Body Bags

Loving father and daughter

"A despicable man-monster is visited by his slut of a daughter. They spend 'quality' time together stabbing and shooting despicable people. Ugly and violent, this technically well drawn and written comic is moral garbage."
—Review by Michael V., circa 1996 - from the back cover of the Father's Day trade paperback

Body Bags is a comic book by Jason Pearson and indie publisher 12 Gauge Comics. It's set in Twenty Minutes Into the Future Georgia, in the city of Terminus. Mack "Clownface" Delgado and Iran "Pops" Sekula are Body Baggers - government-sanctioned "bounty officials" who capture or more often kill individuals with bounties on their heads. The bounties can apparently be posted by the government or by other citizens. Clownface and Pops are in the middle of a violent feud with another Body Bagger when Clownface's daughter Panda shows up on his doorstep unannounced and uninvited. Panda wants to be a Body Bagger just like her dad. Mack has other ideas, and Pops just wants them to get along.

So far one volume has been published jointly by 12-Gauge and Image in trade paperback form, as well as two "one-shot" paperbacks - the aptly-named Body Bags One-Shot and Body Bags: 3 The Hard Way. Unusually for such a short-running series, a set of Clownface and Panda action figures have also been produced.

Tropes used in Body Bags include:

Absurdly Sharp Blade: Mack's knives can cut through just about anything.
Action Girl: Panda.
Badass: Clownface and the Wolf Spiders.
Badass Family: Clownface, Panda and Pops, even though Pops isn't technically family. Probably Panda's mother, considering that she was a police inspector, but this is never seen on-panel.
Badass Grandpa: Iran "Pops" Sekula.
Badass Mustache: Mack has one of these.
Big Breasts, Big Deal: Panda Delgado is a Type 3 with a little of Type 4. She's petite with huge breasts and wears tight, revealing outfits. But when Junior Scorcese grabs her buttocks and comments on how "all that fat went to your boobs", she beats seven shades of shit out of him.
Bounty Hunter: The protagonists engage in both the "bring 'em back alive" and "dead or alive" variants of bounty hunting.
Camp Gay: Cisco, a large, obese bounty official with a taste for extremely flamboyant clothes. Clownface accuses him of being a woman — it's not clear whether this is true or not.
Cool Car: Mack's massive retro car, "Da Boss." It's described as "a killing machine on wheels," and is the focus of the third collection, 3 The Hard Way.
Daddy's Girl: Panda to Mack, but only after they almost kill each other.
Death Glare: Mack and Panda Delgado do this right before an off-panel ass beating, or when they are especially angry and plan to do something violent. Their angry green eyes fill up a panel when this happens.
Dirty Old Man: The airport preacher. He promises Panda salvation in return for a blow job in the bathroom. Panda predictably declines. She then presumably beats his ass off-panel.
Good Scars, Evil Scars: Both Pops and Mack sport several scars on their faces and bodies, most likely the result of Janus' failed attempt to kill them before the beginning of the first book.
Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Mack with his knives and fists, Panda with her guns.
Heroic Sacrifice: Pops
Hollywood Cyborg: Black Angus, Janus, the airport preacher, and the Wolf Spiders.
Incurable Cough of Death: Incurable Blood From The Cybernetic Skullcap, in this case, for Pops.
Infant Immortality: Averted. See Complete Monster, above.
Knife Nut: Clownface.

Pops: Mack learned how to throw a knife at a velocity that makes its impact like a mortar round. He's the only one on earth who has that ability. You don't need a gun when you can do that.

Little Miss Badass: Panda. She's little, has a deadeye aim, and loves guns.
Mini-Dress of Power: Panda's Body Bagger "costume" is a cheerleader outfit with a pleated skirt that's almost too short to qualify as such.
Missing Mom: Panda's mom dies from breast cancer, which is why she travels to Terminus to live with Mack.
Ms. Fanservice: Panda. She's only 14 (and a half!), but she sports a serious pair of breasts and wears a super-short cheerleader skirt and skintight sweater set. The skirt is so short the reader gets panty shots when she's standing still.
Panty Shot: See Ms. Fanservice, above.
Shout-Out: The two biggest crime families in Terminus are the Tarentinos and the Scorceses. When Panda gets off the plane at Terminus International Airport, other disembarking passengers include Hellboy, Abe Sapien (in disguise) and Dwight, Miko and Gail from Sin City. Mack Delgado might be a reference to Mack The Knife from The Threepenny Opera, considering that he's a Knife Nut.
Sociopathic Hero: Clownface and Pops just barely qualify. See Complete Monster, above.
Small Girl, Big Gun: Panda usually wields a Glock, but she uses a 12-gauge shotgun near the end of the first trade paperback, and multiple pin-ups and covers show her carrying an MG3 machine gun, among other large firearms.
Wolverine Claws: Janus has them after his cybernetic reconstruction.

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