released 16 feb 05 / last mod 01 aug 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* Some time ago in a galaxy not far away, comic writer Adam Warren decided to produce an Americanized version of the Japanese DIRTY PAIR anime series. DIRTY PAIR involved two galactic troubleshooters, Kei and Yuri, of the "World Welfare Works Association (3WA)" who go to strange new worlds to meet interesting new people ... and blow them away. Their missions always end in catastrophe, leading them to cry: "BUT IT'S NOT OUR FAULT!"
In the initial installment (listed as the second -- the first remains mysterious -- and put together in collaboration with Toren Smith, who would also work on the next two installments), DANGEROUS ACQUAINTANCES, the Dirty Pair ("that's LOVELY ANGELS!") are up against Shasti, an ultra-dangerous genetically-engineered 3WA agent who was grown in a vat and went renegade after being carelessly "programmed" with the personality of a vicious terrorist. Stylistically, Kei and Yuri weren't too far off the Japanese originals, and though Warren hadn't really come into his own in terms of the artwork, the story did feature his trademark action and extreme bloodshed, as well as sarcastic humor and social satire.
The third installment, A PLAGUE OF ANGELS, starts to come more into its own, with Kei and Yuri more scantily clad and the style generally more distinctive as our heroines pursue a mercenary terrorist who is actually nothing more than personality on a chip, jumping from one host -- human or robot -- to another, remaining a sex maniac in all of them. Whatever pretense of a serious story is given up and the sarcastic humor runs as nonstop as the action, giving the reader a definitely fun thrill ride.
A PLAGUE OF ANGELS has my favorite line of the series, which captures much of its flavor: when journalist Cory Emerson finds out to her terror that her sleazy boss is sending her to interview the disaster-prone Dirty Pair, he tries to reassure her: "Cory, sweetheart ... this story about them being nothing more than serial killers is just plain crazy! If anything, they're ... ummmm ... mass murderers!" Her initial impression of the Dirty Pair is also memorable: "Death with a human face -- and push-up bras!" -- and one of the final lines is good, too: "Any cataclysm that you live through is a good cataclysm."
In the fourth installment, SIM HELL, the girls get trapped in a series of 3WA simulations centered around a past era when nanomechines went amok and threatened to exterminate humanity. The sim is being manipulated by a malevolent, megalomaniac tech named Kevin Sleet who hates the Dirty Pair. Compared to A PLAGUE OF ANGELS, this item seems a bit confused and claustrophobic -- common failings of virtual-reality stories.
The fifth installment, FATAL BUT NOT SERIOUS -- the first color volume, all the earlier ones were originally black and white -- goes to the other extreme, with the girls attending a galactic fan conference in their honor while the evil Sleet cooks up a clone of Yuri to create catastrophes spanning star systems. This one's just a bit too over-the-top, with the violence pushed to such a level that it becomes comical, hence the title -- it almost comes across as an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon. The jabs at comic fandom are also a bit too much like in-jokes.
The sixth and at last notice last installment was RUN FROM THE FUTURE, which involves Kei and Yuri hunting down a diverse set of terrorists and galactic criminals in a space habitat during a 100-minute stopover. This item stays tight on the action / adventure / humor track and becomes one of the stronger parts of the series; Warren makes the Dirty Pair even more scantily clad, as if it were possible. (He insists that he didn't actually reduce the area of the clothing, he just rearranged it a bit.)
* In sum, it's a bit hard to give a solid judgement either way for the DIRTY PAIR series. If you're into action / adventure / humor pulp fiction, they're slam-bang trashy fun. As far as the humor goes, the series does have its laughs, though its satire seems based on the cynical if not completely indefensible premise that men are jerks and women are bimbos, and this becomes a bit tiresome after a while. Warren's manga-flavored artwork is good but not necessarily awe-inspiring, and I don't think everyone would find it to their taste.
Where I do give Warren high points is his cleverness. If the DIRTY PAIR series were just funny action stories they wouldn't be that interesting, but Warren places them in the context of the "Human Diaspora", the spread of humans into space and their evolution into a wild range of forms. Despite the fact that these stories aren't supposed to be taken seriously, he's thought things out fairly well: If the era comes when humans can be genetically modified to any form, when there are artificial intelligences, and when machines can integrate closely with life-forms, then it won't be a choice between human and machine, it will be a spectrum ranging from a range of pure bioforms to pure machines and every combination in between. Indeed, the chip-based terrorist in A PLAGUE OF ANGELS jumps through this spectrum of forms at will.
Still, I think maybe Warren has mined out the DIRTY PAIR series. It's been a while since RUN FROM THE FUTURE, and unless the money's really good he might well want to try something a little more substantial. Nobody expects comix to be true art or literature, but he can do more serious things -- TITANS and his single BUBBLEGUM CRISIS effort clearly demonstrate this -- and maybe it's time to move on.