Many months have gone by since the end of the last Hawaiian Dick miniseries, and the new mini had been resolicited at least once and delayed more than that, and I have to admit, I was starting to think we might never see it. Worse than that, I was starting to think that when it finally came out, whatever reasons for the delays would be evident in the series, and I wouldn't re-connect with the book the way I had with the first one. Then Last Resort comes out and it is, if anything, even better than the first series, taking advantage of a new setting within Hawaii and the character development done in the first miniseries while remaining accessible. It also looks just as beautiful as I'd remembered, with Griffin handling all the art chores on this issue before he and Nick Derington start splitting the art duties with the next issue. Hawaiian Dick is back, baby, and it's as good as you remember it being.
Moore sets his story this time in a pair of dueling resorts, each one owned by a different faction of organized crime. It's a great setting, and the addition of ghosts with a mysterious agenda gives it the same touch of the exotic and weird that the Night Marchers and the mysterious zombies of the first miniseries provided. Moore's storytelling is to be commended for many reasons, but what strikes me most here is how he's able to get across a pretty significant amount of information in a relatively small space. The story calls upon him to introduce a number of characters and their conflicts while reintroducing his protagonists and offering up a couple of exciting scenes, and his script does just that.
One of the things that is different about Last Resort from the previous Hawaiian Dick miniseries is that instead of meeting new characters, we're revisiting old friends. It's great seeing the cynical and yet pretty joyful Byrd again, and I continue to enjoy the chemistry that he shares with Mo and Princess Kahami. There's some great dialogue between these characters, and I especially loved Kahami and Mo's exchange about their "cover" at the hotel, which gives an insight into their role in the series as well as their characters. For all the real danger that the cases offer to Mo, Kahami and Byrd, they treat the investigations as kind of fun, and that fun carries over to the reader as well.
There are any number of great moments in this issue. Both Red Piano and Danny Quinn are colorful, interesting mobster characters, and their "recruitment" meetings with Byrd are filled with entertaining dialogue. Then there's the ghosts and the old man who warns Byrd about them, leading the reader to start wondering what their goals are, and how it ties into the resort war brewing between the Italians and the Irish. Moore's strength is snappy dialogue and chemistry between the characters, but he also writes some great, quick action scenes that give a sense of the danger present in the story.
Of course, one can't talk about Hawaiian Dick without mentioning the art, which earned Steven Griffin a couple of big award nominations. The coloring style and the detail put into the backgrounds, the clothes and other important elements of the art result in a look that seems like a watercolor painted book, but the art also has a naturalistic style that keeps it from becoming as distant and stiff as painted work can sometimes seem. Griffin's color palette really brings the sunlit world of Hawaii to life, with some stunning and gorgeous pages, like the one that sees Byrd driving down the coastline, but he is also perfectly capable with the noir touches, like the opening page in Piano's office or the moody scene where we see the first ghost.
