Next week is the 400th anniversary of John Milton's birth. Epic poet, champion of freedom, attack-dog for the English republic, he still divides readers. Boyd Tonkin looks at his legacyProminent among the modern takes on Paradise Lost were the paintings of Terrance Lindall, who once drew for Marvel Comics and published some of his Milton phantasmagorias in Heavy Metal magazine. A New York Times reviewer surveyed the Brooklyn pandaemonium (a word Milton created) and sneered that the artworks' fleshy style suggested "that the poem made particular mention of ... naked female breasts". Which just goes to show that contemporaries who seek to judge Milton without knowing about him will drop into a pit of their own making.