Sin City/Characters

Marv

• Anti-Hero: Type IV. He generally doesn't start trouble with people who don't deserve it, and has shown selfless heroism on at least one occasion.
• Badass
• Badass Longcoat: "That's a damn fine coat you got there."
  • Worth noting is that Frank Miller has referred to him as "Conan in a trenchcoat."
• Berserk Button: Roughing up women is one of the surest ways to piss Marv off.
• Beware the Nice Ones: It takes a lot to get Marv worked up, but if you do then get the heck out.
• Boisterous Bruiser: He's jolly, jovial, loves combat and is a pretty bombastic guy when he's drinking.
• Born in the Wrong Century: Dwight pretty much says this straight out in A Dame to Kill For.

"Most people think Marv is crazy. He just had the rotten luck of being born in the wrong century. He'd be right at home on some ancient battlefield swinging an axe into somebody's face. Or in a Roman arena, taking his sword to other gladiators like him. They woulda tossed him girls like Nancy back then. "

• Creepy Monotone
• Critical Psychoanalysis Failure: Lucille's girlfriend Claire. "She tried to analyze me once, but got too scared."
• Deadpan Snarker
• Determinator: And how!
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Just ask the Assistant D.A. who got his arm broken in three places for threatening Marv's mama.
• Facing the Bullets One-Liner: "Will you hurry it up? I haven't got all day?"
• Famous Last Words: "Is that the best you can do, you pansies?"
• Frame-Up
• Friend to All Children
• Genius Bruiser: Not "genius" perhaps, but he is smarter than he gives himself credit for.
• Gentle Giant: When not on the job.
• Heroic Sacrifice
• Honor Before Reason: Will willingly and literally go to Hell to repay any and all kindness given to him.
• I Call It Vera: His gun "Gladys"
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: "When I need to find something out, I just go and find somebody that knows more than me, and I go and ask them. Sometimes I ask pretty hard."
  • Methods include sticking heads down toilets and driving along holding mooks' faces againts the asphalt
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Almost crosses into Noble Demon territory. He's actually a pretty sweet-natured guy when he's not committing grievous bodily harm.
• Lightning Bruiser: Despite his size, Marv is just as quick and agile as he is strong. There are several instances where he takes down multiple opponents in a short span of time and even avoids getting shot.
• Made of Iron
• Man Child
• Not Good with People: Between his frightening appearance and mental instability Marv doesn't seem to do well with people, but he outright refuses to kill a wolf, instead knocking it unconscious and giving it a gentle pat.
• Nigh Invulnerability
• One-Man Army
• Pay Evil Unto Evil: He is deeply afraid of winding up as "a maniac [or] a psycho killer" and will only kill someone if, as Marv himself puts it, "I know for sure I ought to".
• Sociopathic Hero: The biggest one in the entire series.
• Stout Strength: Not an extreme case, but when he takes his trademark trenchcoat off, he has a definite barrel chest.
• Super Senses: Marv's senses are extremely sharp.
• Super Strength
• Torture Technician: He has an appetite for Cold-Blooded Torture and is quite good at it.
• Wife-Basher Basher: And hunts them down like animals too.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Marv is really big on this, possibly due to his upbringing. The only times he breaks this is to spare Wendy from watching him torture Kevin to death, and killing a female sex-slaver in one short story.

Dwight McCarthy

• Always Save the Girl
• Anti-Hero: Type III
  • Once ventured into Type IV territory when he considered shooting a cop even though he wasn't sure he was clean or not. Generally, however, he's a normal guy who has been squicked out by the actions of both Marv and Miho.
• Badass Bookworm: He is well-read, going by his knowledge of Spartan battle techniques and the fact that he apparently knows Latin.
• Badass Longcoat
• Badass Normal
• Batman Gambit: His plans often include a lot of manipulation but go off without a hitch.
• Byronic Hero
• Celibate Hero: He tries to avoid women earlier in the comics.
• The Chessmaster
• Chick Magnet
• Creepy Monotone
• Deadpan Snarker
• The Dulcinea Effect: Dwight is violently protective of women. Ava uses this against him in order to get rid of her husband Damien and get her hands on all his money.
• Expy: Of Mike Hammer, though he lacks some of Hammer's more deranged tendencies.
• Freudian Threat: Issues one against Jackie-Boy near the beginning of The Big Fat Kill

Dwight: You ever so much as talk to Shellie again -- you even think her name -- and I'll cut you in ways that'll make you useless to a woman.

• Guile Hero or Magnificent Bastard
• Guns Akimbo: Dwight's weapons of choice are two 1911 pistols.
• Honor Before Reason
• Nietzsche Wannabe: Has a very nihilistic view early on in the comics
• Would Hit a Girl: Though Dwight is violently protective of women, he is not above hitting them, whether because they deserve it (such as Ava) or because he needs to snap them out of hysterics (such as Gail).

Wallace

• Anti-Hero: Type III
• Badass Bookworm
• Badass Longcoat
• Badass Long Hair
• Badass Pacifist
• Beware the Nice Ones
• Byronic Hero
• Celibate Hero: He is described as a monk by Blue Eyes.
• Guns Akimbo
• Improbable Aiming Skills: He shoots sniper through the scope of his own rifle, using a regular handgun while in a dark room. Later, he kills an entire warehouse full of mooks before any of them have the chance to fire a single round.
• Nice Guy: Amazingly nice, given the sheer ruthlessness and ugliness of the setting. It's notable that he gets one of the few truly happy endings in the entire comic series.
• Old Soldier
• One-Man Army: Described as such in-universe.
  • Wallace seems to be one of the most formidable fighters in the entire setting. While sheer numbers and firepower seems to give all but the most deranged of Sin City protagonists (Marv) some pause, all Wallace needs is a small amount of time to get some guns, and he is perfectly capable of dismantling a large part of a criminal organization, and is considered by their Genre Savvy leader to be "too costly" to seek revenge against.
• Retired Badass: Ex-Navy SEAL to be specific
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: At one point, he throws a machete to decapitate a Mook.
• Would Hit a Girl: One of the few heroes who would.

Miho

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Every time she uses a bladed weapon, limbs come off. At one point in The Big Fat Kill, she casually shoved a sword through the roof of a car and into a guy's skull.
• Anti-Hero: Type V.
• Badass: The single deadliest woman in the Sin City universe.
• Berserk Button: Insult her Asian Heritage and EXTRA messy and hilarious dismemberment will be WELL deserved, you racist bastard.
• Career Killers: Miho is very much an assassin.
• Cute Bruiser:

Dwight: She guides my glance upward to the pixie perched at the roof's edge. Deadly little Miho.

• Cute Mute: Miho never speaks. She lets her various deadly weapons do the talking.
• Dark Action Girl: And how!
• Dual-Wielding: Miho prefers two katana blades when she goes into action.
• Flechette Storm: Both her regular shurikens and her big manji shuriken.
• Honor Before Reason: She briefly went against Old Town, her own employers, because Dwight saved her life and she owed him her allegiance.
• Kimono Fanservice: Her costume isn't quite a kimono but she fulfills this purpose.
• Ninja: She'll cut you quick, she'll kill you quiet. You won't feel a thing, not unless she wants you to.
• Noble Demon: Word of God is that she's literally this.
• Non Standard Character Design: In her later appearances, Miho is always drawn as just an outline, with no shading whatsoever.
• One Woman Army
• Pettanko: The only one of the series.
• Pinball Projectile: She uses her manji shuriken in this manner a few times.
• Psycho for Hire: One of the rare heroic examples of such.
• Sociopathic Hero: She does things that make even the more hardened of the girls of Old Town go "Yeesh!"
• The Stoic: Miho has no expression on her face other than a deadly calm when she goes to work.
• Tsundere: In Family Values, her softer side is shown when she cuddles up and goes to sleep on Dwight's lap and seems to have a very comfortable demeanor around him, in contrast to her earlier depictions where she is moments away from slicing him in half. Whether or not there is romance is up for debate. It hasn't stopped fans from Shipping the two of them.
  • It's also a nod to her being frequently described as "catlike" in her mercurial attitudes and casual cruelty.
• Villain Protagonist
• The Voiceless: She also never speaks.

John Hartigan

• Anti-Hero: Type II.
• Badass
• Badass and Child Duo: with Nancy when she's younger.
• Badass Grandpa
• Beware the Nice Ones: When he gets his hands on Rourke Jr, the results are... messy.
• Break His Heart to Save Him: He lets his loved ones believe Roark's lies about him raping Nancy, and at the end he lies to Nancy herself just to keep her safe.
• Celibate Hero
• Determinator
• Face Death with Dignity
• Fallen Hero
• Frame-Up
• Friend to All Children
• Heroic Sacrifice
• Honor Before Reason: The definitive example of this franchise.
• Hurting Hero
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Hartigan purposefully destroys his marriage for this reason.
• Knight in Sour Armour
• Made of Iron
• Nice Guy: And a rare genuine one in the Crapsack World of Sin City too.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
• Papa Wolf
• Silent Scapegoat
• Taking the Heat
• X Marks the Hero
• Older Hero vs. Younger Villain
• Wife-Basher Basher

Nancy Callahan

• Badass and Child Duo: She's the child, Hartigan is the Badass. Though not a child anymore...
• Break the Cutie: Averted. She refuses to scream for Junior.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold
• May-December Romance: She's in love with Hartigan who refuses to sleep with her, because he's old enough to be her grandfather.
• Ms. Fanservice
• Nerds Are Sexy: She is very studious and is a fan of detective novels.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: When people want to see her outside the strip club, they'll say this.
• She Is All Grown Up:

Hartigan: Skinny little Nancy Callahan. She grew up. She filled out.

• Stripperiffic: Well... yeah.
• Wife Husbandry: Averted; she loves Hartigan because he saved her when she was a kid, but he refuses to take advantage of this.

Kevin

• Acrofatic: The comic version was a little chunky but very agile.
• Dodge the Bullet: Does this against Marv.
• Evil Counterpart: Word of God is that he's this to Miho.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul
• Fragile Speedster: He's quick and dishes out a lot of punishment against Marv but ends up being KOed by a single blow. Then again, it is Marv we're talking about.
• Go Out with a Smile
• I'm a Humanitarian
• Morality Pet - He has a pet wolf, although it's not known how kindly he treats it.
• Scary Shiny Glasses
• Serial Killer
• Slasher Smile: The only expression he ever makes.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else
• The Voiceless: It is mentioned that he had a beautiful voice but he only spoke to Cardinal Roark. We never see or hear him speak in either the comic or movie, even in his final moments.
  • Considering that Roark clearly had a few screws loose, it's entirely possible that the beautiful voice was only in his head.
• Wolverine Claws: Kevin's nails are sharpened in order to act as deadly claws.

The Yellow Bastard

• Body Horror
• Dirty Coward: If he isn't running away from a fight, he's sneaking around, planning to strike when Hartigan least expects it.
• Groin Attack: Hartigan does this to him both times he fights him. The second time is a lot more graphic than the first.
• Healing Factor
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: He's a lousy shot, according to Hartigan.
• Loves to Hear Them Scream
• Nightmare Fetishist: "He likes to hear them scream."
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: His death.
• Serial Killer
• Sissy Villain
• Spoiled Brat: Hartigan calls him this many times and it seems to be true. He whines when he doesn't get his way and at one point, threatens a Mook that he will call his father if his Torture Cellar wasn't set up properly.
• Torture Technician
• Would Hurt a Child: God, yes.

Manute

• Affably Evil: As much as he hates Dwight, he is still polite enough to refer to him as Mr. McCarthy
• Arch Nemesis: He and Dwight butt heads many times.
• Badass: Not only is he one of the few badguys that lives through more than one story, but he is the only one to survive confrontations with Miho, Marv, and Wallace. In fact, surviving a confrontation with just one of these people is badass enough, to say nothing of all three of them.
• Battle Butler: He could also be considered a Badass Driver since he's a chauffeur, but he rarely drives.
• Bald of Evil
• Cultured Badass: He seems to be highly educated and looks down on the "dregs of Sin City."
• Creepy Monotone: His film version, although the comic version is likely to have the same kind of voice.
• The Determinator: This is why he is one of the few recurring villains in Sin City.
• The Dragon: He serves Ava Lord or Wallenquist, depending on when the story takes place.
• Dragon-in-Chief: He has worked for an overweight crime boss and a Femme Fatale. Yeah, he's much more physically dangerous than his bosses.
• Evil Counterpart: One could easily make the argument that he is Marv's opposite number. In fact, Dwight brings Marv along specifically to deal with him.
• The Heavy: In The Big Fat Kill, while he is under orders from Wallenquist, he is the dominant bad guy in the story. Also, as big as he is, he's probably pretty heavy as well.
• I Lied: He apparently told Becky that he would let her live. He lied.
• Iron Butt Monkey: He gives Dwight a good beating in his first appearance in A Dame to Kill For before quickly becoming something of a punching bag in the Sin City universe.
• Mismatched Eyes: One of them is fake, the result of Marv ripping out the original eye during A Dame to Kill For.
• No Kill Like Overkill: When Manute finally goes down in The Big Fat Kill, it's under a positively withering hail of bullets courtesy of the girls of Old Town.
• Recurring Character: Again, one of the few bad guys who keeps showing up. Even after he dies, thanks to the non-linear timeline.
• Scary Black Man
• Wicked Cultured
• Worf Effect: As badass as he is, he is sometimes a measuring stick to show how badass other heroes are.

Herr Wallenquist (aka Mob Boss Walenquist)

• Affably Evil
• The Don
• Expy: Given his tendency to wear single-color suits (usually white), his immense size, and his baldness, it's possible that he's basically a German version of the Daredevil villain Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin. It's notable that Frank Millar did some of his better known early work in comics on Daredevil.
• Face Framed in Shadow: Often drawn this way.
• Germanic Depressives: He is very humorless and work-oriented.
• Genre Savvy: It's possible that this is the reason he's such an effective mob boss. Ava Lord is an obvious Femme Fatale, and while her seemingly supernatural ability to attract and manipulate men works on seemingly everyone, he simply tells her right away that "her charms didn't interest him". Furthermore, after Walter deals a heavy blow to his operations, he simply tells his lieutenants that it would be too costly to go after the obvious heroic protagonist One-Man Army.
• The Ghost: In many stories, he is mentioned and you can even see his plans coming to fruition but he never pops in. In fact, he never comes face-to-face with any of the heroes in Sin City, luckily enough.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: He's almost always seen with a cigar.
• Gratuitous German: Averted. His English seems perfect. It's likely that he's been in the US for a long time.
• It's Personal: Also averted. Even when Wallace screws him over and takes out one of his organizations, he refuses to take revenge since it isn't financially viable.
• Large and In Charge
• Money Tropes: Hard to say just how many of these he fits, but he's a chilling villain who puts the "organized" in Sin City's organized crime, without ever even being threatened by any of the heroes, and he doesn't care about anything but making a profit.
• Nazi Hunter: If the fan theory about him is true. See WMG for more details.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: He is probably the only male that does not give in to Ava Lord's advances.
• Scary Shiny Glasses