Frank Miller: Ranking His Comics From Worst To Best

6. Daredevil By Miller And Janson, Vol. 1-3 (1981-83)

Miller's influence on the world of Daredevil is nearly immeasurable, and one could go so far as to say he rescued the character from forever being dubbed a second-stringer. Starting as an artist on an issue of Amazing Spider-Man, Miller pencilled the Web-Head and old Hornhead into a story about the blind leading the blind. With each issue, readers responded more positively to Miller's shadowy portrayals, and soon he took over writing the series with Klaus Janson illustrating, resulting in one of the greatest runs in comic book history. This is young, uncorrupted Miller, largely unconcerned with politics or grand-scale epics. He's a crime writer at heart (or he was, anyway) and here he's writing about street-level crime in Hell's Kitchen and the man who wants to stop it. The run has since been collected into three neat volumes (and an omnibus) and showcases some of Miller's trademarks. The talking TVs of The Dark Knight Returns and the cityscapes of Year One are present here, as is some of Miller's most succinct writing. The Daredevil run is the reason Frank Miller became a legend in comic book writing; "To dare the impossible, a man must be either blind or fearless€or both."