Of all the opponents Sin City antihero Marv has fought, one particularly intense beating was saved for the DC Comics hero Deathblow, a Jim Lee character who was clearly inspired by Frank Miller's seminal noir comic.
First debuting in 1991, Sin City hit the comics industry like an atom bomb. With its harsh black-and-white renderings, Frank Miller’s overheated film noir imagery looked like nothing else on the comic racks of the day. Concurrently, superstar artist Jim Lee broke away from Marvel and launched Image Comics with six other artists. Building off the success of his Image launch title WildC.A.T.S., Lee was quick to establish his own imprint, creating his own world of superheroes and shady government operatives in what would later come be known as the Wildstorm universe. Lee’s second major work came with Deathblow, which introduced government assassin Michael Cray, who discovers he has superpowers after being misdiagnosed with brain cancer. Lee would later sell Wildstorm to DC Comics in 1999, and in 2011, all the Wildstorm characters were officially made a part of the DC Universe when everything was rebooted as part of the “New 52” line-wide initiative.
With its gritty contrast between light and dark values, it appears that Lee was influenced by Sin City when crafting Deathblow. Frank Miller must have taken notice, as the writer/artist wasted no time in showing how he felt about Jim Lee’s homage on the comic book page. In Sin City: A Dame To Kill For #1, readers are reintroduced to series protagonist Marv at Josie’s Bar, standing over a bloody heap of a body, as Marv is wont to do. Look closely at the body lying under Marv and it is unmistakably Deathblow, with the bandana, bandolier of ammunition and distinctive face-paint being a dead giveaway. Given the circumstances, it’s pretty clear from this brief appearance that Miller wasn’t a fan of Wildstorm's Deathblow.
Sin City’s Marv Humiliates Deathblow
It’s easy to see why Miller might be annoyed at Lee’s work on Deathblow. Lee changed up his style completely on the project, leaving behind the clean, crisp lines of his long-time inker Scott Williams for something more scratchy and raw, playing around with the harsh chiaroscuro stylings that Miller perfected over the course of Sin City. While Lee’s work is undeniably impressive, he seemed to take all the wrong lessons from Miller’s approach. In many ways, Miller’s style on Sin City was all about simplification and subtraction. Miller kept removing lines from the art with each subsequent Sin City “yarn,” seeing how much he could get away with by breaking down the images further into abstract shapes. By contrast, Lee kept adding lines to his images, drowning out the compositions in unnecessary detail. By adding striated muscles and an overabundance of lines on Marv’s victim, Miller’s criticism of JIm Lee's Deathblow is right there on the page.
Is Jim Lee’s Deathblow A Sin City Rip-Off?
Lee must have lost interest in Deathblow fairly quickly, as he only produced around 30 pages of work before handing the title off to other artists. There also seems to be no enmity between Lee and Miller, who would both go on to collaborate on All-Star Batman and Robin roughly ten years later. Whatever the case, it remains an interesting factoid that Sin City’s Marv once faced off against DC Comics’ Deathblow.
