Sin City: The Hard Goodbye, by Frank Miller

Reconsidering the Superhero

The work of Frank Miller is one example of many that illustrates the concept of the "Reconsidered Superhero". Along with works such as Hellboy, Rumble, and Black Science I feel the art form has grown tired of the old school, perfect hero type and has reinvented the idea of a super powered protagonist. In these books we usually don't see the super powered indestructible hero types as we did in earlier comic books. Nowadays it seems that the underground concepts of injecting real emotion and thought into characters has seeped into the mainstream of comics for what I feel is for the better. Seeing Superman or Wolverine fight some bad guy for the 500th time really makes the medium feel less impactful in my mind. These superheroes become more of a stable vehicle to deliver light hearted stories or messages to the audience. In a work like Sin City, we are presented with someone who has no super powers and we have no idea what the outcome will be in the story. Marv greatest strength is his determination and features many flaws that are highlighted throughout the story. The book reads to me like the inner monologue of someone who just got yelled at by a teacher and is now thinking about all the comebacks he could have said in the moment but didn't. It's a frustrated tale and a gritty one as well that presents a fantastic adventure that is very much stepped in reality. The "villains" are corrupted people who are often evaluated by our "hero" as to whether or not they deserve to be killed. Our hero doesn't see himself as the hero and he is constantly grappling with his purpose and the justification behind his actions. Overall, within this first volume of Sin City we see our "Superhero" on a quest to basically die in peace with no regret, as opposed to saving the city or the world. It's a selfish goal that leaves many others hurt, but it's a realistic one that I think many people can relate to. This book does not gloss over the hard realities of life such as, everyone isn't going to like you, and that staying determined is extremely difficult, and that right and wrong is rarely black and white. The unstable nature of this book made me read through the entire thing when I just wanted to skim and is also what kept me on my toes the entire time. This book is not titled "MARV" it's "Sin City", it doesn't glorify the hero of the story it merely lets us watch his story as it all unfolds and we can choose whether he was right or wrong in the end.

I think that this kind of character/world writing is extremely interesting where we as the audience are brought into a world because the writer allowed us to, where he doesn't owe us anything. We don't come in expecting super man to save the world or anything of the sort, we get to explore human emotions from a safe distance and reflect on them. I recently played a game called ABZU with my bud, and it in the same way just dropped us into a world and we got to explore and make our own judgements. The game didn't tell you what was going on, but rather let us reflect on the presented narrative and come to our own conclusions. I plan on including this type of world/character development into my work.