3 out of 5

The very thing that holds this series back is also what makes it work: it’s a side story. You can feel it in every beat. And while that means we never quite feel like its cast of characters will (at this point) amount to much more than a sidestory – that Joanna’s trials and tribulations in the “main” Gun Honey-verse must go on – it also kind of alleviates writer Charles Ardai of the need to write the “ultimate” pulp book, of overblown sex, violence, and every other aspect of the genre. Heat Seeker doesn’t have to be mind-bendy or clever; it just has to tell a good story. And it definitely does that.

After some goofily complex sleight of hand introductions, we find our fixer-moonlighting-magician Dahlia Racers – putting her trade to work making costumes and apropos gimmickry for clients – posing as Joanna (with an assist from a friend, posing as Brook), and trying to convince the baddies she’s dead. This turns into a cyclical cat and mouse of fake out deaths when a particularly gnarly assassin is put on her trail: Sarah Claride, a badass, scary killer I hope gets more play in the series.

Ardai finds a good, balanced voice for Dahlia that’s distinct enough, without necessarily forcing us to get invested – as it’s a side story, after all. The pacing is quite grand as well, keeping us at arm’s length for plot reveals, but not playing so far ahead that it feels cheap. And for every moment you might predict, Ardai throws a monkey wrench in the mix.

Artist Ace Continuado has a loose but effective style that adds a lot of motion, though choreography sometimes skips a beat, and when the scale gets too big, the stuff starts to seem like a Marvel movie and not a B action movie; just meaning the pitch varies a bit. But alongside Ardai getting more used to a tone for these comics, Continuado balances the cheesecake with the characterizations quite well, building up to a cheeky setting for one of the final showdowns.

Again, by dint of this all needing to wrap up without many loose threads, Heat Seeker has a kind of weightless feel. By the same exact token, though, it’s an incredibly fun read as a result.