Avenging Angel
by Frank Rich
1993, Gold Eagle
The Jake Straight series is set in a pseudo-communist dystopian future, more punk than cyber (Joe Strummer was Prime Minister at some point). After the world was torn apart in the Corporate Wars, the Party, led by corrupt officials, have taken tenuous control, opposed by more radical factions, fascist skinheads, wino crusades, and corporate remnants.
Straight is a Bogeyman, a semi-official executioner styled as a hardboiled private detective. Straight prides himself on only going after the worst criminals, but is tricked into assassinating a poet wanted on a political warrant. He goes after the truth, and his fee, and of course some dames are involved.
Aside from a gyropistol which acts like a modern gun, and various synthetic food substitutes, not much in the way of technological advancement. The plot is pretty basic, ending abruptly after a dramatic build up, but works to showcase the setting and characters.
Jake Straight himself is a complicated character, a former soldier who was supposed to die in a suicide mission, not fitting into the Party establishment nor the counter-culture, dealing with PTSD, and of course being drunk most of the time.
The 2007 reprints use the same artist (Tim Bradstreet) and I think the same model (Tom O'Brien) as the early Garth Ennis Punisher run, though not the exact same shots.
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