Sin City is a series of graphic novels by His Excellency and graphic noir master Frank Miller.
Fans of colorful illustrations will be disappointed, the basics in this comic are monochrome color schemes. For those who do not really like to read, an all-consuming sadness awaits, the abundance and depth of monologues will make you strain your brains. Miller masterfully filled laconic images with monumental metaphors, through finely crafted monologues.
The plot of all 6 books included in the cycle revolves around a fictional city - Basin City, which is a transit point for gold diggers, a haunting place where knife and ax workers can sell stolen goods and have fun to the fullest with the proceeds of wealth. The play on words leads us to the title of the Basin City comic, Sin City.
The vicious city of Miller is always in darkness, both in direct and figuratively, the city lives, so to speak, by night fishing. That is why the author turns to such gloomy color schemes. Only vague silhouettes, marginal faceless ghosts, that's what inhabits this city. In each subsequent series central image changes, there is no one main character in the cycle, in this or that issue, characters from the past appear storylines but as secondary characters. The main and central image that sets the whole plot remains His Majesty the vice in the face of the whole city.
Miller brings a lot of comics to this series that are unusual for this literary genre, elements, first of all, an unprecedented abundance of textual content stands out. The monologues of the protagonists make up the bulk of the story, it is from their reflections that we have the opportunity to evaluate general mood short stories. The lack of colorful imagery is complemented by very finely crafted, beautiful descriptive cues. Thus, the comic turns into a full-fledged literary work with a plot, faceted by a thoughtful series of monologues.
Laconic, but very capacious images, thanks to the textual content, not only do not infringe on the novella in the depth of its semantic content, they set it a special rhythm of development. All these innovations distinguish Miller's work from his other works.
Miller cheats on his monochrome color solution, only starting with the fourth book, "That Yellow Bastard", there are separate minor color inserts that emphasize especially important elements. And also certain inserts are present in short story"Baby wears red." From the title of these releases, it is not difficult to guess which color was used as an alternative to the black and white trends. All short works, the number of pages no more than 30 were compiled into a collection - "Booze, women and bullets." The name is more than eloquent and self-explanatory, like all verbal definitions from Miller.
For all of us famous film adaptation The cycle consists of three short stories, which are based on graphic novels: "The Difficult Goodbye", "The Big Savory Massacre", "This Yellow Scum". Directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino could not do without the help of the author, Miller was present on the set and corrected the process. And, of course, it was he who created the storyboard for the future film. The directors resorted to such close cooperation in order to preserve the classic vision of the images and the plot from the author, which they more than succeeded in doing.
City of Sins, Vicious City, metropolis, even living during the day nightlife. A city inhabited by strong and uncontrollable people, street predators and their victims, policemen and maniacs; a city whose soul is overturned into darkness. But precisely because of this darkness in the Vicious City, every glimpse of light is so clearly visible, neither the suicidal nobility of the thief, nor the tear slashed down the woman's cheek go unnoticed. The city does not allow this. And he doesn't forgive...
The most famous cycle of Frank Miller has seven issues and is published for the first time in Russian by the Amfora publishing house in full! Frank Miller started out as an artist in popular comics series, but gained real fame after he began creating his own graphic novels. His work combines the tradition of the classic "black detective" Hammett and the bloody aesthetic of "Reservoir Dogs" Tarantino, all in a striking contrast of black and white.
Sin City-1. Difficult goodbye
In the first issue, "A Hard Goodbye", we meet the thug Marv and dive with him to the very bottom of Sin City in search of Goldie's killer - a woman who smells like an angel.
Sin City 2. A Woman to Kill for
The second book tells the story of the noble protector of the girls of the Old Town, Dwight McCarthy, who happened to fall in love with the wrong woman.
Sin City 3. Massacre of the upper class
A new face, false documents, a bad conscience. Dwight McCarthy is trying to get away from the past, but the present is no better. Even his affair with the waitress Shelley turns into a prologue to cruel and bloody events that at first look like an ordinary skirmish with unbridled hooligans. But in Sin City, even one spilled drop of blood can attract swarms of sharks...
Sin City 4. That Yellow Bastard
Old cop John Hartigan has long burned out at work - he is tired, and his heart is naughty, and at home his wife and juicy steaks are waiting for him. But he cannot leave the service without finishing one thing: somewhere a little girl is fighting in the hands of a maniac, who has no one else to rely on. And let everyone be against him, let the bastard, son of Senator Roark, belong to the most powerful family of the City of Sins - Hartigan is ready to sacrifice both his career and life itself, just to save little Nancy Callahan, his only friend, the daughter he has It never happened. In this issue, Frank Miller for the first time changes the strict black and white palette, adding a poisonous yellow color to the palette, which denotes a vile maniac who, after the intervention of doctors, has become a real monster. The scene where he tortures Nancy, which was filmed for the film adaptation of the comic, turned out to be so cruel that it was not even included in the director's cut of the film. Now the reader can fully plunge into the atmosphere of vice and hopelessness of the City of Sins, as the author himself conceived it.
Sin City 5. Family Values
Here, in the earthly threshold of hell, there are no righteous. But among corrupt politicians and indifferently cruel mafia bosses there are people who are ready to avenge desecrated family values. Duyat McCarthy, known to readers from the previous volumes of the cycle and the film by Robert Rodriguez. Set off again at the request of his friend Gail. This time he has to find the killers of one of the girls of the old city, Carmen. Did she learn something superfluous or just got hit by a stray bullet in a gangster showdown? To find out, Dwight will have to shake up his old acquaintances Fat and Small, charm the unfortunate single mother Peggy and enter into a desperate battle with an entire mafia clan.
Sin City 6. Booze, chicks and bullets
The black-and-white conciseness of noir immerses the reader in the atmosphere of a dark, criminal city. Splashes of color - blue, red - give additional sharpness to the hand-drawn narrative ... This time, the reader is waiting for separate fascinating stories.
Sin City 7. To hell and back
Sin City is a metropolis, even during the day living nightlife. This is a city inhabited by strong and uncontrollable people, street predators and their victims, policemen and maniacs: a city whose soul is overturned into darkness. This city appreciates every grain of beauty by its weight in gold, strangles in its arms, pulls to the bottom. But Wallace, a true artist with a romantic soul, is not going to give up: like Orpheus, he descends into the depths of the underworld to save his beloved, to snatch her from the tentacles of a ruthless octopus. Together with the heroes of the last, most voluminous and impressive novel of the cult cycle, readers leave Sin City, having gone through hell - and returning back.
Attributes
Where can I buy this comic in Saratov?
In Saratov, the Sin City comic book can be bought at the Marvelous Comics store, M. Gorky St., 30A
At the very beginning of the nineties, the star of the comic book world, Frank Miller, moved to California, where he began working on a series that was later destined to become a cult and receive an almost standard film adaptation - Sin City. Even before the transition from DC to Dark Horse, Miller flirts with noir, but the editing prevents the artist from doing this completely - he is limited. Drawing, as he himself says, “not standard superheroes in leggings, but short stories for tough guys about tough guys,” Frank begins only after moving to California, and the series quickly becomes popular.
Frank Miller.
Frank Miller's graphics have already become a well-defined concept in themselves: chopped wide figures of people, an apparent lack of details, a peculiar approach to color. "Sin City" is akin to the painting "Waterloo Bridge" by Claude Monet. Concentrating on a particular area of the drawing, it can be difficult to understand what exactly is depicted on it, but once you look at the entire canvas, the monochrome breaks up into a scene. Black and white - two colors turned out to be quite enough not only to depict the night, weapons and thick cigarette smoke: in this world, the flame of a lighter is still orange, and the blood is scarlet.
The rebirth of "Sin City" gives the film adaptation of Rodriguez. It was not easy to get permission to shoot the film: after two not the most successful Robocops, for which Miller wrote the script, the artist lost interest in Hollywood and did not expect anything good from comic book film productions, especially his own. Rodriguez, secretly from Miller, filmed a test scene for the short issue "The Customer is Always Right", which subsequently opened the film. In an effort to bring the film frame as close as possible to the drawings, the director constantly checked the scene with printouts of the comic book, and this approach gave the result: Miller not only gave the go-ahead for filming, but also joined the production himself.
In connection with the release of the second film "Sin City" we decided to recall the most bright heroes graphic novel. And then, as Alexander Kanygin rightly noted in his own, without knowing the original picture, it will not be easy to get into the essence of the events of the second part.
Marv
Wardrobe-like Marvin keeps Gladys' pistol at his old mother's house, with whom he occasionally talks. Unless, of course, at this moment he is not busy grinding people into a bloody mess or admiring the inaccessible beauty of Nancy in a local tavern.
The gloomy Marv is simple, but you can’t buy his trust, and if you have already made friends with this not the most sane big man, be sure that he will give his life for you. He is not very smart, but if something is needed, he can find a smarter person and ask him. And refusing Marv is dangerous.
The most suitable actor for the role of Marv - Mickey Rourke - was quickly found. As Miller himself said, after being invited to audition for Rodriguez's hotel room, Rourke collapsed with some nasty dog, talked about how shitty things were for him for about twenty minutes, while his dog pissed Rodriguez on the sofa, and then he completely dumped , without talking about the role and samples. So Miller realized that before him was the perfect Marv.
Dwight
A local knight in sneakers - several inhabitants of local streets owe him their lives at once. However, Dwight sometimes turns his life into a phantasmagoria of blood and corpses. A simple coincidence with him in leading role pours into hell and the war of the two halves of Basin City, and the flow of Dwight's brains from the skull to the fly (which is hard to blame him for) starts a complex series of events that change him not only internally, but also externally. That is why in two film adaptations the hero is played various actors- Clive Owen in the first film and Josh Brolin in the latest film.
Hartigan
The classic role of a cop "a few_days_until_retirement" - with a completely non-classical fate. The decision to save the girl Nancy from a pedophile completely changes his life: for shooting ultra-short distances at the eggs of a criminal, Hartigan is sent to the bunk: the pedophile turns out to be the son of a local bump. The fate of a cop is worse than death: bandits beat him to the state of a piece raw meat, then local doctors actually re-sew it and demand to take the crimes of the senator's son on themselves. Years of torture will break the will of the old man, but in the end, Hartigan will be richly rewarded, though not for long.
Kevin
A taciturn owner of a silent gait, an enlightened expression and a good appetite for a rare delicacy - human flesh. Kevin, plus everything, hears voices: as an act of justice, they tell him to open the hunting season for local prostitutes, which he actually eats. According to a tradition close to Russian people, he does not throw away the bones, but takes them to the dog, instead of which Kevin has a medium-sized hungry wolf. By the way, despite the general cruelty of the series, the animal will not suffer in the end and even eat quite normally in the finale of the first book in the series.
Roark family
Roarks are representatives of the local power elite. As in real life, they break the laws, avoiding any responsibility in the courts, but in the end they receive it in full from the inhabitants of the city. Cardinal Roark took in the cannibal Kevin and was so imbued with his holy hunt that he decided to join and also tasted the taste of local whores. His brother, a senator, beat his wife half to death and, of course, did not sit down, despite the obvious evidence. In addition, the senator covers up the same pedophile son, whom the elderly cop Hartigan deprived of eggs for his love for little girls. Medicine will return the device to his son, but the pervert will pay with his appearance: side effects drugs will turn his skin yellow, and this is the first of three occasions where color appears in Miller's novel.
Nancy
Beauty Nancy Callahan moonlights as a stripper. The locals know that you can look, but not touch: Nancy's safety is monitored not so much by security as by not the most diplomatic person in Marv land. But no one knows that this is exactly the little girl who was once saved from a pedophile by the old policeman Hartigan. Nancy has not forgotten her savior - having fallen in love with him even then, until the very moment of his release from prison, she will send him encrypted messages. The old cop will save her again - at the cost of his life, and Nancy will avenge her lover to her persecutors of many years.
Ava
A femme fatale, smashing on the spot every man in Basin City. Ava was once with Dwight, but even after breaking up with him, she finds the necessary thread, which turns on the "think member" mode in him. She will be able to find such leverage not only with Dwight. All the men next to this woman are dying: the cruel beauty uses them all, breaking hearts and destroying lives - but how can you resist this buxom beauty? Okay, what if Eva Green is playing her role?
Interestingly, Ava's poster, performed by Eva Green, caused a seething of shit among the most tidy part of the population: the Puritans did not like the actress's too frank breasts. The bust had to be darkened; at the same time, he, of course, did not become smaller, but such a decision completely satisfied the dissatisfied.
Gale
Gayle, the queen of prostitutes, is a tough woman who does not stand on ceremony with those who are dangerous. Should a client try to deceive her girl, and a rookie policeman accidentally drop into the old town, both of them will never be home for dinner. But in the arms of her lover, Dwight, Gale melts and is no longer afraid to be weak and defenseless.
An interesting nuance: for some reason, the Gale poster didn’t bother anyone, although the look of Rosario Dawson in a leather suit with steel, a la Janet Jackson, stars on the nipples is much more vulgar than Eva Green’s lush bust hidden by a blouse.
Miho
Silent Deadly Miho - most powerful weapon in the hands of the prostitutes of the old city: all she would need is to carefully cut a couple of people with her katana, while a few more will catch her shuriken in their throats. However, she owes her life to Dwight McCarthy, and this will play an important role in one of tangled stories Sin City.
Sin City
Sin City has more accurate name- see the road sign with the inscription "Basin City"; the first letters are perforated by bullets. Everything seems to be the same as always: crimes, corruption, corrupt power, dark nooks and crannies and a sense of danger that never leaves. The main thing that distinguishes Beixing from other settlements drowning in blood is that the area called "Old Town" is run exclusively by prostitutes. They have a deal with the law: the girls serve the cops for free and provide them with security. The police, in turn, do not touch any of the inhabitants of the area and, importantly, allow corrupt women to administer their justice.
Why so many prostitutes? Everything is simple. During the gold rush, the Roark family brought women to entertain the miners. Then the workers parted, there was no one to please, and the women huddled in their voluptuous and deadly quarter.
By the way, real city Basin exists in the state of Washington. However, the decision to visit it will not be the best in the world: if anything threatens your life, then it is death from boredom. Less than a thousand people live in the city, and they are all farmers.
Before watching a new film, we strongly recommend that you review the first film adaptation: firstly, nine years have passed since its release, and many details could be forgotten. In addition, an attentive viewer will be rewarded: the world of "Sin City" is small, and the characters intersect in it in the most non-trivial ways. For those who want to dive deeper into the black and white streets of the City, we recommend visiting the nearest bookstore and finding on the shelves a collection of short stories, one-shots of the noir universe "Booze, Chicks and Bullets". There you can find a rare guest of Sin City: two novellas will have a color, blue and red, one per story. In addition, there are two amazing sketches about Marv: from one you will find out where the thug gets his stylish clothes, and the second - "Silent night" - only one scene will unfold over several pages that you will remember for a lifetime.
Text: Alexey Sokolov
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Plain Saturday night
Frank Miller deservedly has a reputation as one of the masters of modern comics. Among his most famous works is a series of dark graphic novels about a certain city. It includes six individual books and several short stories. Frank wrote this comic book series during the 1990s.
comics features black and white drawing. But for some characters, a certain color is “fixed”. For example, yellow is for one antagonist and blue is for a female killer nicknamed Blue Eyes.
All comics of the cycle are united by one place of action - a city once founded as a staging post for gold miners. Also, the novels are united by a number of characters.
Part of them - central characters some comics of the cycle, some are colorful secondary characters. Among goodies Marv, who was unrequitedly in love with the stripper Nancy, was the thug. In appearance, he may seem narrow-minded, but he acts skillfully in battle, and also will not leave his friends in trouble and intercede for beautiful woman. Among the heroes of the second plan are the gangsters Mr. Klump and Mr. Schlagg, who suffer from "mania of eloquence".
Comic book villains are varied. In almost all books, among them is the powerful surname Roark and her 
the current head, who holds the post of senator. In one issue, the protagonist faces his former love, which skillfully manipulates people and goes to its goal through broken destinies.
Sin City is ruled by criminal clans, the most powerful of which is Roarke. The Old City is also an independent force. In it are located brothels, but the girls from there organized their own self-government and security system. The cops don't come into their part of Sin City.
The Sin City comics have been made into two adaptations. Both films were directed by Robert Rodriguez, assisted by Frank Miller. The first consists of three separate short stories, based on three of Miller's comics. They are framed by a story about a certain murderer of the women of the city.
The second film was subtitled "A Dame to Kill For" based on one of the comics, the adaptation of which was included in the film. The script for the sequel was written by the author of the comics about the city himself, and the film included stories that were not in the original series.
A feature of film adaptations is the recreation of the aesthetics of the original comics. The actors look like characters from graphic novels. In films, you can see scenes recreated similar to scenes from the book.
In "Sin City" he takes genre stamps,
and then breaks off the handles,
that it was impossible to turn back.
Chris Sims, comicsalliance.com
When you read this article, "Sin City 2" will be shown in cinemas. Whether we will be delighted with him or you cannot enter the same river twice - who knows. Time is relentless. It's been more than a year since we went to the movies for the first movie that John Hartigan has been in jail. Then we considered the release of each superhero comic in Russian as a great achievement, but now the well-translated volumes of "Sin City" are in the central bookstores of our cities, and no one takes it, everyone already has it. Then we considered this visual style a revelation, but now more people draw "under the blue city" than bullets are fired on the pages of the novel. Then we talked a lot about what we saw. Some say that like this, imitating a comic book page with a camera and composition, and it is necessary to shoot adaptations. Others say that no one needs a dumb moving copy, and Miller's characters shouldn't be given to real people at all. But to hell with the movie. First there was a comic. Sit closer and order yourself something. I'll tell you about Sin City.
Let's not spend a lot of time on what you can read on Wikipedia. Well, if you've spent your entire life in a windowless room, then I'll put it in a nutshell: Frank Miller is one of those guys who changed the way we think about superhero comics first, and then about comics in general. Miller was given a way, by by and large, Danny O "Neil and Neil Adams, the most, motherfucking, gloomy and stylish artist and screenwriter that Batman had in the seventies. These two rediscovered the Dark Knight from scratch to the public in the same way that Miller will do it in a decade and a half. He will take their thick wine will be distilled into the strongest moonshine of the Dark Knight Returns and Year One brands. O "Neil let Miller off the chain - he gave him complete control over the sinking Daredevil series. Miller was twenty-three. It was possible in the industry back then. Now that doesn't happen anymore. At that age, my friend, when you graduate from college, Miller did best comics on the planet. Have another drink.
At this point, Miller's approach as a screenwriter developed, which would be seen in Sin City. Miller wanted to make crime novels, and comics needed superheroes in tights. And he was doing a crime novel about a guy in tights. First on the Daredevil, then on the Batman, he even hit the Wolverine with his elbow. All the characters that Miller took on became darker and tougher. Notice I don't say "realistic". Yes, the problems hit in the stomach, and the enemies did not come up with reasons to leave the victim alive, they drenched immediately. But there was also an ultra-clear line between good and bad guys, there was contempt for the laws of physics and physiology, there was a sweeping strokes and actions.
When Frank Miller was allowed to do anything at all, DC released his Ronin mini-series, one of the first signs of the approach that would become the Vertigo imprint. And if you're wondering how the visuals for Sin City came about, start with Ronin. Here is Miller's admiration for BD - an expressive and at the same time strict composition, aggressive coloring - and the influence of the manga on him - grotesque characters, deliberately rude and at the same time very technically drawn. By the way, right there - half of the modern "widescreen", although then no one knew such a word. Even with a widescreen, Miller tells stories in a way that is unimaginable today. Nevermind.
Large works of the eighties Miller wrote in New York. In both "Daredevil" and "Batman" the city becomes not just a set, but (however this stamp shakes you) one of the main characters of the story. The hero confronts the city, learns from it, or survives in it. The hero passes through the city as through hell - or remains in this hell.
In the early 1990s, Frank Miller fell out with the Big Two, went to Dark Horse, where writers were paid royalties and editorial policies were much softer, and moved to Los Angeles. California has significantly changed the image of the city-hell in the author's head. Superheroes were not forced to write anymore, there were no restrictions on the visual range either. The soil was fertile not only for Miller - around the same time, the beloved by all of us on Spidermedia "Hellboy" was conceived (look for parallels yourself).
The first story (commonly called "yarns", that is, tales) about the City of Sins was published in the anthology "Dark Horse Presents" in two parts. Later it was published as the novel "The Difficult Goodbye". In general, you need to read "Sin City" like novels. The release breakdown was more of a tribute to the genre. Miller did everything by his own rules - including handing in work, so the frequency of the release of the mini-series was lousy. But the result was always worth the wait. Both the picture and the plot of "Sin City" made a splash in the industry. The stories of Sin City blasted crime comics with high voltage and made this heart beat again. Sales-wise, it was a blockbuster. Miller became a classic during his lifetime and could do whatever he wanted in the future. When the history of "Sin City" ended with the nineties, he did what he wanted. Where did it lead him - you know. And if you don't know, it's still a different story. Let's talk about the comic itself.
The traditions of the noir genre involve a play of light and dark that conveys the main themes of stories - here everything is not what it seems, secrets are attractive, dangers are invisible, and the morality of most characters is gray, and only the best people can remain "white" for a while, not for long. ". The protagonist in film noir often pays for a mistake, at least for not wanting to compromise his principles. He is often deceived, in the urban jungle he is a predator himself and is surrounded by predators. The genre of film noir has a lot of dubious things these days. Pretty women and rich people are always dangerous here, women are only saints and whores (and the main characters are vanishingly rare), breaking the law is the best and / or only way out of the situation, and the average good guy killed not fewer people than Ted Bundy. Half of these laws Frank Miller brought either to perfection, or to the point of absurdity, so it is sometimes not even clear whether he is serious or this is already such a satire. The second half interfered with him and was thrown out as unnecessary.
In "Sin City" everything is the same. The most enduring heroes, the most monstrous villains, the thickest allusions and the most literal metaphors (usually meaning either power or death). The off-screen monologues of the characters give a light to Chandler and Hammett, and the characters look on the pages either as clots of darkness, or as figures glowing from within. Each, even completely third-rate character, is so convex and hypertrophied that it is inevitably remembered. Blood is pouring in buckets. In the replicas, every third word is highlighted in bold. Heroes, "the size does not fit in life" (accurate English expression), and always with old wounds - not on the body, but on the soul - they freeze on the pages of stone giants, and in battles they appear as heroes of the Greek or Celtic epic. And at the same time, all this does not seem excessive (although someone will not like it). Frank Miller is head and shoulders above "cool" comics like Millar, Liefeld and Ennis, because "Sin City" is not needed to shock the public, convey the author's beliefs and flirt with the reader and the industry. All this, alas, will be in Miller's biography - but later, and to hell with them, these dull pages. In Sin City, Frank Miller tells the stories he wants to tell, just the way the stories need to be told. Everything is fair. For this we love him. Numbers of volumes according to the current edition of "Amphora" are given in parentheses.
The Hard Goodbye (vol. 1)
The monstrous Marv, street fighter, drifter and prisoner, meets beautiful woman named Goldie. In the morning, she ends up in his bed, dead, with police sirens wailing outside. Marv has been set up and is now being hunted. The tramp will tear apart as many people as it takes to get on the trail of whoever is responsible for Goldie's death and take revenge. But Goldie, like a ghost, begins to appear to him - and Marv loses his already lousy connection with reality.
I imagine how comic book readers looked at THIS when it first appeared in print - and didn't know what they were seeing. The story came out in thirteen pieces, no more than a dozen pages each. Read it in parts - the head will crack. In each issue, nothing happens, the next one (separated by a month's wait) starts a second after the previous one, and most importantly, no one else around writes, draws, DOES like that. It cannot be said that Miller is a visionary who does not see rules and restrictions. He, like his hero Marv, just breaks through them. If someone along the way took out the brain (in the literal or figurative sense) - these are his personal problems.
The first novel is a virtuoso trick that is being performed before your very eyes. Miller knows exactly how he wants to draw and write - but he doesn't yet fully know what it takes. There was nowhere to take ready-made rules (why - I'll tell you a little later), and the author begins to invent tricks and laws on the go. In the first issues of the comic, Marv looks much more like a normal person, much is drawn with more or less traditional "thin" lines, the construction of the pages is more or less similar to what is "taken" to draw. Moving from chapter to chapter, you will see how Miller discards everything superfluous, makes the lines bolder and heavier, and the story denser.
Do you want my opinion? The story that is being told here, despite the presentation, is not a damn noir. This is just the cover. Inside the novel is a cruel legend. Epic fantasy, if you will. Conan moved to the scenery modern city. Marv is a real primeval monster in the middle of the urban jungle. He is huge, ugly, incredibly strong and tenacious, and, by all appearances, has gone a little crazy. At the same time, he has not just principles, but laws of honor. In other stories where he is not the main character, Marv will appear as a pure Viking. Marv is conceived the same as Conan was originally. You are "for him" not because he is a good guy - from the very beginning it is known that this is not so. He is not a teenage fantasy - he is ugly, stupid, unloved by anyone, good for nothing but a fight. Even such a cliche as a woman in the finale, he is deprived - that Goldie is dead, you will see on the fifth page. You are "for him" because Marv has the determination and ability to go all the way to the end that you would like to have. No one can literally stand in his way - enemies scatter like skittles. The path of the monster hero leads through the corpses of other monsters, first metaphorical - like corrupt cops and gangsters - and then real, like a silent psycho killer and a high-ranking cannibal. Che, spoiler? I don't care, but now you'll be waiting for a meeting with a green-eyed psychopath like thunder after lightning, and trust me, it's worth it.
Will it all end well? Nothing ends well in Sin City. The city itself is a space of legends, not at all the same as the noir detective metropolis. Here the whole area is kept by Amazonian prostitutes, there are scary place on the outskirts, where no one can ever go, and a cyclopean statue of the main villain. Goldie, whom Marv calls the "Goddess", seems to him like a ghost (but there is no mysticism here, however, read it yourself). The main character even has to return from the other world. Do you notice this place while reading? Be careful. But that’s all, I won’t soar you with mythology, otherwise it will be even longer and more tedious than it was already.
A Dame to Kill For (Volume 2)
Dwight McCarthy is a private investigator with a dark past. Once his beloved, Ava Lord, ran away from him to a more respectable boyfriend and got married. Ava is now returning to Dwight to ask for his help. Her life has become like hell, and she seeks salvation from her husband and from his faithful servant, a huge lackey named Manut. Dwight's first attempts to protect Ava fail, leaving him with no choice but to kill Damien Lord. To carry out his plan, Dwight needs to turn to the darkness inside himself, which he has not let out for more than a year. At the same time, he will take Marv, already known to us, as assistants. However, in the Lord's mansion, Dwight will find something completely different from what he expected.
This is where the noir begins. If we, of course, understand this word in the same way. I have already said above that Frank Miller noir is something taken to the limit of abstraction. All the moves and tricks of the genre are distilled to create an over-stylized reality that "real" film noir has never had - crime films taken for little money based on tabloid novels.
The fact is that film noir, which we consider icons of the genre, like "Double Indemnity" and "The Maltese Falcon", was written and filmed before its heroes went to Second world war and returned from it. Pre-war noir is full of suffering characters - they often get hit in the head, betrayed and deceived, they themselves suffer because of their principles. Their signature "inner monologue" consists of discourses about life and reflection. After the war, everything changed dramatically. And the word "cool" is the key here. Raymond Chandler was replaced by Mickey Spillane. We call it "noir" out of habit, in America it was called "pulp". His heroes (and the heroes of his contemporaries) behaved differently. They were rougher, tougher, and mostly came out of fights as winners. The manner of them internal monologue also changed - to the one that Miller took. This text is stuffed with juicy metaphors, the invention of which seems to have been special kind sports. One epithet is never enough, two or three are needed. Look how it's written: "A freight train rams my jaw. Then another one. Ava screams somewhere far away. Sounds get wet. Maybe he keeps hitting me. I don't know. I'm gone. I've gone to a place where there's no no pain, no thought. I come to my senses in flight. The pavement rushes towards me with a strong, clumsy kiss." Compare this to another comic book master from around the same period who adopted a noir voice-over monologue - Alan Moore. How much drier, more economical (in comparison) anything is stated in Rorschach's diary. But Walter Kovacs and Dwight McCarthy essentially come from the same type.
From the story of Dwight, a common line for the protagonists of "Sin City" becomes noticeable - they are guys with good intentions and strict principles, who do not lose their ideals in a dirty and immoral world. But the devil sits inside each of them, and they manage to fight him with varying degrees of success. If I wanted to, I would pull out a political message here - about the opposition of an angry loner to power, money, established order(in the novels, this theme will come up more and more each time), but I want to point out something else.
It is often said that the crime genre in general, and noir in particular, is such a purely "testosterone" reading, interesting only to the boy inside the man and boring to women and completely grown-up people. This is not the case with Sin City. Miller writes about anger and rage, about an emotion common to all people. What is unfolding before us is not a physical war, and not even a war of minds. There is a conflict of values, and whoever has more real values and who clings to them more firmly will eventually win. I didn’t come up with this, it’s written by Miller in a broken word. And to those who do not understand, he repeated it in interviews and in columns with letters. That's why I say Miller's characters are ultimately white, not grey. They are all ready not so much to kill as to die for the sake of a higher goal.
A Dame to Kill For is not an exercise in style, but a full-bodied, gulp-ready action-packed romance that hides serious themes behind the rumble, fights, and chases. Well, not too serious, this is not a library of world literature classics. But only a person with an iron will can stop after, say, the third issue and say to himself "I'll finish reading tomorrow."
The Big Fat Kill / Massacre of the Upper Class (vol. 3)
Dwight, already familiar to us, comes to visit the waitress Shelly, when her former, unpleasant and dangerous type named Jack begins to break at the apartment door. Dwight teaches Jack the mind, he dumps more angry and even more uncontrollable than he came. Dwight goes after Jack so that he does not mess things up, and they both find themselves in the Old City - the very area that prostitutes own. Dwight is an old acquaintance here, and Jack is tolerated exactly until he points a gun at one of the girls. After that, Jack is killed - such are the orders in the Old City. The dead man turns out to be a cop - and Dwight, along with Gale, the leader of the Old City, will have to deal with the consequences of this murder. The order established by the girls will be threatened by both the police and gangsters, Dwight will be overtaken by his past, and from the very beginning it is clear that a big massacre in the finale cannot be avoided.
The title of this novel was stolen by Frank Miller from one of his idols, the author pulp fiction Mickey Spillane. There were many other borrowings. Take even a small detail - in popular culture, it was Spillane who came up with the idea that the protagonist's gun should have a name. So in the first novel, a Marv trunk named Gladys appeared. Let's not catch Frank by the hand - he had no choice (besides, the elderly Spillane then approved the young Miller). Recreating any genre in a different format - film adaptation, novelization, whatever - requires re-inventing the specific language that the genre speaks. Dumb copying will not work, we have all seen examples of this. The crime comics of the Golden Age were written like gangster novels, but they were drawn in a fairly neutral way, and did not differ significantly from rom-coms or instructive stories for schoolchildren. Then, when a lot of things became impossible in comics, this genre was abandoned and its language did not develop. When something became "possible" again, the authors began to invent new criminal comics, but already reproducing the language of film noir - the play of light and shadow, non-standard expressive angles, as well as plot and visual clichés.
This language also did not work for Miller, although he took all the best from it. First of all, of course, "camera angles" and off-screen monologue. With Miller turned at full power, nothing is realistic - but there is no need for this. All speech in the novels is stylized and artificial. Yes, the characters speak abruptly and without frills - but not "life-like". Who needs realism? We opened this book to see how a thousand bullet holes were made in someone's car.
The same can be said about the drawing. "Sin City" is a rare example of a comic whose page looks impressive from a distance. For such sheets of text next to the picture, for the composition of two giant panels per page, any editor would beat a newbie on the hands. And if you were asked “without looking” what you think about a comic book where a third of the page is an inscription, and every third page is a splash or half-splash, you would answer that in such a comic the action is clearly moving very slowly. And he would be wrong - Miller throws out everything superfluous from the story, so that something important and exciting happens all the time in it. And at the same time, "Massacre" is read slowly, because it says a lot interesting words, on which you do not want to jump over the line.
Another thing to note is that Miller does not use cheap tricks. For romance important place in which an army of prostitutes (literally) occupies, there are few sexualized women painted for your loneliness. The nudity here speaks of vulnerability, and is not intended to make you react "I was a blower." There is even less mat. It would seem that a crime novel for adults, in the cinema in such swearing through the word. This is not necessary here, and when the f-word appears, it is clear that a replica is impossible without it.
That Yellow Bastard / That Yellow Bastard (vol. 4)
Eight years ago, good cop John Hartigan saved a little girl named Nancy Callahan from a maniac before retiring. The pedophile, Roark Jr., turned out to be the son of a very high-ranking man, Senator Roark. Hartigan, knowing that the court would acquit the criminal, shot off Roarke's hand and genitals. And after that, the corrupt partner shot John point-blank. While Hartigan was in a coma, the pedophilia case was blamed on him. He denied everything, he was kept in a cage like an animal, and beaten for a long time. Among others, a fetid, strangely dressed freak, whose skin was bright yellow, appeared in his cell. Hartigan's only support in prison was letters from Nancy. Therefore, when one day John received a severed female finger in an envelope, he immediately decided that this finger belongs to the already adult Nancy. Hartigan is released from prison to once again rescue and protect a girl in danger. But reality is not at all what he imagined.
If you're only going to read one novel in the series, read this one. I won’t lie, he is my favorite and I am ready to praise him for a very long time. But the virtues of the "Yellow Bastard" seem objective to me. This is the most dramatic of the Sin City stories, it has one of the most interesting protagonists, a memorable villain, high stakes and some of the most "delicious" off-screen monologues in the series. Finally, the hallmark of Sin City stories - all the characters intersect with each other, so that it turns out that all the stories take place almost simultaneously, and the episodic characters of some novels become the main ones in others - here, in my opinion, most noticeable. Although if you only read one novel, you won't notice a damn thing.
John Hartigan is a special conversation among Miller's heroes. He is so smart that he wants to applaud, extremely honest, completely true to ideals and at the same time believable. Well, aside from how many direct hits it can take. Where did he come from? When you didn’t like how a movie ended as a child, you took soldiers (well, or dolls) and played an alternative ending with them. Now you should probably sit down to write fanfiction. Frank Miller didn't like the way the Dirty Harry movie ended - and he wrote a great novel. Frank has a talent for writing about " recent affairs"great heroes. Hartigan's story is, if you like, an improved and sharpened version of The Dark Knight Returns. An old man, a girl, a clash with evil of a new scale, which he partly created himself, justice and retribution, good and evil. Dirty Harry, too easily recognizable - by the words, by the huge gun, by the manner of acting.Besides, do you know what Dirty Harry's last name was? Callahan.
Half of the noir comics drawn after Sin City owe their existence to The Yellow Bastard. And at the same time, it went to the detriment of the novel. "Classic" examples in any genre seem to be secondary to those who came later. The hell with two explain to the beginner the difference between the original and a copy. That's the case with Miller. We now have almost thirty years of comics behind us, copying what he brought. Severed heads, overhanging cities, heroes drawn in ink alone. The same "grim and gritty", which was equated with realism and which is expected everywhere, out of place and out of place. Frank himself - and I do not assume this, but I know for sure - is sick of how only form, without content, has been trimmed from his work. Well, look carefully - this is how ultra-violence, sex and clenched teeth were done when it all still had a meaning. Also, if you wanted to see how the comics apply that trick that everyone discusses after the film adaptations - the colored elements in black and white picture- then you're right here. It's almost nowhere else in the Sin City comics.
Family Values / Family values
(Volume 5)
All familiar faces. To pay back Gail, Dwight tries to dig up some information about a contract killing that took place in a scruffy diner. The murder turns out to be part of a blood feud between two crime bosses Sin City - Don Magliozzi and Herr Wallenquist, who is simply called the German. Dwight and Miho will again kill a lot of people in order to get to the mafia bosses - but what they need from them and why Dwight is so stubbornly engaged in this murder, we will only find out in the finale.
Following the strongest novel in the series, in my opinion, is the weakest. Well, as weak as vodka - weak compared to pure alcohol. This is the first Sin City story to be published outright as a novel, and Miller writes it differently than previous works. The pace is almost like a movie, you don't have to wait for the "next episode" here and the novel is swallowed in one go, because all you want is to get to the end. Not satisfied with the techniques that he had already created for himself, Miller shows in " family values"new tricks. The novel contains several inserted stories, retellings of the same events by different characters. Moreover, there are many "thought bubbles", thought balloons, in which there was no need before. We follow not only Dwight - we some thoughts and conversations of other characters are known. "Family Values" is generally richer than most novels of the cycle in interesting secondary characters- there are many of them and not even all of them end up in the grave by the end of the story. This novel is a journey through Sin City, during which we have more than usual time to look around. This novel is also the logical conclusion of Frank Miller's love for the ninja. Everyone in comics loves ninjas these days. Miller introduced the fashion for them in many ways. First came Elektra and The Hand in Daredevil, which we ultimately owe to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, then there was Ronin and the Wolverine mini-series that Miller did with Claremont for two. So most of the Marvel references to Japan are from here. But already from "The Woman For Whom..." it is noticeable that Miller uses skirmishes with the girls of the Old Town to once again draw a small deadly Miho. This character is single-layered, and in "Family Values" this is noticeable as nowhere else. But Miller's drawing helps out. Watching every scene with Miho is a great aesthetic pleasure. Well, what brighter "nineties comic" marker do you need than a ninja on roller skates?
Booze, Broads, & Bullets / Booze, Chicks and Bullets (vol. 6)
With this volume, if you want to follow the chronology of Miller's work, things are tricky. This is not a novel, but a collection of all the short stories about Sin City that have come out before. There were many of these stories, Miller did not hesitate to put both genre and stylistic experiments in them. Taken together, the stories in this volume are not very comfortable to read. Most of them are not detective and not everyone has a fight. Some don't even know why.
Take the very first published short story, "And Behind Door Number Three..." It's four pages in which a client threatens Wendy with a knife, Gail and Miho show up and tie up the client. It turns out that he killed the prostitutes of the Old City, Wendy went to him to lure the maniac into a trap. The fate of the freak is obvious. But why is this bike needed?
Another thing is the story that follows it, "The Customer is Always Right", which is famous for the fact that Robert Rodriguez made a short film adaptation of it to convince Frank Miller to agree to shoot the film. "The customer is always right" is a prose poem, a little love story in Sin City. Miller's desire to tell romantic story will eventually result in his final novel. I can’t resist and say that the stories in the comics and in the film coincide only formally.
What other stories would I highlight in particular: "Silent Night" is a 26-page one-shot, on the cover of which there was not even a title. The entire text was moved to the end of the issue so as not to spoil the reader's impression. The whole story takes place in complete silence - no lines, not even sound effects. The only words are spoken on the last page. At the same time, the sketch (we will call a spade a spade) looks very expressive. Miller here shows what he has achieved as a storyteller. It would seem that by that time no one doubted him. Apparently something hit him. "Daddy's Girl" is another one-shot that appeared in the Dark Horse anthology. But I love the fact that the first time it was re-released was in a collection with speaking name Tales to Offend. This is one of the darkest stories in Sin City. Strength test - if you decide that after reading nothing can hurt you to the quick, try this. If it's not unpleasant, then you might like the plot twist around which the story is built. "Rats" is another spectacular formal experiment. Composition and drawing, unaccustomed after reading Miller's novels, chopped monologue of the hero, simple story. Apparently, this is a parable, as Frank Miller understands it. "Just Another Saturday Night" is the latest release, but one of the first chronologically, the Marv story. The closest that Sin City has to the genre of anecdote. The most commercial comic in the series, it was made to order and sent only to Wizard magazine subscribers. However, then it was reprinted in all anthologies.
Hell and Back / To hell and back (vol. 7)
War veteran and poor artist Wallace accidentally spots a woman attempting suicide and saves her. The woman's name is Esther, she likes Wallace's work and they have a first date. Their evening is interrupted by gangsters who steal Esther. When Wallace wakes up, he vows to find Esther and take revenge on her abusers. Thus begins Wallace's journey through apartments and dens, during which he fights with bandits, effortlessly gets rid of the police getting in the way, enlists the help of old army friends and goes through a long hallucinatory trip under the influence of drugs injected into him by enemies.
The last novel in the series. The crown of creation, tour de force and all that. The longest of the Sin City stories. It completes all the themes that interested Miller in previous stories, and all the techniques with which he flirted as an artist. From any issue, it is clear that this was done by a venerable pro, resting on his laurels. This can be seen both in the story, which repeats the old tricks, and in the publication, accompanied by fan art from other artists, Miller's smug responses to letters from fans, and, in some reprints, listings of regalia.
By this point, it must be said, one in three artists in the industry had spied something on Miller. Everyone from Liefeld and Netzer to Jim Lee and Scott McDaniel drew in something like him, and Miller was at times so angry that he last pages, where they answer letters from fans, wrote to them "Invent something yourself!" It is clear that the letters where Miller was told "Look at yourself, Kazuo Koiki and José Muñoz called and want their way of drawing back", no one printed. Reading this novel without opening the previous ones does not make sense. There are way too many references to things you should have already seen, from recurring characters to visual page references. previous novels. Reading it last can be boring - the main character is interesting, and the plot captures no less than before, but the feeling of "I've already seen it all" will not go anywhere. At the same time, reading "To Hell and Back" is necessary for at least one reason. Seventh edition. Nearly thirty pages of hallucinations. All of Miller's previous works spill out onto the pages, along with everything that came to his mind. Miller remembers the manner of drawing, which he still did not use under the brand name "Sin City" and frolics, I will not pick another word. What is especially cool is that the hallucination does not interrupt the narrative, the story continues. Usually a trip in comics is an opportunity for an artist to draw anything, as long as he likes it, and it is pretentious and non-standard. And the plot, like, will continue when the hero is released. Wallace not only continues to act - the fact that he is buggy becomes important to the plot. Some of the things that Frank Miller could not draw in a big-circulation comic book are passed on to the reader here. Don't you understand what I mean? When you get to the rag doll, you'll guess. Ah, yes. This whole piece of history is done in color.
It is possible to understand that it is time for Sin City to wrap up by a very simple thing. "To Hell and Back" ends with a more or less happy ending. Many readers will not be pleased, so I warn you right away. The cover says "love story in Sin City" - and the author is not lying. Although the people will be killed, as usual, a lot.
Well, yes, I signed here in such a way that it is unlikely that anyone will read it to the end. True Redson said, "twenty-minute post-rock is my genre." But now you know what "Sin City" is. Now go read.
