High-Octane Adult Storytelling – Talking ‘Heat Seeker: Combustion’ With Writer Charles Ardai

Dahlia Racers, the ex-girlfriend of Gun Honey Joanna Tan, is back in a Heat Seeker: Combustion from Titan Comics on July 22nd. This time, Dahlia is tracking down a biological weapon that could kill millions and a scientist’s daughter who needs to disappear to remain safe. In an exclusive interview with Comicon.com, writer Charles Ardai discusses why writing comics and strong women appeal to him as well as his collaboration with artist Ace Continuado.

Tom Smithyman: Heat Seeker is the latest in a line of Gun Honey titles. What makes this series different from the others?

Charles Ardai: Gun Honey and Heat Seeker are both the stories of cunning women on the wrong side of the law who find themselves facing impossible challenges and devious adversaries. But they have very different criminal specialties: Joanna Tan of Gun Honey is a weapons supplier who will get you whatever weapon you need when you need it, where you need it, no matter how impossible; Dahlia Racers of Heat Seeker will help you disappear if you’ve been marked for death, using various techniques of disguise and misdirection.

Dahlia is reckless and dashing; Joanna is more brooding and dark. Dahlia will save your life; Joanna might help someone kill you. They happen to be ex-girlfriends – but they lead very different lives, and their books tell different sorts of stories. It’s a little like how Superman and Batman are part of the same universe, but very different characters.

Smithyman: What makes you keep coming back to this series? And why do you think your readers keep asking for more?

Ardai: I love writing strong female characters – even a quarter of the way through the 21st century, they’re still rarer than you might expect, and I find it invigorating to replace the conventional male lead from a franchise like Mission: Impossible or James Bond with a woman who has the same levels of ability and intensity and charisma and swagger (and unapologetic sex drive!). I think readers have responded to the same things that keep me excited: high-octane adult storytelling – very much R-rated, no punches pulled – with twists and surprises and danger and sex and thrills. Sometimes, that’s just what you’re in the mood for.

Smithyman: You had a long, successful history as a novelist. What made you turn to writing comic books?

Ardai: I was a comic book reader before I was a reader of novels – Flash was my main book when I was a kid, but I read everything from superhero books to Gold Key’s Star Trek comics and Classics Illustrated, and writing comics has always been a bucket-list item for me.

I know some writers might turn up their noses at comics, but I feel like I’m the luckiest guy in the world to get to write them. It’s also a great challenge – how to tell a compact story in just 22 pages, with only so many panels on each page and only so many words in each panel. It’s a little like the challenge of writing a sonnet or haiku: only so much space to work in, but if you do it right, you can really pack a punch.

Smithyman: Why do you think the heroes in comics are so male dominated? Is there a secret to writing strong women that most scribes haven’t figured out?

Ardai: I don’t think it’s hard to write strong women. You just have to love women, to love hanging out with them and hearing them talk and paying attention to what they care about. I ‘ve always had more female friends than male, and I guess that makes it natural for me to tell stories about women. I also think the relative scarcity of female characters in stories of crime and violence makes the introduction of a female lead a sort of galvanic force, sparking life into what might otherwise be a staid or familiar genre.

I think the continued dominance of male heroes in comics is a matter of habit as much as anything. People think that comics are mostly still read by men and that men don’t enjoy reading about women – but that’s clearly not true. I don’t think there’s a Batman reader who doesn’t enjoy reading about Poison Ivy or Harley Quinn. No fan of science fiction movies minded watching Sigourney Weaver in Aliens or Linda Hamilton in Terminator. If you give people great female characters, everyone enjoys them.

Smithyman: Ace Continuado drew the series. How did the two of you connect, and what was your collaboration process like?

Ardai: Ace is simply terrific. We were introduced by an agent named Chris Allo, when I was first working out the concept that would become Heat Seeker. And as soon as I saw Ace’s sample pages, I knew he was the one for the job. I can describe absolutely anything, no matter how improbable or outlandish, and he comes up with a way to draw it that feels believable and dynamic and gripping. Our heroine is jumping out of a crashing airplane without a parachute? No problem. Skiing down the Italian Alps with gunmen on snowmobiles in hot pursuit? Done.

I write the script pages and overnight Ace fires back panels that capture the action like movie storyboards. It’s really fun – every morning feels like Christmas Day as I get to unwrap a new package and see what Santa brought.

Smithyman: Do you have plans to return to the Gun Honey universe or are you being pulled in a different direction?

Ardai: I feel there are plenty more stories to be told in the Gun Honey universe! In the last series, Heat Seeker: Combustion, I introduced a beautiful mercenary named Evie who’s been genetically altered so she can’t feel heat or cold or pain or fatigue or hunger. She also happens to be an enormous geek, who’s as well versed as any nerdy comic book reader in things like the history of the MCU and Star Wars and Monty Python.

And she turned out to be so much fun to write that even though she was only supposed to appear in that one title and never again, I’ve brought her back for the new series, Heat Seeker: Exposed, and I’m thinking maybe she deserves a spinoff title of her own.

Another book I’d love to write would put Gun Honey and Heat Seeker up against each other – maybe Dahlia is hired to protect someone one of Joanna’s clients is trying to kill. Or maybe a team-up book with all three characters, Joanna, Dahlia, and Evie, working together!

At some point, I’d love to write another novel – but for the time being I’m delighted to explore the Gun Honey universe some more.

Smithyman: Dahlia Racers’ foe in this series can’t feel heat or cold. If you were writing yourself as a bad guy, what would your super powers be?

Ardai: If I were a bad guy? I suppose I might come up with a power that’s connected to writing. Like anything I write comes true – I write your obituary overnight and you’re found dead in the morning. Or I write about a heist at Fort Knox and the next day all the gold has vanished. That might be too powerful, the ability to rewrite reality, so there’d need to be some limits to it. But something along those lines could be fun.

Or who knows, maybe I’d be a good guy, using that power to track these women down and put them behind bars … which would of course make me a bad guy in the context of the comics, where we’re rooting for the criminals. That’s the fun of crime fiction, especially of the noir or hardboiled variety: it turns concepts of right and wrong, ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ on their heads. This is the sort of moral ambiguity that keeps people coming back for another dose of Gun Honey and Heat Seeker.

Smithyman: That sounds like a lot of fun. Best of luck with the new series collection!