If Sin City ever produced an honest-to-god hero, it is Hartigan. He's not a thug like Marv, and he's not a criminal like Dwight. His faults aren't faults at all, but obstacles placed before him because of his greatest strengths. He suffers immeasurably for wanting to help someone. He suffers even more for wanting to help her again.

If Dwight is the one that gets away, it's because he is no better than the world he inhabits. Hartigan is the one that pays, because the world can not endure a hero as pure as Hartigan. That Yellow Bastard is the proof that Frank Miller gives as to why the enduring heroes in Sin City such as Marv, Dwight, and Miho aren't heroes at all, but merely grim reflections of the city that they live in. They have made the necessary adaptations to exist in an ugly place like Sin City. They aren't necessarily bad people, but they do bad things. Sin City isn't necessarily a bad town, but bad things happen there. But Hartigan is a good person that does good things. Sin City is not a place for a man like Hartigan to exist on the same terms as a man like Dwight. It is not fair, but it is the truth.

That Yellow Bastard is the greatest of the Sin City books because in it we see Sin City in all of its awful glory; a place where hope doesn't come in its simple, most beautiful form, but instead as a hideous mutation that is disarming and unpleasant.

Frank Miller reinvented the quintessential comic book superheroes Batman and Daredevil, and he even created the enduring character Elektra in the Daredevil books. But Hartigan is his greatest invention, because Hartigan is everything that makes superheroes great, placed inside a man with no special powers, but just a relentless determination to do what he feels is right.