Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Tag: Big Fat Kill

Frank Miller — Deadly Tar

Original Art and The Artists

Sin City: The Big Fat Kill #4, February 1995

We continue with our month long celebration of the “Independents” — independent creators and projects that continue to impact the comic book medium.

Drowning in tar pits seems like a pretty rough way to go.

Then again, this is Frank Miller, and in the hardboiled world of Sin City, that form of murder might be preferable to some alternatives.

(In fairness, our “hero” Dwight ultimately makes it out alive. Sorry if that’s a spoiler, but the Big Fat Kill is from 1995. 25 years seems like a fair amount of time to catch up on these things.)

Big Fat Kill (BFK) is the fourth of Miller’s Sin City sagas, and one of the three stories featured in the first Sin City film. I can’t recall if the tar pit scene made it into the movie or not. Guess it’s a good excuse to watch it again.

As for actually drowning in tar pits? According to my anecdotal research and sources, It’s harder than you might think.

But it makes for one very cool original art page, and, in this case, that’s what counts.

Clive Owen as Dwight McCarthy in the first Sin City film.
Miller’s Keynote address at the 1994 Diamond Conference is reprinted in issue #5 of BFK. It’s still impactful and important more than 25 years later. © Frank Miller, of course.