COMIC BINGE: SIN CITY: THE COMPLETE SERIES
What started out as a plan to study up for the new Sin City movie, turned into an entire adventure through the entire series by Frank Miller. Considered amongst some of the best graphic novels, Sin City tries to capture several different types of grindhouse-esque stories that center around a noirish environment. I learned a lot of different things about the series as well, by reading it in its entirety. So I’m skipping formalities like the plots and review and ratings, and just giving you the low down on the entire run of Sin City by Frank Miller. It was certainly an adventure.
The first volume is The Hard Goodbye, which is probably the most popularized of the stories because it’s the focal story of the first movie. Marv is a wayward tough guy, in a hotel room with a beautiful woman, wakes up to find her dead in the bed. He knows it was a set up. And thus begins the saga of Sin City. What I like about the first volume is that it perfectly balances the noir setting with a hardcore and gritty story. It’s not too private eye, but it’s not hyper-violent either. It’s really the selling point for the series, as it is the introductory volume and introduces just some of the cast for the series. And just like this book is a small part of the series, it is also a small part in the movie, which is where some of the other volumes come in.
The second volume was probably my least favorite of the series, and it is the titular graphic novel for the new movie Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. What this volume didn’t do for me, was balance that noir setting with what makes Sin City a defining series in graphic novel history, and that’s the aggressive art and storytelling. I’m not much of a fan of noir stories, so that may be my tastes causing me to not like this volume quite as much, but I could have read the series without it. I really hope that the new film is able to draw from the other stories like the first film did, to make this story a little more entertaining. Though, it may be good in movie form anyways with the style they used to make it, and because I tend to like anything with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in it.
The third volume is The Big Fat Kill and it is where the story from Sin City comes from, where there is the city full of hooker looking bad ass chicas that are not to be trifled with. This book brought me right back into Frank Miller’s web, and I was ready for the rest of the series at this point. This is quite possibly my favorite segment from the first film, because for some reason I can’t quite get enough of the scene with the dude going a little Weekend at Bernie’s with his deceased car passenger. Not only that, but just the way it comes across in the film and on the pages, is just hilarious in some form to me.
That Yellow Bastard is yet another plot that takes place in the first Sin City film, and brings the specific coloring throughout the series to the forefront. The Yellow Bastard character is already frightening and disgusting based on his crimes and what he is willing to do to people for seemingly no reason at all. But somehow, this specific coloration of the character in a vibrant yellow in a black and white graphic novel makes his character all that much more apparent, and evil. It obviously sets it apart from the rest of the graphic novel by just looking it, but it also makes the characteristics of the villain stand out that much more. Thus, reintroducing that hyper-violent and you could say hyper-coloration to the series, which I believe is one of the things that make this series special.
The fifth and sixth volumes were a little different than the first four graphic novels. Family Values was an original graphic novel that was not presented in single issue form, and it brings some different characters to the foreground of the series. I didn’t really fall in love with Family Values either, and it wasn’t really the way it was presented, but just a lacking interest in the story. Booze, Broads, and Bullets sounds like a lot of fun, and it could be. It’s a collection of short stories that take place in the Sin City universe. It’s an entertaining read, but doesn’t really present any sort of overarching story or plot other than it all occurring in the same arena as the other stories. It was a neat read, but I can’t say that I like it quite as much as the earlier volumes. That really goes for both of these volumes, but that’s okay because they’re not all going to be amazing.
The seventh and final volume of Sin City is probably the most impressive in scope, just because it encompasses everything that makes the series so special. You might as well throw everything that makes Frank Miller special in there as well, because his stamp is placed on almost every other page in this final volume. The coloration is aplenty on the pages of this 300+ book and it really accentuates several characters that are somewhat new, and some that we all already know. Some of these characters are ones that we both know and love, and that was probably my favorite part of this book. The main character gets drugged out and starts tripping. He trips through everything you could possibly imagine, and it really just was just a flat out entertaining segment in the book. The plot of the entire book was also on point with Frank Miller, and several of his characters make an appearance here too. This would be a film dream for CGI and just all around entertainment and fun, but I don’t know it could happen. Maybe if this second film banks it at the box office this weekend, we can hope for the absolute trip that a Hell and Back movie would be. This final volume makes it worth reading the entire series from beginning to end, and I would recommend it to any serious graphic novel readers. The only thing that is hard to take serious is the amount of titties about in this last book. I mean really Frank? I like boobs too but he really throws all of his apparent loves in there in Hell and Back.
STORY : ( 8 / 10 )
ARTWORK : ( 9 / 10 )
COVERS : ( 10 / 10 )
AWESOME : ( 8 / 10 )
FINAL RATING : ( 8 / 10 )