Comico The Comic Company; $27.95 (HC)

In 1987 Mike Baron, the co-creator of Nexus, teamed up with artist Mitch O’Connell for the original graphic novel The World of Ginger Fox, and it was indeed truly original. Mixing romance, the film industry, its drug culture and rampant misogyny, and martial arts, the whirlwind story is beautiful, fashion-oriented, and a seriously compelling amount of fun.

The movie business backdrop of the story may seem reasonable now, but back when it was originally released, it was out there on the cutting edge. When Sherry Lansing was named President of 20th Century Fox’s film production unit in 1980, she became the first woman to tackle such a role in Hollywood. Although others would follow in her footsteps and she herself would later have an incredibly successful run at Paramount, the title character in The World of Ginger Fox being a beautiful head of a movie studio was still pretty revolutionary.

There’s danger in the film business, and for Ginger Fox and company it comes in two forms. First, a disgruntled director is willing to have Ginger threatened or even killed. And second, a martial arts cult that doesn’t want their secrets revealed on film, and they’re willing to kill anyone and everyone to get their way.

Naturally it seems like everything comes to a head at the same time.

Mitch O’Connell’s art is lovely, and it’s greatly aided by Les Dorscheid’s colors. Both distinctly and stylishly serve Mike Baron’s script, which has lots of snappy dialogue and film industry references.

This one is definitely worth tracking down. Fans of Mike Baron’s work on The Badger won’t be surprised at all by the martial arts portion of the story, but both it, the romance, and the film industry portions are handled in very clever fashion.

– J.C. Vaughn