What definitively comes into focus with the entire series gathered is that Miller never sits in one place, and is constantly developing his art. He also cleverly cross-references sequences, as we return to a bar and realise that more than one person present has an issue worth relating. No matter a character’s eventual fate, they can be seen again as the material dots back and forth in time, with That Yellow Bastard spanning over a decade. Miller quickly establishes that he’s set his series up to have his cake and eat it. Will this be the time they escape their seemingly inevitable fate? In other places the storytelling’s not quite as accomplished, with some of the shorter material and A Dame to Kill For the lower end of the scale.

With its horrific villain and the graphic presentation of his disturbing proclivities it steps well over any boundaries of good taste.Īt its best, That Yellow Bastard and Family Values, Sin City provides edge of the seat tension based on the sure knowledge that the protagonists rarely walk away unscathed.

When first published in the 1990s Frank Miller’s crime noir series was a real punch to the gut, and the opening sequence The Hard Goodbye remains barren, brutal and provocative beyond the remainder. Stylistically it’s a magpie fusion of classic architecture, most from the 1950s. ‘Sin City’ is the name applied to Basin City, where crime no longer lurks in the shadows, but is complicit with a corrupt police force to create a city bereft of hope occupied by the lost, the prey and the predators. There’s no denying this lives up to its title, weighing in a hefty 1300 plus pages in collecting all seven previously published Sin City books in one bumper bundle of bleak crime noir.

Big damn sin city omnibus