In the 1980's, Frank Miller influenced a generation of comic creators with his dark and gritty interpretation of superhero characters, from Daredevil to Batman in The Dark Knight Returns. Since then he has sought to pull the comics-medium out of it's superhero ghetto by embracing genres as diverse as crime-noir in Sin City, historical drama in 300, and cyber-punk in Ronin. More details here.

If you know of any other comic-related reading recommendations made by Frank Miller in interviews or articles we would love to hear from you. Please provide a scan and/or link if possible.
Email: recommended [at] readyourselfraw [dot] com

SPX Anthology
"I went to the Small Press Expo to try to catch up. And the energy and enthusiasm - the sheer love of comics - was like a tonic. I had no idea how much there was to see. Good, awful, promising... it was all over the map. A lot of the stuff that I saw there, we would have called fanzines. It's printed up like a professional piece of work, but often the stuff simply isn't. But there is something refreshing about that too, because there's something about seeing someone come in with so few preconceived notions, that it almost seems like they're stumbling across things that works so beautifully. You want to take notes. SPX is probably the first convention that didn't leave me vaguely depressed. Just seeing there was that much love for the form was inspiring."
From an interview, The Comics Journal #209

Monkeyman and O'Brien
by Art Adams
"And then there's Arthur Adams, author of Monkeyman and O'Brien, and a guy who's suckered us all by showing us that, first time out the gate, he's able to write a comic book like he's been doing it for years, in full control of the art form. As far as his drawing goes, well, all I can say is that none of his several imitators can touch him."
From Sin City: The Big Fat Kill #3

Madman Comics
by Mike Allred
"Mike Allred is the author of Madman Comics, which get better and better with each issue. Bucking all the current trends, Mike employs a clean, confident line and strong visual storytelling to produce the snappiest comic on the planet. His characters don't need to tell you their feelings. Every brush stroke tells you more about them than a boat load of captions or thought balloons could. Mike Allred is very good. He's very happy. He's very young. He's very handsome. Something must be done about Mike Allred."
From Sin City: The Big Fat Kill #4

Kyle Baker Cartoonist
by Kyle Baker
"Kyle Baker's got verve, talent, and guts. Plus a nasty wit. Delicious work."
From the back cover blurb

I Never Liked You
by Chester Brown
"I love the beautiful way Chester Brown cartoons... I love the twisted corridors he takes you down, and the utter abandon with which he lets you see all his demons."
From the Yummy Fur advertising blurb.

Caricature
by Dan Clowes
"In other cases, like Eightball, Clowes' stuff gets to me on a very different level. He draws quite well and he's very expressive, and I love the personalities that he does in his stories - they read very smoothly - but what he seems to do that appeals to me the most is that he crawls inside my head or worse, he drags me inside his. It's a really scary place. I'll often find myself thinking about a story of his days after I've read it, and having to go read it again just to revisit it. I'm thinking of the story about the guy who did the sketches at the fairgrounds. That one was quite haunting."
From an interview, The Comics Journal #209

Pop Gun War
by Farel Dalrmple
"Fascinating Stuff. Farel's developing his own kind of urban mysticism. And the guy swings a mean brush."
From the back cover blurb

A Contract With God
by Will Eisner
"Well, a lot of it to me gets back to Eisner. He still in many ways is a framework for me, and I think at least to date, probably the most important piece of work he did was A Contract With God. Certainly in terms of influence, because I wasn't the only one who sat up and took notice when that book came out. It had a profound effect on how I approached not just the fate of my work, but the kind I wanted to do. I wanted to work much more long form. That's ironic, because it was a series of short stories. But I think he quietly started a revolution. He's been relentless in pursuing it."
From an interview, The Comics Journal #209

The Spirit
by Will Eisner
"... to this day, The Spirit remains not only a stunning body of work, but an essential lesson in what comics are, and what they can do... In The Spirit, we get to watch a very young and astonishingly talented Will Eisner play the art form with verve and joy, laying the ground work for himself, and the rest of us, to follow for decades to come. This isn't just some text book for people like me. It's one hell of a good read."
From the introduction to The Spirit Archives Volume 4

"... what served me best on Daredevil was the Eisner influence. My very first professional writing job wasDaredevil #168, and I ripped off an Eisner story cold. I created Elektra in imitation of Eisner's Sand Saref from The Spirit, and even kept the structure and some of the settings from the story."
From Writers On Comic Scriptwriting

Love & Rockets
by Jamie Hernandez
"... It invites you in with a completely accessible style that's drawn from clear influences in our culture. Not to insult Jamie for a second, because I adore his work, but you can say it's like elevated clip art; like he took clip art and twisted it, transcended it. It's got such a clean look to it, and the characters are so attractive. I would think that in a sane world, Penny Century would have been one of the top two or three books of the year."
From an interview, The Comics Journal #209

Mother, Come Home
by Paul Hornschemeier
"This is a rough ride, but there's nothing dreary about it. Hornschemeier deploys fantasy to get right at emotional, traumatic reality. Fascinating, compelling stuff. But it, already!"
From the advertising blurb

Monkey vs Robot
by James Kochalka
"... I'm kind of turned on by the stuff that guys like Kochalka are doing. Because it's reminding me of why I got into drawing comics... When I read a Kochalka book, I feel like I did when I was an 8 year old kid with some folded-over typing paper stapled in the middle and I was just drawing. It's deliberately unprofessional. I like that aspect of it and feel that the energy of that is something that has to be recaptured."
From an interview, The Comics Journal Library Vol 2

Lone Wolf & Cub
by Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima
"It takes you to another time, and to a frightening, alien land, windswept and gray. Koike and Kojima tell their story masterfully and artfully, portraying a man, a boy, and a country on their journey into Hell."
From the back cover blurb

Fax From Sarajevo
by Joe Kubert
"When they write the history book about comic books, Joe Kubert will be properly recognised as one of our finest story tellers and dramatists and craftsmen and users of black and white and everything else that an exemplary cartoonist. Study every atom of his drawing. This guy didn't just write the book. He drew it. Right now he's drawing Fax From Sarajevo. Who ever publishes it, it's a must buy for anybody with even a passing interest in comics. The buzz is that it could be the next Maus. One sure thing is that it's the work of one of the best artists who ever took a brush to Bristol board, an innovator who continues to blow youngsters like me and my colleagues out of the water anytime he cares to do so."
From Sin City: The Big Fat Kill #2

EC Comics
by Harvey Kurtzman & Johnny Craig
"EC does represent the most consistently well-crafted line of comics to date. The cartoonists working for EC - Wood, Davis, Severin and Johnny Craig, who deserves to be acknowledged as one of the true greats of the field - consistently produced the finest work of their careers. Craig's and Harvey Kurtzman's work, in particular, are examples of superior talent and dedication to craft. Anyone who hasn't purchased the Cochran reprints, particularly of Craig's crime comics and Kurtzman's war books, is missing out on thrilling work."
From an interview, The Comics Journal #101

Reinventing Comics
by Scott McCloud
"Scott McCloud has got to be just about the smartest guy in comics. Once again, he's opened the floor to a debate that will no doubt go on for years - this time, with not just the definition of comics, but its very fate at stake."
From the back cover blurb

Hellboy
by Mike Mignola
"And then there's Mike Mignola, author of Hellboy and the only guy out there who uses more black on his pages than I do. Between the two of us, we probably made Pelican Ink's last quarter. Mike's Hellboy is revealing itself as the horror comic of our decade. It's creepy, it's fun, it's good and scary. It's beautifully illustrated. Go buy it. It'll make your life happier. It'll make the world a better place to live in."
From Sin City: The Big Fat Kill #2

Corto Maltese
by Hugo Pratt
"It's clear that's where he comes from, the tradition of Milton Caniff and Alex Toth and Roy Crane and the other masters of black and white comics. Color is secondary, an addition to Hugo Pratt's work. His brilliance shows in the purity of his black and white work. In Italy, I picked up some scruffy black and white paper-back editions of Corto Maltese, and I've already flipped through them so many times, basking in that economy of line and those merciless slabs of black, that the bindings are shot and the pages keep falling out."
From an interview, The Comics Journal #101

The Amazing Spider-Man
by Stan Lee & John Romita
"Most comic fans are familiar with John Romita Sr's long and memorable run on Spider-Man… Romita's career is a study in fine craft applied to comics of every imaginable variety. His brush stroke is likewise a wonder to behold: confident, certain, economic."
From Sin City: The Big Fat Kill #3

Bone
by Jeff Smith
"If this is your first visit to the world of Bone, you might shake your head like I did, and say what I did my first time: Damn, this guy is good!"
From the back cover blurb

"One of the most refreshing moments I've had in recent years was the first time I saw and read an issue of Bone, which was as far afield from what I do as you could ask for, but I just adored it. Here was this unusual imagination and superior talent working on something that he devotedly loved."
From Writers On Comic Scriptwriting

Good-Bye Chunky Rice
by Craig Thompson
"An enthusiastic recommendation: Get yourself a copy of Craig Thompson's Good-Bye Chunky Rice… It's a wonderfully dramatic, and, in the best sense, sweet story, superbly crafted. It's Thompson's first graphic novel, but you'd never know it. Watch out for this guy."
From Sin City: Hell & Back #5

Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid On Earth
by Chris Ware
"I love it. That's a brilliant strip."
From an interview, The Comics Journal #209

Calvin & Hobbes
by Bill Watterson
"… this is going to sound simplistic, but I think it's one of the essentials of what makes comics work, and one of the reasons they translate so poorly into film, is the sheer joy of seeing good cartooning. A perfect example of that is Calvin & Hobbes, by Bill Watterson. I can't imagine that in any other form, because even more than the humanity or humor in the strip, the drawing is such a joy to behold. It charms my eye enough to make me slow down and really pay attention. I feel a stream of pleasure from looking at drawings like that."
From an interview, The Comics Journal #209

"Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbs - anybody who could speed read through that shouldn't be reading anything, let alone comics, because the beauty of his drawing and the charm of his cartooning is captivating."
From an interview, Artists On Comic Art