Lynn Varley – 1994 Sin City: The Big Fat Kill #2 Original Painted Cover Art & Frank Miller Overlay

Year: 1994

Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

Published: Sin City: The Big Fat Kill #2, December 1994

Artists: Frank Miller and Lynn Varley

Colour Artist: Lynn Varley

Medium: Acrylic paint over printed/reproduced Frank Miller line art on paper

Size: 8.3 × 12.2 inches (21 × 31 cm)

Original published painted cover artwork for Frank Miller's Sin City: The Big Fat Kill #2, published by Dark Horse Comics in 1994. The cover combines Frank Miller's original design and line artwork on an overlay with Lynn Varley's hand-painted work beneath, creating the finished image used for the published comic.

The composition features Gail and Dwight McCarthy, two of the principal characters in The Big Fat Kill. Gail dominates the foreground in her distinctive Old Town attire, while Dwight stands immediately behind her with gun drawn.

The Big Fat Kill was the third major storyline in Miller's Sin City and was originally published as a five-issue Dark Horse limited series from 1994–1995. Centred on Dwight McCarthy, Gail, Miho and the women of Old Town, the story became one of the best-known chapters of the Sin City saga and was subsequently adapted as a major storyline in the 2005 film Sin City.

Frank Miller is one of the most influential American comic creators of the modern era. His landmark works include Daredevil, Elektra, Ronin, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, Sin City and 300. Miller created Sin City in 1991, developing its distinctive visual identity around extreme contrasts of black and white, negative space, silhouettes and cinematic composition.

Lynn Varley is an acclaimed American colorist and painter whose collaborations with Frank Miller include some of the most important comics of the modern period. She provided the celebrated painted colors for Ronin and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and later collaborated with Miller on 300, for which her atmospheric painted color was a fundamental element of the work's visual identity. She received multiple industry awards for her coloring and is regarded as one of the artists who helped elevate comic-book coloring into an integral part of the finished artwork.