A Dame To Kill For - Frank Miller.

When I was in second year University, I took a Popular Narrative class in which we had to read That Yellow Bastard. Have you ever known that you would love something before reading it? That is what happened with this graphic novel. I knew that I would love it before I opened it, and I was right. Even though I loved it, I never read any of the others in the series. It seemed that even though I knew I would continue to love the work, I was not willing to spend the money in pursuing more of it.

I finally caved and bought A Dame To Kill For.

Much as I assumed, I loved this even more than the first one that I read. The story was something that I was not familiar with as a result of the film, and I liked that I was turning the page to discover more as opposed to knowing everything about the beginning, the middle and the end. And the story was something to be waited for. As I read I was anxious to know what would happen, and the amount of mystery and deception was often overwhelming in the best way. The writing is typical Frank Miller, being a hard and fast tale of the lowest in the city. The presence of the people outside of Sin City - the elitists and the rich - made the story even more overwhelming. Both my previous read and the film emphasized the terrible nature of the people in the city, but there was nothing to compare them to. Instead, I always imagined it to be a world of its own without the presence of regular people such as you and I. With a world outside of Sin City you are truly able to understand the nature of those within.

As is the true glory of Miller, the most relevant fixture of his graphic novels is the art. Instead of simply accompanying the writing, the two work hand in hand, often giving more relevance to the art than the words. There are pages of simplistic images that tell a stronger story through the lack of colour and print, emphasizing emotions that Miller is attempting to convey.

I give this graphic novel a 5/5. Its power is derived almost completely from pages of black and white, simplistic artwork. Emotion oozes through the sexuality and the gore of his work. Again, I loved this story the most of the two that I read because of the lack of knowledge that I had of the story, but that isn't to put down the stories that may be present within the film. I think that Miller has an explosive talent in making the undesirable completely desirable.