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The World of Eight Way Bandits

The future is tomorrow… 7 years from now… or just another day around the corner.

The cutting edge in science, the first waves of every new technology, the leading edge in avant-garde computer software, the blinding edge of new medicines and cures – all of it developed and owned by super corporations.   Patent law and intellectual property law has given them sole ownership of their creations.   That also includes humans whose genetic structure was created by corporate research.   These “new humans” or “ Eightmen” are slaves to the holders of the patents on their unique genes.

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One of these Eightmen is a man named Bounyoy Pfau, who prefers to be called “ Boy.”   Boy is a slave to MegaGen, which holds that patent on his genetic makeup.   Physically, Boy is 10 times faster, stronger, and more intelligent than even the most physically and mentally gifted normal humans.   With some limitations, he can also slowly alter his physical appearance by skin color, weight, height, etc.

MegaGen hired Boy out to The Gramercy Agency.   Gramercy is a Q company – essentially a private police agency that specializes in hunting and finding humans.   Boy is the best QMan (“Q” as in quarry) – a kind of bounty hunter.

The opposite of the law-abiding Q-company is the criminal “ bandit house.”   Bandit houses are well-financed criminal organizations that employ the best-trained thieves, soldiers-of-fortune, mercenaries, assassins, espionage agents, and liars.   They are totally amoral, and through theft and murder are the best providers of the classified information and new science, technology, and weapons on the black markets in the world.

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Eight Way Bandits the comic books finds Boy becoming something of a double agent, who infiltrates a bandit house to capture the leader, Auguste Carlos Winter, but Boy falls in love with Winter’s daughter, Anisha, who has multiple personalities – one of them a killer known as The Rose.   Deception becomes Boy’s life, doing whatever it takes to attain the most dangerous prize he’s ever had his eye on, a woman whose love will cost him his freedom and turn him into bandit.   Anisha’s most murderous personality, the Rose Assassin, puts everything on the line, all her training, and fealty to her family for the love of a man – a love she cannot understand.   He finds himself at odds with his profession, and she finds herself assisting him on the odd occasion.   They won’t die a romantic death like the original star-crossed lovers, but they may just make sure everyone else dies.

8 Way Bandits mixes Romeo and Juliet, Blade Runner, Akira, and Frank Miller’s Daredevil in a gumbo of bullets, blades, and two-faced suckers.

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EIGHT WAY BANDITS #1

The introduction issue:   The Rose recruits for her father’s new school of assassins.   Boy finds himself at odds with his employers when a capture gets out of hand.

WRITERS: The Hustle Bros.

PENCILS: Federico Zumel

INKS: Jinks Hustle

LETTERS: Digi-CAPS

COVER: Federico Zumel (design) and Bob McLeod (art and colors)

Visit http://www.negromancer.com for more on Eight Way Bandits #1 and future issues.