Dark Knight Returns is a classic, but also don’t sleep on things that he wrote and other people illustrated like Batman: Year One (Batman #404 to #407) or Daredevil: Born Again (Daredevil #227 to #231).
Interestingly enough, both illustrated by David Mazzucchelli.
I terms of pure Miller books, it’s hard to beat Dark Knight Returns, 300, Sin City, but also a lesser known single issue book he did in and around the Sin City books called “Tales To Offend!” In the style of the old EC comics from the 50s.
I don’t have the most exposure to Frank Miller, mostly his Batman stuff and some Sin City. I really dig his weird art style though. I especially like the pseudo-cyberpunk feel of DKR, and the cheesy slang. Alan Moore’s definitely right about it being at least somewhat fascist though. It feels all like “the kid’s aren’t alright” generation crap that I’ve grown to really hate in recent years.
It’s been a while since I’ve read it but I can’t remember any young person beside Carrie Kelly who’s a decent human being. They’re all portrayed as either brain-dead or psychotic. The story’s about an old man who decides that he never should have stopped beating the shit out of people, and is ubermensch enough to be able to resume doing it even though his hair’s white and he should be made an invalid very quickly. Don’t get me started on the whole horse-riding imagery thing.
At the same time, it was clearly critical of Reagan and the insanity of mutually assured destruction. Superman is also portrayed as a fascist and it’s treated negatively, so it does have that going for it.
It’s something that has things that rub me the wrong way as an adult, but I still enjoy it despite that.
If you really want to see peak fascist Miller, check out Holy Terror.
Frank took a bad turn after 9/11, a lot of us did, and clearly he needed to work through some things.
He pitched a Batman idea to D.C. - which they rejected - so he re-worked the art and self published as “Holy Terror”:
