"That rotten town. Those it cant't corrupt, it soils.
Those it can't soil, it kills."
-Wallace
Hell and Back is "a Sin City love story" another comic from the streets of the Sin City series. It's the seventh volume in the series so far, and is written and drawn by Frank Miller and colored by Lynn Varley. Hell and Back, like all of the Sin City stories, is a modern noir style comic, and is my favorite of the Sin City series.
Wallace was a commander in the Navy Seal and won the Medal of Honor. Now, he's an aspiring artist, only problem is the only type of art people want is the kind that will turn them on. His paintings are amazing pieces of work, but he can't stoop down to the level of drawing for hard-ons. After one such rejection he's driving outside the city when a jacket hits his windshield, he stops to examine it and looks around. There's a woman on top of a cliff who's about to jump off. He rescues her life and takes her back to his aparment complex, letting his landlord help her clean up.
Her name is Esther, and she's an aspiring actress. She has similar problems to his on getting a part. She notices his work and is amazed. They begin to get close in a small period of time. When they're leaving a bar, Wallace is shot in the neck with some sort of dart and passes out. When he wakes up, a cop is standing over him and Esther is gone. Still slightly drugged, he's thrown in the prison tank for the night. He meditates so he can remember what happened. Esther was taken away by two people. He's going to find her, he's not going to lose the woman whose life he saved.
Like all of the Sin City stories, the graphic novel is mostly in black-and-white, but this one has more color than any of the other volumes. When Wallace gets drugged up by some of the antagonists he has some interesting hallucinations involving famous characters and comic book characters. This is the listing that I was able to identify, if someone can name some of the others, please /msg me.