e> Gomics Are Good Food

 

Jason Webb, OP Contributor

he comic-book business is just
that—a business. Publishers
want to sell books, and they will
reach into their bag of marketing tricks
to impress the consumer with the old
razzle-dazzle. Be amazed by popular writers
who can juggle a dozen titles a month! Be con-

founded by multiple alternate endings! Please,

leave the foil-embossed covers for the
pimple-squeezing crowd. A new reader,
as well as the grizzled veterans, must
trudge through this consumer swamp to
find real comic gold. Sometimes that
means relying on old favourites to pull
you through the long months of clumsy
movie adaptations. Readers need real
narrative meat to tear into, and Paul
Chadwick is here to satisfy their
appetites.

You like the environment, right?
What about the people who live in it?
Don’t you think there’s too many of
them, and their numbers will swell to
such enormous proportions that they
choke the life out of this planet? Well,

April 6/2005

 

n a time when comic

book movies ate becom-

ing a dime a dozen (with
two more, Fantastic Four and
Batman Begins, due out this sum-
mer), it has been hard as a
movie fan to find something
original. And it’s been hard as a
comic fan to find something
that actually came out the way I
wanted it to. Frank Miller’s Sin
City is one gigantic exception to
this trend.

For those who don’t know,
Miller is an award-winning
comic author who, besides
telling some of the most edgy
and compelling stories of
comic mainstays like Batman
and Daredevil, created the title
Sin City. Unlike most comic
movies where there are multi-
ple brains behind the stories
over the years, Miller has been
in command of Sim City the
whole way. This, combined
with the fact that he wrote and

co-directed the film with Dusk
Till Dawn director Robert
Rodriguez and “special guest
director” Quentin Tarantino,
has made Sin City the
smoothest, and most loyal,
comic-to-film transition ever
accomplished. And that, my
friends, is a good thing because
Sin City is a damned good story.

The story is set in the mod-
ern, but film noir-influenced,
Basin City. The film is actually
a series of brilliantly connected
short stories. The main charac-
ters include one of Basin City’s
only remaining good cops,
John Hartigan, played to a tee
by Bruce Willis; tough-as-nails
and ugly-as-sin Marv (Mickey
Rourke); and Dwight (Clive
Owen), a killer who is still run-
ning and gunning post
face-changing plastic surgery.
The brilliance of the graphic
novel’s plotline remains in the
faithful creation of a city where

 

all of our city’s worst stories are
viewed as simple day-to-day
business, and any hope of
something good seems like a
distant memory. Violent, bru-
tal, terrifying at points, Sin City
is everything it should be. It’s
various vignettes—such as
Hartigan on the hunt for a seri-
al killer and rapist; Dwight’s
attempts to protect Old Town,
a part of the city run by armed
hookers; or my favourite, Marv
climbing up Basin’s organized
crime ladder to see who framed
him for the murder of Goldie,
the one girl who was ever nice
to him—combine to create a
very entertaining overall story.

If you can handle the very
high gore content, this is a film
most worth seeing. Original,
visually brilliant, edgy, and just
plain dark and mean—Sin City
is one of the best films to see
light so far this year.

 

okay, maybe this isn’t the case; I'll leave
that to you to decide. But, Paul
Chadwick’s long-standing comic Concrete
(Dark Horse) tackles issues of overpop-
ulation and consumption in his six-part
miniseries “The Human Dilemma.”
Chadwick has been churning out
Concrete for 17 years, a story centred on
speechwriter Ron Lithgow, who is
abducted by aliens and has his brain
dumped into a giant stone monster. I
know, it’s weird, but bear with me.
Chadwick’s protagonist is used to
explore a wide spectrum of ideas:
human impacts on the environment,
social issues in the United States, and the
complex designs of the human heart.
His line work can be incredibly precise,
and Chadwick uses it to draw striking
compositions within the panels. Don’t
be turned off by the lack of colour
though. The story will burrow into your
head as you work out your own opinions
on population control, if it’s needed at
all.

 

 

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