Sin City, Vol. 4: That Yellow Bastard

In a Sin City short story, “The Babe Wore Red,” Frank Miller deviated from his stark black-and-white artwork by adding tiny bits of color throughout the story. The girl’s dress was red, her lips were red–you get the picture. In That Yellow Bastard, the fourth Sin City graphic novel, Miller’s experiment with yellow ink is also a tremendous success. The setup is simple. On the last day before he retires, Hartigan, an old cop, gets a call about an 11-year-old girl who has been kidnapped by a lunatic. Hartigan has got just one more thing to do before he retires: save the girl. Saving her is the easy part, because Hartigan has uncovered something really bad that is not going to stop until it catches up with him. That Yellow Bastard is nerve-racking to the very end.