2 out of 5

I’m wondering how much of the nudity is written in to Charles Ardai’s scripts for Gun Honey versus how much his artists are adding in. Taking the spin-off series into account, either Ardai is plugging more T&A into the mainline book, or artist Ang Hor Kheng is taking advantage of a free license to add a lot more. I’m not necessarily against this stuff, nor can I / should I be the arbiter of what “works,” but Kheng’s kind of 90s Image-adjacent boobs and muscles style and overly cinematic layouts (which are equally impressive and frustrating, given that they’re pretty marvelous as concepts but don’t read that well) just lends a kind of extra leering quality to the work that makes even solid cheesecake shots feel excessive. It perhaps doesn’t help the general readability that every single female is drawn the same, with only freckles and short hair to tell a difference. This is pretty true of the males as well, and scenes where there are several bald dudes and several dudes with hair who can only be differentiated as such, and then we mix in several lookalike naked chicks with big boobs and they’re all light skinned… following who’s who can be a mess.

Collision Course’s narrative is, also, frankly a bit messy, definitely needing a leg-up from the art for clarity during several complex scenes of complex loyalties and traded sides, though Ardai’s banter between leading lady Joanna and agent-on-the-run Brook are quality, and individual scenes crackle with similar pulp flare, either for the dramatic or flirtatious or both. The narrative churn is a bit tougher to swallow, as Ardai has set a precedent of 4-issue series for Gun Honey, and that’s too short this time, doing an issue-by-issue international location whirlwind of information bartering / hunting which turns into conspiracy prevention, and going back to Kheng’s work, scenes are either too over-designed to smooth out the cluttered story, or just not definitive enough to make us feel like we can settle into a space or place. This is annoying on both fronts, because when Kheng’s work, separate from story execution, can rock, and the main heft of Ardai’s story – once it properly gets going – is a similarly solid caper.

“Properly gets going” is the hitch, though, as that doesn’t really happen until shoes drop on what’s what in issue 3, and Ardai’s whole way into the story is incredibly forced, with Joanna kind of shrugging her way into trouble because she’s bored, whoops.

While the Hard Case Crime comic imprint has a lot of work under its belt, Gun Honey feels like it should be the representative title, coming from its founder, being creator-owned specific to the imprint, and having spun off to multiple series. Alas, this one just hasn’t found its exact niche for this reader yet, but there’s enough hope given off from each read that I’m happy to see if the next outing lands.