This leaves Darrow to fill the gaps with his stunning artwork, filled with minute detail that'll have you poring over each frame, watching the individual pieces fly off crashing cars and disintegrating robots. As the story progresses, Carl's seemingly normal life starts looking less and less so—his family knocks him out when strange dreams disturb his sleep, and his memory seems to be so full of holes that he can't remember his own name, frequently referring to himself as "Nixon". I was attracted to reviewing Hard Boiled because Miller is the kind of creator who is always interesting, even when at his worst. Although I can’t spot exactly where it is, but Darrow has mentioned in interviews that he even has a battle scene that has one character with a shirt saying Godzilla and the other saying King Kong.

Granted, these comics were published about 25 years apart from each other, but it fascinates me that they were helmed by the same man. A dystopic fever-dream about a robotic tax-collector struggling to come to terms with it's own inhumanity. Now, as far as the writing goes it's another classic 90s Frank Miller comic filled with a huge amount of violence, splash pages, nudity and deep meanings. Darrow is probably best known for creating much of the conceptual artwork behind the Matrix movies, and you can definitely see how his sense of grime and detail fed into the look of those films.At the heart of Darrow’s art is a fundamental exploration of contrasts: big versus small, many versus one, fast versus slow. These are probably only dream images of Nixon in his surgical dream state, but the two totally different acts being associated with one another bothers me. Logos, product placements and pop culture references like the Flinstones, Astro Boy, Nancy, Porky Pig, Batman, Tweety Bird, Homer Simpson, Ed the Clown, Duran Duran, Hanna Barbera, Popeye, Tintin, Psycho and Bambi are plastered everywhere. More than any other letterer I could think of, Workman conveys a sense of loudness, which is good, because this is a very loud comic.

Fav ourite page: (Above) Oddly enough I’m not sure exactly why this is my favourite page other than the look of it feels right. Unit Four is the ultimate robot killing machine - and the last hope of the future's enslaved mechanical servants. Since his other work is coming up, I’ll just add my 2 cents on Miller’s oeuvre: I think he peaked with his first Daredevil run. Pretty much everything else I saw then or in subsequent years, though Sleeping with the Enemy was due to my sister renting it and being forced to sit through it.Hard Boiled has a post- Blade Runner human-like robots and consciousness plot, which might not be the most original of tales but is treated with maximum style and panache by Miller's sparing pen.

I read this because I just re-viewed Blade Runner and re-read Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I had to reread each issue; and, when (finally) the next issue came out, I had to reread the previous issue before I could even begin to make sense of the current one. For this re-release, Eisner-winning colorist Dave Stewart was hired to create a completely new color palette, putting an emphasis on more neutral, realistic hues, a decision which generated some controversy.That’s easy: Emma Frost, Jean Grey (who wasn’t really Jean, but we’ll assume she was), and Selene were so obviously evil, and as we know, women who like sex are inherently evil. Darrow indulges in this and there is something delightful in seeing his folds worked out with such complexity – wrinkle over wrinkle over wrinkle. Hard Boiled debuted in 1990 and focuses on insurance investigator Carl Seltz, who learns that he’s really a homicidal cyborg tax collector codenamed Nixon.

In a dystopian, near-future Los Angeles, city tax collector Nixon is badly injured during a violent encounter with one of his targets, and he undergoes extensive surgery to survive. In 1989, the biggest movie was obviously Batman, with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Lethal Weapon 2 rounding out the top 3.

Things get a little complicated, though, because Seltz, Nixon, and Unit Four are all the same person. Featuring Miller's witty script and Geof Darrow's Art, Hard Boiled pushes it's way onto the comic book scene with a vengeance.