Say, over the years Frank Miller has had a bit of a falling out with the nerdosphear. While highly celebrated during the 80's for his comics about Batman being gritty, as well as other Sin City and 300, the pervasive thought hanging in the air seems to be that Frank's become a parody of himself, as well a mysoginist warmonger, with a smaller minority that thinks that he was ALWAYS a mysoginist warmonger and that we just kinda realized it.
But whatever you think of him, you have to admit his projects have drawn a lot of controversy in the last decade, whether it's that book about Batman(later removing the Batman part) going to the Middle East to kill Bin Laden, which took so long to make US forces got to him first, or making an actual Batman book with a title alluding to Nazi terminology.
Now why would DC allow for Frank Miller to make this kinds of things with it's bread and butter character? You might think that the guys who okayed Sue Dibney's rape and Green Lantern having a book titled "Triumph of the Will" maybe aren't so good at drawing the lines between envelope pushing and going to far to get your book mentioned. But I have another theory.
This is a picture of Frank Miller, looking not-so-hot at age (58). Lots of rumors have circulated about why he looks so beat up, but what never came up is "he's super healthy."
Without speculating about a man's health, I think Frank Miller's been given a final diagonosis. He's got a date with death coming up real soon.
So you're DC, and one of your former star talents is dying and you know it. And he approaches you and tells you he wants to make a book in which Batman kills cops and makes Robin eat rats. Now, this is your main breadwinner character, and if anyone else where to approach with that idea, you'd turn him down. But are you really gonna send a good friend of the industry, a guy you might have read up as a young man, to die of sick and in poverty? No, you let him do whatever he wants.
It just so happens his Make-A-Wish wish is less of the happy puppy variety and more of the whatever this is variety.
But my SUB theory of this is that there is no empathy involved in the process. I mean, when Frank Miller dies, the hate will subside, and up will float a body of work that people will have a burst of interest in, if only to know it the troubled old man really was a madman or a genius or both.
So instead of playing it safe and telling him no, you double down and let Frank Miller make mincemeat out of popular characters, knowing that it's an INVESTMENT for a book that, if it doesn't sell NOW, will surely sell a lot once Frank Miller kicks the bucket. If it's the first thing it's heart warming, but if it's the second thing it's kind of diabolically genious.
But it's probably none of those. I mean, I'm not Frank Miller's doctor or anything. I just think both of those things make more sense than someone seeing the term "Batman: The Master Race" and not seeing any problem with it. But hey we'll see.
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