300

/ Alex Good

300

The first thing that strikes you about 300 (the collection of a five-part series that was originally published in separate volumes) is its physical appearance. There’s the shape of it: a stretched out format that allows each page to be a double-page spread that emphasizes strong horizontals in the art and an overall sense of epic, CinemaScope visuals. But at the same time it’s actually quite a slender book, under 100 pages, which underscores how efficient the text is. It is, after all, an action comic without a lot of interest in historical accuracy, and the hero (the Spartan king Leonidas) is suitably laconic in his words. The text is all very bombastic in a hokey way – as we’re back with the defence of Western Civilization against the evil Eastern empire – but at least there isn’t much of it to roll your eyes at. And besides, this is a comic book.

You could read it as vaguely homophobic and as foreshadowing the later trouble Frank Miller would get into with the anti-Islamic comments he’d go on to make. But in Miller’s defence, while the knock on those boy-loving Athenians makes no sense, as there was even more of this in Sparta, where it was even more deeply embedded in the culture, it’s also true that being on the receiving end of homosexual sex was still seen in Classical times as something shameful, and could be cast as a military metaphor. See, for example, the Eurymedon vase and compare it to what is said here about the Persians showing the Greeks their backsides at Marathon. And as far as the cultural angle goes, the view of Persians (or are they orcs?) as being pleasure-loving and decadent (politically as well as morally) goes back at least as far as Herodotus, and insofar as Miller addresses the subject of religion here, in the form of the Spartan ephors, it’s clear he has no time for any of it.

Acclaimed when it first came out in 1998, it’s a work that’s only grown in stature after the release in 2006 of Zack Snyder’s mostly-faithful film adaptation (which Miller served as a consultant and executive producer on). I think it misses a chance to be something more than just a rousing, boo-yah adventure story, but as an action comic I think it’s exceptional, with the art in particular balancing motion with stasis (those galloping horses suspended in air) and visions of chaos with discipline and order. There are also surprising perspective shifts (mixing in lots of overhead “shots”), and the motif or visual punctuation of forests of bristling spears and arrows that thrust us forward, stand at attention like exclamation points, or lie scattered and broken in the chaos of a battle’s aftermath. So while it’s a story that doesn’t occupy me very much it’s still a book I can return to fairly regularly just to admire the unique style of its presentation.

Graphicalex

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