Author Charles Ardai is back writing another adventure for everyone’s favorite weapon supplier, Joanna Tan. Hard Case Crime co-founder Charles Ardai successfully launched his first comic book series, Gun Honey, at Titan Comics back in 2021. Since then, he’s followed it up with a sequel, Gun Honey: Blood for Blood, as well as a spinoff titled Gun Honey: Heat Seeker. It’s safe to say fans are enjoying everything about Gun Honey and the world Ardai is building, which makes the announcement of a new series, Gun Honey: Collision Course, all the more exciting.
ComicBook.com spoke with Charles Ardai ahead of the launch of Gun Honey: Collision Course, to find out how the new series is set up, where Joanna Tan is following the events of Gun Honey: Blood for Blood, how writing for comics is different than writing for other mediums like TV and novels, the expansion of the Gun Honey Universe, and more. We can also exclusively reveal covers A, B, D, E, and F for Gun Honey: Collision Course #2. The description for the series reads, “After nearly a year in hiding from government agents looking to kill her, GUN HONEY – JOANNA TAN – launches a plan to turn the tables that will take her from the jungles of Borneo, to the streets of Yokoh ama, and the sands of the Gobi Desert. But when four armed groups converge on one secret location, will anyone survive the explosive collision?”
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How Gun Honey: Collision Course begins
ComicBook.com: What is Joanna Tan’s mindset as Gun Honey: Collision Course kicks off?
Charles Ardai: Joanna has been in hiding for nearly a year with some of the world’s most dangerous men looking to kill her. But it turns out she’s been playing the long game: she’s set a trap for her enemies that’s taken a year to ripen, and when we find her she’s finally ready to turn the tables and strike back.
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Keeping Gun Honey fresh
You’ve made a career out of crafting compelling crime-inspired stories. How do you keep things fresh, while also making Gun Honey stand out from the competition?
Gun Honey stands out by telling a story for adults. It doesn’t pull its punches. When bullets fly, blood flows and people die; when clothes come off, we don’t discreetly fade to black. This makes the stakes higher and the impact of the story more visceral. Some people still think of comics as a medium for children, and I love proving that wrong. I love it when people tell me they were shocked by something they saw in Gun Honey — it means we gave them something they weren’t expecting. My other trick for keeping things fresh is, I imagine my best friend coming back from a movie and breathlessly saying, “You won’t believe it, man, this new movie just totally blew me away, it was wild,” and I say, “Oh yeah? What happened in it?” And then I just write down what he tells me.
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Differences between comics and other mediums
You have an impressive resume writing for many different mediums, but I’m curious if you’ve come across anything unique or challenging about writing for comics.
Yes — comics are static, a series of snapshots; you can’t show movement. In a movie, you can write, “He rides down the hill and leaps from horseback onto the moving train.” In a comic you have to pick just a couple of moments to illustrate, to convey an illusion of movement. A box is open or it’s closed, or it’s halfway in between, but you can’t see it actually opening or closing. And you can only fit so many panels on a page! And only so many pages in an issue. So you learn economy — how to tell your story in the smallest number of shots. It’s like storyboarding a movie, only without getting to film it — the storyboards are the final product.
On the other hand, you know what they say about pictures being worth a thousand words. When I write a novel I might spend pages trying to convey in words what an exotic location looks like, or a beautiful woman. In a comic, it’s right there in front of you, better than any words could ever describe it. And better even than in a movie because every frame is a freeze frame. In a movie, everything is always moving on at 24 frames per second — blink and it’s gone. In a comic, if you give people something they like to look at, they can look as long as they like.
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Gun Honey: Heat Seeker reactions
Heat Seeker was another fun addition to the Gun Honey universe. What has the reaction been to her series? I could definitely see her teaming up in a series with Gun Honey down the road.
I loved doing Heat Seeker! Joanna needed a foil, and I liked introducing an ex-girlfriend of hers who has a completely different criminal specialty and personality. I’ve said I think of Joanna as a bit more Christian Bale and Dahlia Racers, the star of Heat Seeker, as a bit more like Tom Cruise — Joanna is more serious and brooding, Dahlia is more reckless, a risk taker and heartbreaker. People seemed to enjoy Dahlia’s first adventure — enough so that I’m writing her second now. I do think you see her and Joanna cross paths again, and it will be very hot when they do.
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The Gun Honey Universe
As a follow-up, are there any plans to keep expanding the Gun Honey universe?
The villain in the new Heat Seeker I’m writing now is stubbornly refusing to stay a villain — she’s beautiful, tough, a mercenary who cannot feel pain, hunger, heat, cold, or fatigue, and incidentally is a hardcore comic book fan. And I’m starting to think she might need a spinoff book of her own.
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What to look out for in Gun Honey: Collision Course
Lastly, anything else you’d like to leave with fans for what to look forward to in Gun Honey: Collision Course?
You’re in for a wild ride. From Borneo to Japan to Mongolia and the Gobi Desert, in a chase that gives new meaning to the phrase “hot pursuit.” But maybe the most fun bit is the setting of the climactic issue: Joanna will be on the grounds of the Paris Summer Olympics, and the issue will hit stores at the very moment when the Olympics are actually happening. So it’s almost like augmented reality! If you watch any of the Olympics this year, keep an eye out — maybe you’ll spot Joanna in the crowd, carrying out one of her clandestine assignments!
