World Famous Comics: That Yellow Bastard (Sin City, Book 4: Second Edition)
That Yellow Bastard (Sin City, Book 4: Second Edition)
By: Frank Miller Publisher: Dark Horse Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Dark Horse Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 240 Publication Date: February 09, 2005
Amazon.com: In a Sin City short story, "The Babe Wore Red," Frank Miller deviated from his stark black-and-white artwork by adding tiny bits of color throughout the story. The girl's dress was red, her lips were red--you get the picture. In That Yellow Bastard, the fourth Sin City graphic novel, Miller's experiment with yellow ink is also a tremendous success. The setup is simple. On the last day before he retires, Hartigan, an old cop, gets a call about an 11-year-old girl who has been kidnapped by a lunatic. Hartigan has got just one more thing to do before he retires: save the girl. Saving her is the easy part, because Hartigan has uncovered something really bad that is not going to stop until it catches up with him. That Yellow Bastard is nerve-racking to the very end.
Product Description: Just one hour to go. Hartigan's polishing his badge and working himself up to kissing it goodbye, it and the thirty-odd years of protecting and serving, tears, blood, and triumph that it represents. He's thinking about his wife's smile, about the thick, fat steaks she's picked up at the butcher's, about the bottle of champagne she's got packed in ice, about sleeping in 'til ten in the morning and spending sunny afternoons flat on his back. But with one hour left to go, he gets word about that one loose end he hasn't tied up: a young girl who's helpless in the hands of a drooling lunatic. Just one hour to go ... and Hartigan's gonna go out with a bang.
Graphic SF Reader A mostly honest cop close to retirement saves a young girl, foiling the plots of some crooked colleagues and other powerful men. He takes the torture, deprivation and long prison sentence to protect her, revelling in the letters she writes him.
They stop, he is let out. Finding the girl, he realises he has been played, and knows there is only one way to stop the little yellow bastard and company.
The Best. Frank Miller's Sin City is paradise for noir fans, nothing can't happen in these graphic novels. "Walk down the right back alley in Sin City, and you can find anything." Book 4 of 7, That Yellow Bastard is a tale of bravery and sacrifice. It's my absolute favorite of all the Sin City books, Frank Miller's dark and extremely stylized way of telling this masterpiece is electrifying. The artwork is tip top, the writing is crisp and smooth, and the characterization is excellent. I hope you enjoy this amazing book!
A Very Good Cop in a Very Bad Town A fan favorite due to the movie, John Hartigan is probably the most unusual character in the Sin City roster - an honest and honorable cop in a very corrupt and dishonest city. Not surprisingly, things do not go well for him. Betrayed by his partner and set up as the patsy for a heinous crime, he represent the epitome of honor as he quietly and passively accepts his fate in order to protect the innocent.
On the other side is Hartigan's polar opposite. The title character is probably the single most despicable character in the series who tortures little kids before killing them, uses family connections to get himself off while framing an innocent man. The great thing about this book is that it really presents the two extremes of humanity and puts them at crossing paths to each other.
The story has more sticking power than many of the others by Frank Miller. No doubt this is due to the ending, far more poignant than that of others. It is too bad that Miller did not continue with this story line in other volumes as there are enough loose ends here for a number of good stories. Perhaps, though, the ambiguity is part of the charm.
That "Bastard" Frank Miller gave noir a new, gritty face with the "Sin City" series, and his favorite is reportedly "That Yellow Bastard." It's another story where a hardened man goes down a dark path, regardless of harm to himself -- and Miller's exceptional art and storytelling are in their prime here.
John Hartigan is mere hours from retiring when he finds that little Nancy Callahan has been kiidnapped by murderous pedophile Roark Jr., who also happens to be a senator's son. Hartigan disarms Roark Jr. (both as a killer and a rapist) but ends up in prison, abused and hated, where his only comfort is his weekly letter from little Nancy. She knows the truth, and loves him for what he did.
But eight years later, Hartigan finally gets himself paroled, since he's concerned about Nancy. She's now an exotic dancer being pursued by a hideous, yellow-skinned creature -- Roark Jr., reborn as a horrendous, unnatural creature. Now Hartigan will do anything -- including sacrifice himself -- to save Nancy from her disgusting attacker.
A knight-in-tarnished-armor theme runs through the "Sin City" series, with deeply flawed men seeking revenge or protection for women. It started off the series, and popped up in many others. That story is at its height in "That Yellow Bastard," which also contains what may be the noblest character in the whole series -- and he's a broken-down cop with angina.
Miller's black-and-white artwork is as striking as ever, especially for a series where everything is a shade of grey. There are lots of shadows and stark faces, as well as the typical violence of the series -- guys, you may end up cringing a lot in the castration scenes. Yet somehow the violence seems appropriate, no matter how horrible it is, since it's being aimed at the deformed rapist-murderer.
Hartigan may be the noblest character in the entire series. The entire story is about him trying to protect Nancy, even to the point of suffering eight years of prison and beatings without a word. He's the only honest cop in Sin City, and similarly, Nancy Callahan retains a sense of innocence despite her raunchy job.
"That Yellow Bastard" is a raw, dark noir comic that somehow manages to be poignant as well. It's a disturbing ride, but still worth taking.
Miller outdoes himself! On another hot night in Basin City, John Hartigan, a gruff and cynical, but big-hearted veteran police detective with an indestructible sense willpower, is working his final case before his mandatory retirement, caused by a bad heart. An 11-year-old girl, Nancy Callahan, is out there in Sin City somewhere, in the hands of the child rapist son of the insidious Senator Roark. Though Hartigan almost dies while rescuing Nancy as well as putting Roark Jr. down, seemingly for good, the hero cop learns the worst has yet to come when Senator Roark himself visits him in the hospital, promising Hartigan even more grief to come, as revenge for crippling his rotten son...
Well, I didn't think it was possible but Miller takes sequential art to a whole level in possibly his best run on "Sin City"--"That Yellow Bastard." Detective Hartigan is a different character compared to what Miller has done in the past, he's not a thug like Marv, or a vigilante like Dwight, Hartigan is a much more believeable character because of his pride, heroic selflessness, stoicism, and undying will to, even when things look dark, never give up to accomplish the right thing. Miller shows this off spectacularly in the panels where Hartigan is taking numerous bullets and stabs in his back just to protect Nancy. Hartigan doesn't care if he lives or dies to achieve his goal. Even in the tragic end, when he destroys his own life, Hartigan still emerges victorious over Roark. Speaking of which, Senator Roark and Junior have got to be the most sinister antagonists since Ava Lord. Junior is a sadistic child molester/murderer and because his evil father is a US senator, and Senator Roark uses his political influence to his full advantage, so that he completely dominates over the hero. I would like to have seen Senator Roark appear in future "Sin City" stories. Miller shines his very brightest here. If you had to read at least one "Sin City" book, make it "That Yellow Bastard."
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