M is for Miller, Frank
b: 1957, Olney, Maryland
1978: DAREDEVIL; 1986: BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS; 1991: SIN CITY

In most, if not all creative fields, there's a certain level of fame or notoriety beyond which the creative types can essentially do whatever they like. Once they make their ET, their ACHTUNG BABY, their X FILES, the world's their oyster and all the obstacles they had found so intractable before suddenly disappear (whether the person in question does a Spielberg or a Carter after this point is, of course, up to them).

Frank Miller reached this point pretty early in his career. After working on titles such as SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN and MARVEL TEAM-UP, Miller was moved onto DAREDEVIL, beginning with issue #158. Drawing Roger McKenzie's story of DD and the Black Widow fighting the Ani-Men was hardly the most auspicious of debuts for what has to be one of the best-regarded creator/character pairings in comics history, but within ten issues Miller was both writing and pencilling the book, introducing characters like Elektra, and turning Daredevil into the darkly tinged character so familiar to comics readers today.

Miller's DAREDEVIL run was wildly successful, and led to him being offered the opportunity to take on the world's greatest detective for DC. DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, of course, was one of the most influential comics of the last thirty years, paired with its contemporary work, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' WATCHMEN. Both books took a much more questioning look at the superhero milieu than had been customary, and once the critical and sales reception of DKR had been weighed up, Miller was officially a comics superstar.

Perhaps surprisingly, Miller chose to retreat from the kinds of works that had made his name, and headed for more personal pastures. His darkly comedic dystopian tale GIVE ME LIBERTY (complete with lush art by Gibbons); his recounting of the Battle of Thermopylae and the 300 doomed Spartans who died there; and his hard-as-nails noir pastiche SIN CITY were just some of Miller's creations during this period, and they were all eagerly received. Of course, when you can do anything, the unfortunate corollary is that you can also get away with anything. Miller's much-trumpeted 2002 return to Batman, THE DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN, was either Miller fully unleashing his love of the over-the-top nature of superhero comics - Batman in IMAX - or it was a hideous mess that mocked those who had put DKR on its pedestal. Those extending him the benefit of the doubt in that instance may struggle more with his current series, ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN, THE BOY WONDER, which is disappointing in its seeming desire to turn Batman into Marv, but with even more misogyny.

Miller can do anything he wants to. Once, that was comforting. With his recent track record, though, that's a far less assured proposition than it once was.

M is for Moebius
b: 1938; Paris, France
1962: BLUEBERRY; 1975: METAL HURLANT

It's a shame that Brian Bolland titled his recent collection BOLLAND STRIPS. It would have been so much more punningly satisfying if French legend Jean Giraud had been able to put out a collection entitled MOEBIUS STRIPS...

Moebius is the pen name employed by Giraud, a man who, for comparison's sake, is about as important to European comics as Jack Kirby was to US comics. He began his career with a strip called 'Frank et Jeremie' for the magazine FAR WEST when he was 18 years old, but within five years was working on BLUEBERRY, whose titular character (real name Michael Donovan) was a lieutenant in the US Cavalry in the old West. Spinning out of a story called 'Fort Navajo', BLUEBERRY told Donovan's story as he was framed for murder and became a protector of Native Americans. BLUEBERRY is a strip that manages to mix philosophical issues (particularly as related to the use of violence) with traditional Western action.

Giraud's style on this series has been much imitated, most recently in the US by JH Williams III, who illustrated the Miracle Mesa section of SEVEN SOLDIERS #0 in a very similar fashion, with everything from composition to linework echoing Giraud.

The Moebius pseudonym itself was coined in 1963, and in 1975 it was revived for METAL HURLANT (the European magazine that Giraud co-founded, which became HEAVY METAL in the US). His work on such strips as THE INCAL and AIRTIGHT GARAGE were first seen here, and remain well-respected works today.

It's odd to think, but most US comics fans will have seen Giraud's work in one of two places - the 1988 SILVER SURFER series, which he drew from Stan Lee's script, or his film work. Giraud has been the designer on a number of Hollywood movies, including such visual spectacles as THE FIFTH ELEMENT and TRON. He even designed the Imperial Probe Droid as seen in the Hoth sequence of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

All this, of course, is secondary to his work on European comics - there aren't many people who can put out high-quality works for a period of forty or more years. The fact that he's not better appreciated in the Anglophone comics world is a crying shame.

M is for Morrison, Grant
b: 1960, Glasgow, Scotland
1988: ANIMAL MAN; 1994: THE INVISIBLES; 2005: SEVEN SOLDIERS

'Certifiable genius' is a phrase that gets bandied about quite a lot by people who don't really stop to think too hard about what they're saying. Most of the time they just mean 'someone who's produced/said/invented/discovered/written something which is very good and appreciated by many'. Grant Morrison, on the other hand, is one of the few people (certainly one of the few in comics) who could be said to be a) a genius and b) certifiable.

Morrison was born in the West of Scotland in the mid part of the 20th century, and by the time he was of an age to write comics, there weren't many games in town. His first high-profile gig was as the writer of ZOIDS for Marvel UK, and the first seeds of his usual themes can be seen therein - the Zoids, being big toys that fight each other, weren't just robotic dinosaurs and so on. They were quite definitely toys, and they were being 'played' with by fifth-dimensional beings on a distinctly 'meta' level.

This juxtaposition of the surface of reality and the external manipulators that determine its path is something that has emerged time and time again in Morrison's work, from the encounter between Buddy and Morrison himself in the final stages of his ANIMAL MAN run, to the Seven Unknown Men who exist outside the reality of the narrative in SEVEN SOLDIERS. Morrison said in 1998 that he believed that mankind was shortly to have its first contact with a fictional reality, he himself having intended to trade places with THE INVISIBLES' King Mob. More recently, he announced his intention to coax the DC universe into a state of sentience. There are a few different ways to interpret remarks such as these. One is that he's right, and reality is something that can be sliced open and stepped through. Another is that his brain moves too fast for physics to keep up, and he's ahead of his time. The third is that, to quote Warren Ellis, "to be frank, Grant is on drugs".

Far from being solely "that weird Vertigo guy", Morrison has shown twice now that he understands superhero comics exceptionally well. He produced a run on JLA that contains some of the best work ever done with the title, peaking with the superlative ROCK OF AGES, and his three-year stint on X-MEN had more fresh ideas per page than Bob Harrass or Mark Powers could editorially mandate in a month of Sundays, while still remaining true to the core theme of heroes protecting a world that hates and fears them.

His most recent works, all for DC, have included the curate's egg SEAGUY, the comparatively underwhelming VIMANARAMA, and the heart-shredding WE3. Of course, the ambition of these three pale when compared to SEVEN SOLDIERS, a thirty-issue interweaving story spread across seven mini-series and two bookends. These have been a mixed bag, it's true, but the intent can't be faulted; it's refreshing to see someone trying something genuinely challenging with superheroes for the first time in a while.

Like Miller, Morrison has also reached the point where he can do whatever he wants. Whatever it turns out to be next, and no matter where you come down on the side of 'genius' or 'certifiable', it's undeniably going to be interesting.

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