It’s Detective John Hartigan’s last day on the job. But there’s one thing he has to take care of first. Your Major Spoilers Retro Review of Sin City: That Yellow Bastard #1 awaits!

SIN CITY: THAT YELLOW BASTARD #1

Writer: Frank Miller
Penciler: Frank Miller
Inker: Frank Miller
Colorist: Lynn Varley
Letterer: Frank Miller
Editor: Bob Schreck
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Cover Price: $2.95
Current Near-Mint Pricing: $5.00
Release Date: February 1, 1996

Previously in Sin City: One of the few officers of the Basin City Police Department who is not on some sort of take, John Hartigan is one hour from retirement when he receives a tip on the last loose end of his police career: The location of an abducted child named Nancy Callahan. As he sets off to free her from the clutches of her kidnapper, his partner Bob insists on trying to stop him.

In Bob’s defense, he’s not trying to let Nancy get tortured and murdered out of cruelty. It’s just that their target is the son of Senator Roark, one of the most influential of the influential monsters who gave Basin City it’s shortened nickname, and Bob doesn’t want to see Hartigan get killed. Of course, no longer in Bob’s defense, he’s only worried about his partner because he knows that Roark would target BOTH of them, which leads to Hartigan punching his gutless lights out and setting off on his own to save Nancy.

Despite the horrific and frankly unnecessary spectre of an eleven-year-old becoming the victim of a serial killer, I defy even the hardest of hardcore Miller-haters to look at the artwork in this issue and not be moved. If one were to evaluate this comic based only on the quality of the art, I wouldn’t blame you for awarding top marks. The use of blacks is masterful, as we see in Nancy’s terrified face above. Even more impressive, as Hartigan’s angina starts to act up and his vision fails, the art and the captions follow suit.

I especially like how the shrinking panels give the reader the equivalent of Hartigan’s tunnel vision as his heart seems to fail. If the sorta/kinda heart attack hadn’t been caused by the effort of bludgeoning an offensive stereotype of a Black teenager, possibly to death, I might even call it a heroic effort. Hartigan shakes off his chest pains with the thought of poor little Nancy Callahan (Age Eleven), and disables Roark’s getaway car, then murders Roark’s thugs/bodyguards. Trudging onward, Detective Hartigan catches the Senator’s boy and Nancy in time to save the girl from a fate worse than death. With a fresh bullet wound, an ongoing heart attack, and sheer determination, John Hartigan stalks his prey to the docks.

Roark shoots him point-blank, but Hartigan shrugs it off with a tough-guy remark and shoots the criminal in the hand and the genitals before the Chekhov’s Gun in this story arrives, in the hands of Hartigan’s partner, Bob.

As our story fades to black, Hartigan believes that his life is over, but the real suffering has only begun. When this book arrived back in ’96, I was into the work of David Lloyd, George Perez, and Mike Allred, and couldn’t wrap my head around the angular, bone-crushing constructions of Miller’s work here. In retrospect, I can admit that I was wrong in 1996, as Sin City: That Yellow Bastard #1 features stunning artwork from cover to cover, epic use of negative space and pools of black, and just plain incredible images, accompanied by a cliche-ridden script for an overall 2.5 out of 5 stars. If you bought this issue off the stands and were immediately overcome with the urge to read the next five issues, I would neither blame nor judge you. 25-year-old Matthew might, but that guy was kind of a

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