When Sin City became a success, Frank Miller must have been a little bit stymied. After all, he'd killed off the lead character and tied off a lot of other loose ends in The Hard Goodbye, what could he do for an encore now that the audience (and Miller himself) had a taste for the book? His answer, as seen in volume two of Sin City, was to create Dwight, a hard-living, noble if flawed photographer hero for A Dame to Kill For, the second Sin City story. That graphic novel was released out of sequence, perhaps due to the vagaries of publishing and perhaps because it's not being translated into the film, but at any rate, it's one I don't have in hand yet in the new format, so I'm skipping over to Dwight's second appearance, The Big Fat Kill, for my next in a series of Sin City reviews. Quite honestly, while I like A Dame to Kill For, I think The Big Fat Kill is a better story and a better representation of Dwight as a character.
Of course, it took this recent reread of Big Fat Kill to remind me how good this story was, so who knows what might happen when I reread A Dame to Kill For. Marv made such an impression on me that it was hard to make the transition to a different character and a different style of story, and even That Yellow Bastard is a little closer to the original in terms of the brutality and "lug" nature of the protagonist. However, The Big Fat Kill is definitely every bit as strong as the other Sin City tales, with its particular focus being on exploring the deadly prostitutes of Sin City (one of the most endearing of Miller's fantasy archetypes). There's a likable protagonist, more than one scummy villain ("Iron Jack" Rafferty" is a perfectly entertaining sleaze who you're happy to watch and even happier to see get killed) and plenty of memorable action scenes, many of them involving Miho, Miller's female ninja who recalls his creation of Elektra in some ways.
Miller has said in a recent interview that to him, Sin City is a love story, albeit one that is twisted and doesn't usually have a happy ending. I can certainly see that, and I would say that The Big Fat Kill is the strongest argument for Sin City as love story. Dwight's motivations right at the beginning stem more from a surprisingly do-gooder notion of protecting others, but when he really gets dumped into the soup (or the tar, as it were), it's because of his affection for Gail, even as it was his affection for Shellie that gets him into the whole mess in the first place. There's a terrific sense of longing from both Gail and Dwight in their interactions, as both of them realize that, long-term, there's no future for them, even as neither one can deny the heat and passion that they generate when together.
While both Gail and Miho made their first appearances in A Dame to Kill For, both of them get a lot more face time in the pages of The Big Fat Kill. Certainly Gail is much more of a player here than she was in A Dame to Kill For, where her role was mostly to play jilted lover and timely ally for Dwight. Here, she is a reminder of what he's lost, as well as one of the few people who has the will and strength to stand up to Dwight and not back down from the force of his personality. Gail is perhaps the strongest female protagonist that Miller has created in Sin City, a dominant personality whose dominatrix-themed costuming is no accident, but a visual reinforcement of her character. Miho, the silent ninja, is another strong character, although her personality is more one-dimensional. Her role is to be the badass, never the nurturer, the action star and not the female lead. She doesn't get any of the good lines because she doesn't talk, but Miho gets a lot of the good moments in these pages.
The action is certainly a big attraction for The Big Fat Kill, which features a memorable showdown between Dwight and some Irish soldiers, a brutal finale which clearly inspired (or was inspired by) Miller's research into 300 and of course Miho going into action against Jack Rafferty and "his pack." There's also plenty of the sensual thrill that Sin City offers up in the form of the deadly but gorgeous (and often quite naked) hookers of Old Town. What surprised me in The Big Fat Kill was finding it to be more humorous than the other Sin City volumes. Oh, Hard Goodbye has its funny moments, notably Marv's sick glee as he kills and tortures his way to Roark, but there are some very funny schtick moments that really worked for me in The Big Fat Kill. Stuka's death scene is hilarious, Dwight's roughing up of Jackie Boy also darkly funny and the "buddy movie" stuff between Dwight and Jackie's corpse is over-the-top but also quite amusing.
Miller did some of his best artwork ever in the pages of Sin City, and The Big Fat Kill is no exception there either. Some of his best work is done with silhouette, such as the fight between Jackie and Shellie in the kitchen or the first shot of Becky walking down the alley. There's also a very effective use of "freeze frame" type shots to, paradoxically, indicate action moving so fast it's hard to follow. Miho's assault on Rafferty's car happens in the course of a split second but takes seven pages, showing each move so that we truly understand her prowess. The moment of realization about who and what Rafferty is, likewise, is maybe a couple of seconds, but Miller plays it out across six pages for maximum tension. Miller's storytelling style on Sin City is not what is now popularly called decompressed, but neither does he cram in too much information the way comics often do. He takes his time, and his pacing is more often than not absolutely perfect.
This new collection of A Big Fat Kill is, like the other volumes, in that cool little bookstore friendly format that I really like, and has all the bells and whistles trade collectors have come to expect, like numbers on the spine and consistent design sensibilities. I was also glad that in terms of extras the book contains the beautiful color covers from the original miniseries and some excellent pinups from Miller's friends, including Art Adams, John Romita and a very memorable Nancy pin-up by Paul Chadwick. 10/10
