This past week saw the release of A Dame To Kill For, the second Sin City film, and by all accounts it was...weird. Which is befitting of its source material, a series of comic books that saw veteran writer and artist Frank Miller throw hardboiled detective stories, noir films and pulp fiction (not Pulp Fiction, crucially) in a blender along with his bombastic superhero work. At the other end spat out a highly stylised, ultra violent and sexually explicit throwback to "the good old days" of genre stories; Sin City was a playground for Miller to indulge in his love of gritty crime mysteries, with crooked cops, femme fatales and all. Also there are dinosaurs sometimes, because of course there is. Over the years Miller has weaved together a whole weird world of his own, the fictional Basin City having its own distinct geography, demographics and criminal underworld (it's the criminal underworld that gets the most airing). Despite being rendered in stark black and white the setting is populated by colourful characters befitting his influence, from cops framed for crimes they didn't commit to samurai sex workers to a yellow bastard. Literally yellow. He has a problem with his liver, or something. That's just one of the many strange aspects to Sin City you go with in order to enjoy the macabre, bonkers, bloody world Frank Miller has put together. And there are many more! Nine, in fact! Here are ten crazy facts you just have to accept to enjoy Sin City.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
