Frank Miller Week: Miller's Gummy Politics

Kinda bouncing off what David said about Miller and Moore--or even, Miller vs. Moore--one of the most baffling aspects of comics fandom and comics criticism (which are more of less, one in the same) is the unquestioned love of both Frank Miller and Alan Moore, often by the same people. If you're actually reading these works, there's really no way to be "a fan" of both of them.

Sure, one can appreciate both artists and enjoy reading their stuff, but I've met too many people that list both of these guys as their favorites and don't really seem to grasp the themes, ideas, and politics behind the work. Moore is your kinda classic bohemian liberal, tinged with the nihilism and knowingness that many aging left-leaning idealists have. Miller's essentially a hard-line Libertarian and in recent years, especially post-9-11 (which is something that's really infected his rhetoric in pretty much every interview) perhaps something of a nutty, FOX News-style Neo-Con. The only thing they have in common is a very fashionable cynicism.

Last year, Sean T. Collins over at Robot6 "Frank Miller, conservative comment-thread commentator" pointed out Miller's comments on a Conservative message board. This was interesting not only because it was a quasi-private discussion in public from a comics legend, but because it's a tangible confirmation of where Miller "stands". If you read them, he's sometimes nutty, sometimes smart, usually conflicted--and that's great.

Now no one's surprised that Miller's something of a conservative, but that point is often ignored or used as part of the comics nerd in-joke that Frank Miller's essentially, over time, lost his fucking mind. To contrast with his supposed right-wing turn, we're reminded of Superman as Reaganite goon in The Dark Knight, Miller's work with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, or black feminist superheroine Martha Washington. And his conservatism's used to explain why All-Star Batman is retarded. And to parse-out the roots of the movie 300's propagandistic qualities. And to mock the apparently no-longer having much to do with Batman, "superhero vs. Al Quaeda" comic Holy Terror!.

The thing is, these two supposed "sides" of Miller say more about the way many perceive the right, than anything about Miller. Like Christopher Hitchens, who took a supposed "right turn" after 9-11, it's more the result of readers reading what they wanted to read in the guy's work and assuming a grand, over-arching political understanding because of some key issues in common. Indeed, Miller's work has always been informed by a rarefied mix of Nationalism and Libertarianism. Miller's a smart guy, he's hardly a knee-jerk like most actively liberal comics artists, and he's well aware of the full extent of his politics, and is comfortable taking them to their logical, complex, sometimes not-so-pretty end. With superhero comics, that's pretty much always the uneasy attraction and repulsion we have towards vigiliante-ism. This is something I'm going to work out in some longer pieces later on, but I'd encourage everyone who's been so skeptical of Miller's recent work, to go back and look at his older work and finds the connections.