Frank Miller’s work on Daredevil remains a focal point in Marvel Comics for a slew of reasons, including the characters that he created and the way he redefined the hero’s backstory for the modern age. Miller’s collaborators brought just as much to the table as he did, though, be it writer Roger McKenzie or artists John Romita Jr or Bill Sienkiewicz. With Sienkiewicz, Miller found a collaborator who would elevate the storytelling that he had in mind for his most iconic original character, Elektra, delivering a story for her that redefined her status while also lampooning some comic book elements that would go on to become staples of the industry in its wake.
Speaking with ComicBook about his new documentary, That Polish Guy, Sienkiewicz detailed why he and Miller worked so well together, noting that it just came down to “friendship and personality” and that they “just clicked.” Sienkiewicz revealed that by the time the two of them came together, he’d been working in comics for a time already, and wanted to mix things up after years of doing the same thing.
“I was wanting to really kind of push things a little bit more,” Sienkiewicz. “Frank’s script was written as a script, an actual screenplay, in a very serious way, and it was so dark that I realized that as I was reading it I started to feel very uncomfortable. It was very bloody and brutal. And I realized that how I had grown up was that if things got to be too dark, my sense of humor would kick in to sort of like try to take the edge off. It was like this very dark humor. And so I started to have dark humor like images or almost satirical images coming in.
He continued, “Like if you look at the cover for Elektra#1, I mean she’s maybe 110 pounds, soaking wet, standing in high heels, like a swimmer’s physique, and she’s carrying a gun that easily outweighs her by two to one, and looking over her shoulder with the sort of come-hither look. And I just think of that as sort of a complete satire. I just thought I was poking fun. It’s serious, but it’s also comedic.”
Regarding the new documentary about his like, Sienkiewicz also detailed how the title came to be, revealing that it was chrisened on him by none other than Clint Eastwood when the filmmaker decided that Sienkiewicz would be the one to draw the poster for the movie. Though that was over thirty years ago now, Sienkiewicz still hasn’t met Eastwood.
“I would love to meet him, and at that point it was like I was working on Unforgiven with the ad agency with Bill Gold. So I actually never had an interaction with Clint directly. It was all through Bill, and that’s when I found out that I actually got the poster gig. He was like, ‘Who are you going to give it to? Give it to that Polish guy.’ And when I heard that, that was like, I’ve just been insulted by Dirty Harry. It’s like life doesn’t get any better than this.”
