Daughters of the Dragon: Samurai Bullets collects the six-issue series written by Kimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray with art by Khari Evans, originally serialized between January and July 2006. (The series was relaunched in August 2006 as Heroes for Hire, featuring the same characters and writers but with a new artist.)

Marketed as a "sexy thriller," this story stars longtime Marvel supporting characters Misty Knight and Colleen Wing, who've incorporated as Nightwing (or Knightwing, the story can't seem to make up its mind) Restorations and are operating as bail bondswomen and private detectives. A fine premise: a sexy, street-level story. A shame, then, that the execution is neither sexy nor thrilling nor any good.

The writing is inconsistent: Colleen in one scene quotes Hemingway to show how bookish she is. Shortly thereafter, she doesn't know what the words "dehydrate" or "fiscal" mean. Pretty much everyone in this story comes across as an idiot, heroes and villains alike, and the humor, generally in the form of dull wit and bad one-liners, starts out unfunny and is frequently extended to the point of tastelessness. (There's a scene in which two male characters get in a fight, then talk out the problem, and end up falling asleep in the same room. They're found by our heroes in the morning. There's a panel of a picture being taken on a cellphone and Colleen saying, "This is priceless." That's amusing. But then the whole page continues riffing on it. "What have you boys been up to?" "You look awfully cozy." "By the look of this room I would have to take a guess that interspecies sex was somehow involved.") I usually read comics quickly, but it took me three false starts to actually get into this book and even then I had to read it in bits over several days to get through it. The last comic I found so unpalatable was the interminable second volume of Claremont's X-Treme X-Men.

The art is bad, too. Khari Evans has an odd style that is detailed yet caricaturish, extremely sexualized and yet just plain ugly, and he seems to have special trouble with lips. Further, given that we're dealing with martial artists: the combat poses often look awkward and limp rather than graceful or powerful, and occasionally the poses look painful, as in a scene in which Colleen is peering into a window. In any event, rarely is a comic featuring two gorgeous, scantily-clad women so visually unappealing.

This book has almost nothing to recommend it. It is not fun or funny, not sexy or thrilling or smart or even just a good diversion. By all accounts, the comic Jonah Hex by the same writers is very good, so I don't know what happened here, but for whatever reason, this one is just plain bad, and to be avoided. ( )