300-The Comic

Go tell the Spartans, passerby:

That here, by Spartan law, we lie.

300 by Frank Miller is one of the best comic I have read. Published in 1998 in five issues, it was collected as a hardcover in 1999. It was published by Dark Horse Comics.

Frank Miller's drawings are his classics, portraying human bodies, not in its ideal Greek form but as functional tortured souls. Lynn Varley did the coloring. It reminds me of his classic, Batman:The Dark Knight Returns. The story is based on an event in Greek history.


The Persian army of one million soldiers under Xerxes were on the way to invade Greece. It is said that the earth shook when the Persian army marched. This attack of the Persians took the Greek city states by surprise. They needed time to gather their forces. The initial attack had the Persians franked the Greek army.




Knowing this, King Leonidas of Sparta decided to lead 300 of his elite force to try to stop the Persians at a narrow pass called the Hot Gates or Thermopylae.

According to Herodotus, Leonidas had been warned by the Delphic oracle that either Sparta would be destroyed or their king would lose his life. Leonidas chose the second alternative. All the Spartans died, including Leonidas.

However the 300 Spartans managed to hold off the one million Persian army long enough for the rest of Greek army to escape. Their courage and their death became the inspiration for the Greek nation states to fight against the Persian.

I have reread the comic. Now I am ready for the movie.