Today's reommended comic is Sin City by Frank Miller.

With Robert Rodriguez' innovative and star-studded movie fast approaching the theaters, now is a good time to try out the original graphic novels if you haven't yet experienced them.

Sin City is hard-boiled, gritty noir drawn in a uniquely stark black and white style that makes every page a beautiful piece of graphic design. Each volume tells a different story of hardened, grim, tough guys and the women they love.

Frank Miller is well known as being the man who reinvented Batman with The Dark Knight Returns back in the '80's. Miller took his clout from that and other projects, like his defining run on Daredevil, and devoted his time in the '90's to telling exactly the kind of stories he loves with this series. Along the way he refined his style of visual storytelling, paring it down to black and white shapes that are spare but carry an enormous amount of weight on the page. His characters, like Hartigan the cop, are bulky, larger than life presences and seem to heave the burden of hard luck on their massive backs.

Recently, Dark Horse comics re-released the 5 Sin City books in smaller, digest-like volumes with new covers designed by Chip Kidd. Pick one up so you can see how precise the translation from book to film is going to be.

Check out your local comic shop today. If you don't know where your local comic shop is, find it here: http://www.the-master-list.com/