Legends of King Arthur, his knights of the round table and the sword in the stone are well-ingrained into our storytelling psyche. So much so that their core elements -- Camelot, Merlin, Excalibur, etc. -- can be easily plucked out and placed virtually anywhere else, completely independent of their original context. Bolstering this is the fact that there is no single Arthurian text for creators to pull from but, rather, an entire body of medieval romances -- leaving plenty of space for continual reinterpretation.

Cursed is the latest, radical reimagining of these legends. The illustrated novel, by Tom Wheeler and Frank Miller, takes the focus away from their namesake and puts it, instead, onto the Lady in the Lake, creating a new origin story for Nimue, Arthur and many other familiar figures for a squarely Young Adult audience. The book is also something of a refocussing for co-creator Frank Miller; picked up by Netflix for a television adaptation before publication, and both Wheeler and the legendary comic book creator took hands-on roles in bringing Nimue's world to life on both page and screen, almost concurrently.

Ahead of the series' release, CBR caught up with Miller to discuss the unique experience he had working on the two projects, as well as the ingredients that went into them.

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CBR: Cursed is a very different take on Arthurian legend than we’re used to. What was behind the decision for you and co-creator Tom Wheeler to choose Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, as its star, and not the eponymous King?

Frank Miller: Well, for one thing, Tom [Wheeler] has a daughter [and] I think the idea for Nimue came from him thinking about his daughter in the context of the Arthurian legend. As a child, I was very much enraptured with the legend ever since I saw Disney's Sword in the Stone and followed it through Robin Hood and all the other permutations. And the role of women throughout the legend has always been bad and not paid proper attention. With the character of Nimue, she's a wonderful vehicle for bringing the underlying magic of the legend to the surface, and really playing with it for all it's worth.

Along those lines, would you describe Cursed as a feminist retelling of the legend?

Well, it's more a matter of looking at it from a female perspective -- if I could make that [a] thing. It's because it's not really a creed of any kind, politically, but certainly, Nimue as the central character and just growing in power and importance throughout the story... It makes a statement artful. I'd rather not, you know, hit the nail on the head.

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You wouldn't want to put a label on it then?

I would say it's more of a perspective than a feminist perspective.

What was the creative process like when working on Cursed compared to 300, your other historically-influenced series?

Quite different in that with 300, I did the research and did some traveling and put together a comic book. And then, after the comic book had come out and been collected into a volume, it garnered attention and forces came together to make it into a movie. Whereas with Cursed, [it's] all happening at the same time, just as the book was conceived and being illustrated the sets were being built, and everything's been sort of like feeding off each other, back and forth.

As you mentioned, you've had some experience working in film before but Cursed is, I believe, your first hands-on experience working on a TV series. What was that like?

Oh, it's fascinating. One thing is there [are] so many moving pieces at once. And the production is just crackerjack. Both forms have so many similarities in how they work and everything. The actual mechanics of making them are are different in that case.

Moving back to the mythology behind all this -- adaptations have come thick and fast for decades in popular culture. Recently, Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword didn’t do too well with critics or audiences, yet it seems like our appetite for these stories never really wanes. What do you think it is about them that still fascinates us to this day?

If there's any story that has it all, it's right here, because it does have some magic in it and a million things that look great. And it also entails this grand romance and the birth of what we call civilization now. So, all of that and more is encased in the sort of overall shell of wild fantasy elements, and it's sort of a melodrama and a parable at the same time.

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Yours and Tom’s novel on which this adaptation is geared toward a Young Adult audience. Would you say that the TV show was also made with this demographic in mind, or would viewers of say, Netflix’s adult-oriented fantasy series, The Witcher, be at home with it too?

Oh no, I think that I think that the central agenda has not changed. That is, that it is meant for the wider audience.

Something I think that those audiences will appreciate in Cursed is its race-blind casting. Historical and fantasy media has (and still is) consistently been accused of white-washing these kinds of stories with “historical accuracy” as justification. Was that something you and Tom had a hand in at all or were conscious of when working on the book?

I would say we were mainly just after the best people we could get.

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Sort of along those lines, a big theme in Cursed is religious extremism, as well as what could be perceived as racial persecution. Your recent Batman book, The Golden Child, has also been described as “woke” in the way it deals with political issues. What is the intent behind this reflection of real-world evils in Cursed?

Oh, I think a certain amount of that in fantasy comes from somewhere, that is the basic rule. You can find reflections of real-world "Good" and "Evil" in any fantasy story out there... It's inescapable, even without the author's intent.

Yes, but even so, it's often surprisingly easy for audiences not to see even the most blatant of political messages in popular media -- fantasy, especially. People will watch things like Star Wars and just view it as pure escapism even though it literally has Stormtroopers in it. Do you think it’s possible to have truly escapist stories in the genre, and if so, is something important lost in doing so?

I believe that for an escapist story to be thrilling, or scary or whatever the intent is it has to actually affect you. It has to have some resonance somewhere in the real world. And it can be symbolic, you know, Superman was able to fly because, partly, there was a global depression and that was an answer to it.

You've gone through something of an evolution yourself in your own personal politics over the last decade or so. If you don't mind me asking, is there an arc that can be traced from your older works to now to that effect?

That's for other people to say. The stories often come from deep within and the mind takes a while to catch up. I mean, I'm essentially a fantasy artist and I don't really pretend to be a political commentator, so, I'll leave it at that.

I know there’s a Sin City TV series that’s still in the works. Do you have much involvement in that? And can you give me any hints about any other projects we can expect from you in the future?

Well, I'm all over the Sin City project and it is really a dream come true. And I just got a lot of other comics that I'm doing. I can't say much more than that because these things have to be announced by the people who are releasing them as they become ready.

Do you look back fondly on the Sin City movies? Is the TV series a chance to do anything differently that you wish you'd done in the films but didn't have an opportunity to?

[Laughs] Nah, that's loser talk -- I've got no regrets.

Based on the novel of the same name by Frank Miller and Tom Wheeler, Cursed stars Katherine Langford, Devon Terrell, Gustaf Skarsgård, Peter Mullan, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Daniel Sharman, Sebastian Armesto, Ella Prebble, Scarlett Rock and Daniella Gad. The series arrives on Netflix July 17.

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