Hawaiian Dick

2002 Comic Book

Hawaiian Dick was a comic book created by writer B. Clay Moore and artist Steven Michael Griffin, and published by Image Comics. The first Hawaiian Dick mini series hit comic shops in December 2002, and was subsequently followed in late 2003 by a second four issue mini series called Hawaiian Dick: the Last Resort. The second series ran into numerous publication delays, but was completed in July 2006. The trade paperback collecting the second mini series was published in October 2006. The comic book received extensive media attention upon its arrival, including favorable reviews in Entertainment Weekly and Publishers Weekly. In 2004, Hawaiian Dick was optioned by New Line Cinema for development as a feature film, but efforts failed. Artist and colorist Steven Griffin was nominated for the 2003 Russ Manning Award for his work on the book, and subsequently received three separate Eisner Award nominations for Best Colorist for Hawaiian Dick, receiving those nominations in 2004, 2005 and 2006. The third Hawaiian Dick series ran five issues, and was subtitled Screaming Black Thunder. Artist Scott Chantler illustrated the lead stories. The fourth series, Aloha, Hawaiian Dick, began publication through Image Comics on April 20, 2016, with artists Jacob Wyatt and Jason Armstrong handling the art on the lead and back up stories, respectively. Hawaiian Dick appeared on the Wizard Top 100 Trade Paperbacks of the Wizard Era, clocking in at number 92. In an article on WeAreAtomik. com talking about making the list, B. Clay Moore confesses to being Atomik.

Hawaiian Dick takes place in the fifties, in a noir version of Hawaii. Byrd, the main character, lives in Honolulu. The Hawaii of Hawaiian Dick is also home to all of Hawaii's legendary supernatural anomalies, each able to manifest when the time is right.

Hawaiian Dick: Byrd of Paradise begins innocently enough with Mo Kalama visiting his friend, Byrd, to tell him about a stolen car that is a little hot for the police to handle, but not too hot for someone with the outside interest that Byrd would present. Together, they find out that the car, being paid to be delivered to a man named Grimes, has a stash that will be going to notorious island criminal and drug baron Bishop Masaki, a Japanese expatriate who runs a criminal syndicate in Hawaii. Shortly after discovering this, Byrd, Mo, and Grimes are involved in a high speed shoot out in which the car gets riddled with bullets and they end up off the side of the Pali Highway. Byrd and Mo discover that instead of drugs being stashed in the car's trunk, Bishop Masaki's lover, Leila Rose, was in there bound and gagged. However, the shoot out resulted in her death. While they make this horrifying discovery, they also hear a steady drumbeat growing on the night air. Moving as far as possible, Byrd and Mo just escape from the clutches of the Pali Highway Night marchers, the spirits of Hawaiian warriors, though Grimes is swept away in the tumult, screaming. After the Marchers have passed, Byrd and Mo return to the car and discover that Leila Rose's body is gone as well. Byrd investigates Leila Rose, and ends up meeting her sister, Kahami, at a bar called the Outrigger. Kahami, saddened by her sister's death, takes Byrd to visit her aunt, Auntie Chan, a woman who, in Hawaiian culture, is a sort of witch doctor (similar to a bruja in Mexican culture). While Byrd meets with Kahami's aunt, revealing that it was she who raised Leila Rose and who got the girl killed in the first place, feeling it would be better to have dead nieces than ones who were in the thrall of Bishop Masaki, Mo investigates a disturbance at one of Bishop Masaki's warehouses. While there, he is knocked unconscious by Leila Rose's zombified corpse, who proceeds to leave the warehouse. As the story rumbles towards its conclusion, Byrd and Kahami go to the docks to face Bishop Masaki as a storm rages around them. During their confrontation, Auntie Chan arrives. A shoot out begins, during which time Auntie Chan gets shot, but stops when Bishop Masaki sees Leila Rose coming toward him during the storm. It is only when a flash of lightning strikes too late that Masaki sees Leila for the corpse she has become before she embraces him and they fall off the pier and into he roiling ocean. Byrd and Kahami flee the scene, as does Auntie Chan. The book ends with Byrd setting up his new offices in Auntie Chan's old storefront. Auntie Chan herself ends up stalled on the Pali Highway. She gets out of her car as a series of drumbeats begins.

In The Last Resort, Byrd is hired by Italian mafioso, Red Piano, to investigate who is trying to stall and sabotage the opening of his casino resort, the Seaside Sands. He figures the trouble is being caused by his Irish rival, Danny Quinn, at the competing casino resort, the Coral Reef. Byrd blows all of his advance from Piano on a new cherry red 1954 Corvette despite the bills he is accumulating at his home office. Heading out to check on him, Mo and Kahami pose as cousins and also get a room at Red Piano's hotel. After his meeting with Piano Byrd is captured by men of Quinn's, who tie him to a chair and try to coerce information about Piano and his job out of him. Byrd holds up against the abuse (mostly doled out by Quinn henchman Stew Mulligan) and remains tied up while Quinn and his boys decide better what to do with him. Byrd, trying to figure a way out of the mess, is aided by what appears to be the spirit of Leila Rose who unties him and directs him toward a window to jump out of. Byrd does and flees back to the Seaside Sands hotel. In the meanwhile, Mo is recognized by men of Quinn's who also kidnap the large detective and hold him until they can murder him and dispose of the corpse. While Kahami remains worried about Mo, Byrd assumes (re: hopes) that Mo can handle himself, as he doesn't see a feasible way to try to free the man. Meeting up with Quinn's thug, Mulligan, Byrd and the Irishman hit it off and begin to drink heavily, during which time Mulligan reveals that Quinn wants to set up a casino at his resort, despite gambling being illegal in Hawaii. After this, Byrd passes out and Mulligan returns him to his hotel before heading back to Quinn's establishment. On his way, Mulligan hears strange noises in the wood and is waylaid by a Hawaiian spirit who runs him off a cliff and into the ocean below. The next day he appears at Red Piano's hotel saying one word, "Spooks", before falling face down, dead. Quinn, in an uproar, storms into Piano's establishment and demands justice, though he is placated at first when they reveal that none of them killed Mulligan. Piano then reveals to Byrd that he has also greased local palms in order to get a casino running in his establishment and that he wants proof that Quinn is trying to harm his business so he will have the clout to muscle Quinn out of Hawaii altogether. Byrd also meets the Seaside Sands's bartender, an FBI agent named Chris Duque, who tells him that he is also investigating the criminality of the establishments and that Byrd's cooperation will be appreciated—whether Byrd actually wants to or not. During this time, Quinn's men are also trying to kill Mo, who has escaped the speedboat they were taking him out into the ocean with, along with one of his captor's weapons. He shoots the boat's driver through the head, then ducks as the out of control boat comes revving up the dock, banks off an outcropping of rock, and flies straight into Quinn's resort, blowing up one of the wings, and igniting the rest of the place. Quinn, furious about the attack he perceived to come from Red Piano, and about the fact that the Irish mafia just severed ties with him (by telephone), takes his men over to the Seaside Sands to have it out with the Italians. While a massive gun battle between the Irish and the Italians ensues, Byrd still wonders who was trying to sabotage the resorts. Mo indicates that it may have been Hawaiian spirits, but Byrd dismisses this thought. As they try to flee the hotel, however, Byrd, Kahami, and Mo are nearly attacked by a spirit and escape just in time. Upstairs, Piano's and Quinn's men face each other in a stand off while spirits materialize before them. Both men open fire out of fear, the bullets passing through the ghosts and into each opposing side instead. As Byrd, Kahami, and Mo flee the Seaside Sands, Anthony Antonio, the late Mr. Piano's right hand man, joins them as Byrd's cramped Corvette hightails it out of there. How Byrd will pay his mounting bills remains to be seen.

Beginning with Byrd and Kahami watching an airshow from the cliffs overlooking the beach (Byrd dodges around Kahami's questions of buying legitimate tickets) they watch as a squadron of WWII planes perform stunts in the air before being viciously attacked by—of all things—a Japanese Zero. While Byrd rushes down to see what's going on, we move to Mo Kalama poking his head into Anthony Antonio's new souvenir shop in Honolulu and checking to see if the reformed criminal really is as reformed as he seems. Byrd and Kamami end up going for drinks with several members of the Screaming Black Thunder, a rogue WWII air squadron made up of stunt pilots that fought for the Allies during WWII and now goes about the world in search of the supernatural. Byrd makes plans to meet with the group the following day at his offices to see if he can help them discover what's what regarding the Zero.