I high school, I was a huge Frank Miller fan–based not only on the Dark Knight, but Elektra and Ronin, weird books that weren’t like any of the other ‘comic books’ I saw out there. Miller has gotten strange in the last 15 years or so, and Grantland did a great retrospective of his career which explores where he’s been and why he’s so uncompromising.
The thing Miller admires about his heroes isn’t their power — he’s yanked that away from them, over and over. He worships their certainty. Their moral clarity, their willingness to judge and mete out the punishment that society can’t or won’t, their refusal to back down or equivocate.