Terry Moore wraps up the Parker Girls miniseries with Deadlight as Katchoo and her terrifying sister Tambi try to stop the billionaire Zachary May from gaining global power, and also bring him to justice for murdering his wife (and fellow Parker Girl) Piper.
Volume 1 ended on one hell of a cliffhanger. Tambi’s associates Cherry Hammer (yes, that’s her real name) and Becky (known by the fans as “Becky The Gun Girl”) have pieced together Piper’s last moments, and it adds up to her being beaten to death and dumped overboard by her jealous husband. Meanwhile, Tambi had a plan to have Katchoo cozy up to Zachary and convince him to drop his bid for a company Tambi wants to protect, and that plan went off the rails almost immediately when two of Zachary’s goons drug and kidnap Katchoo from her hotel room.
Oh, and Katchoo and her wife Francine are separated, and Francine isn’t taking Katchoo’s calls…WHAT THE HELL??
The story has some surprises, but the interpersonal stuff is really the least of it. This book is violent. The members of the Parker Girls organization never used to shy away from physical attacks if they had to, but it feels like things have escalated now. A quick and brutal murder or enhanced interrogation by drowning with sharks is now the default plan, rather than the last option.
This volume collects issues 6-10 of the miniseries. Issue 6 reveals a little more of Zachary May’s plan for world dominance, but it’s mostly about one of the Parker Girls getting answers about Piper May’s death, and doing it in the most ruthless way possible. Nothing is off the table; if your witness is too terrified to be helpful then the solution is to deliver even more terrifying threats, and to make sure they know you mean it.
Zachary May has his own reasons for kidnapping Katchoo, and for all that he’s a man with the brains to create a global empire, he’s also stupid enough to think he can threaten her to go along with it. Issue 7 is Katchoo’s reaction. Issue 8 is Tambi’s.
“What’s the plan now? Do we negotiate?”
“No, we burn his house down. And kill everything that runs out.”
There’s no hesitation here, no pausing for breath or worrying about the cost of violence. In this new, scarier world, the Parker Girls identify threats and almost instantly react, scorched earth every time. Terry Moore doesn’t get a chance to do much pinup art or humor in these five issues, he’s got enough to do with illustrating a rapid exchange of gunfire, or an interrogation in international waters, or someone’s reaction with teeth-clenched rage, or the motion lines when someone’s head is getting kicked through a wall.
I really have to stop thinking of these miniseries as standalone stories. What they feel more like is seasons of an ongoing story, one where the big bad antagonist might be taken care of by the season finale, but more than likely there are going to be threads still left to follow. There are a few questions that I don’t think are ever going to be addressed (Why did Mark spend a week drunk and miserable at a resort and then spin an entire yarn about a cancer misdiagnosis and a non-existent sister and then tell it to a random stranger he had no way of knowing could actually help him?), and we’re left with a few things that may play out in the next season (possibly something blooming between Cherry and Becky, and how about that fight that Katchoo and Francine are having?).
The big reveal of Zachary May’s motivations was…not exactly what I was expecting. In his own way he’s exactly as ruthless and reactionary as the Parker Girls. It’s what lets them get things done, but I have to think that it makes them both equally vulnerable. Both of them act with complete impunity, and with zero regard for consequences; it’s not “how do we solve this issue” but “what’s the tipping point that justifies going in with guns blazing”. It left me wondering exactly how many atrocities can pile up before it becomes ridiculous that the authorities haven’t stepped in yet, or before other forces working in the shadows step in and start making ruthless decisions of their own.