Frank Miller goes to an Italian specialty store convention, and says he's glad there's less film adaptations lately

Miller continues his current PR tour abroad, and IGN tells about their meeting with him at an Italian event, where he announced he's producing a new sci-fi comic, a genre I myself can't say I've known him for putting a big emphasis on:

Sin City: Blood & Dust is just one of several projects Miller is currently developing. He was asked if there were any particular books in the works he was especially excited to show to readers. Miller singled out Invasive Species, a new Dark Horse Comcis project that was announced at SDCC 2026 this past summer.

Invasive Species is a sci-fi comic that pairs Miller with artist Ryan Benjamin and colorist Alex Sinclair. Details about the book's plot were scarce before now, but Miller shed more light on it during the panel, revealing it to be a microscopic invasion story inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Invasive Species is what I'm particularly charged up about," Miller said. "It's a project I conceived during the height of the COVID pandemic where everyone was afraid to sneeze within a hundred yards of anybody else because everybody was so afraid and everyone was wearing masks. I think people were showering their masks. It was so paranoid. But what it reminded me of was those wonderful 1950s alien movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Invaders From Mars and so on. They were all fear of a Russian invasion."

Miller continued, "But I thought we had biological warfare talk everywhere every which way now we've got viruses that we're all afraid of and as guys all locked inside not talking to each other. And I thought what perfect metaphor for our times. And so I made up a story where we were being invaded not by a bunch of spaceships, but by a virus, by little aliens that got inside, came in our ears."

I do wonder if he's implying Russia's communists weren't a problem? I don't know. What I do know is that even "little aliens" can be conceived traveling in spaceships too, if you use your imagination. So why make it sound like that's not the case?

One of the more interesting developments in the comic book world this year came when Miller was among numerous artists tapped to draw a cover for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #300. Miller is famously credited as a huge source of inspiration behind Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's original TMNT comics, so it was a fun case of life imitating art.

We asked Miller for his thoughts on finally contributing to the TMNT franchise in an official capacity. He revealed that IDW didn't exactly have to twist his arm to get him on board.

"There's no agenda to all this stuff," Miller said. "They were kids when they were doing it in their clunky black-and-white comic. No one dreamed they would turn out to have this amazing property, which I think one of the main things they had was one of the best titles in history. So when they asked, I said, 'Sure.' I mean, they were big fans of mine and I thought that this will be fun. And then I sat down and said, 'What do I do with these guys?' I said, 'Well, look, stack them up.' I did it and they were real happy."

Seriously? This was the same company that enabled a bizarre insult to a female character, and he's saying there's no agendas? Even if Ninja Turtles wasn't the series now plagued with a problem, there've still been various others, and Chris Ryall as an editor did a poor job on his part. Sugarcoating stuff like this doesn't help matters. Miller was even asked whether he'd want to try working as a filmmaker again, after the botch he made of adapting Will Eisner's Spirit, and they even had the gall to downplay the film's badness:

The Spirit wasn't exactly well-received, critically or commercially, but it certainly brought a unique visual flourish to the property. We asked Miller if he had any desire to return behind the camera and direct another film at some point.

"Sure. Yeah. I mean, come on," Miller said. "It's an amazing field. It's an amazing form and it's like nothing else in the world."

All Miller's adaptation did was make another mockery of Eisner's works, and it owed more to the former's visions than the latter's.

SciFi Now also brought up his collaborations with artist Peach Momoko, and why he decided to take up the partnership:

For Miller, the collaboration offered the chance to explore an aspect of Japanese storytelling he said he had never really tackled before: horror.

“What I really got to explore more was something I’d really never explored,” Miller explained. “I’d seen some Japanese anime and Japanese manga that included horror stories, and they have a completely different concept of what horror is.”

Miller pointed to the work of Japanese printmaker Tsukioka Yoshitoshi while discussing the traditions behind Japanese supernatural stories, before explaining how working with Momoko allowed him to see those ideas interpreted through her distinctive style.

“There’s a very female sense and vitality to the supernatural in Japanese ghost stories,” he said. “And so to work with Peach, I got to throw her stories that involved the supernatural, and then to see what she conjured.

“Some of it was a lot scarier than anything I would imagine.”

Coming from the creator of Sin City, Ronin and The Dark Knight Returns, that’s quite an endorsement.

I thought he already came close to working in the horror genre, based on what Sin City's like. In any event, all he's doing is confirming he's not interested in taking up projects and assignments with a brighter angle, and that's insulting to the intellect. Certainly lethargic. All that aside, his claim there's a female sense to ghost tales or horror thrillers from Japan is absurd, because there's some that're just plain loathsome too, and some I don't find any more appealing than Miller's work.

Miller was also interviewed by Variety at the event, and he told them he's "relieved" there's less comics movies now:

Would you agree that there has been a slight dip in the comic book to movie pipeline?

I would hope so. Yeah, really. It had really gotten so out of control that comics had started losing much of their own identity. I have been arguing vehemently for comics to start asserting their own purpose again and asserting their own identity as a literary form.

Do you think there were too many comic book artists and writers aiming for movie and TV deals?

Oh, without question. Just because the appeal of not just the money, but the fame, respect and glory of working in the most powerful medium in history is undeniable, but I think that it was a little too heady a wine, in that comics were really in danger of losing their souls in the process.

It very much seemed to be superhero movies in particular.

Oh, that was all it was. It was partly because the technology caught up with us. So the one thing comics could do that nobody else could do was the ridiculous pyrotechnics and everything, right? But if you think of it, the die was cast back in the 1970s with the movie slogan “You’ll believe a man can fly” where they actually made Superman’s flight convincing, and now they can do, you know, virtually anything that can be imagined.

Some could argue the tug of Tinseltown got the better of Miller too. But technology hasn't exactly caught up, or it's not like CGI results in the most spectacular adventures either. Amazing he feels this way, because yes, there've arguably been too many comics movies or emphasis on the same, and too many in live action, making a mockery of what potential animation could do for the pyrotechnics he speaks of. But what he won't get into, alas, is how artistic quality plummeted over the past several years, and there was an increasing number of films laced with leftist metaphors. Some may have been subtle, but they were there, one more reason why they won't age well. And then, wouldn't you know it, allusions to Miller's politics come up:

As well as the heroes, you create astonishing, extreme worlds. But it seems that we live in a world which is almost impossible to exaggerate.

I often have remarked that doing the next “Martha Washington” would be difficult because the first one happened. And my parody of Ronald Reagan is now in the White House, right? But there’s always somewhere else to go. Now you would parody what my country has turned into, and what the world has turned into, it’s fascinating dark material, indeed.

It’s almost like Dante looking at hell and going, “I see some verses here.”

There’s no shortage of inspiration now. This is indeed a supercharged time, because in the course of the 20th century, there were two gigantic realignments, through the two world wars, particularly World War II, which was a gigantic, unifying event. World War II was the advent of American hegemony, but now we’re at the other side of the American hegemony. America has become much like Rome: spread so far and so rich and powerful that it has lost its center. It is no longer Thomas Jefferson’s country, for instance. It is no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. It’s become quite a bloated thing, and of course this is exactly when we start waving the flag more than ever, right?

When I see the MAGA signs I ask whether by saying “again,” you are saying that it’s not great. There are so many contradictions within all of that, but this is a global situation. The old order is, as Bob Dylan put it, rapidly aging, and so everywhere you look, there’s an empire crumbling. Look at the thrashing old Soviet Union, right? And what it’s dissolving into, when a tiny brave country is bringing it to its knees. China has become a paranoid concentration camp. So we’re definitely seeing a change in the matrix. Speaking of the Chinese, this does bring to mind the old curse: May you live in interesting times. We live in interesting times, don’t we?

Does he pay any attention to how bad New York and California have become as a result of Orwellian policies? Some residents have been leaving those areas in past years as a result. If that's what MAGA supporters are talking about, Miller sure isn't listening. I'm surprised he's willing to admit though, that China's a bad lot today based on their communist rulership, which came about at least partly because of western politicians refusing to oppose them any more than Russia's. Yet something tells me that, despite what he says, Miller's not particularly interested in campaigning for an end to communism/socialism/marxism as a form of rulership. And then, if we were to point to the positive, does Miller approve of Trump's efforts to improve the industry and economy? I guess he just can't bring himself to find anything good about what the Trump administration does now. Towards the interview's end, he says:

What next?

Well, I’m working with the great Italian artist Milo Manara, who is renowned for his erotic and often funny comic book work. He asked me on stage once if I would write a “Sin City” story for him. He’s the only artist I could ever imagine doing one with, because I’ve always drawn them all myself. But this is the one exception I’ll make because … I told him on stage, being glib: Yes, I’ll do it but he’d have to learn how to draw women.

But how, exactly? I know Manara drew a rather absurd take on Spider-Woman's rear end over a decade ago, but if Miller expects Manara to "overcorrect", and make women less attractive, that'll be hugely disappointing, to say nothing of prolonging a disturbing trend of wokeness in the past decade. In any case, Sin City is not something I want to waste time and money on, and Miller can only seem to drone on and on with little of value in his recent interviews. Beyond his Daredevil/Batman work, he's had little else to care about, and again, his artwork is very mediocre today, proving he's way past his prime in that field too.