hard boiled

     Geof Darrow draws like he's paid by the line. The minutia packed into Hard Boiled- shrapnel, spent shells, wrappers from little snackies flying everywhere- it's like every panel shakes out a cascade of cartoon dandruff.  Darrow also packs his subjects with detail. Glorious chrome-plated multiple segmented midcentury detail.  So much so that even though Hard Boiled was released when Frank Miller was still a respected industry veteran, there is no doubt that this is anything but The Geof Darrow Show.  

     The plot of Hard Boiled has dated somewhat-this loose tale of sleeper agents, robots, and corporate warfare seems a little tiresome twenty years later. Regardless, it was always the thinnest of motives for Darrow to get the go-ahead to do burnouts on the lawn. The action, the extreme violence, the wrecked machinery, the goopy cybernetics, the corny advertisements, and that hailstorm of miscellaneous detail, all this becomes the point of the comic. Style over substance? Well, sometimes style has a substance all its own.

      Hard Boiled takes some very graphic depictions of violence and even gore and makes them fun to look at. Darrow is  just such a good-natured director that he firmly establishes the gritty Miller script as a comedy. Frank Miller has certainly fallen into self-parody in the 21st century, but this work is a such a knowing and joyful self-parody, it's like someone got a picture of Eeyore smiling on the flume ride. 

     Hard Boiled is one of the best action comics of the 1990s. Some of its imagery continues to be referenced from time to time. It has absolutely nothing to say and entertainingly shouts that lack of message all the way out to the back row.  Any comics fan with a tolerance for violence should give it a look.