Frank Miller's Holy Terror

[strejdaking]

"We're constantly told all cultures are equal, and every belief system is as good as the next. And generally that America was to be known for its flaws rather than its virtues. When you think about what Americans accomplished, building these amazing cities, and all the good its done in the world, it's kind of disheartening to hear so much hatred of America, not just from abroad, but internally... For some reason, nobody seems to be talking about who we're up against, and the sixth century barbarism that they actually represent. These people saw people's heads off. They enslave women, they genitally mutilate their daughters, they do not behave by any cultural norms that are sensible to us. I'm speaking into a microphone that never could have been a product of their culture, and I'm living in a city where three thousand of my neighbors were killed by thieves of airplanes they never could have built." - Frank Miller

 

“My stuff always represents what I’m going through. 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....I don’t want to go back and start erasing books I did. I don’t want to wipe out chapters of my own biography. But I’m not capable of that book again.” - Frank Miller

   

























































 

























 

Comments

[cyberghostface]

[strejdaking]

Had this prepaired since morning and planned for a while, believe it or not. As you pointed out, people are often misremembering it and know it mroe abotu reputation rather than seeing for themselves.

[cyberghostface]

Also you’re not allowed to hotlink from piracy sites.

[strejdaking]

I may have misinterpreted the Rules and Guidelines. Anyway, fixed.

[tinygaylaura]

"I paid nothing for this and I still feel like it was overpriced"

The reaction of everyone who wasted valuable minutes of their lives pirating this garbage

[informationgeek]

Hey look, racist, Islamophobia garbage.

...nothing else clever to say. This crap is what it is: offensive crap.

[deh_tommy]

At least Frank Miller seems to have chilled out considerably since then.

[tinygaylaura]

Hey now it's not just islamophobia!

He took a brief break from the islamophobia to include some antisemitism and some weird fetishisation of asian people as well

Just on the off chance there was anyone not disgusted by this book

[leahandillyana]

Fuck this guy. Just fuck him.

[mrstatham]

All that ranting about how great America is without a trace of irony, years AFTER what he did with DKR and DKSA which pissed all over corporate America, the government, the notion of false flag operations and so on; Frank really drunk the whole pitcher of kool-aid for a bit, didn't he?

The only thing of real merit at all is the art; I always find Miller's style at least interesting, and he's clearly at his best doing black and white with spot colours as opposed to the LSD-fuelled DKSA (although I unironically enjoy that book). It's a shame what little merit there I can see is being drowned in a hundred gallons of religious/race hate, though.

[christianconnor]

To be honest, I found a lot of the art to be indistinct and confusing. Maybe it's because the scans are just samples of the whole.

[silverhammerman]

Maybe one of the most nakedly reprehensible comics to be published a major figure and company in North American comics.

I can appreciate that Miller was working through some things (that final page seems like the most honest and human thing in the book), and he's in some ways evolved since then, but Holy Terror is still just utterly repugnant. There's no getting around the fact that this book is deeply, pointedly hateful, and coming out in 2011 there's not even the half-hearted excuse of the immediate post-9/11 backlash. Honestly, in terms of Miller working through shit, he'd have probably been better off writing this garbage and then putting it in a box forever.

[mrstatham]

Definitely agree. It's utterly bizarre to me that you can look at DKSA and see what happens in Metropolis in that story as Miller reflecting poignantly on 9/11 without really a lot of anger, and for him to then later on make this. In terms of some sort of grieving process or the like you'd almost expect something ugly and hateful like this to appear first, and the vaguely more thoughtful scene from DKSA later.

[lissa_quon]

Yeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaa - like I get making art to process and working through shit. That's fine.

That doesn't mean you need to like - air it out in public.

[thanekos]

Having just one, mostly faded out face in the otherwise empty panels on that one page is an effective choice.

[repto]

And the increasingly larger number of grids on a page, all blank, is a really great visual device. Shame it's put in the service of a story such as this.

[starwolf_oakley]

Alan Moore said WATCHMEN was the result of a bad mood he was in back in 1985. Of course, WATCHMEN wasn't really about how angry Moore was at Margaret Thatcher's England.

A flipside to that. Mark Millar wanted to write a hero vs. hero crossover event. But instead CIVIL WAR turned Tony Stark into a fascist because George W. Bush. Anything about Steve Rogers starting a violent rebellion in Times Square seems to be forgotten.

[mrstatham]

Of course, WATCHMEN wasn't really about how angry Moore was at Margaret Thatcher's England.

That's because he was dealing with that in V for Vendetta; his introduction to the book basically says it's about the ugliness he was seeing at that time.

[velacron]

The rare case of a comic even worse than its reputation

Pro tip: Whenever you find yourself writing stuff like "curvy young infidel", just stop and take a moment to reflect on your life choices

[tinygaylaura]

I've been on the internet for a long time and in that time I've browsed a lot of fan sites and seen a lot of fan art. And as a result of this I have of course also seen a lot of really bad fanart

So when I say

That the shittiest of all the shitty fanart I have ever seen

Is still like a fucking Picasso compared to the art on this book

Please know I am speaking from experience and not simply indulging in hyperbole

[alicemacher]

Agreed 100%. Hyperbole is totally justified here, anyway, because understatement doesn't do justice to how "trees were cut down for this?!" bad the art is.

Though (and I suspect you'll agree) not even the art of a master in their prime could make the writing or the hateful ideology of Holy Terror bearable. Thank God this at least wasn't an actual Batman story, as Miller had originally conceived it. If ever a book could've led to DC's most profitable franchise in its entirety being put on hold until time healed the wounds to the publisher's reputation, it'd be this book. (How's that for hyperbole? :-D )

[strejdaking]

The friendly Israel spy guy who got kicked out of Mossad for torturing people too hard (I didn't cut his sub plot BTW, that's seriously his whole role in this) sure aged well.

[super_fly]

Wow, look at all those shitty caricatures. Normally you'd think they'd be there as talking heads with commentary and stuff. Hey Frank did you forget to add word balloons? No? Just gonna put them there for the hell of it? Ok then.

[tripodeca113]

This must have had an extensive re-writing process....

Does this mean the Fixer was aware of the imminent terrorist attack, and let it happen to justify his rampage? Or am I reading into it to much?

[strejdaking]

Nah, apparently this is all there is to it, he was "adventuring", met with him, decided he must become Batman to fight Al-Quaeda. I know it must look like I cut important shit, but this is seriously the whole plot.

[1wordreaction]

Racist

[t209]

I wonder what happened to Miller though.
I mean even his heyday had women not being prostitutes (Yindal, Carrie Kelly, and Martha Washington). Also Robocop 2.
Then that era had him becoming unhinged, like this and making All Star Batman and Robin having abusesive and sadistic Batman.
Granted he did came to his senses, but not sure if it was due to editors and “co writers”.

[tcampbell1000]

I'm fascinated by the few bright silverfish jumping out of this ocean of darkness. The mauve-lipsticked character is genuinely compelling, with the caveat that she does feel pretty much like she walked in from Sin City. The last page is actually fantastic, and a shockingly honest way to end things.

And the basic layouts set up visual storytelling as effectively as anything Miller's ever done. If he'd done breakdowns and given it to a steadier hand to finish, then it would've looked amazing. But maybe it's better for the sake of the world that it instead looks like the crapstorm that the rest of it is. A marriage of form and content.

As I said elsewhere, stories are made of people, and with a few exceptions like the above, there's no real people in this. It's just a long angry shout vaguely translated into figure drawings.