| Publisher | Titan Comics |
|---|---|
| Date Published | 03 May 2022 |
| ISBN-10 | 1782763465 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1782763468 |
| Format | paperback |
| Pages | 112 |
| Price | £ 14.99 |
Gun Honey
by
Joanna Tan – known as Gun Honey – will sell and deliver weapons to whoever can pay her price but when what should have been a simple job turns into a messy and lethal prison riot, she’s forced to work for the US government to track down the escaped prisoner at the heart of it all.
Review
Joanna Tan's area of expertise is weapons. Whatever you want, she can get, anywhere, anytime. For a price, naturally. She’s not fussy about who she sells to. She’s not the one who pulls the trigger, so the blood isn’t on her hands. They call her Gun Honey. She doesn’t mind the name. They can call her what they want if they’re prepared to pay her price.
When what she thought was going to be a simple job – get a gun into a maximum security prison to be used in a hit – turns into a messy riot that ends up with 29 dead and more than 60 injured, Joanna runs up against a US department headed by a woman who revels in being called both the Iron Maiden and the Burrow Bitch, the latter a reference to the fact that no one ever sees her out in the open where her enemies can get to her. Joanna has already turned down one offer to work as an independent contractor for her, but this time it’s harder to say no to the Burrow Bitch, and even Joanna’s conscience is starting to prick, although she won’t admit it.
The task she’s forced to accept is to find the man she helped break out of prison. His identity is unknown, due to the scar tissue covering 90% of his body. The man is now on another killing spree and the Burrow Bitch wants him found and stopped.
Gun Honey is a slick pulp noir action thriller teaming the slim, sexy, ample-breasted Joanna Tan with square-jawed, unshaven, hunky Agent Brook Barrow, the Burrow Bitch’s trusted sidekick. The pair work well together, complete with the inevitable sexual tension, sharp quips and explosive violence, mostly directed at other people. For anyone of a certain age, the comparisons with Peter O’Donnell’s iconic pair, Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin, are inevitable, although Joanna Tan completely lacks Modesty’s unshakable moral code, but other than that, the trope of the dark, athletic beauty and the rugged blond sidekick is much the same, only with Joanna hailing from Singapore rather than a war-torn region at the east end of the Mediterranean.
Joanna’s backstory is drip fed through a series of sepia-tinted panels, unlike the dark, strong colours used when violence is in the offing and the bright sunlit scenes when Joanna is showing herself off as part of a job. Joanna’s assets include shapely breasts that she has no objection to using to her advantage (more shades of Modesty Blaise and the tactic known as the Nailer) and as a result, there are plenty of scenes that fall into the category of parental guidance needed, although today’s youngsters have usually seen far, far worse on the internet than their parents would like to believe. For fans of pulp comics, there’s nothing here that will shock. Hard Case Crime co-founder Charles Ardai has put together a perfect example of its type, and the new kid on the block, artist Ang Hor Kheng, has done an immaculate job of bringing his creation and her world to life. I’m delighted that we’ll be seeing more of Gun Honey and Brook Barrow.
When what she thought was going to be a simple job – get a gun into a maximum security prison to be used in a hit – turns into a messy riot that ends up with 29 dead and more than 60 injured, Joanna runs up against a US department headed by a woman who revels in being called both the Iron Maiden and the Burrow Bitch, the latter a reference to the fact that no one ever sees her out in the open where her enemies can get to her. Joanna has already turned down one offer to work as an independent contractor for her, but this time it’s harder to say no to the Burrow Bitch, and even Joanna’s conscience is starting to prick, although she won’t admit it.
The task she’s forced to accept is to find the man she helped break out of prison. His identity is unknown, due to the scar tissue covering 90% of his body. The man is now on another killing spree and the Burrow Bitch wants him found and stopped.
Gun Honey is a slick pulp noir action thriller teaming the slim, sexy, ample-breasted Joanna Tan with square-jawed, unshaven, hunky Agent Brook Barrow, the Burrow Bitch’s trusted sidekick. The pair work well together, complete with the inevitable sexual tension, sharp quips and explosive violence, mostly directed at other people. For anyone of a certain age, the comparisons with Peter O’Donnell’s iconic pair, Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin, are inevitable, although Joanna Tan completely lacks Modesty’s unshakable moral code, but other than that, the trope of the dark, athletic beauty and the rugged blond sidekick is much the same, only with Joanna hailing from Singapore rather than a war-torn region at the east end of the Mediterranean.
Joanna’s backstory is drip fed through a series of sepia-tinted panels, unlike the dark, strong colours used when violence is in the offing and the bright sunlit scenes when Joanna is showing herself off as part of a job. Joanna’s assets include shapely breasts that she has no objection to using to her advantage (more shades of Modesty Blaise and the tactic known as the Nailer) and as a result, there are plenty of scenes that fall into the category of parental guidance needed, although today’s youngsters have usually seen far, far worse on the internet than their parents would like to believe. For fans of pulp comics, there’s nothing here that will shock. Hard Case Crime co-founder Charles Ardai has put together a perfect example of its type, and the new kid on the block, artist Ang Hor Kheng, has done an immaculate job of bringing his creation and her world to life. I’m delighted that we’ll be seeing more of Gun Honey and Brook Barrow.
Reviewed 12 November 2022 by Linda Wilson
