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DAMN IT, HARTIGAN-I WON'T LET YOU DO THIS! Lire la première page
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John Hartigan est un policier qui a à peu près 50 ans et il est à 1 heure de la retraite. Mais il vient d'être tuyauté sur un enlèvement de jeune fille (Nancy Callahan, 11 ans) et sa conscience lui interdit de fermer les yeux. Ce flic intègre dans une ville pourrie se rend sur le lieu probable de détention pour sa dernière action d'éclat. Il va réussir à stopper le tortionnaire d'enfants mais au prix de sa liberté et de sa réputation. Pour protéger la jeune fille, il va accepter de porter le chapeau pour les exactions commises par le criminel, et bien plus encore. "That yellow bastard" raconte le calvaire d'Hartigan pour assurer la survie de Nancy et ce qui lui arrive après sa peine de prison.
Pour la quatrième fois, Frank Miller emmène le lecteur dans Sin City. Pour la quatrième fois, il met en scène un héros vraiment dur à cuire, au-delà de toute vraisemblance. Il faut voir John Hartigan à près de 70 ans résister à des châtiments corporels qui viendraient à bout de sportifs endurcis. Pour la quatrième fois, le héros est capable de supporter un niveau de douleur qui défie l'entendement, et vraisemblablement les lois basiques de la biologie humaine.
Mais après une légère baisse d'inspiration au tome précédent, Frank Miller a retrouvé le ton juste : Hartigan, on est avec lui du début jusqu'à la fin. On souffre quand il encaisse les bastos, on pleure de rage quand il subit les humiliations, on crie pour l'encourager quand il reprend le dessus, on l'exhorte même à rentrer vicieusement dans le lard des malfrats et criminels de tout poil, pour les achever. Le récit de Miller prend aux tripes et implique émotionnellement le lecteur : la justice doit triompher face aux violeurs d'enfants.
Frank Miller fait plus que retrouver le ton juste ; il introduit également de nouveaux personnages qui restent dans les mémoires. Ainsi le mode d'expression orale de Burt Schlubb et Douglas Klump passe à la postérité comme un summum de vanité et d'imposture. Hartigan transparaît comme un personnage difficilement crédible du fait de son âge et de sa résistance hors norme (il fait "étrangement" penser à un Bruce Wayne vieillissant et impossible à abattre dans Batman: The Dark Knight Returns). Par contre, le principal criminel de l'histoire est une vraie réussite visuelle. Et l'horreur du personnage se trouve renforcée par un physique pas facile et l'utilisation très judicieuse de la couleur jaune.
Pour le reste des illustrations, le lecteur retrouve le noir et blanc très contrasté des autres tomes. Mais là où on avait l'impression que "The big fat kill" avait été dessiné un peu rapidement, "That yellow bastard" semble avoir été l'objet de plus d'attention. Miller a recommencé à simplifier ses dessins pour ne laisser que les traits indispensables et utiliser les surfaces les plus simples possibles (à la limite de l'abstraction) pour définir les formes. Il n'est pas loin de la perfection d'un Alex Toth. En plus, il a travaillé sur le rendu des visages et en particulier leur texture et leurs rides. Certaines tronches font penser à du Esteban Maroto dans sa période Eerie et Creepy, un vrai délice. D'autres gueules évoquent les visages burinés par les épreuves telles que les réussit si bien Joe Kubert. Et puis il est difficile de passer sous silence (au risque d'être traité d'hypocrite) les 4 doubles pages et 3 pleines pages consacrées à la danse de Nancy : impossible de ne pas tomber sous le charme.
Dans ce tome, on retrouve le héros insensible à la douleur qu'affectionne Frank Miller au sein d'une intrigue bien noire, avec des dessins qui ont encore gagné en intensité et en efficacité.
"That Yellow Bastard" begins with tough cop John Hartigan, whose good heart is going bad on him, trying to stay alive long enough to do one last case before he dies. Somebody has been raping and murdering little girls for some time and now they have taken 11-year-old Nancy Callahan. Hartigan is able to save Nancy from Roark Junior, the son of Senator Roark, but takes four bullets in the process. Junior is in worse shape, having an ear and both of his "weapons" removed by Hartigan's bullets. If an old man dies and a little girl survives, then Hartigan considers that a fair deal. But this bloody encounter is but the first act in this particular comic noir.
The first episode sets the rules for Hartigan's world, where protecting women is hard-wired into the psyches of tough guys like him. Even when Hartigan finds out that Nancy grew up and filled out, that does not change his mission (just complicates it a bit). Granted, the age difference would make more sense if he was her grandfather, but then there is a consistency to what Hartigan means when he says that he loves Nancy, even if she is inclined to read it a different way. There is a leap in the narrative at one point that you might find a bit hard to accept (i.e., confession leads to immediate release), but you have to admit it is a lot easier to be a pariah out in the world than stuck in prison (and I think Junior would have wanted it that way).
Again, the art work here is Miller at what I consider to be his best, but attention must also be paid to the sense of pacing that he shows in several scenes (most notably when Hartigan pulls himself together for the final confrontation with Junior). There are easily a dozen great looks at Hartigan's grizzled face, and a 15-page sequence, spanning two chapters, of Nancy dancing at the club, consisting of not only full-page shots but also two-page spreads, as she mesmerizes her audience. With "That Yellow Bastard" readers who were introduced to the graphic novels by the film that incorporated three of the first four volumes will be heading into new territory with "Family Values." It will interesting to see when and how Miller tops artistically what he came up with for this one.
If Sin City ever produced an honest-to-god hero, it is Hartigan. He's not a thug like Marv, and he's not a criminal like Dwight. His faults aren't faults at all, but obstacles placed before him because of his greatest strengths. He suffers immeasurably for wanting to help someone. He suffers even more for wanting to help her again.
If Dwight is the one that gets away, it's because he is no better than the world he inhabits. Hartigan is the one that pays, because the world can not endure a hero as pure as Hartigan. That Yellow Bastard is the proof that Frank Miller gives as to why the enduring heroes in Sin City such as Marv, Dwight, and Miho aren't heroes at all, but merely grim reflections of the city that they live in. They have made the necessary adaptations to exist in an ugly place like Sin City. They aren't necessarily bad people, but they do bad things. Sin City isn't necessarily a bad town, but bad things happen there. But Hartigan is a good person that does good things. Sin City is not a place for a man like Hartigan to exist on the same terms as a man like Dwight. It is not fair, but it is the truth.
That Yellow Bastard is the greatest of the Sin City books because in it we see Sin City in all of its awful glory; a place where hope doesn't come in its simple, most beautiful form, but instead as a hideous mutation that is disarming and unpleasant.
Frank Miller reinvented the quintessential comic book superheroes Batman and Daredevil, and he even created the enduring character Elektra in the Daredevil books. But Hartigan is his greatest invention, because Hartigan is everything that makes superheroes great, placed inside a man with no special powers, but just a relentless determination to do what he feels is right.
Enter John Hartigan, a gruff, well-built, old-timer who suffers from angina and carries a big-ass revolver, relevant to Bruce Campbell's "boomstick". Hartigan is a man on a mission. His mission: to save Nancy Callahan, age 11, before he retires. She has been kidnapped by sicko rapist/killer, Junior who, unfortunately is a son of a very powerful senator, who is corrupt like most in Sin City. Hartigan goes in guns blazing, knocking-out his partner and suffering a sudden heart-attack along the way. He doesn't know that he's made the biggest mistake of his carrer. But that's why we like Hartigan because he manages to do good while risking his own life. He is the most noble character in the whole series.
Hartigan puts Junior in a coma, but in the process is shot-up pretty bad and put in a coma too. He is then framed for raping Nancy (even though she was saved) and put in solitary confinement. Life is basically over for Hartigan, but while in prison he gets letters from Nancy, who has changed her name because she is still in danger. But when Hartigan stops getting letters, he goes mad.
After eight long years, Hartigan is let out've prison and goes to look for Nancy, who is being stalked by a yellow-skinned creature that distinctly resembles Junior! Now, it's up to Hartigan to protect Nancy, who has become a stripper at a seedy tavern, from the Yellow Bastard!
With constant plot twists, a couple of suspenseful show-downs at a spooky farm and dingy dock, and shocking violence and action, That Yellow Bastard is a compelling noir-ridden, moving, and twisted adventure about heroism, love, good and evil, betrayel, and revenge, with an ending that you'll never forget. This is Frank Miller's best work as both an artist and a writer, but isn't for the faint of heart!
And Miller has created some wonderful characters to inhabit his nest of vipers. Generally, the "Sin City" stories involve clashes between anti-heroes and villains . . . heroes are hard to come by, and the most likely candidates are either murderous hookers with hearts of gold, or berserkers like Marv who may be killers, but are killers with hearts of gold (deep, deep down, of course).
Finally, in "That Yellow Bastard," Miller gives Sin City a hero in true sense of the word. Hartigan is the lone good cop in the nation's most corrupt police force in the nation's most corrupt town. He's on his last night before retirement, but he knows that an eleven year-old girl has been kidnapped and is doomed to die most horribly.
And Hartigan can't let a little thing like the rest of his life stand in the way of her salvation.
What could have been a single night of bloodshed turns into a decade of misery, torture, hope, vengeance and love for Hartigan, his beloved damsel in distress Nancy, and the Yellow Bastard.
For the Yellow Bastard is more than a sadistic murdering rapist . . . he's the only son of Senator Roark, the leading light in the ruling family of Sin City. The rules are simple, even for a cop -- you cross Roark, you get destroyed. Roark doesn't just kill you . . . he exacts vengeance like Kaiser Soze.
Miller's artistic nihilism has never been better, as the cold solitude of Hartigan's lost world comes through on every page. And the well-publicized use of yellow to depict the Yellow Bastard couldn't be a better choice. Through it all, Miller weaves in little glimpses of Dwight, Marv, and the other patrons of Sin City that make his graphic novels so clever and enjoyable.
I didn't think Miller could top his monstrous creation, Marv, but he may have with Hartigan. I'm glad these two never had to clash . . . Sin City might not have survived.
Listmania!
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