In the future (sometime after 2000), Earth is on the way to descending into complete chaos. The planet is a mess ecologically--the ozone layer is almost gone, the oceans (which which the West Coast fell into years ago) are toxic, and the air pollution brings acid rain that further erodes the dying planet.
The colonization of Mars and Venus in the early 2000s has basically left planet Earth as a giant slum. Those who could afford it left Earth and brought the high-paying jobs with them. Those born on earth have very limited options.
Cloning has also been possible for years, and the rich can pay for immortality through transplanting their brains into a new body. Clones are grown from human DNA and are fully-functioning humans whose brains are removed and discarded when they become the body of a new host. There are some humans who cannot genetically have their brains transplanted (known as Type 13s), and for the rich ones, immortality comes through a cocktail of drugs that keeps them living in their decaying and disease-ridden bodies.
Earth also faced an invasion years earlier was when a parasitic race called the “Banshees” arrived on the planet and infected humanity like a plague. The spore-like creatures inhabit and take over human bodies, Banshees earned their names because of the way they wail when they are discovered. It is believed that the Banshee invasion was defeated.
During the invasion an emancipated clone named Blood and his human partner Jennie (aka Guts) hunted down Banshees. Blood had a knack for sniffing them out. He also had a knack for killing.
Some time after the Banshees were defeated, Blood was institutionalized. Jennie became a private investigator, and has had one bad job after another.
But the Banshees have returned to Earth, and now they want to use the clone bodies to take them to other planets Earth has colonized. Jennie gets the Captain of the Civil Peacekeeing Force to let Blood out, so the two of them can find and eliminate the Banshees. As the second issue wraps up, the Banshees have boarded a ship headed to Jupiter, and Blood and Jennie (Guts) decide they must go after them.
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The Barry Blair Library from Outland Entertainment releases the definitive collection of Barry Blair‘s comics in digital format, including 300 issues and over 6000 pages of content collected from over a half-dozen publishers that Barry worked with in the 1980’s and 90’s.
