Michael Gilman: You are doing a new Sin City one-shot -- Lost, Lonely, and Lethal -- for December. What's the premise of this?
Frank Miller: It's three self-contained stories that are all very different aspects to Sin City. One of them is "Fat Man and Little Boy," which originally appeared in the 1995 San Diego Comic-Con Comic. It features the two incompetent thugs who played a minor role in That Yellow Bastard. The other two are brand new; one is called "Rats" and the other is called "Blue Eyes."
Gilman: Is anybody we're familiar with featured in either of these two?
Miller: You'll see an awful lot of familiar faces in cameo roles in "Blue Eyes." Whenever anybody wanders into the bar there's a fair number of characters you know hanging out.
Gilman: What's going on in each story?
Miller: "Fat Man and Little Boy" is a three-page episode of the two loquacious bunglers; "Rats" is a story about a 90-year-old man who pays for past crimes; and "Blue Eyes" is the longest of the three, it's fourteen pages and it introduces a character that will play a major role in Sin City. Let's just say there's a new gal in town.
Gilman: Will there be any guest pin-ups in Lost, Lonely, and Lethal?
Miller: There will be two, one of which will be by Geof Darrow. We haven't made a final decision on what the second one will be yet; we have all these beautiful pin-ups and it's hard to decide.
Gilman: This is your third two-color comic. Why did you choose to use blue for this particular issue?
Miller: In "Blue Eyes" the main character's nickname is Blue Eyes and, as you might expect, her eyes are blue.
Gilman: What prompted you to begin using these two-color combinations?
Miller: Color is very powerful and the eye will be drawn right to it, especially if it's a single element. I love working in color, but these days so many comics are saturated in color they all sort of make the eyes hurt. Doing the spot color from time to time is fun and I always compose my entire job around the use of any color, like I did in Yellow Bastard; as you read it there's more and more yellow toward the end for truly disgusting reasons. Sometimes I like to use it to attract, like in The Babe Wore Red; I think the reader was much more aware of her than of the lead character.
Gilman: Do you have plans to use any other colors?
Miller: We'll just have to see what time brings.
Gilman: You've been doing Sin City almost non-stop for five years. How did you get started with it?
Miller: I spent a couple of years not drawing as I worked in the movies and I was aching to draw again. Coming out of Hollywood where everyone was my boss, I wanted to do something to completely please myself. Sin City was my dream project; when I was 14 yeas old I was drawing comics about tough guys in trench coats. It was years gestating, coming up with titles and characters, and I finally decided to sit down and make myself very happy. I had no idea whether anyone would like it or not. The fact that it has succeeded and enabled me to do more of them has brought me pleasure beyond belief. Now it's to the point where I can't keep my hands off it.
Gilman: What's coming up next?
Miller: I have another one-shot to do, titled Broads, Booze, and Bullets, then I'll be doing the next miniseries. I changed which series I'm going to do next; it was going to be a 1940s story. Instead, I'm going with a story you might call a sequel to Yellow Bastard; it's going to be a few years later and you're going to see yet another side of Nancy Callahan -- it's the first Sin City series with a female lead.
Gilman: What is the title of that?
Miller: I've only got a working title: Nancy Callahan, Private Eye.
Gilman: What's this about a 1940s story?
Miller: There's a World War II story that I have planned, but I'm still gathering research material and the story really isn't formed enough yet. It's the way these Sin Citys go; I've got three or four I'd love to do and it all depends on which one moves itself to the front burner. As you can see the cast has really grown and a lot of these characters have waited a long time to appear, but I decided to lead with a Marv story.
Gilman: Why was that?
Miller: Two reasons. It was the story that was more ready to go and I thought it did a good job of establishing the ground rules of Sin City. Marv's a very extreme character and I didn't want to trick anyone going into the series; I wanted them to know what they were in for. The other reason was that Marv's story ended with his death and I wanted to start off Sin City letting you know how far I was willing to go with these guys. I didn't want it to be regarded as a one-character series. That's the great thing; they stay fresh. People really don't live from one adventure to another. I come and visit these characters during the most intense periods of their existence.
Gilman: Do you get any complaints about the non-linear nature of the Sin City stories?
Miller: No. I work very hard on the timeline; it all does make sense. All of these scenes could be put in sequence and would read correctly. I don't have people come back to life at all; if you see Marv in a story it takes place before the first Sin City. If you took all the Sin City stories I've done -- including the next miniseries -- and lined all the scenes up in chronological order, the very last scene would be Marv's electrocution.
Gilman: If there are a million stories in the Naked City, how many stories are there in Sin City?
Miller: Right now they feel endless.
Gilman: So you have no plans to stop doing this?
Miller: No, not at all. I conceived Sin City as a vehicle for my favorite kind of story with a lot of room for a lot of exploration. I'm having too much fun to stop.