Frank Miller, whose Holy Terror has been roundly criticized as a bigoted and excessively violent work, says that while he would not “erase” the project, he has no interest in that kind of work.
“My stuff always represents what I’m going through,” Miller said in the interview. “Whenever I look at any of my work I can feel what my mindset was and I remember who I was with at the time. When I look at Holy Terror, which I really don’t do all that often, I can really feel the anger ripple out of the pages. There are places where it is bloodthirsty beyond belief.”
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“I don’t want to wipe out chapters of my own biography,” he added. “But I’m not capable of that book again.”
The comments came during a wide-ranging interview with The Guardian, in which Miller also said “I wasn’t thinking clearly” when he lambasted protesters participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement, comparing them to terrorists.
Miller, who has flirted with politics throughout much of his career and drawn ire from the left and right over it, was doing the interview in support of his forthcoming 300 spinoff Xerxes. The project is due out this year from Dark Horse Comics.
300 itself has drawn some criticism — albeit more after the film version by director Zack Snyder was released — for its depiction of non-white characters. The Guardian itself called that film “an out-an-out racist diatribe worthy of contempt,” and a 2017 piece at the AV Club tied the film to the rise of white nationalist politics in the U.S.
Miller’s depiction of Xerxes and the Persians, and especially Snyder’s interpretation of Miller’s work on the big screen, have drawn some criticisms in the years since 300 was originally published, leaving critics to wonder whether a full-length story fleshing out Xerxes’s backstory will absolve Miller of those criticisms or just amplify them.
The project is likely to be Dark Horse’s biggest thing at Comic Con this summer, along with Hellboy, which is getting a movie reboot and a return from the dead, so expect to hear much more on 300, race, and Miller before the year is out.
