Frank Miller’s Patriotism

I am a comic book fan. I get absolutely girlish with my squealing when I see clips for the upcoming Spiderman 3 movie. Batman Begins was one of the best batman movies ever made. And I loved both Marvel Movies of Daredevil and Elektra, two comic book superheroes that were made famous by the hand of artist Frank Miller, and two movies that stayed true to Miller’s vision of his heroes.

I have all of Frank Miller’s early stuff in a closet- the Daredevils, the Elektra series and the storyline with Bullseye that Marvel based the Daredevil movie on.

Miller wrote a great essay for NPR about the American Flag and what it means to him in a post 9-11 world. Here are some of the best parts:

My high school teachers were ex-hippies and Vietnam vets. People who protested the war and people who served as soldiers. I was taught more about John Lennon than I was about Thomas Jefferson.

I could never stomach the flower-child twaddle of the ’60s crowd and I was ready to believe that our flag was just an old piece of cloth and that patriotism was just some quaint relic, best left behind us.

I schooled myself in the writings of Madison and Franklin and Adams and Jefferson. I came to love those noble, indestructible ideas. They were ideas, to my young mind, of rebellion and independence, not of idolatry.

But not that piece of old cloth. To me, that stood for unthinking patriotism. It meant about as much to me as that insipid peace sign that was everywhere I looked: just another symbol of a generation’s sentimentality, of its narcissistic worship of its own past glories.

Then came that sunny September morning when airplanes crashed into towers a very few miles from my home and thousands of my neighbors were ruthlessly incinerated — reduced to ash. Now, I draw and write comic books. One thing my job involves is making up bad guys. Imagining human villainy in all its forms. Now the real thing had shown up. The real thing murdered my neighbors. In my city. In my country. Breathing in that awful, chalky crap that filled up the lungs of every New Yorker, then coughing it right out, not knowing what I was coughing up.

For the first time in my life, I know how it feels to face an existential menace. They want us to die. All of a sudden I realize what my parents were talking about all those years.

Frank Miller is writing a 200 page graphic novel, and is doing all of the illustrations and inking himself. It stars Batman, tracking down Al Queda terrorists after Gotham is attacked. Nice! About this story he says:

Holy Terror, Batman! is no joke. And Miller doesn’t hold back on the true purpose of the book, calling it “a piece of propoganda,” where ‘Batman kicks al Qaeda’s ass.”

The reason for this work, Miller said, was “an explosion from my gut reaction of what’s happening now.” He can’t stand entertainers who lack the moxie of their ’40s counterparts who stood up to Hitler. Holy Terror is “a reminder to people who seem to have forgotten who we’re up against.”

It’s been a long time since heroes were used in comics as pure propaganda. As Miller reminded, “Superman punched out Hitler. So did Captain America. That’s one of the things they’re there for.”

“These are our folk heroes,” Miller said. “It just seems silly to chase around the Riddler when you’ve got Al Qaeda out there.”

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the story.