Sin City Volume 1: The Hard Goodbye (Frank Miller)

Sin City launched the long-running, critically acclaimed series of comics novels by Frank Miller. Having worked on some of the most important comic books in the 1980s, including Marvel Comics's Daredevil and the influential Batman graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, Miller was already a heavy-weight cartoonist, but he hit his stride with Sin City. It gave him the freedom that doesn't come when working on someone else's characters. While the art isn't as polished as in later books, it is in many ways the quintessential Sin City story: tough-guy Marv finds the girl of his dreams, an incredible beauty named Goldie. But when Goldie is murdered on their first night together, Marv scours the bars and back alleys of Sin City to find her killer in hopes of avenging her death.