Product Description

Carl Seltz is a suburban insurance investigator, a loving husband, and devoted father. Nixon is a berserk, homicidal tax collector racking up mind-boggling body counts in a diseased urban slaughterhouse. Unit Four is the ultimate robot killing machine - and the last hope of the future's enslaved mechanical servants. And they're all the same psychotic entity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #92175 in Books
• Published on: 1993-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Review
The List 7-21 October 2004, review by Danny Graydon: "...intensely detailed and highly visceral..."; Go! Essex Chonicle: " packed to bursting with intricate illustrations."

Customer Reviews

And all those little details ass well...
Enough have been said above about the qualities of the book. I just want to add to things: 1) Darrows draws in an extremely detailed and ironic way so that you can return to his images time after time and still find new small object to laugh about. also 2) The story of Hardboiled" is actually based upon "Do Androids Dream of Electrical Sheep" (just like "Bladerunner"), so if you like either of these two (and who don't) be sure to buy "Hardboiled" as well.

An experience
A shocking maelstrom of death, blood and guts, with sexy bits, that's also gripping and, in places, quite funny and poignant. The artwork is like a cross between Herge (the Tintin guy) and Hieronymus Bosch; incredibly detailed and precise but often showing you more than you really wanted to. The story is difficult to describe as there doesn't seem to be much of a coherent narrative. It's as if you're being given extracts from a much larger story and asked to fill in the details yourself. Essentially the hero of the book discovers some surprising things about himself and others while tearing a bloody path through a future LA in pursuit of a psychotic fat old lady who has kidnapped a small girl. Don't be put off by the death and horror. I'm very squeamish normally, but I got through it and am glad I did.

Surprised by Miller
I bought this book a month ago, having heard it's name being mentioned on occasion during my 12 years (and still going strong) of buying, and sometimes even reading, comics. Knowing it was Frank Miller, and being very impressed by the fraction of his corpus of work that I have actually read ('The Dark Knight Returns', 'DK2', a couple of the 'Sin City' yarns) I thought I was in for a treat. Maybe I missed the point - it wouldn't be the first time, although it pains me to admit so - but I was left feeling a little hollow by it.

Mr Darrow's artwork is close to spectacular and, as one of the other reviewers noted, often reveals more each time you revisit it. The concept is interesting - the idea of almost forced reinvention on the part of the main character raises thoughts about the power of indoctrination and brainwashing. Otherwise, however, it seemed largely all style and very little substance; perhaps it was just over all too soon (it's quite a slim volume, having originally been only a three issue miniseries).

I stand by my judgement on the book (initially, as I previously mentioned, I thought I'd missed something) as my local comics dealer, also a fan of Miller's, felt exactly the same way as me.

Verdict - to end on an ambiguous, but probably fair, note: visually appealing, sometimes thought provoking, but on the whole a little too empty - or perhaps slightly underdeveloped - to be anything more than a 3.5/5.