I'll take the first two, but maybe pass on the third (Sin City: Booze, Broads, and Bullets - Frank Miller)

Member Name: SWSt

Product:	Sin City: Booze, Broads, and Bullets - Frank Miller
Date:	29/10/09 (39 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Superb artwork, mini-tales format works very well, strong sense of atmosphere

Disadvantages: Not for the faint-hearted or newcomers to Sin City

Booze, Broad and Bullets (BBB from now on) is Frank Miller's sixth venture into Sin City and marks a slight departure from previous. Earlier books told three or four standalone, but interlined tales. Despite being one of the slimmest volumes in the series, BBB is far more ambitious and contains no fewer than 11 stories.

This did give me some cause for concern when I first picked up this title. One of the important jobs of comics is to build up an atmosphere, which sucks the reader into the author's imaginary world. Whilst the mixture of text and imagery enables comic book authors to establish atmosphere more quickly than straight prose, I wondered whether Miller would be able to create the same level of immersion when he has just a few pages for each story.

In fact, BBB turns out to be one of the most immersive and fascinating of the Sin City yarns. The short story format works really well when set against the backdrop of the ugly metropolis of Basin City. It really adds a tremendous sense of perspective, of a city so sprawling and teeming with life that if you turn your back for just one minute you might miss several major incidents. BBB makes Sin City come alive, showcasing the good, the bad and the ugly (mostly the latter two) of human behaviour.

Each of the short stories feels sufficiently different and are testament to Miller's vivid imagination. Lesser authors might have run out of steam towards the end and started to recycle earlier themes and ideas; yet there's no evidence of Miller doing this. Many of the stories end with a slight twist and are a good example of skilful writing and the art of misdirection. Even when you are looking for a twist, it's not easy to predict where Miller will go. More importantly, when twists occur, they feel real within the context of Sin City and its inhabitants, so the reader never feels like they've been cheated. It's like a comic book version of Tales of the Unexpected. Only good.

Some readers might find a number of the tales a little dissatisfying. They can end abruptly, seemingly without any real conclusion. They meander along without an obvious purpose or meaning. If you like strong structure to your stories and a proper "beginning, middle and end" you may find BBB a little challenging. But stick with it; if you get used to the format, it pays off by the bucket load.

There's another reason for this apparently "aimless" aspect. Many of them feature characters that have appeared (usually as minor support characters) in earlier Sin City stories. The fact that we get another brief glimpse of them here adds weight to the idea that Sin City is a real, dynamic, living place, where denizens go about their business even when we're not watching them. The characters are so alive that you can quite believe that when you move on to the next tale, they also move on and are getting into new scrapes, unobserved by us.

Sin City has never been a "traditional" comic and this one is probably the least traditional of all. Whilst you could read it as a standalone volume, I think you'd be better served going back and reading at least some of the earlier Sin City tales before you try this one. It's one for existing fans of Sin City, rather than a book designed to be appealing to newcomers... and that's just how it should be. This is, after all, Part 6 of an on-going series, so if you come to the party late, you can't expect to understand everything that is happening!

It goes without saying that, like its predecessors, BBB is very dark and has plenty of adult content. There is a lot of stylised, quite explicit violence and some nudity within the book. In Sin City, human life is cheap and each of the stories depicts that, often graphically. If that sort of thing offends you, BBB will not be for you.

If the stories are strong, the artwork is stunning. Don't let the fact that it is all in black and white put you off. Black and white visuals are used to incredible effect to create some truly impressive artwork. Light and dark and shadows are used to brilliant effect and contrast sharply with each other. Characters are deliberately grotesque with exaggerated, contorted faces, all adding to the idea that Sin City is not a good place to be.

When it comes to framing his artwork, Frank Miller is one of the best. He takes a number of brave writing decisions that really pay off and add to that "different" feeling that Sin City has always evoked. There are some "traditional" comic book panels (laid sequentially from left to write in horizontal columns), but BBB is far more ambitious and much of the artwork ignores these conventions. The images break out from their frames, overlapping with the next one. In one tale, virtually every page is consists of just a single image, giving everything an exaggerated feel. The amount of visual variety Miller adds to each tale is incredible. Initially, it can be a little confusing to read - you're never quite sure which bit of the page you're supposed to look at next - but you quickly adapt and it soon seems the most natural way in the world of reading a story.

Miller's artwork is so good, so powerful that it scarcely needs (or gets) much in the way of dialogue. Speech bubbles are kept to a minimum - often just a couple of words; sometimes whole pages go by without a single word being spoken. The traditional "square narrative boxes" (. Elsewhere in the city..." etc.) are also conspicuous by their absence. Yet, they are not missed. Miller's highly visual, cinematic approach to storytelling means you are never in any doubt about what is happening and the silence of the characters only reinforces the sense of doom and dread. Never has the phrase "a picture's worth a thousand words" seemed truer.

I'd read and enjoyed each of the previous Sin City tales, but this has become one of my favourites. The short, punchy tales give Sin City a dynamic feel, whilst the tales are intelligent and satisfying without ever descending into traditional "comic book" territory. If you're fed up with the sometimes predictable adventures of Batman, Spiderman and the rest, take a trip to Sin City... just don't wander off on your own; you never know who you might bump into.

Basic Information
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Sin City 6: Booze, Broads and Bullets
Frank Miller
Dark Horse, 2005
ISBN: 978-1593072988

© Copyright SWSt 2009

Summary: Despite a surprise change in format, this is one of the best Sin City tales