Hazard: A Crucible Comics Novel

by Robert Fitzgerald, Kira Vavold, Rick Fitzgerald

A Crucible Comics Universe NovelBy Robert Fitzgerald

Some scars never heal. Some cities never sleep. And some heroes never stop bleeding.

Avery Maddox was just a kid when her little sister vanished into the back of a white van on a sun-washed Los Angeles street. Six years later, Avery’s still searching—by day, a worn-down call center rep; by night, the vigilante known only as Hazard. She stalks the broken alleys of Pico-Union, waging a one-woman war against traffickers, dealers, and ghosts that wear human faces.

When her hunt collides with a rising criminal empire led by the ruthless Lobo, Avery finds herself trapped between the city’s underbelly and a new a privatized meta-human police force backed by ARGUS Integrated Solutions.
If the streets don’t kill her, the system will.

But Avery doesn’t stop.
She can’t.
Because somewhere out there, Elena’s still waiting—and Hazard was born to find her.

Perfect for fans of gritty street-level hero fiction like Jessica Jones, The Punisher, and The Dark Knight, Hazard is the first Crucible Comics Universe novel—a raw, human story about trauma, justice, and what happens when ordinary people refuse to stay broken.

209 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 27, 2025

About the author

Until his death in 1985, Robert Stuart Fitzgerald was Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory Emeritus at Harvard University. He was a member of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 1984 he was named the poet of the Library of Congress. He published four volumes of his own poetry, and translations, with Dudley Fitts, of Alcestis, Antigone, and Oedipus Rex, in addition to his Illiad, Aeneid, and Oedipus at Colonus.