In the latest edition of Comics to Read Before You Die, Jessie Robertson looks at Sin City…
“Walk down the right alley in Sin City….and you can find anything”
Marv’s words to describe this eponymous city, black to our eyes, white to our senses, as if every person or action there is colored this way. It’s anything but.
Why does Sin City work? Reading just this book, it’s a closed off story; it begins and ends with one main character, one single goal, one succinct story to tell. The writing works here because we’re coming into Sin City blind; the pages paint over top a blank canvas of a world we know nothing about, but quickly we’re able to connect the pieces together and discover this isn’t a very nice place. Killings, cannibalism, torture; if Sin City itself, as a story, is indicative of the nature of this place, it’s no vacation spot. But, it’s so gruesomely terrifying, it’s like an auto accident on the freeway, burning and gnarled; we can’t take our eyes away from it.
What makes our protagonist a hero? Marv looks like a statue come to life, a grizzled rock monster with a kind heart towards women and a care-nothing attitude about everyone else. His lover, Goldie, has been murdered right in front of him but he was asleep and did not know it. This act gives him purpose; gives him an excuse to become the man he used to be (although, I don’t think anyone else believes he was a regular nine-to-fiver, a changed man). The beast lurking under his facade had re-emerged and would stop at nothing to revenge the person who took Goldie’s life. This is the story we follow; Marv, cutting a swatch of blood and guts through Sin City, as he talks about brutalizing hitmen and using the scum inhabiting Sin City to his advantage. So, what makes him a hero? Nothing but his moral code. Marv has a character trait that’s noble, and good (he doesn’t hurt women) and he portrays that loyally, so he’s given a pass on all the bad he does. Sin City, in nature, is named aptly; it’s a sinful place, a shitty place where bad people exploit that , so again, Marv gets a pass, even if he’s pummeling the police, because they’re probably crooked too.
It’s a dark, dystopian portrait of what the worst of any big city could become if the deepest recesses of human nature’s worst came out and took over. Marv, at his core, is no better than any of them, but we still root for him to put down whoever perpetrated this because they’re worse. And my god, are they worse. It goes to the top, like Marv says, to a damned Cardinal of the Church. He killed hookers because no one would miss them, and eating flesh became his obsession. Despite Cardinal Roark’s eloquent description of the passion he and Kevin shared, Marv can still speak as an every man when he says “I know eating people is pretty weird.” This is, of course, right before he beheads the good Cardinal.
I think it’s the artwork that makes this book so memorable; either pitch dark backgrounds with white filled in as the characters, or white with darkness illustrating the evil souls of Sin City. It’s stark and full, and not at all gimmicky (except for the fact that Miller must have discovered he was allowed to draw boobs, because he does….in spades) which I feel sometimes with Frank Miller, but with Sin City, at least, just this story, he’s created something unforgettable in the way it’s presented, transcending all other merits, the way comic books can sometimes do. It’s the beauty of the art form; books don’t have pictures unless they’re pop-up, music is all input through the ears, and films, while they can look beautiful if the budget’s high enough, have to have more than just pretty scenery. While comics do boast a higher standard than maybe in years past, just with the exposure of comic book icons in the media, it’s artwork that has always stood shoulder to shoulder, and in many, many instances, higher than the words and story. If the art in a comic book sucks, I can’t read it. It’s a statement most comic book fans have uttered at one time or another. Miller shatters everything about comic art by creating Sin City, a truly original piece of art that is every bit as disturbing as vivid and memorable.
Jessie Robertson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnc360pUDRI&feature=player_embedded&list=PL18yMRIfoszFLSgML6ddazw180SXMvMz5
Originally published April 24, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
