Set five years after a mega-quake destroys Los Angeles, Dark Horse’s new four-issue miniseries “The Big Shakedown” follows private detective Ester Blanco as a missing-daughter case drags her into cults and conspiracies. Written by Jordan Blum and Tim Seeley wi
Los Angeles doesn’t just fall in Dark Horse’s latest comic pitch—it gets left behind.
Five years after a mega-quake left the city in ruins. a population count that’s no longer complete defines the landscape. Most people are gone—perished or fled—and those who remain tend to be the kind who won’t or can’t leave. Among them is private detective Ester Blanco. a onetime private eye who’s desperate to get out to “greener pastures. ” even if she hasn’t found a way.
Her opening break comes through a desperate father who hires her to find his missing daughter. The problem is the problem Los Angeles can’t answer: how do you find someone who disappeared in a city where a third of the population is already missing?. That question funnels Ester into a sinister underworld of cults and conspiracies—one that threatens to swallow the last thin layer of order in the City of Angels.
“The Big Shakedown” is built for the kind of detective story that never trusts its own answers. Jordan Blum and Tim Seeley write the four-issue miniseries. Scott Koblish provides the art, with Hi-Fi handling coloring and Nate Piekos lettering. Blum—who described the project as a way to bring a “unique and original spin” to the genre—said. “LA noir has a long. rich history and we wanted to do a unique and original spin on the detective thriller. so we set it in the aftermath of every Angeleno’s greatest fear… THE BIG ONE.”.
Issue #1, titled “The Big Shakedown #1,” arrives in comic shops on September 16, and fans can pre-order their copy now.
The creative team behind the series brings a mix of comedic animation experience, superhero-world storytelling, and deep comic-industry craft. Blum wrote episodes of “American Dad!” and “Community. ” and showran the stop-motion Hulu series “M.O.D.O.K.” In the comics realm. he. Patton Oswalt. and Scott Hepburn co-created the series “Minor Threats. ” which depicts the quest of a group of low-level costumed criminals to kill their city’s deadliest super-menace; it’s set to be adapted by Netflix. Seeley co-created the comic series “Hack/Slash” and “Revival;” the latter was recently adapted for TV by SyFy. He currently writes “X-Force” for Marvel. Koblish has penciled and inked dozens of titles for Marvel and DC. and his cover for “Deadpool #27” holds a Guinness World Record for Most Characters Depicted on a Single Comic Book Cover.
Hi-Fi is a coloring studio founded by Brian Miller and Kristy Miller; they’ve colored books for almost every publisher in comics. Nate Piekos is a twenty-year veteran of the comic book industry and penned “The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering.” Dark Horse Comics was founded in Oregon in 1986. making it one of the longest-running independent publishers in comics. Among their most notable publications are “Usagi Yojimbo,” “Sin City,” “300,” “Hellboy,” and “The Umbrella Academy.”.
For now, the case is all that matters—and Los Angeles has already proven it doesn’t care who’s searching.
The Big Shakedown Dark Horse Comics Ester Blanco noir sci-fi comic book miniseries Jordan Blum Tim Seeley Scott Koblish Hi-Fi Nate Piekos Los Angeles mega-quake cults and conspiracies