Fans of shouting half naked Greek warriors are in for a treat as Frank Miller and Dark Horse Comics have revealed the first piece of art from Frank Miller’s prequel to 300, Xerxes.
The massive success of Zack Snyder’s film adaptation of 300, and Miller’s own subsequent critical drubbing following his movie The Spirit, means that the time for another trip back in time is on the cards.
Whether the publication of Xerxes will hurry along a Snyder-helmed film, but recently he spoke to ComingSoon regarding the project,
I’m waiting on Frank for the sequel to ‘300,’ and there’s a really good chance that will be the thing [I direct next].
I didn’t tell Frank what to write the first time, and I’m not telling him what to write this time. I’ll take it and I’ll adapt it and make it into a movie and I’ll write a screenplay, but I want him to do whatever he thinks.
Miller himself gives this synopsis of the comic book, and the first image of Xerxes himself is below,
The story will be the same heft as ‘300’ but it cover a much, much greater span of time — it’s 10 years, not three days…This is a more complex story. The story is so much larger. The Spartans in ‘300’ were being enclosed by the page as the world got smaller. This story has truly vast subjects. The Athenian naval fleet, for instance, is a massive artistic undertaking and it dwarfed by the Persian fleet, which is also shown in this story. The story has elements of espionage, too, and it’s a sweeping tale with gods and warriors.
The time frame begins 10 years before ‘300’ and the story starts with the Battle of Marathon, which was killer to draw, by the way, even if it was a lot of work…The lead character is Themistocles, who became warlord of Greece and built their navy. The story is very different than ‘300’ in that it involves Xerxes search for godhood. The existence of gods are presupposed in this story and the idea is that he well on his way to godhood by the end of the story
