The individual ‘yarns” in Frank Miller’s SIN CITY sage range
anywhere from “very good” to “mediocre. But the first one—latterly entitled
“The Hard Goodbye”—stands as a masterpiece of comics-art. In all likelihood it will remain an
unacknowledged masterpiece for the near future. When THE COMICS JOURNAL ran its 1999 list of the “top 100 English-language comics,” some fans bemoaned the fact that
Sim’s CEREBUS was left off the list due to insufficient votes. A few fans
even expressed some appreciation of Miller’s DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. But critically, SIN CITY has usually been ignored by the comics-literati.
While it's possible to criticize Miller's work on its own terms, most extant critiques have been grounded in the over-ideological concept that Miller’s SIN CITY—and perhaps his work as a whole—can be
summed up by the Old Fascist Two-Step: (a) Work A endorses violence, so therefore (b) Work A is
also a tacit endorsement of fascism. For some reason, it’s always the “Rightie”
version of “the rule of force,” never the “Leftie” version—but that’s another
essay.
There’s no question that THE HARD GOODBYE is chock-full of
violence. George Bataille, who viewed violence as so pervasive that it even
subsumed the activity of sex, might have appreciated Miller’s ode
to the hardboiled crime genre. Even though the story starts with a sex-act
between the protagonist and the woman he’s framed for murdering, there’s no
tenderness evident: the sex is nearly as violent as the violence. The first words, uttered by protagonist Marv in his ongoing voice-over—comments: “The night is hot as
hell. Everything sticks.” With these simple words, Miller creates a world
unredeemed by good air-conditioning, where people are always exuding sticky
sweat—a prelude of sorts to the way copious bodies will soon be exuding another
sticky substance.
Marv—whose surname is never given—is a hulking, flint-faced
loser. Miller never clarifies how he ekes out a living in the demimonde of Sin
City. Since he’s on parole from his last prison-sentence, one may imagine him getting bounced around in various petty jobs-- none of which, admittedly, matter to this story. The GOODBYE of the title begins the night Marv meets a beautiful woman named Goldie. Goldie wants Marv's protection from an
unnamed menace, and she tries to get it by sexing him up. But Marv fuels his
passion with booze. After sex he passes out, “stone drunk,” after which an assailant
sneaks into their bedchamber and kills Goldie. Marv is immediately framed for
her murder, but this disturbs him less than his personal failure as a
protector:
“Why, I ask now. But when you got scared, when you trembled
and your eyes went as big as a little girl’s, I didn’t ask why, not then. Then,
I didn’t give a damn what was bothering you.”
I could pen a much longer essay than this one on the role of
female characters in Marv’s universe, though for this post I can only say of such an essay that it would be free of the usual clichés about “objectification” and “women in
refrigerators.” For the purpose of this essay, though, I need only assert that
whatever Marv thinks about women, he sees men as their natural protectors. Even
though he knows, and often asserts, that he belongs to the dregs of humanity,
nothing about himself arouses such self-loathing as the thought that his “macho
pig” lust caused the death of a woman under his protection.
Anti-violence ideologues will argue that Marv’s guilt is
just an excuse for the violent rampage that makes up the rest of the story.
That’s an argument I’ve refuted many times. Withiin the scope of this essay, I
think that Miller makes it quite clear that Marv is not a hero in the general
sense, and that he doesn’t even think of himself as a hero. The “big man”
behind Goldie’s murder, as well as several other deaths, calls Marv a
“monster,” and all of Marv’s mental musings make clear that he’s heard this
appellation before. Even his square-headed visage may owe something to the
iconic head of the movie’s version of the Frankenstein Monster. In any case,
Marv, according to my system of persona-types, is not a hero. He doesn’t care about
justice like Batman or Daredevil; he doesn’t even care about the code of the
professional investigator, like Sam Spade. Marv’s a human monster who’s never
had a reason to exist, until a band of well-connected murderers try to make him
their patsy. The resulting violence is immensely cathartic to the sympathetic
reader, but it’s a catharsis that functions less like the justice-seeking tales
of Batman than like the rampages of the Frankenstein Monster against the
stupidity and venality of mankind.
HARD GOODBYE is filled with many keen psychological insights
into the mind of Miller’s human monster, too many to explore in a short essay.
Yet the story is primarily a sociological myth. In the world of the superhero,
the costumed crusader arises to facilitate justice, simply because the Law
Can’t Be Everywhere. But in the world of hardboiled crime, Big Law is bed with
Big Crime. The only satisfaction left to all those under the thumb of Powerful
People—from simple wage-slaves to the "dregs of humanity”-- is that once in a
while, they can spawn a holy monster that can tear down the towers of the rich
with outpourings of Biblical violence. Even so, the conclusion remains less
than triumphant, for the monster is fated to be destroyed, as Marv is, while
the dark crucible of Sin City endures, brewing its endless concoctions of corruption.
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On a side-note, this is my 51st "mythcomic" analyzed for my "1001 myths" feature.
Only nine hundred and fifty to go now.
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On a side-note, this is my 51st "mythcomic" analyzed for my "1001 myths" feature.
Only nine hundred and fifty to go now.
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