Artist profile FRANK MILLER

Frank Miller is known throughout the comics industry as a key figure and major influence on the stories and art produced with his runs on both Marvel and DC. He changed the tone of how comic book stories were told with the very dark and gritty realism he injected into already known characters and properties.

Before producing anything of note, Miller was the illustrator for various small titles such as Unknown Soldier and Weird Tales. He was recognized as a great storyteller and artist during his run on Daredevil and created the character Elektra. The character's popularity was down and sales of the comic we're poor at the time of his run on the character. Making the character more dark and grim was a necessary change to the tone as it attracted a more mature audience and allowed for better stories.

 His first creator-owned title was DC Comics' six-issue miniseries Ronin (1983–1984). In 1985, DC Comics named Miller as one of the honourees in the company's 50th-anniversary publication, “Fifty Who Made DC Great”. He also gave the same treatment to Batman in his comic series, Year One and The Dark Knight Returns in the late 1980s. The former of the two is seen as one of the greatest graphic novels of all time, and has influenced the comic-book industry by heralding a new wave of darker characters.  In 1991, Miller started work on his first Sin City story. It proved to be another success, and the story was released in a trade paperback. This first Sin City story was rereleased in 1995 called, The Hard Goodbye. Sin City proved to be Miller's main project for much of the remainder of the decade, as Miller told more Sin City stories within this noir world of his creation, in the process helping to revitalize the crime comics genre. Sin City proved artistically auspicious for Miller and again brought his work to a wider audience without comics. Miller lived in Los Angeles, California in the 1990s, which influenced Sin City.

 He has been considered controversial in the stories he has written and general views of him are seen as sexist due to his portrayal of female characters. I have always been very fond of his work and take inspiration from his thin lined, sketchy style. His work is very recognisable due to the subtle dark abnormalities in every character and scene. The detail of his drawings is often what draws you to them, all the ugliness of a scene is transformed into something beautiful and brutal at the same time.

a very good example of his style, almost abstract in its simplicity.