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Am I the only one that doesn't love it?

Frank Miller is a sick, sick, man. I respect his directing abilities, he did some good work on Batman and some phenomenal work on Daredevil, but this series is pretty sick. This trade is the first installment in the Sin City series that's written and drawn by Frank Miller. The series is basically just a number of different stories based in the vile city known as Sin City *cough*Las Vegas*cough*. Before I go on, this book should only be read by the mature reader, things like cannibalism, nudity, extreme violence, and overall the bottom ring of human life are present.

Our main character is the hardly lovable tank known as Marv. Marv has no idea why, but he somehow gets some extremely hot chic named "Goldie" to sleep with him, and the whole story is nice and touchy-fealy....... for the first three pages. The only problem is, when Marv wakes up the next mourning he finds Goldie laying next to him, dead. Of course the cops think Marv killed her and the rest of the book is basically Marv going on a suicide mission to send the people that killed the one woman that took pity on him for one night straight to hell. But as Marv says numerous times throughout the story, the hell that he sends Goldie's killers to will seem like heaven after what he'll do to them.

The story gets very involved with us finding out about important political figures being involved in Goldie's death, but that doesn't stop Marv. We follow him throughout his journeys to get to the bottom of what's going on in Sin City, we meet Marv's crooked parole officer, a psychotic cannibal, a corrupt cardinal, and many more "colorful" characters. The story progresses pretty nicely and the ending is thoroughly satisfying. Needless to say, the story is told in the distinct "Miller Style" of great dialogue injected with real personality.

And now my patented fourth (and or fifth) paragraph: the flaws. I'll be the first to admit that I love Frank Miller's art, I think he's one of the best Daredevil artists of all time, but I truthfully don't care for the art in this book at all. It's all black and white with not one drop of color added with a lot of shadow play and white on black backgrounds. I can see the style that Miller was going for but I really don't see why that has to punish the reader, some of the panels are very confusing and some are overly simplified. What I thought would have worked well would be the Hellboy art style of total black with solid colors, it's still got the style but it's a lot easier on the eyes.

So in closing, this is by no means a bad trade but I wouldn't recommend picking it up unless you're a huge Frank Miller fan. I should I also mention that Frank Miller is writing / directing a new Sin City movie that looks awesome. The movie isn't necessarily based on this trade, it's more based on the whole series in general, but it wouldn't be bad to pick this one up if you're really interested in the movie.