I was just wondering, since there were others, who likeme, received this Christmas. I decided to skip over V for Vendetta (it's next), and read this today. What a beautiful book, and great story this is.

While Miller is no Land, Finch,Lee, or Turner with pencils; his pencils are well suited for this book. They are somewhat similar to what I've seen from his Sin City work, except with color. Lynn Varley's coloring just adds richness to each panel, making it an epic of beauty.

For those that aren't familiar with what 300 is:

It's Miller's liberal interpretation of the Battle of Thermopylae. He uses real events to weave a great tale, told from King Leonidas' (the king of Sparta)
point of view. It details the events that lead up to, and through the battle where for 3 days, 300 Greek warriors fended off over 1 million Persian soldiers.

What's great about this story is how, despite the odds, the Spartans (and Leonidas in particular) know that they must hold their ground. This despite being betrayed not once, but twice. Really inspirational stuff.

After I was done, I went back and looked at the Theatrical trailer and the teaser trailer on Yahoo, and then researched it a little more. Wow! It seems that this may be the truest comic to movie that has been produced. Every thing seems almost panel for panel.

If you are able to get this, I'd highly recommend it to those who like history and comicbooks!

Rated a 10!

It might also be good to mention that much of his inspiration came from the movie The 300 Spartans.

Just to point out, there were more than 300 Greeks. There were 300 Spartans who were accompanied by thousands of other Greek warriors. Most of these others left however when Leonidas sent them away when the betrayal happened.

My rating isn't as favourable but overall I enjoyed it. Part of it comes from my not liking Miller's artwork. I was never a big fan of his art and I find I like it less and less. Varley does supply some beautiful colouring and there are a few pages/panels that really come across well but I tend to cringe at a lot of Miller's characters. And after cringing it sometimes takes me a minute to try and figure out which character he's drawing.

I also thought some of the liberties were a bit excessive like making Ephialtes a deformed hunchback or Xerxes with all those piercings.

But having said that, he does succeed overall in getting the story across and hits on a lot of the right emotions though to be honest, the historical documents of the time provided some great scenes on their own. So my rating would be an 8.

My one great beef is the whole line about 'freedom'. The Spartans we a decidedly anti free society. Their whole civilization revolved arround the domination and enslavement of the Helots. Pretty much any historian will say their pre-occupation with keeping the Helots in check kept them from being a major player in the world. Also, no one could hold political office without first serving in the military, and it was societies decision on if a child should live or not. If the child had any deformities or blemishes it would be killed so that it could not 'polute' the warrior body.

Otherwise I'm looking forward to the film, and might actually read the whole book sometime instead of just leafing through it.

Yeah, Miller kinda glosses over parts of Spartan life (mostly picking the stuff that makes the Spartans look like bigger bad-***es). In his defense to some point, his focus is on the battle alone and not much beyond that but I agree, "freedom" may not have been the best choice. Though, they were trying to keep from falling under Persian rule so some Spartans may have seen it as "freedom".

And there were some positives to Sparta such as their women being the most educated in ancient greece and being treated equally when it comes to training. The women were also very involved in business.

I've watched the trailer to the movie at least five times since the link was posted on here, and I was just about to start a thread to ask about the comic when I saw this one.
I rarely read comics, and when I do it's usually just the best (Maus, From Hell, Watchmen).
Is this book worth getting?
It seems rather expensive to me (24€ for 88 pages), especially since alternatively I'm considering buying Absolute Sandman for just a little more than double what I'd have to pay for 300.

every effing penny.

Ephialtes' parents took him out of Sparta to spare him the death.

As far as I know, that's a Miller addition. Ephialtes was not from Sparta nor did he try to join them in battle.

Sorry. I should have clarified that I was referring to 300, not the historical aspects of the battle.

From my reading all Spartan children had to spend a night alone in the open when born.

Yes, but physically imperfect children were thrown from the tops of cliffs so that their blood could not polute the gene pool.

It should be retroactive for some people. And is for the Darwin Awards.