Heat Seeker: A Gun Honey Series
To the world at large, Dahlia Racers is a master of stagecraft. A designer of illusions for professional magicians. But that job, thrilling as it is, is not the redhead’s true vocation. In truth, she’s not even a redhead, and that’s not the only misleading thing about Dahlia Racers.
The truth is, Dahlia Racers is a unique sort of fixer whose occupation doesn’t have a name. She makes people disappear—for a price. Not in the same way assassins make people disappear, but helping people go off the grid. With a latex mask, a change of clothes, and some DNA, she has helped many people start a new life. Some of them were bad people seeking a fresh start. Others were good people on the run. So long as their money was good, Dahlia didn’t much care, as long as she got a rush from the work and some time with a beautiful soon-to-be ex-girlfriend along the way.
However, Dahlia’s latest gig may be too hot for even her to handle. Her old acquaintance Joanna Tan (aka the gun smuggler known as Gun Honey) is on the run with former federal agent Brook Barrow. They need someone to fake their deaths before they wind up dead for real. Unfortunately, the people hunting them have brought in Sarah Claride—a sociopathic assassin as deadly as she is beautiful. It will take every trick up Dahlia’s sleeve (and a few more invented on the fly) to help her meet her day job obligations and get Joanna and Brook to safety, while taking the heat off herself.
Heat Seeker picks up where the previous Gun Honey series, Blood for Blood, ended. Despite this, it’s a wonderful introduction to the world of Charles Ardai’s Hard Case Crime comics. It’s also a neat spin on the modern noir formula, thanks to Dahlia Racers being a unique and memorable heroine.
Most noir adventures are built around a hard-living protagonist, with dangerous women crossing their path and dragging them into intrigue. Heat Seeker is no exception, but is notable for having a lesbian protagonist. Dahlia’s narration describes how she discovered stage magic the same winter she discovered girls… “magic of a different sort.” This puts a new spin on the usually tired genre tropes, though Dahlia does flirt with just as many femme fatales over the course of the story as Sam Spade and James Bond.
The artwork by Ace Continuado is smooth and sketchy. There is more detail in the backgrounds than the characters and the inks by Jose Zapata barely outline the characters. The end result, paired with the colors of Asifur Rahman, is far brighter and lighter than one would expect of a hard-boiled thriller. Yet that only serves to make Heat Seeker stand out as something memorable.
Heat Seeker is rated 17+ by Titan Comics. I believe that to be a fair assessment. There is not much in the way of blood or bloodshed in this book, though there are several people who are shot and one hung up to die. Of larger concern to moral guardians is copious amounts of nudity and sexuality activity, up to and including a climactic firefight at a nudist colony in Mexico.
Heat Seeker: A Gun Honey Series
By Charles Ardai
Art by Ace Continuado
Titan, 2024
ISBN: 9781787740914
Publisher Age Rating: 17+
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+)
Character Representation: Lesbian
