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"Whatever your feelings about Frank Miller are, his influence over comics cannot be denied. Only Alan Moore&amp;#039;s work in the &amp;#039;80s can be compared in terms of the effect it would have on superheroes - in comics, films and the public eye - over the intervening decades.  With the release of Sin City: A Dame to Kill For - his second collaboration with Robert Rodriguez adapting his noir comic of the same name - Miller is back in the public eye, talking about his love of Superman and Batman and generally upsetting everyone. To mark the occasion, we look back at the highs and lows of Frank Miller&amp;#039;s career. The Highs Batman: The Dark Knight Returns If there is one character with which Miller is best identified, it has to be Batman. 1986&amp;#039;s The Dark Knight Returns - which he wrote and drew - is frequently cited as one of the best tales in Batman&amp;#039;s 75-year history, and sometimes as one of the best comics of all time.  The Silver Age of comics and Adam West&amp;#039;s Batman television series had conspired to transform the Caped Crusader into a campy joke. This vision of an elderly, retired Bruce Wayne getting back into the saddle showed that Batman could be serious and gritty again. Its influence can be felt - for better or worse - throughout Batman comics, films and the industry itself to this day. Daredevil Another character to flourish under the Miller treatment was Marvel&amp;#039;s Daredevil. The comic&amp;#039;s popularity in the &amp;#039;80s was waning until Miller came onboard, jettisoning much of existing continuity and transforming it into Marvel&amp;#039;s premiere noir book.  Miller&amp;#039;s intermittent runs on the book (including the seminal Born Again and several Elektra spinoffs) teamed him with some stellar artists, including David Mazzucchelli and Bill Sienkiewicz. The tone and concepts introduced by Miller were maintained for decades, and have only begun to be altered significantly during Mark Waid&amp;#039;s recent acclaimed run. Batman: Year One Miller&amp;#039;s transformation of Batman did not end with The Dark Knight Returns. In 1987, he teamed with sometime-Daredevil collaborator David Mazzucchelli on what remains the quintessential Batman origin story.  Year One focused on Bruce Wayne&amp;#039;s earliest days as Batman, cementing the relationship between the hero and James Gordon. Mazzucchelli&amp;#039;s moody artwork brought Gotham City alive as a den of corruption and danger. Again, the extent of its influence is impossible to gauge. Sin City Outside of superhero comics, there is nothing Miller is better known for than Sin City. Published by Dark Horse Comics, Miller&amp;#039;s art style is a perfect fit for this modern noir tale, set in a city bursting at the seams with gangsters, hired killers, crooked cops and suspect dames.  Miller took the property to new heights with Robert Rodriguez. The pair directed the 2005 film - an innovative work which brought the comic&amp;#039;s unique sensibility to the big screen - and the newly released sequel. Martha Washington Miller has been criticised for his portrayal of women across his career (more on that later), but there are some notable exceptions. One of those is The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty First Century, on which he collaborated with Watchmen legend Dave Gibbons.  The dark and satirical series centred around an African-American woman, who escaped from a Chicago housing project to become an influential freedom fighter in the second American Civil War. Spanning almost two decades, this is one of Miller&amp;#039;s most atypical works. The Lows Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again Miller&amp;#039;s 2001 follow-up to The Dark Knight Returns was heavily anticipated, and proved to be just as heavy a disappointment, especially in comparison to the acclaim of its predecessor.  The Dark Knight Strikes Again was criticised from all angles for its art, its storytelling, its psychotic Batman and its mean-spiritedness. It is considered to mark the absolute end of Miller&amp;#039;s golden age. Holy Terror The prize for most despised project of Miller&amp;#039;s career almost certainly belongs to Holy Terror. Originally conceived as a story about Batman fighting al-Qaeda, when DC got cold feet it became a story about a superhero you have never heard of fighting al-Qaeda.  Beyond the ongoing accusations that the quality of his artwork continues to deteriorate, 2011&amp;#039;s Holy Terror was dismissed as a violent and stupid response to the 9/11 attacks - a racist, angry and overly simplistic screed that should have been abandoned in the intervening decade. The women of Frank Miller Miller&amp;#039;s portrayal of women has been problematic throughout his career. Outside of some notable exceptions (Martha Washington and The Dark Knight Returns&amp;#039; Carrie Kelley), even his best works have engaged in some of the worst kind of stereotyping. Prostitutes and man-hating lesbians are a staple of his work, with Batman: Year One re-imagining Catwoman as a hooker and Karen Page returning to Daredevil as a porn star and drug addict in order to make them more &amp;#039;compelling&amp;#039;. Sadly, Miller&amp;#039;s controversial views show no sign of altering. In a recent Playboy interview, he spoke about a &amp;quot;crisis of masculinity in modern times&amp;quot;.  &amp;quot;I believe it&amp;#039;s a biological function of men, because we tend to be larger than women, to be protective of them,&amp;quot; he continued. &amp;quot;If I were to try to zero in, comic-book-like, on when masculinity went awry, I&amp;#039;d say it was when Rod Stewart sang, &amp;#039;You are my lover, you&amp;#039;re my best friend&amp;#039;, rather than allowing there to be two people in his life who served two very important functions.&amp;quot; The Spirit Riding high after the success of 2005&amp;#039;s Sin City film, Miller&amp;#039;s next Hollywood project was an adaptation of comics legend Will Eisner&amp;#039;s The Spirit. The 2008 movie proved to be a critical and commercial flop.  Critics accused the Miller-written and directed movie of attempting and failing to re-capture the magic of Sin City, delivering instead a stylised but muddled and poorly acted experience. Long-time fans were disappointed by the huge gap between the film and its source material. The Spirit was honoured with a place on Empire&amp;#039;s Top 50 Worst Movies Of All Time list. Frank Miller vs Occupy Miller&amp;#039;s work has been a popular in-road into comics, and many were upset by his vicious attack on the Occupy movement. He called the protestors &amp;quot;nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness&amp;quot;.   Fellow legend Alan Moore - who has written and even recorded a single for Occupy - was among many of those enraged by Miller&amp;#039;s comments. He called the protests &amp;quot;a completely justified howl of moral outrage... handled in a very intelligent, nonviolent way, which is probably another reason why Frank Miller would be less than pleased with it&amp;quot;. &amp;quot;If it had been a bunch of young, sociopathic vigilantes with Batman makeup on their faces, [Miller would] be more in favour of it,&amp;quot; he added. Bonus - Gucci Guilty We&amp;#039;re not sure what to make of this Frank Miller-shot Gucci perfume ad starring Evan Rachel Wood and Chris Evans. If it is meant to be satirical, it is genius. If it was conceived as a more serious project, consider us entertained but baffled.      Is Frank Miller the most divisive man in comics? Leave your thoughts on his work in the comments section below! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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