Comic Book Mayhem

Some dumb shit has made Frank Miller's one-note pulp comic series Sin City into a movie (oh, wait. Not "some dumb shit," but Robert Rodriguez, the uber-disappointment from south of the border). If you've never read Miller's "masterwork," it's a series of predetermined character studies wherein men are hulking, hyper-aggressive gangster or cop archetypes, women are curvy whores or else lumpy slatterns, and that's pretty much it. The men engage in senseless fucking and killing (ooh, that's some deep analysis of the human condition, Frank. Keep it up!). The women engage in senseless fucking and generally are killed. Hooray.

OK, maybe that's overdoing it a bit. Miller's early stuff, like one I recall called "That Yellow Bastard" was decent, if only because it was super-violent and unapologetic about it. But that got old real fast. The comics entered a very fast downward spiral and never recovered, mainly in my opinion because Miller didn't really have anything to say, unlike fellow luminaries Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Garth Ennis (Sandman, From Hell, Preacher, for anyone who doesn't know. And those are just the best-known ones). You could tell where the story was headed within the first two pages, and it never deviated from its pre-ordained path. That's not a recipe for success in any field, and it's very mediocre in this day and age in comics, where people like Moore have elevated the "graphic novel" to heights heretofore unseen.

And now, from one mediocrity to another, Miller to Rodriguez, I give you Sin City, the Movie! I'm sure it will be slick and overproduced (I have seen the commercials, but I'm basing that more on the super-glitzy, super-vapid nature of Rodriguez's total body of work). I'm sure it will lead the box office for one weekend, at least. I do not blame people for wanting to go see movies that are more about spectacle and pretty people than dialogue and plot. Evil is seductive, after all.

Now I could be wrong. Maybe this will be the greatest movie of all time. But I'm betting against it.