Bob Calhoun

Bob Calhoun
Location
Pacifica, California, USA
Birthday
June 18
Bio
Bob Calhoun is a regular contributor to Film Salon and observer of offbeat media. His 2008 punk-wrestling memoir "Beer, Blood and Cornmeal: Seven Years of Incredibly Strange Wrestling" (ECW Press) has spent one entire week on the San Francisco Chronicle's Bay Area bestseller list.

Editor’s Pick
NOVEMBER 14, 2011 1:43AM

I always suspected that Frank Miller was a fascist.

Rate: 12 Flag
Et tu Frank Miller?
The author now has a bad feeling about these Frank Miller comics that he fished out of his closet. Notice the book on the right is titled "Give Me Liberty, for whatever that's worth.

Frank Miller, the comic book writer/artist behind a totally rad, ninja-filled run of "Daredevil: The Man Without Fear" that I was really into when I was 11 years old, has weighed in on the Occupy Wall Street movement in a recently posted blog.

"'Occupy' is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness," the creator and co-director of "Sin City" rants in 14-point type.

"This is no popular uprising," he continues, "this is garbage."

He goes on to call the occupiers "pond scum," before cautioning them about America's "war against a ruthless enemy," i.e. "al-Qaeda and Islamicism."

I think that Frank Miller believes that ninjas can resurrect Osama bin Laden just like they tried to do with Elektra back in the "Elektra Saga". In other words, Frank is getting high on his own supply.

Miller closes his little diatribe by telling the occupiers to "go back to your mommas’ basements and play with your Lords Of Warcraft (sic)."

Miller's politics shouldn't come as a shock. Anyone who's read "300" with its dehumanized Persians and love of authoritarian Sparta could've guessed at them. What I still find surprising though is that Miller uses the same stereotypes to deride the Occupy movement that are so often employed to dismiss his own fan base. But this may be why Miller finds a genuine youth movement so terrifying.

The last thing that Frank Miller wants is for those young people playing "Lords of Warcraft" in their mother's basements to become part of an actual democratic movement that has them getting jabbed in the ribs by cops in Berkeley or taking tear gas canisters to the head in Oakland (as in the case of Iraq War vet and Luke Skywalker lookalike Scott Olsen). Participating in life instead of living through digitally colored fantasies of samurai hookers, dark knights and 300 Spartans is bad for Miller's bottom line. 

Bob Calhoun is the author of  the bestselling punk-wrestling memoir, Beer, Blood and Cornmeal: Seven Years of Incredibly Strange Wrestling, which is available through Amazon.com. You can follow him on Twitter @bob_calhoun.  

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Why is fascism suddenly so acceptable in this country?
Miller is a talented comic book writer/artist. But he knows diddly about politics.
Samurai hookers....hah!
You may be interested in reading David Brin's brilliantly composed and reasearched refutation of all that is Miller: http://open.salon.com/blog/david_brin/2011/11/13/move_over_frank_miller_or_why_the_occupy_wall_street_kids
It's funny how Frank Miller was at one point very anti-Reagan and anti-right-wing, and his comics satirized establishment politics of the time. Now he's become this super patriotic, anti-everything not red, white, and blue. He earnestly believes that by simply naming the crimes of al-Qaeda that anything and everything is justifiable from bigotry to militarism to systemic financial corruption. Not to mention Bin Laden is dead, al-Qaeda is on its last leg, and democracy might actually be on the horizon in the Middle East because of the actual will of the people who live there. So he really has to put the "Those primitive Muslims are gonna take our freedoms" narrative to rest. It's so 2002.

@old new lefty I've been wondering that myself. And oddly enough, it's under a supposedly liberal president that fascism has gotten so acceptable.
Miller's comments are so ill-thought-out, I don't know who he actually thinks he's arguing with.

He has the same appeal that Ted Nugent did, and targets approximately the same age group.
Really odd. Could be sells were down for his comics.
@Mango Sherbert: There is a lot of hostility directed at "Lords of Warcraft" (?) and iPhones in his rant. Along with young people trying to change the country, these are all things that take a bite out of his sales.
@Samasiam, thanks for the link.
I think you've pretty well nailed it. "300" is a horribly fascistic, fetishistic screed. The SS would have loved it. And don't start me on the overpraised "Dark Knight" Batman travesty.
In comic form:

http://i1137.photobucket.com/albums/n515/adamo22001/frank_for_vendetta.jpg
Is this supposed to be news to anyone who has ever read anything he has ever written?
1. Propaganda in the pictures to insure that Conservatives understand it.
2. A picture is worth a thousand words especially when you have trouble reading.
3. Sparta like you've never seen it before ever! Free showing at the B&D Ball...chains and whips supplied. Please supply your own leathers.
@norwayorthehighway: No it shouldn't be a surprise, but it's so nice for Frank to give us a glaring reminder that he is the G. Gordon Liddy of comic books, except I don't see Miller holding his hand over any candles.

Also, while I'm here; You know what makes Ted Nugent way cooler than Frank Miller? The fucking tone man! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYOV8uu17t0
@ old new lefty:

What do you mean, "suddenly"?
i have stood on the corners of the streets of U.S.A [sic]
who
what
where
why
when
with fear
in my jug
Still, he is allowed to have an opinion, no?

Plus, who cares?
You can find evidence of his mindset even in the two Dark Night stories that made him famous and gave the movie its attitude. I've been calling Miller a Nietzshean for years. Batman imposes a militaristic regime on Gotham, the excuse being that really bad people have taken over. Batman can bounce back in a day from broken ribs and other broken bones, even from a heart attack. The so-called "warrior way" is glorified. (My bet is Miller has never known combat or even hand to hand fighting.) The superior individual, as in Rand, controls destiny.

I like comix, but Miller is full of crap.
@D Art: Yes, Miller is still allowed to have an opinion, but we're still allowed to have an opinion on his opinion. It's called the market place of ideas.

@hontonoshijin: a well respected comic book artist that I don't feel right in naming once told me that Frank Miller comes from a small town in Vermont. "The first time he came to New York to show his portfolio to Marvel, he got mugged coming off the bus," the artist recalled. "He's been writing vigilante comics ever since."
He called them "pond scum," really? Isn't that an eighties expression? The man still has his head up Reagan's patootie (that's a forties expression).

Rated
Frank Miller is an avid fan of Ayn Rand. He has praised her books on a number of occasions (if you own the collected Give Me Liberty volume, read p. 385).
Urban_Guerrilla: Well I did just dig those things out of my closet for my pretty picture. I couldn't get to the box that had his 70s/80s Daredevils (some of them in crappy condition because they're the ones I bought off the rack at Quick Stop when I was in the 5th grade) without major excavation. I couldn't find my trade paperback of "Dark Knight" and who knows where my set of Ronins is. Meanwhile, all this talk of "The Hunger Games" really has me wanting to read Jack Kirby's New Gods blowoff, "The Hunger Dogs," again for some reason.
This guy has the nerve to talk about war to the protesters...

I sent him a tweet noting the hole in his biography regarding military service. Another bigmouth, hypocritical chickenhawk.
I say we have a televised debate between Frank Miller and Dave Sim. Or Frank Miller, Dave Sim and Alan Moore.
me thinks miller the one lookin' for big daddy. fascism is the redoubt of the emasculated.