Gun Honey Doubles Down (Free Comic Book Day 2026)

 By Mark Rodriguez

So this is another new series I discovered thanks to Free Comic Book Day. That's one of the benefits of FCBD, you not only get previews of series you already know and heard of, you also discover things you never seen before. Something about the cover made me pick this up, though I'm not sure what. The comic promises thrills and suspense akin to Mission Impossible, John Wick and James Bond. Let's check it out.

 

The story opens with Joanna Tan visiting her friend Olga, who answers the door while aiming a gun at her face. She lowers her weapon once she sees it's her friend. Joanna asks if her father is home. Olga says he hasn't 'been home' since her brother died. He might live, eat and sleep there but he hasn't been home. Joanna says this is important, and Olga comments that it always is.

Joanna fills her in on the whole story. There was an assassination plot in Paris, where her partner was manipulated into killing his own boss, the director of National Intelligence. He tried to kill her, but Joanna stopped him in time. The Russian agent Kozlov was captured and sent back to Moscow where he will be questioned by Dmitri Vulapin. The D.N.I made an offer to Joanna. She'll get ten million dollars to have a gun in that room once Kozlov gets there.

 

Olga says Joanna will never be able to get to Vulapin. Joanna says he's a man like anybody else and a bullet to the right place will take him down all the same. Olga says he's protected by and army and his place is the Kremlin. Joanna says a thousand people enter and leave that building every day, including Olga's father. Olga says he works remote now, but Joanna says he would still know ways in and out.

Later on, Joanna is having lunch with some women that will get her everything she needs. Sometime afterwards, Joanna is applying make up as part of a disguise. Olga informs her they will search her at two check points and confiscate anything metal they might find. Joanna asks if this applies even if she's part of the cleaning crew. Olga says yes and adds that they get all their equipment inside. Joanna asks what they do if the equipment breaks.

Joanna goes disguised as a repair person and is told of a maintenance tunnel that leads to a repair shop two stories beneath street level. Her tools will still be inspected but not confiscated. After the checkpoint, Joanna heads towards the maintenance area. One of the workers asks her if she's there to fix the heaters and she plays along. Once alone, Joanna opens her toolbox. While the tools were inspected, the actual toolbox itself was not. She has hidden the required pieces to assemble a gun hidden in separate compartments within the box. She had also hidden bullets within the toolbox's handle.

Joanna will also need a passkey to get farther, but she got that covered. She seduces the cleaning lady and after some fun in the bathroom, she gets her passkey and her uniform. Now disguised as the cleaning lady, she goes into the room where Kozlov will be in and pulls the gun out of her water bucket. She plants the under the meeting table and activates a detonator. The toolbox, back in the maintenance area, explodes.

One of the guards reacts to the explosion. Joanna says something blew up in the maintenance room and she was ordered back. The guard asks why they would need her. Joanna says she has to clean up the mess, unless he wants to do it. He lets her go. Outside, Joanna removes her wig as she gets away.

Later on Joanna is done with her shower and she tells Olga that by now security has doubled in the maintenance tunnel. However by now, they're pretty much closing down all the barn doors after the horse is already long gone. Olga asks about the gun. Joanna says it's where it's supposed to be, and Kozlov will be free to use it. Whether or not he succeeds isn't up to her, she was only to supply the gun. Olga says they'll kill him and Joanna says he knows they were going to kill him anyways. This is his one chance to fight back.

Elsewhere, the captured agent, Anton, is brought in to meet with Vulapin by his men. Anton gets sit down and Vulapin tells his men to back off. Vulapin asks him what happened in France since he is not known for being incompetent. Antos reached under the table and finds the gun, exactly where it was supposed to be. When asked for an explanation, Anton explains why shooting the Russian dictator in the head!

 

Preview Pages of Issue 1-

The issue starts with Joanna diving underwater as she monologues that she did her job, but it wasn't done right. Now she is paid another ten million to try again, and she foolishly agrees. In a flashback to she explains to Olga that the man that Anton shot was a double. The double will die soon, but the real Vulapin is out there somewhere in hiding. When he returns, he will go after everyone connected to the attack, including Joanna and Olga. Olga asks why she's involved and Joanna reminded her that she got her the plans to help her into the Kremlin.

Joanna sneaks into Vuladin's mansion through a hidden underwater passage. She narrates that the reason she took this job was to save Olga's life. As she gets inside, her slips on a shirt to hide her swimsuit and her gun as one of the men see her. The man says the 'big man' is ready for massage and asks if he's seen her before.

A flashbacks shows that Joanna and a friend of her were able to pinpoint the location of two other doubles and their locations in the last 24 hours. They were able to find three locations, two are doubles and one is the real Dmitri Vulapin.

As the man takes Joanna to the room, he asks what she tells her mother when she reports there. She says she tells her she's doing housekeeping. The man asks if she thinks she would believe that. Joanna says it's what she told her 20 years ago. 

Back to the flashback, Joanna asks how she can tell if she found the real Vulapin. The woman says the real one doesn't have any molars on the left side of his mouth, but his doubles could have had their extracted to match. He does have a rare genetic condition that she can verify if she can get a blood or skin sample. Sh will be given a field test unit the size of a poker chip. It will take 40 seconds to get a reading. Joanna enters the room and the man inside looks up at her. He tells the guard to leave, anxious for the massage to begin, now knowing Joanna's plans.

My Thoughts-

So this is my first time encountering Joanna Tan, and we get a preface that explains that not only is this her first Free Comic Book Day appearance, it's her first appearance in two years. So far it's a pretty intense thriller as she tries to sneak into a place that is impossible to get to and get close to someone that is pretty much untouchable. 

I'm enjoying the stealth and such so far and Joanna is a master of disguise. I was only confused by the other women she was working with that weren't Olga and wish some names were mentioned. In an earlier scene where she is eating with some women, one of them mentions having to 'get Evie and Rosaline back to New York' and as a new reader, I have no idea who they are. For all I know the other woman helping Joanna locate the real Vuladin could have been either Evie or Rosaline.

 

The main story sets up this new comic series, and you also get a 6 page black and white preview of the first issue coming in June. I'll have to learn more about Joanna, but seeing that she took this second mission to save Olga's life, it's clear she's not in this just for the money or the thrill. 

The art is pretty cool, and while I guess I shouldn't be 100% surprised based on the cover, there is slight nudity here and there. It's what one would call 'tasteful nudity' but I still wouldn't let younger readers get their hand on this one. When I got this book at Richmond Comix, there were people handing out whichever comics the people in line asked for. They would recommend which ones were good for the kids, and they obviously told them to pass on this one. But then again, I'm sure the cover also helps. The language doesn't hold back either. None of the 'four-letter words' are censored.

We'll see what happens with Joanna Tan and her dangerous mission. I added this one the Pull Box so we'll check it out.