Frank Miller
Sin City

The world of American comics had sunk for too long into the colorful kaleidoscope of superheroes. Balloon America was missing the taste of whiskey and the smell of cigarettes. Then came Miller, and America reclaimed the genre that had made it famous and infamous in the '40s/'50s, Noir.

Frank Miller is a noir author, a noir that fits between Humphrey Bogart and Philip Dick.

Drugs, roaring cars, sex, alcohol, cigarettes, and bullets. And more: politicians, hitmen, freaks, corrupt cops, prostitutes, and priests. All in Sin City, the city of sin. All in Sin City, the city of vice.

In April 1991, "Sin City" made its first appearance in the pages of "Dark Horse Presents." The story was serialized over thirteen issues and then reprinted in a single volume titled "Sin City (The Hard Goodbye)." Over the years, six more volumes followed, all signed by Miller and his unmistakable style.

A gamble to present a black and white comic, in the era of "the more colorful, the better it sells," which proved successful: Miller's stroke is distracted, approximate, yet at the same time decisive and precise in bringing to life shapes emerging from the shadows. A black and white that can't be more contrasted. After all, the tales of the city of sin are like that: sharp contrasts between death and the desire for survival. There are no positive elements in Miller's pages; his characters can easily be divided into perpetrators and survivors, and it doesn't matter if the survivor leaves more victims than the perpetrator of the moment; in the end, he remains a nobody, aware of his state as a surviving criminal, but above all aware that he is ultimately helpless and lost in the city's delirium. Because the city is the true protagonist of the entire work. 

Basin City (the real name of the city) represents the source of all evil: corruption, drugs, sex for sale, child trafficking, etc., it represents, in short, all those illicit activities better not done in broad daylight; and perhaps for this reason, Miller prefers not to let the sun rise very often, leaving the reader at the mercy of white spots on black backgrounds.

There is no morality between one panel and another, no half-good sentiment, no pretense of teaching anything to anyone. Only the desire to narrate. To narrate the smell and taste of the moment of damnation.

And in this, Sin City, is a masterpiece without rivals.