Frank Miller’s 300 and Leaning On Strength

I always respect creators who understand the strengths and weaknesses of their chosen medium and tailor their work accordingly. As a result, I only see movies in IMAX and then only ultra big budget works from Marvel, Star Wars, or Christopher Nolan. If I want a tight, well plotted crime drama, I will watch that at home or read a book. McNulty getting insulted by Bunk for not eating his grab gut will never get me into a theater. All these leads to 300 because here Frank Miller effectively used the visual medium to highlight one small and vital aspect of his story, the magnitude of the invading Persians.

The rule “show, don’t tell” is foundational in content creation. In one of the panels, a Spartan character mentions Xerxes is leading an army of a hundred nations. This does not come off as irrelevant or cheesy because Miller had been subtly planting that idea in the readers’ minds for pages through character designs. Counter-intuitively, the antagonist Persians are the best drawn characters in the story. The Spartans and other Greeks are boring; a bunch of super ripped guys with a cloak and shield. But the enemies have a wide variety of designs. In one two page stretch, the Persian army is represented by three different uniforms. That is only the most obvious example because the differences are presented on the same page. Throughout the text these differences are never highlighted and I did not notice them my first time through. But looking back and trying to see it as a collection of individual drawings, it is obvious that Miller used the visual aspect of comic books to demonstrate the might of Xerxes.

I do wish 300 had more scenes set in the Persian camps. I would love to see how creative Miller would have gotten with uniform design when drawing a crowded wrestling match or dice game. It is a testament to his skill that he can introduce an entirely new character uniform in one panel and it is never used again. Maybe it was intentional, in a “this tiny village was only able to contribute one hundred soldiers to Xerxes so they only get a single panel” sort of way. But overall, because Miller spent so much time showing the threat, when it was finally obviously said, it did not feel out of place. And that is how comics and graphic novels can lean on their strengths instead of working around their weaknesses.