IT GOES something like this: there’s a $100 bill sitting at the centre of a crossroads. Approaching from four sides are: a) your typical socially maladjusted and intellectually inert comic-book geek; b) a woman in fishnet stockings who likes getting smacked; c) a naked pole-dancer who knows karate and can take a good beating; and d) a topless lesbian cop in high heels and a thong. The question is: who gets to the money first? The answer, of course, is the comic-book geek. Why? Because the other three are figments of his imagination.

The comic-book geek, long regarded with paternalistic tolerance by mainstream culture, has been cruelly undone by his latest big-screen crush, Sin City. For despite pretences of sophistication — a Cannes premiere, a media charm offensive, and even suggestions of High Art — this computer-generated comic-book adaptation is so steeped in fetishistic adolescent imagery and casual misogyny that it overexposes the sinister appetites of its hardcore fanbase. In fact, such is the sublime level of sexual sadism on display here (paedophilia and slut-killing are big in Sin City), and so relentless is the leering softcore depiction of prostitutes, dancers and slatternly lowlifes, that the movie unwittingly reveals the frank and masturbatory hatred of women that is fundamental to any understanding of the comic-book geek.

For most people (those who have a life and don’t actually care about the great intergalactic struggle between Marvel and DC comics) contact with comic books is generally a secondary experience. It is something filtered through the enthusiasm of publicly anointed geek figureheads, such as the director Kevin Smith and the internet fanboy supremo Harry Knowles. What these men represent, with their giddy encyclopaedic knowledge of comic lore, their tired eyes, and soft, unthreatening, roly-poly demeanours, is the cosy comfortable face of a jaded industry that’s male-dominated and entirely hostile to women, from the initial moment of production (see Elektra, Satana, Black Canary and Oracle — action “heroines” with enormous breasts and great boots) right through to the final point of sale.

“Women just don’t go into comic-book stores,” explains Trina Robbins, the author of The Great Women Cartoonists, speaking recently to the New York City Comic Book Museum. “A woman gets as far as the door, and after the cardboard life-size cut-out of a babe with giant breasts in a little thong bikini and spike-heel boots, the next thing that hits her is the smell. It smells like unwashed teenage boys, and it has this real porn-store atmosphere.”

In the past, some half-hearted attempts were made to divest the industry of its porn connotations. Marvel introduced a short-lived girl-centred series called Love Comics and DC quickly followed suit with Girl’s Love. Elsewhere the political work of Last Gasp comics in San Francisco and the cult feminist series Wimmin’s Comix tried to show a side to the craft that was witty and thoughtful. Sadly, today, despite some pretty lonely websites such as Friends of Lulu (“Bringing Comics to Women!”), the fundamental law of the comic-book universe states that the geeks are male, and the breasts are large.

Hollywood hasn’t exactly helped either. By consistently funding turgid comic-book adaptations in the vain hope of capturing that elusive adolescent geek market (via repeated shots of Jennifer Garner’s taut buttocks — see Elektra), the movie business is actually fuelling the comic-book industry’s continuing obsession with hooker chic.

And yet while movies, through public focus groups and test screenings, tend to self-regulate their tone and content, comic books are an essentially private medium and answerable only to the deranged and deluded fantasist who’s holding the marker pen. Which is why Robert Rodriguez’s page-for-page screen translation of Frank Miller’s Sin City is so telling. Here at last, unmediated by mainstream sensibilities, is the raw reality of comic-book art and the truth about the hopeless phallocentric frenzy that stirs inside every comic-book geek.

Not convinced? Listen to Knowles pontificating online about Sin City. A self-declared “friend” of the director (he nabbed a walk-on part in Rodriguez’s The Faculty), he warns his fellow fanboys that Sin City will “sate each and every perverted drooling doodle of a thought you’ve had”.

He then describes the sexual experiences that he’d like to have with various Sin City babes, before summing up the movie, and the entire comic-book world view, by declaring that Sin City is ultimately about “everything that made Robert and Frank’s d***s hard . . . the culmination of dreaming the big dirty dreams about d***s and dames!” Nice. Let’s hope he spends his $100 bill in the right store.

Page 2: Save me! The fantasy babes ()

Save me! The fantasy babes

Appearance
Tiny waist, thunder thighs, muscular buttocks, watermelon breasts and non-existent costume.

Superpowers
Unlike male counterparts, female comic heroines are skilled in the mundane arts, such as gymnastics (DC’s Huntress), “online skills” (seriously! See DC’s desk-bound Oracle) and messing with the emotional centres of the brain (typical woman! See Marvel’s Malice).

Adventures
Rarely privileged with central roles, comic babes are restricted to supporting parts on the villainous periphery — see Spider-Man villain White Rabbit or Batman’s voluptuous stalker, Harley Quinn.

Says
“You’re right about me! I’m nothing but a selfish slut who threw away the only man she ever loved . . . I’m such a fool. Such a selfish stupid slut.” (Ava in Sin City).

Career Prospects
Not promising. Batwoman is killed, Batgirl is paralysed, Mirage is raped, while Black Canary is tortured, made infertile, and de-powered!

• The Sin City books by Frank Miller are published by Titan Books

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