Sin City

Sin City is the title of a series of adult comics by Frank Miller, published in 13 parts by Dark Horse between 1991 & 1992.

Sin City's style borrows heavily from film noir (itself based on a particular style of American detective pulp novels), with heavy use of black, dramatic lighting and occasional splashes of a red, yellow or blue.

All the stories take place in Basin City, a fictional 1950s-esque, post-goldrush town, dominated by a very rich, very nasty family, the Roarks.

Everything is extreme in Sin City, usually extremely corrupt. The police function as the Roarks' personal army. Prostitutes control their area of the city (Old Town) using an arsenal of hi- and lo-tech weaponry. And the rich and influential find pleasure in doing gut-wrenchingly bad things.

Each story functions as a twisted morality tale, taking recognisable caricatures from a range of genres and throwing them into a place where the only way to be good is to do bad things to very bad people.

A movie adaptation of Sin City, co-directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller with 'special guest director' Quentin Tarantino, was released on April 1, 2005. It faithfully interpreted the spirit and the look of the graphic novels using real actors, prosthetics (a superb Mickey Rourke as 'thug-with-a-heart' Marv) and a host of glorious digital effects.

Two film sequels are planned.
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