Comic book legend Frank Miller isn’t afraid to revisit his most iconic work. After completing a sequel to his Dark Knight comics last year, he’s written a follow-up to 300.
300 reached mainstream audiences via the Zack Snyder movie in 2006, a violent and stylized retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae. Miller wrote and drew the upcoming five-issue miniseries, with colors by his Dark Knight III collaborator Alex Sinclair. Judging by the plot summary, the comic will play fast and loose with historical timelines, bringing together Xerxes (born 518 BC) with Alexander the Great (born 356 BC). But does anyone really look to 300 for historical accuracy? Hopefully not.
“Xerxes: The Fall of the House of Darius and the Rise of Alexander follows Persian King Xerxes as he sets out to conquer the world to avenge his father Darius’s defeat and create an empire unlike anything the world has ever seen . . . Until the hardy Greeks produce a god king of their own, Alexander the Great.”
In the comic’s press release, Miller describes 300 as “an interlude in the great story of the Persian Wars.” This miniseries tells a more wide-reaching story about “the first great clash of civilizations, the first bloody contest between east and west.”
The tough, manly, and heroic Greeks represent the West, while the effeminate, villainous Xerxes represents the East. No one has ever accused Frank Miller of being politically correct. It’s not hard to draw a thematic link between this and Miller’s 2006 comic Holy Terror, which he personally described as “propaganda” and was widely criticized for its Islamophobic content.
Xerxes: The Fall of the House of Darius and the Rise of Alexander will arrive on April 4, published by Dark Horse comics.
