G4: What was your first exposure to Batman?
FM: I picked it up in a department store, back when they sold comic books in department stores. I picked it up and I had just opened it and it was probably Jerry Robinson’s artwork, I’m not sure whose it was, but I opened it up and I just fell in. And I’d like to say that even though it just cost twenty-five cents, I just bought it.
G4: What was your vision for your version of Batman?
FM: My Batman was formed by the atrocity of his parents; that is, by formed I mean he’s not thrashing around helpless in reaction to it, but it’s who he is. He never saw the face of the guy who killed his parents, so he grew up with this wound that eventually became the purpose of his life. And because he never saw the guy, he’ll never stop because he’ll never get satisfaction.
G4: Were you surprised by the reaction to The Dark Knight Returns?
FM: Everybody was. That thing went over like gangbusters. It was an unheard of event. It was like everybody was waiting for this to happen. Because it was the one they wanted all along and because I was lucky enough to have the clout to do it and to have the faith of the publisher. Because everybody from Jeannette Kahn to Paul Ebbets to Dick Giordiano backed me on it. And of course we had fights--that’s part of the job--but it was really like this thing had been crying to happen. It wasn’t so much a matter of inspiration from on high as it was inevitability I think.
G4: And then you moved out to Hollywood...
FM: Well actually what happened was, this sounds strange, I moved from New York to Los Angeles to find out what California was like. I really didn’t have any designs on any movie work at all. Then one morning the phone rang and it was John Davidson, who was the producer of Robocop, asking me if I’d be up for writing a sequel. And I’d just seen the movie on videotape, back when there was videotape. Remember that? I loved the movie and I thought, “Yeah, I could work in movies.” And I just fell into that, for the next couple years I was completely wrapped up in exactly that. After that, more work came and it was offered. It’s fun work and it’s lucrative, obviously. And so I’ve been in movies up until when I just decided I couldn’t handle it anymore and went away and did Sin City, which is my movie.
G4: What did you learn from the experience of writing the Robocop movies?
FM: Well, Robocop 2 was the more intense of the two, more because I was on the set everyday and watched the whole process. For Robocop 3, I was little more distant because I didn’t go to the set. In both cases, I learned the same lesson though. Don’t be the writer. The director’s got the power. The screenplay is a fire hydrant and there’s a row of dogs around the block waiting for it (Laughs).
G4: Then you went back to comics and did 300. How do you feel about that now? Are there any plans to make a film of it?
FM: I’m not really attached to that as now. I’m the author and I’ll be shown things and so on. We haven’t really figured all that out now. I was about seven years old when I saw the clunky old 20th Century Fox movie, 300 Spartans, and sat there next to my older brother and just…my parents were sitting behind us and we saw the whole story of Thermopylae play out where the 300 Spartans were up against 300,000 Persian soldiers and they held a narrow pass for three days in an astonishing act of sacrifice. And at the end, when they started dying, when the Persian arrows were starting to hit them, I talked to my brother and then I went back to the next row and said, “Dad, do good guys die?” And he said, “I’m afraid they (do), son.” And it was the first time I encountered the notion of heroic sacrifice, which informed just about every piece I’ve done since. So eventually once I’d gotten sick of boring everybody to death about this book I was eventually going to do, I finally decided I better sit down and draw it. And I did.
G4: You seem to draw from a wide variety of influences. What about Japanese film?
FM: Well, just the other day I was watching a remarkable live action piece called Azumi. Have you seen that? It’s this wonderful story of this young female ninja assassin. And it reminded me once again just as the Lone Wolf and Cub movies have of how the Japanese aesthetic is just a beautiful and terrible thing to behold. In Kazuo Koike's works, the movie adaptations are…well they're as faithful as Sin City is to its source material. They’re terrifying and merciless and beautiful. So I’m going to use the usual reference to Kurosawa because they’re obvious.
G4: Would you say your expectations run high for your adaptations?
FM: One thing about entertainment--whether it’s comic books or movies--is that you can’t imagine the fate of the piece of work. I proceed with confidence; I think we all do and hope that he audience will love it. I’ve had the experience of a lifetime.
G4: What's your general opinion on comic book movies?
FM: I’m afraid that comic book movies tend to be better the closer they are to the source material. I think the Spider-Man movies and X-Men movies are examples of people being very close to the material and being very faithful. Whereas one thing that I think the Superman franchise suffers from is that they started out with such a blockbuster, so now they think they’ve all got to be that big. And I wish they’d just be knocking them out every year and just having a ball with it. Spider-Man in a lot of ways seems like they’re having a lot of fun and it really shows.
G4: Did you see Elektra? Would the movie change your feelings about your creation?
FM: I’ll love her ‘til the day I die. I didn’t see it (the film).
