Product Description: Legendary artist Frank Miller opened a noir opus in Sin City. This critically-acclaimed triumph-honored by both an Eisner Award and the prestigious National Cartoonists' Award-combines the pulp intensity of writers like Spillane and Cain with the gritty graphic storytelling that only Miller can deliver. Sin City is the place-tough as leather and dry as tinder. Love is the fuel, and the now-infamous character Marv has the match ... not to mention a "condition." He's gunning after Goldie's killer, so it's time to watch this town burn! Frank Miller is one of modern comic's first talents to publish a comic book that he created, crafted, and owned. That book is Sin City, which grew from the wellspring of Miller's passionate desire to create a comic book with two distinct qualities - it wouldn't be a superhero comic, and it had to be a crime comic. Enter Marv and Goldie. And a psychotic killer. And a crime-drenched town. And a corrupted diocese. Sin City is a town like no other, but most places resemble it in one way or another. In real life, thugs live everywhere and women sell their bodies all the time, but if everyday life is a storm, Sin City exists in the eye of a hurricane.
Amazon.com Review: Sin City launched the long-running, critically acclaimed series of comics novels by Frank Miller. Having worked on some of the most important comic books in the 1980s, including Marvel Comics's Daredevil and the influential Batman graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, Miller was already a heavy-weight cartoonist, but he hit his stride with Sin City. It gave him the freedom that doesn't come when working on someone else's characters. While the art isn't as polished as in later books, it is in many ways the quintessential Sin City story: tough-guy Marv finds the girl of his dreams, an incredible beauty named Goldie. But when Goldie is murdered on their first night together, Marv scours the bars and back alleys of Sin City to find her killer in hopes of avenging her death.
The Noir-est Noir Ever There is no doubt in my mind that Frank Miller as a human being is an arrogant, sexist, racist homophobe who represents everything that is horrible about the human race. Still, questions of author's intent aside, he has written some pretty good stuff. And it may, in part, be the foulness of his own ideology that allows him to create a character like Marv, Sin City's protagonist, who is worthy of our sympathy, yet so monstrous, so twisted, that his only redemption is to die. Unlike Marv, Miller is able to redeem himself through the accidental genius of his work, his contributions to the literary world.
Darker than the noir of the mid-twentieth century, this book oozes with all the sleaze and filth of humanity. One does not "like" this sort of material--one endures it and appreciates it. Is it helpful to explore the darkness and emptiness of the human race with such fervor? Is it helpful to go through wretched hell only to emerge feeling empty and tarnished? I will leave these questions to the literary critics and philosophers; I just know that Book 1 of Sin City is damn disturbing and damn good.
The Hard Goodbye - An Intro to Miller Mythology The Hard Goodbye is the passport to Miller Mythology. It's a blueprint for the series. Frank Miller taps right into human storytelling-consciousness and so this effort is immediately classic and iconic.
If you enjoy pulp, legend, or hero stories you will love The Hard Goodbye.
As an afterthought, however, this isn't kiddie fare and is not for the easily offended. It is graphic in the manner that any medieval tale pictorially presented would be. Brutal and honest with a dash of metered gore.
Marv's story -- a work of violent genius. Frank Miller's imagination inhabits the harshly-lit night of the underbelly of gritty Sin City. It is a place where the thugs and hookers are brutal (yet vulnerable) and the cops and priests are black-souled goons. "The Hard Goodbye," Miller's film-noirish first volume in the Sun City series, gives us the harsh and violent story of Marv, the schizoid, pulp-faced ultraviolent antihero whose iron mitts are as hard as his life. This is a revenge novel. Marv, whose rough, broken face and dim-watt mind make him unattractive, has had the time of his life with a beautiful blonde who turns up dead. Marv goes hunting for the silent killer who did in the only women who ever loved him. His path of blood and destruction with his favorite handgun, "Gladys," takes him through confessional booths, back-alley strip clubs, crooked priests, rampaging cops and a cannibal farm. Not a tale for the faint of heart, but Miller tells it with a Bogey swagger and a series of epic pen-and-ink panels that spin around the characters as they struggle through a vortex of mayhem, torture and desperate love.
Great read, and better re-read. But don't leave it where the kiddies will find it!
The best masterpiece ever written This is one of the only books i have ever enjoyed. I usualy hate novels, but this book was so awesome I read it in one day. From the start to the end this is truly the best book ever. It will keep you at the edge of your reading seat until it is over and then when it is over you will read it again and again, possibly until you die. I highly recommend this book for all who can handle the awesomeness.
If you liked the movie, this book just adds more depth I am a huge fan of the Sin City film and since this complete book came with my Collector's Edition DVD set, I finally got around to reading it. It really shows you how much effort was put into making the movie as close as possible to this amazing story. Frank Miller really creates a world that you can fully immerse yourself in. You will feel the grime of Sin City just by looking at the pictures and reading the harsh dialogue. Marv is my favorite character in the movie and we learn a little more about what he is going through and thinking in the graphic novel version. This guy kills almost everyone he comes into contact with (most deserve it), but you will end up caring about him in the end. This is a fantastic read that won't take you more than an hour or so to get through. I'll have to check out the rest of the Sin City series in the near future.
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