Titan Comics partnered up with Hard Case Crime to start releasing crime comics, and one of their launch titles was Triggerman, released in floppy issue form starting last fall. Now the first arc is available in an edition collecting issues #1-5, with preview pages at Comics Alliance. Here’s a description:
An operatic prohibition era crime caper! Locked up for a life of murder, Roy Nash never thought he’d walk the mean streets of Chicago again… let alone rescue his beloved, Lena. But when the city’s Mafia elite spring the notorious gun-for-hire to handle one last assignment, Roy once again finds himself thrown headfirst into a life of bloodshed and bullets as he sprints a breathless race to save the girl he left behind. From legendary screenwriter and director Walter Hill (The Warriors, Red Heat, Last Man Standing) and French comics writer Matz (The Killer), comes this hardboiled crime thriller set in the bullet-ridden streets of 1930s Chicago.
Working on this book was a unique experience, as I got to speak with Walter Hill on the phone a few times. I’d translated Matz’s The Killer for Archaia, but it turns out he got his hands on an old unproduced screenplay of Hill’s, and turned it into a graphic novel in France, where Jef’s art lent a juicy, overripe, almost feminine menace to this squalid, hardboiled gangland saga. Walter Hill was kind enough to send me his original screenplay, and give me notes on the sort of middle ground I navigated between it and my translation of the French book, tweaking the dialogue for period authenticity.