Sin City: The Hard Goodbye

For me Frank Miller began the road that ends in "Sin City" with "Daredevil" #164, which retold the hero's origin. There is a series of panels in which Daredevil is chasing down the Fixer, the man who arranged the fight that Battling Murdock refused to throw. In each frame Daredevil gets closer to his quarry and cutting across the panels is a line representing the Fixer's heart beat, which goes from blind panic to full cardiac arrest before flatlining. It was at that point that I knew Miller was starting to think of what he could do with art in a comic book. After his work on "Daredevil" there was "Ronin" and "The Dark Knight Returns," and eventually Miller gets to Marv.

There is no doubt that Marv is the walking path of destruction that dominates this narrative. He is extremely violent, deeply disturbed, and whatever medication he is taking is just not doing the job. Still, he is a sympathetic figure because pretty much everybody he is maiming and killing are the real scum of the earth and he is on a mission to avenge the death of Goldie, the beautiful blonde who gave him a toss in the hay. He falls asleep in bed with her, having one of those moments of true happiness that never bodes well, and wakes up with her dead and the cops on their way. Marv is being set up, but that is incidental in his mind to the fact somebody killed Goldie, so somebody has to pay along with everybody else who stands in his way. The grand irony here is Marv and his interior monologues are the voice of sanity by the time he finds the killer.

The characters and the dialogue are easy to characterize as Mickey Spillane types on steroids. Then there is Miller's artwork as he explores what can done with just black and white on a page. The result is wildly experimental and sometimes you can a sense of how rough Miller's ideas are by the time he finishes a page. The first page of the story is more black than white, with Goldie's lips, the outline of her hair, the white skin exposed by the strapless gown and gloves etched out in seductive folds sets the tone for the artwork. The second page is the opposite with more white than black and offers a more conventional view of Marv and Goldie, and already you like the first page better. The third page offers a synthesis of the first two and it is like Miller is laying out the new ground rules. There are figures reduced to silhouettes except for hair or teeth (or bandages), and others reduced to white images against a field of black. Then we get to Marv standing in the rain in Chapter 8 and looking at the statue of Cardinal Roarke, at which point Miller is trying something completely different from the rest of the book.

I have no doubt that if Miller was to do "The Hard Goodbye" today that there would be significant changes in the artwork that would provide a refinement of the raw energy displayed here. There are times when the justification for the artwork seems to clearly be that it is different from the pages Miller has just drawn as opposed to be the best way of illustrating that part of the narrative. But this is the first story in an ongoing series, so allowances can be made if Miller really did decide to do a page a certainly way for no other reason than he had not done one that way yet. After all, it is not like he was coming up with 200 different pages of artwork and by the time you get to Chapter 8, which I think is artistically far and away the best of the entire graphic novel, it is equally clear Miller knows exactly what he is doing and all of the pieces are falling into place. The joy of watching the art evolve in this story makes up for the rough patches.

These stories were originally published in issues #51-62 of the Dark Horse comic book series "Dark Horses Presents" and in the "Dark Horse Presents Fifth Anniversary Special." This second edition has come out with the rest of the extant "Sin City" collection in term to be gobbled up by fans of the movie version and those who come from the theater to the graphic novel will probably be surprised how faithful Robert Rodriguez was to Frank Miller's story and vision. Then again, that was the whole point of doing the film the way it was done.


Bienvenue dans la Ville du Peche   Juin 30, 2002
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Marvin est un colosse. Un dangereux personnage, dont le physique, taille dans le roc, ne lui est pas favorable aupres des femmes. Un dur a cuire, souvent ivre ou drogue, brutal et decide. Sin City est sa ville, son univers. Violent et sans pitie. Pourtant un soir, il tombe sur une femme magnifique qui lui fait l'amour, sans rien attendre d'une seduction inutile. Quand Marv' se reveille le lendemain, sa douce creature git, morte, a ses cotes. Le tueur a maquille la scene, Marv' est le coupable ideal, et la police est deja dans ses escaliers. Va commencer une enquete qui conduira Marvin dans les trefonds d'une ville sombre et noire. Bienvenu dans l'enfer de Sin City, la ville du Peche.

Frank Miller est un auteur a part entiere. Dessinateur, scenariste, il se forge une reputation sur Daredevil qui etait en perte de vitesse chez Marvel il y a plusieurs annees. Il lui ocnfere une epaisseur et une vie qu'aucun autre ne lui avait donne auparavant. Miller se fait ensuite les dents sur Batman, Dark Knight Returns. Un pave, du meme accabit, un miracle et un succes, encore. Batman renait, Miller est devenu membre du pantheon des meilleurs artistes US.
Il cre Sin City, plus tard, pour Dark Horse. Narrant les aventures d'un personnage atypique, nevrose, et solitaire, Sin City est un polar sombre, tres sombre, qui n'a rien a envier aux meilleurs polars version romans. Pur bijou, Sin City trouve ses marques dans une narration expressive, cinglante, humaine. Miller dessine en noir et blanc. Comme personne n'aurait ose. Tout n'est qu'ombre et lumiere, negatif et graphique. Le ton est donne, les personnages sont hallucinant de charisme et d'epaisseur. Le parcours de Marvin est une quete et une decouverte de cette ville qui fait parler d'elle desormais a travers plusieurs tomes. "J'ai tue pour elle" est le premier, et probablement le meilleur, encore que "meilleur" est dur a definir tant le niveau est tres haut sur cette serie.
Un must ! A se procurer absolument !