You say you want to be a life coach, a personal assistant, a yoga guru, a personal trainer or come up with a religion you can sell through infomercials, this is the place. But remember as L.A. native Jack Webb intoned on Dragnet, "Son, no matter how you slice that, that's dangerous." In that regard, Angeltown: The Nate Hollis Investigations is a bit of a hybrid. The Moonstone edition reprints the Angeltown mini-series I did for Vertigo a few years back. The plot concerns this cool L.A. private eye Nate Hollis (who like Chandler's Philip Marlowe, used to be an investigator for the district attorney) looking for a super star pro basketball player, a "baller," who may or may not have just killed his ex-wife for publishing a tell-all book. The story riffs on the notion of celebrity and all that glitters beneath the surface in La-La Land. To sweeten the pot, and this is the hybrid part, I've penned two new short prose stories, "Hollywood Killer" and "King Cow" (ya gotta read it to appreciate the title… ha) though accompanied with illustrations, for this edition also featuring Hollis.

I wonder though -- is there much of an overlap between the crime and mystery prose reader and the crime comics audience? Not sure, but I do know some mystery-themed bookstores are starting to carry crime and mystery graphic novels.

Will Dennis, the Vertigo crime line series editor, and editor on the original Angeltown, and I got to talking about this via emails and I recalled this statistic that in new York City, there had been several shooting of black undercover cops by on duty white policeman, but never the other way around. Using these real life situations as the volatile grist, Cowboys is about a tough black undercover detective, Deke Kotto, the kind of cat who doesn't mind bending a few rules and breaking a few heads to get the job done, and Tim Brady, a straight-laced FBI agent, infiltrate a case from different ends. Their respective agencies are not communicating with each other and these two are on a collision course as they lose sight of their missions. Physically and psychologically both men undergo transformations; Kotto's marriage is already rocky, given his infidelities, but he is devoted to his handicapped son. While Brady drifts further and further from his wife and two kids in suburbia as he's seduced by the life he pretends he's part of in the story.

As comics are a visual medium, I can't praise enough the artwork of Brian Hurtt who brought Cowboys to life on the page. No offense to the superhero artists, but Brian expertly depicts real people and real objects, interiors and buildings like nobody else. People are going to be mighty impressed with what he's done on this book.

Turns out too, rather coincidentally, Cowboys and Angeltown: The Nate Hollis Investigations will both drop this July.

And there you have it readers. Gary & Co. will see you on Sunset Boulevard -- hey, has that title been used for a noir yet!? -- this weekend!