Both of my parents are from villages near the ruins of ancient Sparta, where there's an imposting statue of Leonidas, so I've always known who he was. (We've even passed by the Leonidas monument in Thermopylae, on previous trips to Greece.)
I saw the 1962 film "The 300 Spartans" on TV as a kid, but it wasn't until I stumbled across the first issue of Frank Miller's "300" while browsing in a comic book store in Montreal, that I took a deeper interest in the story.
I re-read those "300" comic books with my wife, prior to our first trip to Greece (we had only been dating for a couple of months). We later included color-photocopied panels from the series in a scrapbook that we made.
Zack Snyder's film adaptation in 2007 came as a pleasant surprise. Our twin daughters had just been born, and my wife's friend Sue kindly watched the kids while we stole a quick date night to see the film.
I was blown away by Snyder's visuals. He really captured the look and feel of Miller's art. I haven't yet seen the sequel "300: Rise of an Empire" from 2014, but heard it wasn't as good (I plan to see it, anyway).
Most recently, Miller published the follow-up graphic novel "Xerxes: The Fall of the House of Darius and the Rise of Alexander" in 2018, (upon which "Rise of Empire" was partly based) which I also intend to check out.
No comments:
Post a Comment