MFT: Frank Miller - The Chase

Here's a little rarity for your delight. I've found this story while gazing through selections of Pilote and Charlie on a comics-related blog.

"The Chase" is a shortstory by Frank Miller. It was published in great french magazine Pilote (home of Valerian and Laureline) in 1988. It means that this story is one of the earliest glimpses of Frank Miller's post Batman stylistic shift that culminated in the early nineties with Sin City. The lines are getting more erratic and in the same time static, contrast is amped up to eleven. Narrative is minimized and told mostly through action. The way panels are matched is snappy and clearly punctuated. Stylistically it is firmly in a hard boiled noir vein with thick shadows of hard-edged expressionism coupled with wordless novels of the 1930s.  

While extremely short - "The Chase" manages to pack fleshed-out story in mere two pages without taking away anything. It is a master-class in compressed and focused storytelling. Page lay-out of "The Chase" is dynamic and yet clearly defined. No panel is waster - they bounce off each other. You always know what is going on and where are the characters in relation to each other.    

The story of "The Chase" is simple. Man in a jacket with wholly black body (cool design choice, seriously) chases a Woman (typical french design, might've been Goldie, clearly there is a bit of Bardot). They jump around the rooftops, trying to shoot each. Eventually they ran out of bullets and there is an awkward pause. They try to take this as an advantage but both manage to reload pretty quickly and resume the shootout. Man tries to move forward while woman attempts to take him down. She hits the mark but the man still manages to deliver a finishing blow. He shoots her in the stomach, She falls off the roof and hits hard. He jumps closer as she shoots back at breath's end. Man attempts to shoot first but they shoot simultaneously. He falls on his knees near the woman. They share their last moments. Just another pointless death...

This story is layed-out as a poem. We get into it in medias res - right in the middle of the action without any explanation. Narrative is presented in strokes. First two panels set the scene. Next two introduce the characters. Third row panel shows the culmination. Second page provides resolution. Shot are fired, bullets caught. This is the end. It doesn't mean much. Just another wasted opportunity, just another bad night. We only get the essential parts of the story. Because you can think out everything else.

Here's what we get in these two pages. We know there was a conflict and these two failed to resolve it any reasonable way. Things slipped beyond reason, got ugly and went out of control to unfortunate outcome. Characters mirror each other. Every panel furthers their characterization and show their relationshio. They do the same things in every panel. They are definitely close but at some point turned up on different sides and that led to the initial conflict. Their very nature brings the bane. It is a tragedy of inability to take compromises.