Look, we love Frank Miller around here (which really goes without saying, since our site design was heavily inspired by his Sin CIty artwork). The dude is damn brilliant as a comics writer/artist, but that doesn’t mean he should be given free reign in Hollywood. After all, remember the muddled mess of The Spirit? Still, as recently noted by Mr. Atoz — Hollywood has yet to lose faith in Miller’s previous gold-spinning abilities, so they’re pretty much (albeit unofficially) buying into the concept of a 300 prequel. Miller is currently working on Xerxes (to be published as a 5-issue mini series next year), and director Zack Snyder is said to be impressed with the completed pages thus far. LA Times got the preliminary artwork as well as Miller’s vision for the prequel:
“The story will be the same heft as ’300′ but it cover a much, much greater span of time — it’s 10 years, not three days,” Miller said. “This is a more complex story. The story is so much larger. The Spartans in ’300′ were being enclosed by the page as the world got smaller. This story has truly vast subjects. The Athenian naval fleet, for instance, is a massive artistic undertaking and it dwarfed by the Persian fleet, which is also shown in this story. The story has elements of espionage, too, and it’s a sweeping tale with gods and warriors.”
. . . .
“The time frame begins 10 years before ’300′ and the story starts with the Battle of Marathon, which was killer to draw, by the way, even if it was a lot of work,” Miller said. “The lead character is Themistocles, who became warlord of Greece and built their navy. The story is very different than ’300′ in that it involves Xerxes search for godhood. The existence of gods are presupposed in this story and the idea is that he well on his way to godhood by the end of the story.”
Based upon Miller’s description, this story’s scope sounds far too broad (for a 5-part mini-series) to show kindness towards his Miller’s usual narrative method. Obviously, Miller can do amazing things with a very limited time frame and urgency of action, which was part of what allowed him to make the characters of 300 so compelling. Now, with Xerxes, I have a bad feeling that Miller’s focus will suffer immensely with a nearly unlimited set of scenarios from which to choose, which was Miller’s exact weakness with his adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit. Basically, it’s the whole forest-for-the-trees cliché all over again. Besides, I’m really not interested in Xerxes’ rise to “godhood” — the character is a self-righteous prick and just not worth it. Next?
