Crime writer/novelist Gary Phillips is no stranger to comics, having written titles like Angeltown, High Rollers and The Rinse, among others. But today he brings one of his prose characters, Martha Chainey from High Hand and Shooter’s Point, to the comics page in the Comixology Originals title Cold Hard Cash.
Phillips has teamed up with artist Adriana Melo, colorist John Kalisz, letterer Tom Napolitano and editor Greg Lockard on the five-issue series, which had a surprise launch today on the digital comics platform.
“I’m thrilled to bring my tough as nails protagonist Martha Chainey to the pages of a comic,” Phillips said. “Seeing her navigate the gritty streets of L.A. and the high-end tech world in this fast-paced crime thriller illustrated by Adriana is surreal, and I hope people dig it.”
Here’s the description from Comixology:
Martha is a six-foot woman of color adept at martial arts. With no intention of winding up arm candy for some whale when she quit wearing forty-pound headdresses, she makes a living as a courier of off-the-books money—cold, hard cash. When her old friend, Rena Solomon, also an ex-Vegas showgirl, asks her in on a hush-hush job to find ten million dollars in stolen funds, Martha takes the gig.
Rena heads the Urban Collaborative, a nonprofit organization working to better conditions in South Central, which has recently partnered with Zentech, a Silicon Beach firm. Unfortunately, the Collaborative is computer hacked, and ten million dollars granted to the nonprofit for a cutting-edge center aimed at tech training and job placement goes missing.
As Martha delves into the theft, the evidence indicates the funds were converted to cash. The trail leads her throughout California from the seedy Salton Sea’s Slab city to the tony Zentech campus. Through the investigation’s twists and turns she encounters ski-masked hacktivists and the alt-right Reclaimers also on the hunt for the swag—as she seeks to uncover the truth.
Will Martha’s head slammin’ sleuth skills be enough to recover the missing cash?
And here’s a preview of the first issue:
The first issue is available now in Amazon’s Comixology store.