"; if(is_file("header.php")) include "header.php"; else include "../header.php"; ?>

Comic noir With a name like "The Hard Goodbye," it isn't surprising that the first volume of the Sin City series is pure, gritty noir. After practically reinventing the superhero comic, Frank Miller created a series that can definitely be called his opus -- gritty, dark, sexy and heady. Think of it as "The Big Sleep" meets "Kill Bill." "The night is hot as hell. Everything sticks." With those words, tough, scarred Marv encounters and beds a beautiful, alluring "goddess" named Goldie. No sooner have they made love than she is found dead beside him, and unsurprisingly the police believe that Marv is the killer. Case closed? Not really. Being blamed for the murder of the woman he loved, Marv devotes himself to finding who killed her and framed him. He rampages through the depths of Sin City, unearthing the twisted power structure that holds it up -- and in his homicidal quest, destroying his hidden enemies for the murder of Goldie... and in the process, dooming himself. The noir atmosphere starts from the first panel -- toughguyspeak, a silhouette and a beautiful woman. That dark, dirty feel sets the mood for the book, and in fact for the entire series. Imagine one of those old Humphrey Bogart noir movies, with the smoky atmosphere and black-and-white film... but darker, more violent, openly sexual, and often gruesome in tone. Miller's drawing style is all in black and white, and in "Hard Goodbye" the style is simple, but effective. He uses stark swashes of dark and light to illustrate the characters' faces and bodies, never overburdening the reader with too many unnecessary details. Although later volumes have more visual detail, Miller strips it down here to the bare bones, and it fits the spare narrative beautifully. "Sin City" itself is a seedy underbelly, full of crime, revenge and corruption; Marv isn't the guy who's going to clean it up, a la Dashiell Hammett, but the guy who will get revenge, no matter what the consequences are. The characters are just as dark: a corrupted Cardinal, psychopathic cannibal Kevin, and moderately crooked cops. Lots of death ensues. Frank Miller's "Sin City: The Hard Goodbye" is a hard book to read. However, the Chander-by-way-of-Tarantino comic book is an electrifying read, dark and bloody and vivid.