Frank Miller says Michael Keaton is officially the best Batman

Legendary comic creator and film director Frank Miller, 64 – known for The Dark Knight Returns comic book miniseries as well as Daredevil and Sin City – on being ‘a genius’ and which actor he considers the greatest Batman.

You’re the subject of a new documentary Frank Miller: American Genius. Do you like being called a ‘genius’?

I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t! I’ll take compliments wherever I can get them. I’m not known as particularly shy or modest.

You’ve just attended the esteemed Lucca Comics and Games festival — did you go in cosplay?

Not this time. I’ve been to a lot of comic cons and Lucca is one of my very favourites because it’s properly international. This is the first place I met many of the most extraordinary cartoonists of Europe: Hugo Pratt and Enki Bilal and Moebius.

But I’ve been a comic book fan myself since I was five, when I started drawing my first comic books. The very first time I dressed up it was as a character called The Phantom Stranger. He just had a big hat and a long coat. It’s how to do a costume without putting a lot of work into it.

Hats are clearly your thing. What are you sporting today?

This is a classic fedora, the hat that you’ll recognise from classic film noir. I wear these because I am a complete aficionado of old black-and-white crime movies.

Your 1986 series, The Dark Knight Returns, is considered a great work of comic art and is cited as a major influence on both the Dark Knight trilogy and Batman V Superman. Were you directly involved with these movies?

Let’s say, it’s a complex relationship. I was not hands-on at all making those movies.

I will say that when I was approached to work on Batman by the editor-in-chief at DC Comics, it was the opportunity of a lifetime. I was only a few weeks away from turning the ripe old age of 30 and I was dreading it.

And I thought I could never be as old as Batman! So I made Batman the impossibly old age of 50. I thought 50 meant you’d be arthritic and that your knees would always ache. So much of what I did in Dark Knight was about this cranky old man in a batsuit.

Who is your favourite on-screen Batman?

That is reeeeaaallly tough. It goes down to two. As a child I absolutely adored the Adam West version on TV.

And this is going to get me in trouble but I was thoroughly impressed with Michael Keaton’s version. I thoroughly enjoyed it, particularly his version of Bruce Wayne. He brought more emotional intensity to that part than anybody else.

Which is the finest comic book-to-screen adaptation?

I won’t include mine, just out of good form! The one I have most affection for is the Richard Donner Superman because that was very fresh. Nothing had been done like it before.

And Donner enforced such a near religious feel to it. He was playing it straight and seriously, it was never winking at itself. It did the hard work of drawing you into the fantasy and keeping you there.

Will you direct another Sin City movie?

Only if I can! Absolutely. It was such a pleasure and, thanks to Robert Rodriguez, it was made technologically possible.

Your work has been criticised for misogyny and homophobia, as well being anti-Islamic…

I have had every reaction to my work and I’ve found the worst reaction is to be reactionary. The best way to react is to listen, then take your own counsel and proceed in the best way that you can.

Which of your characters most excites you?

Mostly I do go back to my Sin City characters because those are ones that I created out of nothing. More recently I profoundly enjoyed having a crack at Superman. That was the first character I fell in love with and to get to work on him again was a real honour.

What did you learn from watching a documentary about yourself?

Seeing the peculiar world that I inhabit from an outsider’s eyes. The film Silenn Thomas has crafted is an examination of the culture and the wonderful world of fantasy and the deep international community that is centred on an art form that has died a dozen deaths over the years but somehow thrives through the devotion of its fans.

What is your advice to a budding artist?

More than anything, it’s to resist boundaries. When I first got into comics I ran into nothing but boundaries in this wonderfully versatile form.

The stories were only about men who dressed up in bright tights and had endless fights, and they were always for a younger audience.

Even though, by the time I showed up, the audience had grown older, the publishers were still only publishing stuff that was aimed at children and met very strict editorial guidelines. So everything was ready for the content of comics to diversify.

Now we’ve gone so far in the other direction that there are almost no comic books for children!

For next year’s Lucca Comics & Games festival see luccacomicsandgames.com

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