If You're Looking for Sin, Look in Berkeley

Though we do tire, at times, of the alpha-male genre, few comic books or movies do it with more relish and gusto than Frank Miller's Sin City. So unless you're some kind of sobbing tree-kisser who doesn't like cartoonish violence and macho grandstanding, you'll be glad to hear that Frank Miller is hosting a screening of the film this Sunday at the Act 1&2 in Berkeley. The whole shebang benefits the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; and audience-members and CBLDF-members get free invites to a post-screening chat with Mr. Miller at Comic Relief, a nifty Berkeley comix store.

The legal defense fund exists because it's sometimes difficult to singlehandedly defend the First Amendmentyness of certain books -- Sin City, for example -- against people who don't think that anyone should be allowed to read them. And yeah, maybe you oughta have a long talk with your 8-year-old kid if his media diet consists of rape and murder. But in The Land of the Free, shouldn't a consenting adult be able to read whatever they like, whenever they like, by whatever artist they like? "Yes," says the CBLDF, and they're proving it with legal victories and events like the one on Sunday. Which we would wholeheartedly attend, if we weren't so bored by that particular film.

Tix are $15, and can be purchased at the box office and from the DBLDF table at WonderCon. Screening starts at 7, and the Act 1&2 is at 2128 Center Street in Berkeley. Comic Relief's at 2026 Shattuck Ave.