Review by Frank Plowright

Charles Ardai’s two volumes of Gun Honey have been tightly plotted action thrillers keeping readers guessing until the end, but with a disappointingly 1970s attitude toward the objectification of women. Heat Seeker is set in the same world, connected by former government agent Brook Barrow and Joanna Tan herself. There’s a contract out on both of them, but if they’re convincingly seen to die, then the heat will be off.

It means there’s a clever title for the activities of the oddly named Dahlia Racers, doing little to disguise Ardai’s premise being a clear copy of the Human Target. For an exorbitant price Dahlia will impersonate people with a contract on them, and that’s what she and a partner take on with Barrow and Tan. However, it’s not as simple as she may have assumed.

This isn’t up to the quality of Gun Honey primarily because Ace Continuado’s artwork is of considerably lower quality. Las Vegas is drawn with as little detail as possible as Continuado prefers generic locations and backgrounds, and for someone drawing a cheesy story objectifying women, he has very little sense of glamour. Perhaps the thought was that if the breasts are drawn large enough and often enough, no-one’s going to be looking at anything else.

At first it seems a further flaw is Ardai’s characters too often behaving in a way suiting the needs of the plot rather than conforming to any kind of reality, but he’s a step ahead of readers there, and something that seems very convenient is actually later comprehensively explained. The Las Vegas location isn’t random either, as it enables the inclusion of stage magic, and Ardai switches the narrative between two people with very different motives, keeping the interest up.

Much of the other interest kept up, however, is sleazily generated. Everywhere Dahlia goes people are naked for the sake of titillation and her being a lesbian is nothing more than an excuse for pruriently intended entertainment, except Continuado’s uninspiring art works against those intentions. Ardai’s is a disappointingly old-fashioned fantasy view of the world and a woman’s place in it, and this time the plot and art can’t overcome that.