Sin City: The Hard Goodbye

“Sin City” is about as pulpy as a detective story can be. From the high contrast shadow and light artwork, to the brutal story about human nature, every aspect of this story pushes the limits of the genre. It is an interesting read made great by an excellent main character.
The artwork is black and white with minimal line work. Most of the frames are either all white or all black with most of the figures drawn in minimalist blocks. The artist pushes this style to the breaking point. Some frames do not work because of the lack of detail but some are the most dynamic I’ve seen in a graphic novel. It’s hit or miss but it is always interesting and fits the tone perfectly.
The tone is dark, and brutal with the worst of humanity show more brought into the light. This is not for the young or the faint of heart. There is torture, sex, hyper violence, and mutilation but all of these elements are used in service of the story and not just for shock value. Everything is a natural extension of a city fallen into hell with a man trying not to fall with it.
Marv is one if my favorite graphic novel characters. He is savage, doing a lot of the violence and yet he is also a broken human. He has many moments where he questions himself and his own humanity. This gives weight to the moment he shows his teeth. It makes the violence truly horrifying as it is at the expense of others and Marv. Without this duality the story would have little beyond shock value.
‘Sin city’ not only earns its name, it embodies it. The tone, the content, and the artwork all work together to make this story as twisted as you can get without going overboard. But it is the character of Marv that puts all these things into context. Anyone who is a cares for hard-boiled detective novels should try this out and anyone interested in character studies and designs needs to buckle up and enjoy this ride. show less

This was one that once I started it, I could not put it down until the very end. The art on this is definitely gritty and well suited to the noir story of revenge that Miller presents. I can certainly see why this work was such a breakthrough in its time. It is fast paced, and it grabs you from the start. If you like hard-boiled works like Hammett, Spillane, so on, you should read this even if you are not a fan of graphic novels. This is one that will stay with me for a while. And, after seeing the movie, I can appreciate a lot of what the movie left out, but I can also see how the movie was very successful in capturing the "feel" of the comic. Very good reading overall.

I have a soft spot for Sin City in all of its violent, gory glory. It was one of the first films I saw that scratched every itch I had. It was artistic nearly to a fault, so beautifully noir and gracefully violent. It was every detective novel I devoured, every old Humphrey Bogart film I wanted transported to the modern age. Just sheer perfection.

The books, of course, are just as good.

[book: The Hard Goodbye] opens with Marv waking up in bed with a dead woman, police on the way. He's been framed, he knows it, and anyone willing to hurt this angel of a woman is going to pay. Goldie, of course, was the one good thing in this guy's life and now she's dead, dead and gone. Marv is tough as nails and undeniably crazy. He gets confused without show more his medication, see. Even Marv knows that you can't kill a man unless you're sure he's the bastard who's done the crime, though, so over the course of the book he kills his way up the chain until he gets the answers that he needs.

[book: The Hard Goodbye] is a fantastic introduction to the messy world of Sin City. Marv, in spite of the bloodshed, is a lovable lug and a fascinating unreliable narrator. This book is pure [author: Frank Miller]. There's cannibals and prostitutes, crooked cops and vigilantes... but unlike, say, [book: Batman: Year One] everyone fits into the role they're cast in since this is purely Miller's world. It's the man at his best, and time hasn't dulled my love of it one bit. show less

As pulpy & noir as it gets, to the point of cliché, but who cares? It's a fantastic ride. The artwork is gorgeous.

Frank Miller writes the darkness that weighs on men's souls. He takes hard-boiled to another dimension, really. There is no hope in this world. Sin City is just a jungle where everyone is fighting to survive as long as possible.

Here we have the first Sin City tale, The Hard Goodbye. Marv, a monster of a man that would make Frankenstein proud, spends a night with a beautiful woman named Goldie only to wake up and find her dead, with the cops practically at the door ready to charge him with her death. What follows is a mystery worthy of Chandler and Hammett, but in a world ten times darker than anything Marlowe had to face in his time.

This is noir, and it shows in the artwork. Miller's use of negative space is a thing of beauty in Sin show more City. Strong black and bright white contrast the very grey world in which these stories take place. It might seem at times that Miller goes too far with his stories, but for this world he's created, it's just far enough. show less

I've had the first 5 of these graphic novels on my shelf for many years. I like Frank Miller's stuff, but they really didn't look like something I would be interested in and I remembered not liking the movie either, other than some of the cool cinematography. I'm moving soon and trying to prune down my library so I figured I'd read this first one and then decide whether these books were coming with me.

I love what he's done with the art and Marv is deranged and cool. The story wasn't that exciting and I'm just not into brutal, gory violence. Basically, this was a step outside of the kind of thing I would normally read, and so it was interesting and not terrible, but I don't feel like I need to read more.

This is the beautiful tale of Marv and his incandescent love affair with a prostitute that showed interest in him, and her twin sister Wendy that throw Marv into a brutal world of betrayal, revenge, and sheer carnage mayhem. And it's great.

Storytelling is top notch. Illustrations are not, but they really fit the story. Yes, very hard to look at, and many look like scribbles or inkblot tests, but Miller accomplishes something magnificent in Marv, a brute that has a heart of gold.