Frank Miller. If that
name means nothing to you, you’ll probably just want to pass on by…nothing to
see here, folks.
I’ve recently finished both 300 and the complete Sin
City series. At his best, Miller is
a genius. Unfortunately, he isn’t always
at his best.
300 is one part genius, one part gimmick and one part
sloganeering. The tale of the Spartan
300 is a perfect tale for Miller’s gifts.
The gimmick is the oversized book; it doesn’t actually fit on a bookshelf
very easily. The larger page format
lends itself to some impressive pages—the art (done by Lynn Varley, Frank’s erstwhile
wife) has has room to breathe and the book has a vastness to it. The heroes are heroic, the villains are
villainous. It rings throughout with a
clarion call for Freedom from Tyranny.
It’s a good book, on the verge of being Great, but not quite there. Why not?
That’s what I can’t pin down.
What is here is done well, but in the end, it just feels…light. An odd thing to say about an oversized book,
but the tension of the stand at The Hot Gates is lost in a show of bravado; the
treachery of the hunchback is lost in quick cartoonish scenes; the vastness of
the Persian army is lost in the rush to show them being beat and so on. Labored over a bit longer, this book had the potential
to be not just an interesting bit of art and storytelling, but something which
would have risen to the level of literature.
Instead, we have the visual representation of a campfire tale—nice
enough for what it is, but it could have been more.
Sin City?
There are 7 volumes in the series.
The last three are pure mail-it-in efforts. The Worst of Frank. Seriously, there is no reason for volumes 5-7
to exist. They milk the franchise in
tired stories with tired artwork. Sad,
to be honest.
The first two volumes are stunning. Volumes 3 and 4 are a bit derivative, but
still good it their own way.
What is this series?
Imagine Raymond Chandler come back to life as a comic book artists in
the 90s and you would have exactly these books.
The heroes are detective-like, terribly flawed individuals, living is a very
sordid city specializing in depravity.
In one of Chandler’s stories, Marlowe tumbles into a pornography
ring. In the 1940s, when Chandler wrote,
the details of the crimes were left unstated.
In Miller’s Sin City, the details are graphically displayed. (This is not a book for children, in other
words.) Miller’s fictional world is much
like Chandler’s fictional world, so the difference here is simply the difference
of the half-century in which the two authors wrote. All in all, I prefer the restraint of
Chandler’s world. And, I feel very sad
thinking of all the adolescent boys who are excited by the umpteenth portrayal
of an unclad prostitute.
Setting aside the pornographic angle, however, the art here is
interesting. The books are all black and
white (well, there is some yellow thrown in volume 4—the later volumes have
more color, but the less said about them, the better). I would have never thought one could do so
much in black and white, but Miller (who
both wrote and drew the books) has a masterful way in both the black on
white and white on black panels. There is
a range of emotion expressed here which is really quite fascinating to behold.
When the plots stick to the realistic, they are really quite
good—again, worthy of Chandler. As in 300,
the heroes here are heroic—good men fighting their way through a very bad
world. Somehow, in the midst of all this
evil and depravity, these heroes keep their souls intact, saving the damsels in
distress.
Can these books be recommended? Herein lies the problem: Not really.
Too much gratuitous nudity. Too
much depravity in the villains—I’ll spare you the description of their evil
deeds (be glad). These really aren’t the sort of
books you want to be reading in public.
It’s too bad. At his best in the
first four volumes here, there is much to recommend these books, but you have
to take the over-the-top with the good.
With a bit more restraint, these books could have been great. So, why don’t the books have that
restraint? The problem is at the heart
of the message of the book: these are not cases of vile books in the service of
a greater moral lesson. They are vile
books in the service of anarchy. There
is a nihilism at the core of the books.
And if all you have is nihilism, why not just include yet one more
sketch of a prostitute or a tortured corpse?
So much talent in the service of…nothing. A waste.
Truly a waste.
By the way, I never got around to reading these earlier
because a few years back I saw the movie based on the books. To call that movie bad would be an understatement. It has all the lurid detail of these books,
with none of the literary or graphic art.
Suffice it to say, the books are vastly better than the movie.
Frank Miller is an intriguing guy, in the end. Someday there will be an endless stem of
doctoral dissertations on him. I am not
sure if that is a compliment or not.
I suppose I am obliged to link to Frank singing about a guy
from Sin City.