HARD BOILED
Frank Miller, Geof Darrow
Dark Horse Comics
Android killers. The relationship between Man and Machine. The unreliability of Identity. And Big Fucking Explosions.
Not to be confused with John Woo's superlative cop drama, Hard Boiled is, in many ways, a thematic and visual bridge between the defining moments of two generations of science fiction. It borrows liberally from Blade Runner, with its trenchcoated android lead and grimy, superurban backdrop. And Geof Darrow, or Geofrey Darrow as you might know him, was the conceptual designer for much of the really cool stuff in the Matrix Trilogy - everything from the foetus harvesters to Zion itself.
The plot of Hard Boiled takes a backseat to the art: Harry Nixon is a heavily brain damaged android killing machine, disguised as a happily married and besprogged tax collector. Losing his metal mince, and killing his way across half a city block, Nixon is returned to his manufacturers for repairs and reconditioning. When the programming fails a second time, Nixon reverts to his default setting: unstoppable carnage. We soon learn, however, that Nixon may be the last hope for sentient deathbots everywhere�if only he wasn't as dumb as a toaster�
(Your Matrix Parallels May Vary)
Miller's story is as stripped-down as the title suggests. Nixon's dialogue is slightly concussed, and peppered with haw-haw, blue-collar clich�. Highly amusing, perhaps, but not half as funny as the idea that the machines have invested all their hopes in this tinpot Terminator.
The real attraction of Hard Boiled, of course, is Geof Darrow's stunning art. And stunning is probably an understatement: the carnage is relentless, imaginative and hilarious. Picking some moments at random, Darrow throws Harry Nixon through windscreens, has him James Dean-ing off the freeway in a cloud of burning petrol, and drives him like a thumbtack through a packed sexateria.
(The sexateria is my personal favourite, because Darrow has taken the time to draw little black boxes across the eyes of the patrons, to avoid scandal.)
Every panel of every page is packed with intense, anal detail, from the tiny wind-up nudey pixiebots that attend Nixon's manufacturer to the overcrowded, logo-saturated midden that passes for the city street. There's so much to see on every page of Hard Boiled that you could spend days reading it. It's like a never-ending Where's Wally book. What's amazing is that the story doesn't suffer: it flows like silk off a supermodel.
When you read Hard Boiled, you'll understand why the Wachowskis wanted Geof Darrow to help build their digital dreamworld. In fact, the detail and the draughtsmanship are such that you might be convinced that Darrow is drawing this from life. But he's not. I mean, unless you know a lot of robot women with Chevrolet fin heads, of course (my address is at the bottom of the page).
Hard Boiled is a story with a lot of style. It's not just a shoot-'em-up. There are moments of great pathos and humour throughout the book, especially where Nixon is presented as an Electric Jesus figure, or in the rare moments of lucidity, where Nixon realises who and what he really is.
The story that Blade Runner could have been, the story that A.I. should have been, Hard Boiled is, amongst other things, a testament to the power of comics. With the best will in the world, you couldn't film it, even in today's CGI-powered industry. You couldn't find a team of animators insane enough to want to turn it into a cartoon. And putting it on the radio would just be silly.
Hard Boiled proves that, with enough talent and imagination (plus a pathological devotion to the work) comics can tell just about any story you might wish for. And tell it well.
Review Text (C) Matthew Craig
Originally published in the pop culture
magazine Robot
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