes themselves without long engineering cycles. This is key. If you notice something in the interaction that's wrong, you just tell it, no, no, no, say it this way.

25:12James Altucher:Because it's using the same technology as all these AI coding tools. It's like you're coding the customer service in real time. That means less time spent managing workflows, more time focused on customers, and you'll see the ROI in weeks. Also, Decagon gives your team full visibility into why agents make decisions and what's happening across every conversation so it's easier to spot trends and improve the experience over time. Decagon helps power millions of conversations every day for brands you know and love, including Avis, Affirm, Fanatics, and Aura. Ready to transform your customer service?