NEW YORK -- Apart from Marvel's Stan Lee, if there is a figure who represents the link between the comic books of old and the movies coming to a theatre near you, it's Frank Miller.

The artist-writer, who gave us 300, Sin City and the Dark Knight incarnation of Batman, began his career in the colourfully ink-stained New York-based cauldron of comic-book art, mentored by the likes of Jim Shooter, Neal Adams -- but most of all, the legendary and prolific Will Eisner.

Theirs was a strange, combative relationship -- one in which Miller is finally getting the last word, three years after Eisner's death, making his solo directorial debut with a stylized movie of Eisner's signature noir hero from the '40s, The Spirit. Wherever he is, the female-form-obsessed Eisner must appreciate the casting -- Scarlett Johansson (Silken Floss), Eva Mendes (Sand Saref) and Jaime King (Lorelei), all playing various forms of femmes fatale tormenting our mordant hero (Gabriel Macht).

FEMININE CURVES

"My relationship with Will Eisner was a long and abiding one where we argued incessantly," says Miller, who at 51, cultivates a kind of tattered scruffiness that evokes equal parts Jed Clampett and Harry Dean Stanton. "The very first time he saw one of my pages, he told me what was wrong with it."

The anecdote dates to Miller's days in the late '70s as the saviour of Marvel's Daredevil comic.

"Jim Shooter, my editor-in-chief, was showing off the new kid on the block at a party thrown by Neal Adams. And he kept shoving my work in Eisner's face.

"And after he got past that syrupy avuncular Eisner sweetness, he finally read the page and glared at me and said, 'He's lying in the back of a garbage truck, and his caption is saying, 'I'm lying in the back of a garbage truck.' That's redundant!' And I said, 'But he's blind, he had to put that together!' He wouldn't accept that explanation. So he and I just got at it.

"We just kept arguing ever since. It was the classic Irish Catholic meets the Bronx Jew."

What they had in common, besides a love of feminine curves, was New York (Miller reputedly used to sit on rooftops and sketch bird's eye views of the city that became his motif). They also both had key roles in the evolution of the comic book into its more self-important descendant, the graphic novel (Eisner's groundbreaking A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories was first published 30 years ago).

So you can consider The Spirit to be a form of tribute -- although not one Miller was averse to tinkering with.

The Spirit's arch-enemy, The Octopus, for example, was represented in the comic book by a pair of gloves.

In the movie, he's Samuel L. Jackson, henna-ed to within an inch of his epidermis and adorned in a series of different costumes, including at one point, a Nazi SS uniform.

Like his comic book predecessor, this Spirit is a cop, killed in the line of duty, who turns up alive -- although in the movie he shows up with miraculous self-healing powers.

'I'M A THIEF'

"I was out to interpret Eisner's creation and to incorporate the two things Will Eisner and I loved deeply, and that was New York and beautiful women. The Spirit is a haunted man, he doesn't know why he's alive. And he faces an existential question that can only be answered by a very bad man."

The '40s noir look is retained, though there are anachronisms like TV and cellphones.

"I'm pretty much an encyclopaedia of film noir," Miller says. "And I was very happy with the voices in this movie. Gabriel's voice was very Raymond Chandler, Eva's voice is Eva's and Scarlett's is a dream come true."

Dan Lauria (The Wonder Years), who plays the Spirit's boss Lieut. Dolan can attest to Miller's expertise.

"I'm a thief," Lauria says. "Whenever I do anything, I rob from an old actor that nobody remembers. So I told Frank the last play I did, I was doing Richard Conte. And he said, 'Who are you doing on this film?' And I said, 'Ah, you wouldn't know him.'

"And he said, 'Try me.' And I said, 'Barton MacLane.' And he listed every Barton MacLane movie. I couldn't do one bit without him telling me what movie I stole it from."