Booze, Broads, & Bullets (Sin City, Book 6: Second Edition)

This book collects various shorter Sin City stories that were published in various comic books. There are eleven separate stories here, so I will offer brief reviews of all of them.

"Just Another Saturday Night" is a typical Marv story. (4 stars)
"Fat Man and Little Boy" is a short comedy starring small time hoods Klump and Shlubb. (4 stars)
"The Customer is Always Right" was the prologue in the recent Sin City movie. (4 stars)
"Silent Night" is a Marv story with virtually no dialogue. (3 stars)
"And Behind Door Number Three..." is a brief story featuring the girls of Old Town. (3 stars)
"Blue Eyes" introduces the character of Delia. (4 stars)
"Rats" stars a Nazi war criminal. (3 stars)
"Daddy's Little Girl" stars the one-shot character of Johnny. (3 stars)
"Wrong Turn" is a longer Delia story. (4 stars)
"Wrong Track" is a shorter Delia story. (3 stars)
"The Babe Wore Red" stars Dwight and is the best story in here. (5 stars)

So there you have it. "The Babe Wore Red" is so great, that the book is worth getting just for that one story. But all the other stories also have something to recommend them. That is to say, they all have gorgeous art by Frank Miller, even if a few of them are a bit lacking in the plot department. If you are a fan of the other Sin City books, you will probably enjoy this one, too.

Sandwiched between the relatively short Dwight & Miho story "Family Values" and the massive "Hell and Back" (which is supposed to star Johnny Depp in the next "Sin City" movie if the Fates are kind), Book 6 "Booze, Broads, & Bullets" is a collection of "Sin City" short stories from Frank Miller. There are eleven stories, ranging in length from three to two dozen pages and for those fans who do not think that "Sin City" has been as good as when Marv was holding center stage in Book One, "The Hard Goodbye," then the fact that Marv is the main character in two of the stories and a bystander in a couple of others will be greeted with undiminished joy. But there is also the addition of new female character who insists people call her "Blue Eyes" (yes, her eyes are colored blue, but that is not as impressive as what Miller does with her blue dress).

The collection gets off to a great start with "Another Saturday Night," in which Marv must have forgotten to take his medication, because he wakes up in the middle of a mess and cannot remember what is going on. We then shift to a comic little piece in "Fat Man and Little Boy," the nicknames by which a couple of low-rent hit men named Douglas Klump and Burt Shlubb do their business. They have been hired to dump a body, but Mr. Shlubb has designs on the finely crafted boots of the deceased to replace his most embarrassing and blister-inducing of pedal garments, but Mr. Shlubb points out that given their current status in the extralegal community even a minor transgression such as that could be cause fo discipline most severe. "The Customer is Always Right" is the vignette that served as the introduction for the "Sin City" movie, and then Marv comes back for "Silent Night," in which he has some business to take care of on a snowy night. Artistically this last one is my favorite in the collection as Miller continues to explore drawing figures walking through the snow. He did that a little in "Family Values," but in "Silent Night" he has some nice shots of Marv walking through a blizzard.

"And Behind Door Number Three..." is a quickie that gives Miho a reason to show up, while "Blue Eyes" introduces the new recurring character of Delia, who is reunited at the bar where Marv is watching Nancy dance with Jim, the only man she ever really lived. But Jim is running from somebody trying to kill him, so hooking up with Delia at this particular point in time might not be a bright idea. "Rats" is the most atypical of these stories, although bringing the sensibilities of "Sin City" to what I see as being a Holocaust story is an interesting touch. "Daddy's Little Girl" is another "Sin City" tale where a character, in this case the title one, gets to have a little color. However the color in this case is pink. On the one hand, I am not any more crazier about black & white and pink here than I was on the cover of "Family Values." But on the other hand pink does add to the attendant irony of this grim little tale.

Blue Eyes is back in "Wrong Turn," and she gets a ride from a guy who only thinks this is his lucky night. After Marv walking in the snow Miller's full page shots of Delia in her blue dress are my favorite artwork. Whether we are talking leather or silk, I really like how Miller draws fabric draped over the female form. "Wrong Track" brings Delia right back for another "Sin City" quickie. Miller plays with adding one primary color to his black & white artwork again in "The Babe Wore Red," in which Fat Man and Little Boy are on the trail of the title character. Fortunately she is rescued by one of Sin City's grimy knights, who does not know what to make about a beautiful woman who is the worst liar he has ever seen and prays in Latin when they are being shot at.

On balance, "Booze, Broads, & Bullets" is a short story collection where the sum is greater than the value of the parts. Yes, it would be nice to have another "Sin City" graphic novel with Marv, but it would be hard to top "The Hard Goodbye," so getting a couple of solid short stories may well be the best way to go. Plus, throwing a new female character into the mix, and one who actually talks instead of just dancing in a bar or slicing and dicing bad guys with her samurai sword, is a step in the right direction. Consequently, I am more than willing to round up on this one as representing a nice change of pace from Miller. Certainly our comic noir palate is cleansed before having to tackle the almost 300-page "Hell and Back."

Miller has defined his own noir nouveau. Sin City is a crime drama, but without the cops. It takes place in an urban world that has no sun or mercy, gritty people in a gritty place. It has heroes of sorts, but you probably don't want to look too closely at the guy you're cheering for. Most of all, it has Miller's stark artwork. Black and white, with no tones in between, every line is as sharp as a knife edge. The images are built from extremes, as are the characters, as are the stories.

The stories vary. The first centers on a homicidal strongman, chasing his prey into a gangland dead end, with emphasis on dead - and he's the good guy. The next comic book in this set of reprints is an enigmatic story with only one spoken sentence, near the end. Within that framework, it uses claustrophobic view angles to suggest multiple betrayals and larger events. It also makes clear that some people are innocent, some times.

Later stories use single spots of color to create characters and to focus attention, a strong visual and narrative tool. The stories are still dark and violent, based on people at their worst. Only that last story changes in tone, a bride who panics on the eve of her wedding and runs. The problem is that she runs into some bad people. She is, however, returned in time to make her vows.

This is what I like about the last decade in comics - innovative artwork and stories that hang together. Others are good, but Miller's Sin City is among the best.

//wiredweird

This one was almost as great as the rest. It was more of the short story compilation but I still thouroughly enjoyed it. I like the full stories in the other books a little more. Great purchase and a must have if you are a Sin City fan.

I was disappointed with Frank Miller's previous run on his "Sin City" saga, "Family Values," but "Booze, Broads, & Bullets" is a step back up. Still, it's not quite worthy of five stars like the first four. "Booze, Broads, & Bullets" is kind of different than the previous "Sin City" yarns, as it doesn't necessarily have a fixed plot or completely focus on one particular character, but we are introduced to a new character that most of the story seems to follow--Delia, aka "Blue Eyes." Delia is different. Unlike Marv, Dwight, and Hartigan, Delia is a villain. After killing her abusive husband, she joins an organization to become a professional killer, with her own trademark of having sexual relations with her victims prior to killing them. What's interesting about this one is how Miller uses more color to personify or recognize his characters using more color this time in his usually gritty, black and white drawings (he did it once before in "That Yellow Bastard," by characterizing Roark, Jr. with the color yellow). He characterizes Delia with the color blue, which, somehow, adds mysterious depth to the stories Miller places her on.

There are some other areas besides "Blue Eyes" where Miller uses color, which he rarely does. He uses pink in one of the "side chapters," as I call them, called "Daddy's Little Girl," which is about a one-shot character named Johnny who stumbles a strange, taboo operation involving the murdering of strangers between a woman he loves and her father. In the book's final chapter, Miller uses red, hence the chapters title, "The Babe Wore Red." This one is another story about Dwight, who rescues a mysterious woman in red from Fat Man and Little Boy (a couple of delusional thugs who first appeared in "That Yellow Bastard"). My favorite chapter in "Booze, Broads, & Bullets" however, was "Rats," a very bizarre, short yarn about a Nazi war criminal. Out of all the "Sin City" chapters Miller has written, "Rats" has to be the most disturbing. And I like that. There's also a couple of shorts featuring Marv ("Just Another Saturday Night" and "Silent Night"), whom we haven't seen since "A Dame to Kill For," so it was nice to have him back, even thought it was brief. Also featured in this trade was the short story "The Customer Is Always Right," which was used for the opening scene in the recent "Sin City" movie, which is every bit as good as the comics.