I had mentioned this one a few times, but surprisingly didn't blog it until now! From 1993,
Untamed #1, "Wounds of Equal People" Story and art by Neil Hansen.
This was part of a fairly big push at the time, Epic's "Heavy Hitters" of creator-owned limited series. We've seen
Lawdog a few times; I think that was the only ongoing series of the lot, and it didn't even last long. I really liked Mike Baron's
Feud and
Spyke, and Howard Chaykin's
Midnight Men, but I wouldn't have recognized Neil Hansen's name, even if I had maybe seen his work in
Savage Sword of Conan and
Badger, where he occasionally used the name "Spyder." He's got a great visceral style for action, but while I don't think he had a lot of writing credits, he comes out swinging here.
In a not-too-distant future, supercop Tokudane "Dane" Kuchiyama is sent from Japan to San Diego, to help stop the rise of a Yakuza breakaway gang, the Kosansui. Dane is partnered up with wildman Griffin Palmer, recently returned to active duty after the death of his wife in a car crash. Griffin gets a tip from one of his usual informants, which turns into a trap and sets up a solid fight scene; then later he murders the hell out of said informant. Meanwhile, Dane is visited by a strange woman, who claims to be Griffin's late wife: she further claims to have been kept in a safe house, but is seemingly as afraid of Griffin as of anything else. Before Dane can get more info out of her, Griffin calls; and when she tries to leave, the front door of his apartment explodes!
The next day, Dane plays his cards close to the vest, not mentioning that Griffin's wife had been there when his place was bombed. They get into a car chase after some cop-killers, which Dane stops short with a "hardened C-4 throwing star," but that causes a massive pile-up. Dane wakes up on the sidewalk, having been pulled from a burning car by Griffin...
I don't know if this is a hidden gem, but it's three solid issues I still really like. If you see it in the cheap bins, it's well worth grabbing for a read.
7 comments:
Absolutely never heard of this series before but I kinda like it. It feels like mash-up of Blade Runner & Lethal Weapon, with Dane being a stand in for Gaff & Griffin clearly being a stand in for Riggs.
Love how over the top violent it is though.
While I’m not too familiar with most of those titles, I do know about Alien Legion, Lawdog from you & seeing an ad for Sachs & Violins from back in the day. The line definitely had potential & I’m all for creators having another creative avenue to get paid to ply their trade.
For some reason I got the Heavy Hitters line mixed up with Clive Barker’s Razorline imprint & that’s probably because they both existed around the same time period.
I doubt it, but I’m sure it’d be nice, if not only were these characters & series explored again in the current modern age, but also if they were all collected in one big omnibus collection.
I wanna say this was one, of about half a dozen times, that Marvel flooded the market with books; maybe hoping to crowd everyone else off the racks. Did it ever work? I don't think so, but...
As near as I can tell, no, no it certainly did NOT work out for them in the end, nor any other time they tried that approach. It not only reeks of desperation, but is also very much counterproductive & counterintuitive, as the practice tends to harm your product by creating consumer confusion & at worst, consumer apathy.
Pretty sure the only one from the Heavy Hitters line I have is the Trouble With Girls miniseries, and that’s more because I like the previous ongoings and miniseries. Definitely wasn’t much cohesion for the line at this point, but I feel like that’s true of most of Epic after Archie Goodwin left (I think Razorline was another Epic sub-imprint, by the by).
Yes it was, with which I somehow confused it with the Heavy hitters line.
Is Trouble with Girls any good?
I like it- it’s very much comedy with action instead of an action-comedy. More situational than puns, though there are some puns and it’s mainly spoofing stuff like James Bond. The only problem you might have is that Gerard Jones is one of the co-creators, and people seem to have trouble separating his work from his personal life.
Awww, gotcha.
Gerald Jones huh? That’s a shame. I can easily understand why people wouldn’t want to go back and read his stuff & support him in anyway or capacity. He’s a fucking pedophile. So yeah I definitely get it.
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