Frank Miller is primarily known as a graphic artist; since the 1970s he has worked in the DC and Marvel universes with such characters as Daredevil, Elektra, and Batman as The Dark Knight. His original titles include Ronin, 300, and Sin City. This exuberant memoir is cloaked as an instructional text in creativity. To emphasize this, he calls his sections lessons instead of chapters. Really, though, whatever you call them, they each deal with different life stages in his growth as an artist.

For as long as he could remember, as he was growing up in rural Vermont, drawing and composing artwork fascinated Miller. As soon as he felt ready he moved to Manhattan, where comics publications were based, to try to make it as an illustrator. Life in New York was rough and rugged, but he emphasizes that this was a plus as he conceived and composed his early works. He relished being edgy. He despised the Comics Code Authority, or CCA, a puritanical holdover from the fifties. He writes: “Push the wall and defy the code. To this day, I still live and make art by following these simple dictums.” He rightfully asserts that comics are an art form, and he states that “you should always value the craftsmanship, even when you’re in defiance mode and kicking down doors.” His anecdotes about his early days struggling in the raw filthy city, meeting and collaborating with fellow artists, and getting his first assignments and publications, reminded me of science fiction writers such as Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg, who similarly moved to New York as young writers to be close to the center of pulp fiction publishing.

After some initial successes, Miller was invited to Los Angeles to write the screenplay of Robocop 2. There followed other film work, and eventually he obtained a co-director spot with Robert Rodriguez while filming his own Sin City.

I really enjoy Miller’s rough rugged voice as he extols the life of a creator. He especially shines when he puts a positive spin on failure. “Eventually I learned that to get over any perceived failure, you just have to get back into the ring.” “You must celebrate your errors for what they are: informative missteps on the way to creating what you intended to make all along. Mistakes are gifts from the gods, and if you aren’t making any, you aren’t taking any chances.” He encourages artists, regardless of the medium in which they work, to be brave and to go far beyond their comfort zones.

What is clear throughout Push the Wall is that Miller has never lost his sense of wonder, the feeling of fascination and enthrallment he had as a child when he first discovered comics. And this memoir works because he manages to pass on that wonder to his readers. He tells them to “be restless. Rediscover your sense of awe. Journey out into the world and into the chasms of the mind.” We’ll close with a wonderful jewel: “A creative mind is an open one, one that can change. And this is one of life’s best gifts: it’s never too late to change.” It is this sort of exuberant freshness that has sustained Miller through a long and fecund career, and that propels him on into the future. This book is feisty and fun and informative and inspirational. Highly recommended.