Click here for Vol 5 – “Family Values”

“She shivers in the wind, like the last leaf on a dying tree.” – the Colonel

BOOZE, BROADS, & BULLETS

The sixth “Sin City” volume is an anthology, collecting various short stories set in Frank Miller’s Basin City.

The stories include:

• Just Another Saturday Night
• Fat Man and Little Boy
• The Customer is Always Right
• Silent Night
• And Behind Door Number Three…
• Blue Eyes
• Rats
• Daddy’s Little Girl
• Wrong Turn
• Wrong Track
• The Babe Wore Red

What was really striking in this volume compared to most of the previous ones was Miller’s occasional use of limited color in his black and white style, something the Sin City movies really took and ran with. Prior to this, (not including covers) we’d only seen color used in “That Yellow Bastard” (Vol 4) – with the um, yellow bastard.

There’s a reoccurring character named Delia aka “Blue Eyes”, an Old Town assassin, who is shown in blue with (you guessed it) ‘blue eyes’.

“The Babe Wore Red” also includes some very clever use of color, with some of the best imagery in the series. It’s quintessential ‘Sin City’. This one follows Dwight McCarthy as he saves a damsel in distress and learns things aren’t quite what they seem.

We also get one of my favorite lines from Dwight’s narration: “I toss away a couple more bullets.”

Basin City Connections

Besides the return of Dwight, we get a number of returning characters in this one, including Gail, Miho, and even a couple appearances from Marv! “Silent Night” is one of the standouts here, which follows Marv on a mission to save a young girl. The really striking thing about this story was that it had almost no dialogue, just pure visual storytelling at it’s best.

“Just Another Saturday Night” is another Marv-centric story, taking place concurrently with Hartigan’s story, while “Blue Eyes” takes place alongside the events of “A Dame to Kill For” (Vol 2), and in “Wrong Turn”, Delia lures an unsuspecting man to the tar pits (see “The Big Fat Kill” – Vol 3).

Comic vs Movie (Vol 6)

Robert Rodriguez’s “Sin City” actually opens with a scene directly from this volume – “The Customer is Always Right”. This was an incredible short piece – it’s only three pages – and it was a perfect opening to set the tone for the movie. The movie version followed the comic almost exactly, but leans more into the use of color, whereas the comic version didn’t have any. Josh Hartnett plays ‘the Colonel’, and really shines here in the very little screen time we get with him.

This was definitely one of my favorite stories from this volume, so I can totally see why they decided to use it as the first scene in the movie. In fact, rumor is that this scene was filmed before the rest of the movie to prove to Frank Miller that they could really translate ‘Sin City’ to the screen! “I tell her I love her. The silencer makes a whisper of the gunshot. I hold her close until she’s gone. I’ll never know what she was running from. I’ll cash her check in the morning.” The narration here is pitch perfect.

Next Time: Vol 7 – “Hell and Back”

If you’re a fan of neo-noir, check out my latest book “2299”