Here’s a creator series written by Mark Millar that came out in early 2019. I recall reading about it but, for whatever reason, it just didn’t interest me at the time, so I never bought it. But having just finished reading Millar’s series Space Bandits, which came out that same year, starting a few months after Sharkey, I saw that at the end of that series, this character was being hired to hunt down Cody and Thena, previewing a future crossover. To date, no such series has been published, but I did really enjoy Space Bandits so I figured that I should go ahead and check this out so I’ll be ready for it, should it ever happen. Plus I like the new universe Millar portrayed in Space Bandits, and want to see more of it.

So once again Millar takes what is a pretty straightforward story but makes it unique with a simple sci-fi twist. Sharkey is an ex-soldier who is now working as a bounty hunter, He’s good at what he does, but he has some major gambling debts so he’s hard-up for money. We see him catch his latest bounty in some rundown slum neighborhood. But the money he gets for it isn’t anywhere near as much as he was expecting. After picking up a local woman for a one-night stand, he’s confronted by a young boy who tells him he’s the nephew of the man Sharkey caught, and his uncle was his guardian since his parents were dead. Now he’ll be left a homeless orphan unless Sharkey takes him to his only living relative, a distant cousin. Sharkey tries to ignore the kid but feels sorry for him (the boy was in tears, and we later see him getting bullied by another kid on the street) and agrees to do it. But then Sharkey gets a new assignment to catch a wanted mass-murdering female terrorist, which will earn him enough money to clear all of his debts. But he’s told that many other bounty hunters are also on the case. So Sharkey plans to ditch the kid to go after the bounty, but at the last minute, he has a change of heart and picks up the kid to take him with him.

It’s a potentially interesting story on its own but it’s made all the more compelling because it’s set in outer space and everyone in the story is an alien. Sharkey himself is a purple-skinned humanoid, the little boy, called Extra-Billy, has green skin. The woman Sharkey slept with is a cyborg who is slowly having all of her flesh replaced with mechanical parts with the goal of literally becoming a transport vehicle. There are some other crazy twists too, all beautifully drawn by Simone Bianchi, whose style makes this story feel like it would fit in with something you’d see in Heavy Metal magazine.

This series is off to a great start, I’m looking forward to what happens next. Chacebook rating: FIVE STARS

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