The Hard Goodbye (Sin City)

Imagine getting punched in the gut by some rogue lunatic underworld gladiator who promptly collapses into your kitchen chair and chomps down on a bowl of cheerios with his oversized mitts as you crouch on the floor stunned and drooling blood…there’s a knock on the door and you pick up your corpse of a body to stare through the peephole at a knife-wielding leather-clad dame grimacing while rare classic cars skid onto the scene followed by screaming cop sirens tolling in debauchery and corruption…then the color drops out and real nice like everything goes noir…
 REVIEW OF VOLUMES 1-4, and 6: Frank Miller set his Sin City “yarns” in a timeless noir chronology. His inspiration was cool cars, hot dames, and muscle dudes in trench coats. Mission accomplished. The stories are put together in multiple volumes and flip back and forth in time, occasionally providing different perspectives from past scenes as the view point switches. The storylines interweave in expert ways over the course of the collections and it’s fun to see od characters come up again in the background or do things you haven’t seen before as you follow a new protagonist around with new problems and goals.
The world he creates is not vast. Everything revolves around a single city and its outskirts, constantly driving inward at the characters who rule or fight or flee from this place. All the spots to which they bring you really manage to pop with a lurid black and white reality.
Throughout the vast majority of narratives there is thoughtful inner monologue by the rotating cast (usually the protagonist but sometimes even secondary or background characters). We get a front seat ride in many heads, nestled right up against all the twisted struggles that torment these people. We also get to see the tarnished dreams and bitter regrets that motivate them to do what they do, whether it is for a perceived good or simply a personal selfish proclivity. Either way we are there with them in all the glory of what a first-person perspective can provide. This insight really fleshes out the people who inhabit the Sin City world and (along with the visuals) helps to distinguish the ensemble which further develops if you read through multiple volumes.
The dialog is gritty and loose, mostly used sparingly. There were times I felt a repetition in the patterns and speech, but this ultimately complimented the strong distinct style being evoked. The mood was very specific and excellently achieved. Even though the stories are set in a nameless and timeless decade, they feel grounded and real. There is nothing generic here.
The author did double duty in this series by also penciling the drawings. He also made the decision to go almost entirely black and white with almost no colors (with a few exceptions)—you can smell the plethora of black ink as you turn the pages. The resulting style is heavy handed, like everything else in this work, but utterly flawless in its delivery. His use of action and choosing what to show and when or how to show it all fell into place to maximize the narrative. The Sin City stories marry so many different elements in a perfect way that the creator is able to achieve amazing results without ever feeling over played or too intrusive.
These are the hard streets of Basin City where the players make the rules and everyone else goes along, or they pay the price. Sometimes it’s the higher ups and sometimes it’s the dregs. Nobody is immune. People get caught up in their own rachets and games and sheer humanity of being human. Everything you could want in stories like this are here. The corruption, the violence, the passion, the dreams, the loyalty, the betrayal, the revenge, the comeuppance, the chase, the desperation—all of it!
Podcast: If you enjoy my review (or this topic) this book and the movie based on it were further discussed/debated in a lively discussion on my podcast: "No Deodorant In Outer Space". The podcast is available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Tune-In Radio, Stitcher, Google Play Music, YouTube or our website.

In a note in the back of "The Hard Goodbye," Frank Miller explains that this one got away from him. What was supposed to be a 48-page crime thriller turned into a 200-page graphic novel, all because Marv, the story's brutal misanthropic protagonist, started bossing Miller around. If you have seen "Sin City" the movie where Mickey Rourke steals the film as Marv, then you can understand Miller's explanation. You will understand it even more when you read the graphic novel, the first volume in the Miller's comic noir saga.For me Frank Miller began the road that ends in "Sin City" with "Daredevil" #164, which retold the hero's origin. There is a series of panels in which Daredevil is chasing down the Fixer, the man who arranged the fight that Battling Murdock refused to throw. In each frame Daredevil gets closer to his quarry and cutting across the panels is a line representing the Fixer's heart beat, which goes from blind panic to full cardiac arrest before flatlining. It was at that point that I knew Miller was starting to think of what he could do with art in a comic book. After his work on "Daredevil" there was "Ronin" and "The Dark Knight Returns," and eventually Miller gets to Marv.There is no doubt that Marv is the walking path of destruction that dominates this narrative. He is extremely violent, deeply disturbed, and whatever medication he is taking is just not doing the job. Still, he is a sympathetic figure because pretty much everybody he is maiming and killing are the real scum of the earth and he is on a mission to avenge the death of Goldie, the beautiful blonde who gave him a toss in the hay. He falls asleep in bed with her, having one of those moments of true happiness that never bodes well, and wakes up with her dead and the cops on their way. Marv is being set up, but that is incidental in his mind to the fact somebody killed Goldie, so somebody has to pay along with everybody else who stands in his way. The grand irony here is Marv and his interior monologues are the voice of sanity by the time he finds the killer.The characters and the dialogue are easy to characterize as Mickey Spillane types on steroids. Then there is Miller's artwork as he explores what can done with just black and white on a page. The result is wildly experimental and sometimes you can a sense of how rough Miller's ideas are by the time he finishes a page. The first page of the story is more black than white, with Goldie's lips, the outline of her hair, the white skin exposed by the strapless gown and gloves etched out in seductive folds sets the tone for the artwork. The second page is the opposite with more white than black and offers a more conventional view of Marv and Goldie, and already you like the first page better. The third page offers a synthesis of the first two and it is like Miller is laying out the new ground rules. There are figures reduced to silhouettes except for hair or teeth (or bandages), and others reduced to white images against a field of black. Then we get to Marv standing in the rain in Chapter 8 and looking at the statue of Cardinal Roarke, at which point Miller is trying something completely different from the rest of the book.I have no doubt that if Miller was to do "The Hard Goodbye" today that there would be significant changes in the artwork that would provide a refinement of the raw energy displayed here. There are times when the justification for the artwork seems to clearly be that it is different from the pages Miller has just drawn as opposed to be the best way of illustrating that part of the narrative. But this is the first story in an ongoing series, so allowances can be made if Miller really did decide to do a page a certainly way for no other reason than he had not done one that way yet. After all, it is not like he was coming up with 200 different pages of artwork and by the time you get to Chapter 8, which I think is artistically far and away the best of the entire graphic novel, it is equally clear Miller knows exactly what he is doing and all of the pieces are falling into place. The joy of watching the art evolve in this story makes up for the rough patches.These stories were originally published in issues #51-62 of the Dark Horse comic book series "Dark Horses Presents" and in the "Dark Horse Presents Fifth Anniversary Special." This second edition has come out with the rest of the extant "Sin City" collection in term to be gobbled up by fans of the movie version and those who come from the theater to the graphic novel will probably be surprised how faithful Robert Rodriguez was to Frank Miller's story and vision. Then again, that was the whole point of doing the film the way it was done.

What a great graphic novella for mature readers. It engages, it excites and it delivers.Frank miller rocksI think few splashes of colours here and there could have made it even better.

Marv wakes up next to Goldie, the dead hooker, and the Sin City police are coming up the stairs. But Marv refused to take the rap and sets off on a crusade of bloody vengeance.Brutalistic imagery and a true Noir storyline, Frank Miller's 'The Hard Goodbye' is a fine experiment in the boundaries of graphic fiction through a comic book lens.The black and white ink drawings add to the noir sensibilities and, while this is not a book for the faint hearted, the story line drags us from frame to bloody frame.

Muy buena edición, sin duda una de mis novelas graficas favoritas. La historia es increible y el arte me encanta. Recomendado

J'ai beaucoup aimé le(s) film(s) donc je me suis laissé tenté, je ne suis pas déçu. Attention tout de même à ne pas mettre entre des mains trop jeunes ?!

Frank Miller's drawing style rocks my world! As far a the service goes, it's a book and it arrived a 2 days after I ordered it. Good job all around.