This is how Frank Miller has operated for years, and it’s worked out well for him.
From working on X-Men, before reinventing the characters of Daredevil and Batman into the forces that we know today and then giving us genius like Sin City and 300, Miller is a complicated yet undisputed legend. Alongside Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison, Miller rejuvenated comics in the 1980’s by demonstrating how the medium could be just as powerful as literature or movies. For that, we owe him our eternal debt.
So the idea of a self-penned memoir should be quite the revelation. Sadly it isn’t but there are more plus points than negative points.
What’s refreshing is that Miller still retains the enthusiasm of a zealot and this reflected on every page. So when he writes about what inspired certain works (such as Sin City), he unashamedly reveals his fandom:
For inspiration, I had decades of film noir, from the classy to the trashy. Then there were the underground comics. Newer, more experimental works by artists and writers like Chester Brown, Daniel Clowes, Dave Sim, and Jeff Smith. There was a purity about their work that I admired. Being this was more than enough; it didn’t need to aspire to anything else. You could feel it in the artwork: the playful freedom with, and mastery of, the craft. At the same time, it challenged readers by way of themes and subject matter. They celebrated the comic art form as a worthwhile medium unto itself, but also made sure no one could banish it to the children’s section.
Likewise, when he discusses the avatar that would take the reader into Sin City, Miller is no less adroit in his ardency:
I wanted drama. Violence. Passion. Madness. I wanted a feral atmosphere. I wanted to take something very old and transform it into something scary and primal. Enter Marv. An imposing brute with an axe to grind and revenge on his mind, a man born out of his time, unafraid to kill, Marv was the anti-hero I needed — an alienated tough guy from the margins who had to sort it out for himself.
Marv’s town, the centre of his struggles, became Basin City, a desert oasis for low-lifes, villains, and rotten cops. Like Los Angeles, Basin City is hot and dry, full of palm trees and sun-baked streets; and surrounded by mountains, desert plains, farmlands, and citrus groves.
I decided that three traits would define the characters of Basin City: their jobs, their guilty secrets, and their cars. It’s just a fact that you can’t draw a place like Los Angeles without drawing beautiful women and cars. This presented drawing challenges I was eager to tackle. I’d been drawing women in every comic I’d made. Now I’d be drawing plenty more femme fatales, sure. They’d be prostitutes, sure. Haute couture prostitutes who were armed to the teeth and in total command of their territory. Nothing sad or sleazy. They’d be Valkyries.
Of course, anyone familiar with Sin City will get what he’s discussing straight away and those who are unfamiliar with it should be checking it out now. Such is the power of not only Miller’s creation but also his enthusiasm for writing about it.
Barely running to 200 pages, it’s a little bit of a disappointment for long term fans as there are a few works that are barely looked at or (in the case of the controversial Holy Terror) given the barest examination, thus missing the chance to grapple with or address some of the criticisms that have been levelled at the works.
However, as a primer for someone dipping their toes into Miller’s work or even looking for some inspiration for their field of creativity, Push the Wall will inspire.
Frank Miller, 2026, Push the Wall: My Life, Writing, Drawing and the Art of Storytelling, Canongate Books. ISBN-13: 978-1837262144
⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.
