When private dick Jack McKinnick finds himself summoned by the eccentric and creepy billionaire Roderick Ottermeir to track down an errant wife, little does he realize that he is about to be thrust into a flamboyant world of deceit and depravity, and that his search will lead him to the Hooternanny--the baddest club in a very bad town!
Wittily written and illustrated in glorious detail by comics veteran Ernie Colón, Strip Search is a sexy and violent trip into a twilight world where the very rich are sick, sadistic bastards who do as they please, and the rest survive by their wits--or by even less savory methods!
A private investigator, Jack McKinick, is hired to track down a billionaire's "wife" and ends up in some very seedy situations. The story begins with extremely muscular Jack getting dressed to go to meet Roderick Ottermer. On the bed in the room is a nude woman, and as he is leaving, she asks Jack if they have a future together, and just like that, they're through.
Ottermer lives in a castle like palace guarded by some huge nude demon statutes. When Jack walks in he spots three people in the room. Ottermer, and two nude people one male one female. The nude people leave the room, and later the girl returns in a revealing transparent dress (top is transparent). Jack's hired and told to start looking for the missing "wife," Joyce, where she hangs out, in strip clubs.
Jack hurriedly strolls through several strip clubs until he finds one where a woman, a very skeletal woman, is being beaten for refusing to go out and dance. Jack intervenes, takes out the woman ("ugliest . . . dog I've ever seen") beating skeleton girl and is attacked by all the other nude women at the club, who think that he is the "Gamesman." There are definitely some ugly woman in this here book (and some pretty ones to).
When the fight's stopped on account that they find out he isn't the Gamesman, Joyce shows up with a gun. Jack ignores the woman with the gun, and takes skeletal girl away from the strip club and gives her some money. He returns and learns that Joyce's "husband" is the Gamesman and that he likes to mutilate her and force tattoos onto her. The Gamesman would track Joyce down in the city, grab her in broad daylight, throw her into his car and then head back to his home. Once there he would inject Joyce with drugs, and the games would be on. There's another 22 pages left, and I don't want to give everything away.
Overall, the book is well-drawn, not pretty, but well-drawn just the same. The story is an interesting one, though a little thin. The book contains rape/nc/humiliation/she-males/etc. Quite a violent little book, definitely not for the weak of heart.
Very odd but at least NOTHING is predictable in this grotesquely dark and omni-filthy tragicomedy. You'll have absolutely no idea where the story is going for any more than a few pages at a time!
The art is outstanding- especially his ability to draw different scenes and characters with proportional delicacy and roughness.