Funnybook Babylon

This past weekend David Brothers brought up Frank Miller’s big 1994 speech from a Diamond Retailers seminar that got reprinted in the back of Sin City: The Big Fat Kill #5. He wrote something about it too. It’s a powerful speech, and dismaying at how much of the speech could easily be cross-applied to the industry eighteen years later with maybe 5% of the text adjusted. While I still don’t understand Miller’s hardline stance against anything resembling ratings or cover advisories, his message about creative freedom and creators’ rights still ring true. Which makes it all the more frustrating that he pushes what amounts to the Fairy Tale version of the comic book industry in 1954: He even does so in an attempt to “correct” history, saying:

This is how screwy our sense of our own history is. Most people in comics don’t realize that the Senate vindicated us. After due consideration, the United States Senate decided comics books were not a cause of juvenile delinquency. We were vindicated. (more…)