Since the emergence of the modern comic strip around the turn of the 20th century, literary critics and intellectuals had been taking note of the fledgling medium. Just as vital as evidence from Miller’s own work, then, to examining this relationship in Si n City is the theoretical underpinning of comics in general. Miller, while possessing a keen instinct for visualizing letters, ultimately demonstrates scant interest in those very implications nor is he alone, among even the best comic book creators, in overlooking the complex relationship between letterforms, words, and sound in comics. Through this ubiquitous example, I will both outline how Miller’s graphic technique in Sin City challenges the interplay between words and pictures so fundamental to sequential art, and also explore the implications of that approach. Instead, the “literal architecture” I intend to examine is the graphic construction and arrangement of letterforms in Sin City, specifically the onomatopoeic word Blam which conveys, visually, the sound of a gunshot. Yet just as there is no “real” Basin City, the object here is not its “real” architecture-the construction of its tenements and townhouses. The series’ interplay between experimental black-and-white artwork and the storytelling conventions of crime comics and noir cinema make the universe of Miller’s fictional Basin City, with its motley collection of lowlifes, assassins, and crooked politicos, fruitful for study. Sin City, written and illustrated by Frank Miller, has long been renowned for its striking, nihilistic style.
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