Sin City Family Values TP 1st Pr Frank Miller Dark Horse Movie Miho Dwight NM

Description

Sin City Volume 5: Family Values Paperback
by Frank Miller (Author, Illustrator)

Frank Miller’s first-ever original graphic novel is one of Sin City’s nastiest yarns to date! Starring fan-favorite characters Dwight and Miho!

There’s a kind of debt you can’t ever pay off, not entirely. And that’s the kind of debt Dwight owes Gail. The girls of Old Town have their own family values, their own laws-and when someone too dumb to know better breaks them, an example needs to be set. Dwight’s got his own reasons for taking the job, and deadly little Miho… Miho likes to play with them a little first.

With a new look generating more excitement than ever before, this third edition is the perfect way to attract a whole new generation of readers to Frank Miller’s masterpiece!

With Miller and co-director Robert Rodriguez gearing up for Sin City 2, now is the time to read this great series! Family Values was adapted in the first movie!

Frank Miller began his career in comics in the late 1970s, first drawing then writing Daredevil for Marvel Comics, creating what was essentially a crime comic disguised as a superhero book. It was on Daredevil that Miller gained notoriety, honed his storytelling abilities, and took his first steps toward becoming a giant in the comics medium. After Daredevil came Ronin, a science-fiction samurai drama that seamlessly melded Japanese and French comics traditions into the American mainstream; and after that, the groundbreaking and acclaimed Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, both of which not only redefined the classic character, but also revitalized the industry itself. Finally able to fulfill his dream of doing an all-out, straight-ahead crime series, Miller introduced Sin City in 1991. Readers responded enthusiastically to Miller’s tough-as-leather noir drama, creating an instant sales success. His multi-award-winning 300 series from Dark Horse, a telling of history’s most glorious and underreported battle, was brought to full-blooded life in 1998. In 2001, Miller returned to the superhero genre with the bestselling Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Frank Miller continues to push the medium into new territories, exploring subject matter previously untouched in comics, and his work consistently receives the highest praise from his industry peers and readers everywhere. In 2005, with the hugely successful Sin City movie release, codirected with Robert Rodriguez, Miller added a director’s credit to his already impressive résumé and introduced his characters to an entirely new legion of fans worldwide.

“Family Values” is the 5th book in the fantastic Sin City series of graphic novels written and illustrated by mad comic book genius Frank Miller. It’s a brief and uncharacteristically straightforward jaunt starring Basin City’s premiere anti-hero Dwight and the biggest/smallest bada$z ever to hit the pulp, deadly little Miho. Sin City began once Miller had established himself as a premier writer with amazing arcs for both DC and Marvel Comics that redefined classic heroes like Daredevil and Batman for a new generation. After his massive success, he was given the freedom to literally do anything he wanted. What he wanted was Sin City. The art for the series is done entirely in black ink. There is no gray or shading in any image; it is entirely, purely, strikingly black and white. The same can never be said of the stories, where even the heroes are often sadistic murderers. The only difference between the heroes and villains is whether they are slaughtering innocent people, or those who had it coming. The amazing art style alone sets this series far apart from any mainstream comic series out there, and the flagrant violence, nudity, and language assures that any child in possession of one of the stories had best hide it from their parents. This one is for grown-ups. “Family Values” is no exception.

A lot of Sin City’s stories end up focusing on corrupted institutions such as the Catholic church or the police, but this one goes a bit traditional and focuses on a mob hit. Dwight investigates a drive-by shooting at a diner accompanied by his murderous guardian angel watching from shadows and rooftops. He turns down a randy female cop, says hello to two of Sin City’s quirky regulars, and settles on charming the details of the incident out of a run-down, worn-out old barfly. Soon, his inquiries bring the perpetrators down on him and the fun begins. Now, one could argue that this entire story was just an excuse for Miller to draw his favorite ninja girl kicking a$z on roller blades. I would concur with that argument. But it is a righteous endeavor. Miho is always a welcome face, and Miho on roller blades is somehow even cooler. At one point a hood refers to her as a “Jap sl**” and gets her special undivided attention, which crescendos with her using a swastika-shaped shuriken to slice halfway through his neck so she can speed at him and kick his head off with both skates. Nice. Whether or not it was necessary for her to fall out of her kimono in multiple panels I will leave up to you. My favorite bit has to be when Miho is dragging a mob guard down a flight of stairs with a kusarigama (handheld sickle) through his head as Dwight confides with his hostage that she’s actually a very nice girl once you get to know her.

I think what really makes “Family Values” great aside from the usual Sin City coolness plus roller-blading ninja girl is the “moral of the story” as it were. As Dwight reaches his final target and lectures him on the reason he is to die, Miller offers a bit of personal commentary on the meaning of the book’s title and the twisting of the term as it is applied by ivory tower politicians and businessmen as though they have some sort of claim on it while they are living their own deviant fantasies out. Indeed, there are all sorts of families out there and it is nobody’s place to put a value on which loving relationships are right and which are wrong and which are to be valued over others.

Near mint, 1st print.