You should probably go and read Chad Nevett on That Yellow Bastard and then make your way back here. Peep the index. This one is about the book and about me and my relationship to the book, so, y’know, pull up a chair.

My first comics were Amazing Spider-Man 316, 317, 321 and 322. The first two were the return of Venom, while the latter two were part of the Assassin Nation Plot, with art by Todd McFarlane and words by David Michelinie. I read them til they fell apart, and up until getting screwed over in a move a few years back, they were the oldest comics I owned. I think the first I bought with my own money, or traded for or whatever, was X-Men 1. That set the tone for my comics habits for the next few years. I was reading Marvel, mostly out of the X-office, almost exclusively. I picked up the odd books via trading– Warriors of Plasm, Spawn, Shadowhawk, Robin–but my world was fairly limited. Until Sin City: The Big Fat Kill.

I only ever had chapter five of The Big Fat Kill when I was younger, but I read it dozens, if not hundreds, of times. It’d be years, and I’d be grown, before I read the full story. I’d read plenty of comic books before it, but none like it. The cover alone was different. There was an explosion, a guy jumping, and then some striking text: “Sin City.” More text: “We gotta kill every rat-bastard one of them.” Still more, off to the lower left: “The Big Fat Kill.” This book was different. This was designed. It wasn’t just disparate cover elements tossed onto a gaudy, garish pinup.

Inside was a revelation. Comics come in black and white? And I mean literal black and white. There were no shades of grey, like in flashbacks. People cursed, people died, guns went off, and it was all rendered in two colors. Architecture flip-flopped colors and appeared only in contour. People didn’t have figures so much as vague outlines, and their shadows were all weird. Some pages were half empty, there were panel dedicated to sound effects, and the lettering was uneven and weird. I didn’t know back then, but I now recognize that Miller was playing with negative space, pacing, and contrast. It was just striking. It was amazing.

And the ending– it was murder. “We gotta kill them because we need them dead.” No nobility, no heroism, no moral, and no cause. These people gotta die because Dwight and the girls need to prove a point. Quite a difference from Wolverine pulling his claws or Bishop shooting people with energy bullets.

Past the ending was a letters page. “Keynote Speech by Frank Miller To Diamond Comic Distributors Retailers Seminar.” It was a speech about something entirely new to me. I didn’t know about Jack Kirby, or William Gaines, or the Comics Code Authority. Royalties? What? Creator-ownership? Making fun of Marvel? Past the letters page were pinups. Sergio Aragones, who I knew from Mad. Walt Simonson, who I didn’t know at all.

I would’ve been twelve, but more likely eleven, when I first read it. I don’t think I even really got that the girls were hookers when I first read this. I knew they had actual nudity, rather than the fake nudity of superheroines. It just never clicked. I was out of my depth. The Big Fat Kill was bigger than anything I’d read before, from front to back. It left my brains on the wall.

I didn’t see it at the time, but The Big Fat Kill came along at the right time. I already liked mystery/adventure books. I dug Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, and Sherlock Holmes more than the Hardy Boys, and I blazed through Frank Peretti’s Cooper Kids books. But, reading and re-reading and absorbing The Big Fat Kill was like the end of The Usual Suspects. Tumblers clicked into place, and I was introduced to what would later become my favorite thing. This hard-boiled, ugly, jarring, nasty bastard of a book was a virus. It rewrote my brain.

It was that last scene that did it for me. The calculated murder, the callous way they went about it, and the pithy line Dwight drops when the killing starts (“Where to fight. It counts for a lot. But there’s nothing like having your friends show up with lots of guns.”), all of that had a huge effect on me. Now, I love crime fiction more than anything else, couldn’t really care less about sci-fi/fantasy if I tried, and old movies where women grip cigarette holders, breathe out clouds of stylish death, and send men off to die with a glance and a false smile are some of my favorites. The only thing that even comes close to my attraction to crime stories are stories about feudal Japan, and guess what Frank Miller flirted with in Ronin?

The Big Fat Kill is one of those books I can’t accurately judge. I’m too close to it, it’s too entwined in my DNA. If I had to pretend to be objective, I’d say that Chad has it down pretty well. It’s a short story, not trying to do a whole lot beyond show some manly men, violent women, and dangly earrings. There’s nothing righteous or noble about it. It warps a young mind.

“We gotta kill every last rat-bastard one of them.”

Spoilers, of course.

Read the rest of this entry �

Why should you read the transcript of this panel with Frank Miller, Paul Pope, Kyle Baker, Jaime Hernandez, and Dean Haspiel from MoCCA last weekend?

MILLER: Let’s get to my central gripe about superhero costumes: Shoes. Why do these people go out in loafers while they‘re running across rooftops? What would you wear? I’d wear something with some tread. At least wear a pair of Converse All-Stars, or Air Jordans. Combat boots are my favorite.

Yes. I need a Teen Titan or Young Avenger in some Jordan XIIs as soon as possible. Maybe put Danny Rand in some Air Yeezys. If I can color coordinate, so can some of these heroes.

Sean Witzke on Ronin? Please and thank you! Chad Nevett on The Big Fat Kill, my favorite yarn? Yeah, I’ll read that! Booze, Broads, & Bullets week continues apace! Dig into the index if you’re new around here and need to get caught up.

With Dark Knight Returns and Year One, Frank Miller left what turned out to be an indelible mark on the character. He made Batman his own in a way that, say, Neal Adams or Jim Aparo, both incredible artists, didn’t. Two short works injected his vision of what Batman is, was, and how he came to be into the minds of comics fans, and that’s been his corner of the universe ever since. He’s only gone back to that well precious few times, with a cover for Batman: Black & White, a brief entry in Evan Dorkin’s World’s Funnest one-shot, a pinup in an anniversary issue or two, and All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder. Save for the latter book, there is nothing of length, nothing of note. With one exception: Spawn-Batman, a 1994 collaboration with Todd McFarlane.

It’s easy to organize the Miller universe. Year One kicks it off, ASBAR is the tale of Batman becoming a human being, Dark Knight Returns is his return to form, and Dark Knight Strikes Again is his settling into a brand new role in a new world. Spawn-Batman fits comfortably between Year One and ASBAR, with a Batman that’s good at what he does, but insufferable while he does it. He hasn’t gone through the humanizing process that Dick Grayson is going to push him through, so he’s cold, arrogant, and a blowhard.

This is about as good as McFarlane’s art has ever looked. It’s cartoonier than I remember his early Spawn work being, with a Batman that’s all shadow and angles and a Spawn that’s all cape. It’s a fairly standard early Image book for the most part, with pages that lean more toward pinups than, y’know, actual storytelling. It’s plenty entertaining, though, and McFarlane fits the bill.

Miller’s story is where all the fun is, though. He’s coming on Claremont-wordy this time, with Tom Orzechowski stuffing captions, sound effects, arrows, and word balloons all over the page. The captions begin as your usual omniscient third-person narrator, but then partway through the book they shift to Jeph Loeb-style dueling thought captions. He’s got a lot to say.

Which is fitting, considering that this book is all the way turned up. The first page has nineteen captions, most with 2-3 words, setting the stage for the book. At first glance, this is Miller at his worst– overly serious, hammering the point home again and again, and aping the wordiest man in comics. But, no, keep reading and you’ll find that isn’t true. It’s wordy, wordier than any comic has a right to be, really, but Miller is having fun here.

His Batman is impossibly gruff. At one point, he orders Alfred to patch up his shoulder because “the blood’s getting in my way.” Alfred spends the scene urging Batman to drink some chamomile tea. He says that it “is sure to prevent nightmares. Even the self-inflictedvariety.” Batman’s response? “I don’t get nightmares. I give them.”

The rest of the story is enjoyably over the top. He and Spawn get into the traditional meet-and-fight that forms the crux of 90% of these crossovers, and Batman takes genuine pleasure in the violence. When he realizes that Spawn is superhuman, he thinks “No reason to be nice” and turns up the violence again. Every third word out of his mouth is punk, and while he tells Spawn to “count your blessings I let you off so easy,” it’s clear that Batman was severely out of his league. He only gets away after dosing Spawn with nerve gas, causing him to vomit.

This isn’t the hyper-competent Grant Morrison Batman, the one with plans for plans and a hairy chest. No, this is your picture perfect Frank Miller Hero: Beaten bloody and senseless, completely out of his league, but with guts for days. A few bandages, a couple splints, and he’s ready to get into it with Spawn again. Having a power glove helps, of course– he lays into Spawn with renewed vigor in their rematch, and the dialogue goes monosyllabic on both parts.

“Idiot. You’re an idiot. I’ll tear you apart.” “In your dreams.” “Break you in half. I’ll break you in half.” “Sloppy. Stupid fighter. No discipline.” “Talking trash. You’re talking trash. It won’t help you.” “No discipline. Stupid fighter. Stupid punk.” “Had it. You’ve had it. You’re done.” “Just warming up you stupid punk.”

It turns into an orgy of sound effects, Orzechowski laying them out Adam West-style, until they trade five (five!) sound effects at once and collapse. They pause to catch their breath and continue their repartee.

“Give it up, punk. You’re finished. Just look at you. You’re finished.” “Look at you. You can’t even get up. You’re the one who’s finished. khoff.” “I’ll rip you to pieces Undisciplined slob. khagg” “Catch my breath. Just catch my breath and I’ll break you in half. kheff”

And then robots come and beat Batman basically to death, forcing Spawn to save his life with a little hellfire. While bleeding to death, shaking in the grime of an alley, Batman is still going. “Magic tricks. No way to fight. No discipline. hukkk” Spawn saves his life again, forcing a bit of a mind-meld, and Batman’s response? “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a dead punk that won’t shut up. We’ve got work to do. Let’s go.”

For about ten or fifteen years, Batman was a douchebag. He was rude to his friends, mean to his family, and everyone sat there and took it because he was Batman and Batman was right. This book, and ASBAR, show you what it looks like when Batman is a douchebag to people who won’t take any of his crap. Batman and Spawn fight like cats and dogs even when infiltrating the stronghold of the bad guy. At one point, Batman says that Spawn is even dumber than Clark. “Who’s Clark?” Spawn asks. “None of your business.” Later still: “Just smash cyborgs and shut up. I’ll do the thinking here.”

There’s your Alpha Male Plus.

(For the record, the villain is Margaret Love, a mad scientist who Al Simmons knows of old. She’s gone completely genocidal and appears on seven pages of the book. She’s alive for five of them, looking death in the eye on the sixth, and launching a missile on the seventh. She isn’t the point of the book. She’s just there to facilitate the fight-and-team-up formula of crossover books.)

Spawn-Batman isn’t an essential piece of the Dark Knight Universe, but it is a fascinating one. It reads like a rough draft for ASBAR, with its sense of scale all thrown out of whack and pumped full of testosterone. I remember reading in an interview, one that I of course cannot find right now, that Frank Miller has said that you wouldn’t want to be Batman’s friend. It makes sense- considering his mission, his trauma, and the way he’s basically a pulp character gone superheroic, I don’t think that he should ever be Mr. Sunshine and Light. He has to play a role, a role that Alfred sees right through, by the way. Batman has to be the guy lurking in the darkness, laying in wait to pop a mugger’s spine entirely out of place. He’s mean, and he has to be mean, because that’s what his city requires.

At least, until Robin arrives. We’ll talk that out on Saturday, though. Miller’s doing something interesting with Batman, and it only really became clear in ASBAR.

Spawn-Batman, though? It takes itself just seriously enough that both characters are recognizable, but not so seriously that you’re beaten over the head with the import of the situation. It’s stupid. It’s very entertaining.

Tucker Stone threw this up on Twitter, and I’ve gotta share it. It’s the Bushwick Book Club on Dark Knight Returns and it is fantastic.

One of the cats, Breez Evahflowin, is a guy I’ve dug ever since I used to go around calling myself a def jukie and was backpacking hard. He’s down with Cannibal Ox, Stronghold, etc etc. He’s nice on the mic device, is what I’m saying. Here’s his extended piece:

I’m new to Susan Hwang, but her joint ruled, too.

“Batman! He won’t go out for ice cream, has no time for movies, isn’t good at having fun!”

I love that this exists. I wish I could’ve gone.

Booze, Broads, and Bullets continues! Tim O’Neil takes on the Tao of Miller! Tim Callahan posts a scan of Tales of the New Gods: Nativity by Frank Miller and then analyzes it in When Words Collide: Frank Miller’s New Gods! Chad Nevett looks at A Dame to Kill For! Check the index for the full slate of posts!

Frank Miller’s Batman doesn’t kill. He decided to, he wanted to, in Dark Knight Returns, but chose mercy for the Joker instead at the last possible moment. In Dark Knight Strikes Again, Batman condones killing, and is happy when Lex Luthor gets maced by Hawkboy, but the only life he actually takes is Dick Grayson, and he regrets that choice. The heroes of Sin City are something else entirely. Marv, Dwight, Gail, the girls of Old Town, Miho, and almost every character has a body count by the end of their run. Life is cheap, and their bullets are nameless. Miho is especially brutal, not being averse to toying with a man before he dies. Miller’s got no problem writing people who think that killing is as easy as breathing.

Daredevil, though, is something different. In the classic final issue of his run on Daredevil, “Roulette,” Miller has Daredevil place a gun to a helpless Bullseye’s head. He thinks over their past, and eventually proclaims that, when it comes to killing Bullseye, his “gun has no bullets.” He can’t murder him in his bed, no matter how much he wants to deep down inside.

Frank Miller’s Daredevil has two aspects that make him so entertaining. One is his intense sense of morality. He believes in the law and the rules, and works in his day job to prove the supremacy of those rules. The other is his flawed nature. His nighttime gig allows him to make shortcuts to, or circumvent, the law as he likes, dispensing justice at the end of a baton or his fist. This causes him no end of internal strife, and the crux of “Roulette” is that his morality is greater than his weakness.

Man Without Fear, Miller’s 1993 retelling of Daredevil’s origin with John Romita Jr, shows the kinds of situation where Daredevil will kill. The last action scene in the book is a chase, with a pre-Daredevil Matt Murdock fighting to rescue a young girl who has been kidnapped by a goon. One man dies by accident at the beginning of the fight, and Matt’s forced to stab another with his own knife while fighting underwater. What’s key is what he thinks as he’s killing the man: “A knife– no choice– give it back to him.”

Murdock is practical. When there’s no other choice to be found, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. He leaves the rest of the men unconscious or broken. There is a very controlled application of force to be found in Murdock’s style of crime fighting. While he occasionally loses it, or gets wrapped up in his own arrogance and goes too far, Daredevil generally knows exactly how to walk the thin line of being a vigilante.

Later in the book, Murdock intentionally kills a man. He’s put in a situation where he dies, the girl dies, or the villain dies. He begs the villain to stand down, saying, “I don’t want to kill you. Let her go.” The villain pops a shot off, winging Murdock’s arm. Murdock repeats his plea. The man fires again, and again, and Murdock swats the last bullet back at him, hitting him square between the eyes.

Mere moments before their encounter, the man kills a cabbie. He tells the horrified little girl he’s kidnapped that “It was nothing.” Four pages later, he’s dead and the contrast couldn’t be clearer. He killed because it was convenient. He took the path of least resistance. Murdock, on the other hand, only did it when there was no other option. It isn’t a habit, it isn’t something he’s proud of, it’s simply something that has to be done.

Miller’s Murdock is the hero who will make the hard choice, who will weigh his options, who knows his limits, and will not hesitate when it comes to doing a bad thing in order to do the right thing. It’s a refreshing change from most of the hardline “heroes don’t kill!” interpretations you see in comics. When given a choice between a child and a murderer, he chose the child. He didn’t waffle when faced with the choice. He told the man what would happen, he gave the man a choice, and the man chose poorly.

Andrew Bayer is a friend of mine, and he had a few things to say about digital comics pricing, specifically with regard to Marvel’s iPad app. I thought it was interesting, maybe you will, too.

With Marvel’s iPad/iPhone app coming out and receiving gobs of acclaim for its presentation and usability, we seem to have finally gotten to the point where digital comics distribution looks like a viable business. There’s a distribution mechanism, a gorgeous UI, and most importantly, the buy-in of one of the Big Two. There are still big questions to be answered, the same sorts of questions that had to be answered for digital music and still need to be answered for digital books – how do we get the ability to buy a comic and read it in another app, on another platform, etc? How do we get to a standard file format for digital comics? How do we get rid of DRM? Of course, that last one plays into all the others, but the simplest answer there is that we, the consumers, need to prove to the publishers that there’s a strong enough market for digital comics, and a strong enough demand for portability, that they can see that DRM is not needed in order for digital comics to be a money-making endeavor for them. And that brings up the biggest question of all – how should digital comics be priced?

My initial reaction to Marvel pricing single issues of digital comics at $2 was that they were setting too high a price point – that’s been the general reaction I’ve seen pretty much everywhere, in fact. After all, Marvel’s already paid for creative, editors, legal, etc, and while there’s still production/distribution overhead for digital comics, that’s definitely going to be a lot less per issue than it is for physical floppies. So digital comics should be really cheap, you’d think. But if a publisher sets up digital comics pricing with the assumption that all the costs involved in producing the comic other than those specific to the digital edition are already covered by the print edition, they’re doomed. If the digital edition is significantly cheaper than the print edition, you’ll start seeing sales moving from print to digital – the eternal fear of the content companies that the digital version of something will cannibalize sales from the physical version. And if Marvel’s making less revenue for each digital issue than they are for the same comic in print form, then they’re going to lose revenue for every sale that switches from print to digital.

For that reason, the lowest possible price for Marvel to charge for a digital issue is one that nets them the same revenue as they’d get from a print sale of that comic. That’s the only way that digital comics can be a viable distribution stream for the publishers. They have to work under the assumption of a worst-case scenario – what if every print sale turned into a digital sale instead, with no increase in the number of copies sold? If the publisher makes less on each digital sale, well, then that worst-case scenario destroys the publisher, and they can’t take that risk. I’m working on the assumption that $2 hits that sweet spot for Marvel, where they’re taking in as much per digital issue sold as they would from a print sale. That seems about right to me – cut out the printing and shipping-to-Diamond costs, and then strip out Diamond’s cut, and finally the retailer’s cut, with the addition of Comixology’s cut, and $2 is probably the closest round number. Marvel’s not charging that because they’re trying to gouge the digital comics consumer – they’re charging that because they have to or the business model falls apart.

David brought up the question of old back issue pricing on Twitter – right now, Amazing Spider-Man #1 is at the same price in Marvel’s app as the latest issue. Admittedly, that doesn’t feel quite right – shouldn’t prices be different for issues from the ’60s than those from today? But I’d argue that Marvel again has no choice – single issue pricing must be consistent. What business case is there for selling the old issues for less? Yeah, the cover price is a lot lower than it is on a new comic now, but it’s not like you can go buy a new copy of a book published in the ’60s for lower prices than a book published a couple years ago (assuming the older book is still in print, of course). Why should digital comics be any different? Now, Marvel is missing a key feature in their store – the ability to buy an “album” of comics. Say, the first 50 issues of ASM for $30 – just as it’s cheaper to buy an album of mp3s on Amazon than it is to buy each song individually, it definitely would make sense to have similar bundling with digital comics. But Marvel can not budge from the $2 price for single issues, no matter how old the actual comic is – if they make ’60s comics a buck a piece, they’re setting a new floor for digital comic prices. If people can buy a Marvel comic for $1, why do they have to pay $2 for a different one? Marvel would end up facing pressure to drop prices on new single issues as well – and that’s just not viable as a business. There can be flexibility in pricing bundles – $30 could buy you the first 50 issues of ASM, but the same $30 might only buy you the first 25 issues of Brand New Day-era ASM – but I don’t see how Marvel could have the same sort of flexibility in single issues. Whatever you set as the lowest price for single issues, you’re going to end up having as the price for any single issue.

Tim is enjoying his 1000th post over at When Will The Hurting Stop.

Congrats, Tim.

Go read Chad Nevett on Sin City: The Hard Goodbye. I’ll wait. Promise. I got plenty of booze and broads right here, but the bullets are in my other jacket pocket. Index of posts here.

Elektra Lives Again is a Frank Miller/Lynn Varley joint from 1991. The title really says it all. This is the story of the return of Elektra, who died in Miller’s classic run on Daredevil, and the effect she has on Matt Murdock’s life. Elektra Lives Again is about obsession, in other words. Murdock doesn’t mourn her so much as he is haunted by her. The Hand want revenge on her for her disrespect, and will stop at nothing to get it.

Why is this book significant? It was Miller’s first stab at the character since 1986’s Elektra Assassin with Bill Sienkiewicz. Miller has admitted that his writing that book adjusted the way he approaches making comics due to the back and forth and explosion of ideas between Miller and Sienkiewicz.

Elektra Lives Again comes after that, and after that time Miller dropped four classics between 1986 and 1987. Nearly ten years had passed since his run on Daredevil began. Elektra Lives Again, like Dark Knight Strikes Again ten years later, was Frank Miller coming home again, going back to what made him a name.

Like Ronin, Elektra Lives Again is on another level visually. While all comics are group efforts, this is one of those that simply wouldn’t be the same without Varley’s painted colors. Miller is credit with script and line art, which I assume means that he inked himself. Most of the definition and shading seems to be courtesy of Varley, whether it is the diseased flesh of the zombies who hunt Elektra or Murdock’s feverish face while he dreams.

Ronin had a palette that brought to mind decaying organics and broken futures. This book, on the other hand, has a subdued palette. Even scenes that are lit by flames are dark and dreary, perfectly reflecting Matt Murdock’s mental state. Lynn Varley counts, though most of what i’m about to say is about Miller in particular.

There is a sequence of pages in this book that I’m in love with. It is the first of perhaps three major action scenes, and begins after Murdock has tried to heal his pain through sex with a client. It didn’t work, and he calls it “a sad thing.” He goes walking in his underwear, wrapped up his own thoughts, and ends up at her grave. Ninjas attack, demanding to know where Elektra is, and then Elektra rises from the ground, literally rising from her grave, and laying waste to the ninjas. Murdock and Elektra meet face-to-face, neither speaking, before Elektra makes her getaway.

It’s standard when spelled out, but the execution is obscenely beautiful. Miller lays out the page with enormous panels, generally two to a page and stacked vertically. They are packed with detail, whether that’s the intricate brickwork on Murdock’s brownstone, the constantly shifting graveyard, or the various weapons the ninjas use while attacking. Miller keeps the camera in motion during the fight, zooming in or out as needed, while leaving the background fluid.

But the mind-blowing part, the part I keep coming back to, is page twenty-three. Murdock hops off his railing, lands on a wire, and bounces to a rooftop. Anyone who has read a Batman, Spider-Man, or Daredevil comic knows it well, but I bet you’ve never seen it rendered like this. Matt’s form is practically angelic as he comes off his railing, and the only hint that he is in motion is the splash of snow he left behind.

He hits the wire and we capture a perfect moment between moments. Murdock is still in the process of landing on the wire, a split-second before his muscles shift and he launches himself upward to his next perch. In that split-second, we see that the snow that rested on the wire is still in mid-air, and he’s split it perfectly.

This is poetry in motion, one of those scenes that makes you pause and marvel. There’s a later page that is almost as amazing. Page 30 features Elektra pausing and then punching through a ninja as his momentum carries her off the hill. It’s great, but panel two, page twenty-three is king. It has a message, and that message is this: Frank Miller knows exactly what he is doing, and he is very good at what he does.

Look at the figures. There is none of the verve, none of the unlikely acrobatics that normally illustrate these kinds of scenes. There is no foot swung out wide, bat-symbol boots on display. No spider-web tangled and looping through and around the scenery. There is just a listless man, broken-hearted and blind with grief, going through the motions of what he does. But, despite the rote nature of the act, there is a certain level of beauty to be found there. There is grace.

Miller undoubtedly drew scenes like this hundreds of times in his career at this point. It is a classic superheroic action. Leaping from rooftop to rooftop is how everyone from Spider-Man to Speedball to Batman to Captain America gets around town. If you can’t fly, if you don’t have a fancy car, you take to the rooftops. It doesn’t get more superheroic than a hero on a roof.

But this isn’t superheroic at all. Murdock is just a man here. It’s something different. This is Miller pushing his limits. He’s done straight superheroes. He’s reinvented the biggest cape in the business. He got to have his cake and eat it, too, and then he blew your mind with Elektra Assassin. Ronin showed a certain restlessness in his art, a refusal to settle down. Elektra Lives Again is another signifier of that restlessness. This could’ve easily been just another Daredevil comic, but instead, it feels vaguely European. The storytelling is all wrong, the panels too big, and the star of the book too broken and haunted.

Murdock’s body language on the line, the broken snow, the enormous panels that waffle between claustrophobic and spacious– Miller is refining his art and growing up in public, here. This kind of graceful hero doesn’t really show up again in his writer/artist work, or at least not as blatantly as it does here. His Sin City yarns are big on bombast and not so much on the subtle storytelling. Perhaps in 300, but nothing comes to mind.

Panel two, page twenty-three keeps coming to mind when people talk about Frank Miller having lost it. It means a lot, more than I thought it did when I first read Elektra Lives Again a few years back. It’s a clear sign of a man pushing his craft forward, experimenting with new things, and breaking out of an old shell. It’s a killer page, and a small part of a beautiful book.

-Two books!
-Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’s Criminal: The Sinners.
-Darwyn Cooke’s The Man With the Getaway Face.
(-The Sinners hits comic shops in trade form this week, make sure you pick it up. Phillips killed on art.)
-We talk about the difference between Parker and other crime heroes.
-We talk about the sociopolitical aspects of crime fiction, vis a vis feminism and racism, filtered through the lens of Parker’s ’50s-era setting and the city without pity of Criminal.
-In other words, we discuss how to deal with overt or covert sexism or racism in crime comics.
-In other other words, is it better to be treated equally and shot by Parker, or treated unequally and condescended to by Tracy Lawless?
-Also, how much noir drama is too much? Just ask Daredevil how running Gitmo: New York City is going.
-We’re gonna spoil one or both of the books for you, but c’mon. The Man With the Getaway Face is based on a forty-year old story and you should already be reading Criminal. No excuses.
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-You’ll never catch us alive, copper!

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