Frank Miller is a comic book writer whose work has occasionally crossed over into the world of film and television as well. Besides adaptations of comics he’s written, such as 300 and Sin City, which he also co-directed alongside Robert Rodriguez, his work with Batman and Daredevil has also influenced several of their projects. Now he’s back with a dark, modern take on fairy tales called Pandora.
“Disney made the fairy tales a very friendly, happy place to visit,” Miller told Comic Beat. “But before that they were grim fairy tales, by the Brother Grimm. Let’s not forget that Hansel and Gretel shoved the witch into an oven. All of these fairy tales were filled with stories of quests and horrors. The one that Disney absolutely got right though, was Pinocchio. Because that really is a horror movie.”
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While Miller “would like to bring back some of that horror,” Pandora will be aimed at young adult audiences. And while Miller’s work does usually deal with mature subjects, often involving violence and sexual situations, he has worked on material for younger audiences before. Cursed, an Arthurian-inspired tale that was recently adapted as a Netflix series, was an illustrated novel Miller co-created with Tom Wheeler.
Pandora is part of Miller’s new publishing initiative, an independent imprint named Frank Miller Presents (FMP). Miller will serve as president and editor-in-chief, former DC co-publisher Dan DiDio as the publisher, and the CEO of Frank Miller Ink, Silenn Thomas, will be COO. Besides Pandora, FMP plans on rolling out three other series over the next 12 months. Two Sin City projects, a Western written and drawn by Miller and a one-shot with art by Milo Manara. Besides that, a sequel to Ronin with art by Philip Tan and Daniel Henriques.
“I remember when I sat down with Dan, I said, look, if we’re gonna try to do this thing, let’s really do stuff that jumps around genres, and have fun with all of them. But for God’s sake, let’s not have a universe or a central mythology. [The idea] is to have it be a vehicle for individual voices, and to explore the astonishing amount of talent that’s out there,” said Miller.
What You Can Expect From Pandora
While Miller conceived Pandora, it will be written by Anthony Maranville and Chris Silvestri, a writing team who are known for writing several episodes of Star Trek: Discovery and have worked with DiDio on several projects already. The art will be done by Emma Kubert, whose known for Inkblot for Image, and Brush Stoke, a semi-autobiographical webcomic.
During the interview with Comicsbeat, both Miller and Kubert played coy about what precisely the comic was going to be about. Except for the fact that it will follow Annabeth, who Kubert describes as “a young girl who is unfulfilled in her life, and she’s searching for more.” Kubert also felt a kinship with the character.
“One of the things about my art is that I’m always putting myself into it. When we were talking about the main character, and Frank said she’s precocious, she’s a little mischievous and curious, I thought, wow, that that sounds like Emma,” said Kubert, whose inspiration for Pandora’s art style includes John Tenniel (Alice in Wonderland) and Brian Froud (The Dark Crystal).
Pandora will debut in December with the first of three 48-page prestige format issues. The format that Miller pioneered back in 1982 with Ronin. Only time will tell if it will join the ranks of other projects Miller’s worked on that have been adapted to television and film.
