Comic Book / Daisy Kutter

A four issue comic by Kazu Kibuishi originally published through Viper Comics in 2004 before being collected in omnibus format, Daisy Kutter: The Last Train follows the adventures of the eponymous Retired Outlaw heroine as she takes a commission for One Last Job that throws her for a loop.

Daisy Kutter is a retired bank robber and legendary gunfighter who has quit the banditry business to open a dry goods store in the quiet frontier town of Middleton. She's also bored out of her mind. Sheriff Tom McKay, her ex-boyfriend and ex-partner-in-crime, spends his days trying to recruit her to join him on the other side of the law — but Daisy bristles at the thought of working under the institution she used to rebel against.

When Daisy loses everything she owns in a high-stakes poker tournament, she is offered a job by the stranger who cleans her out at the table. That stranger turns out to be J. C. Winters, security magnate, and he wants to hire her to rob his train. The catch? Winters believes his vaunted robotic security system can stop any robber in their tracks, and he wants to pit it against the notorious Daisy Kutter to prove it. If she succeeds in robbing the train, she'll win back the store and return to her new life on the straight and narrow some 350,000 lugs richer than before. But there's something sketchy about the job Daisy can't quite put her finger on... at least, not until she's already onboard.

All four issues are available to read on Kibuishi's Bolt City Productions website. A second entry in the Daisy Kutter canon (a Weird West short comic called Daisy Kutter: Phantoms) was published later in Volume 6 of the Flight (2004) graphic novel anthology series, which is edited by Kibuishi.

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The Daisy Kutter comics contain example of:

Daisy Kutter: The Last Train

• Absurdly High-Stakes Game: Daisy is goaded into betting her general store against Mr. Winters' hand during Poker Night at Shelly's Tavern. She loses.
• After-Action Healing Drama: While being hunted by Winters' oversized security mecha with Gatling guns for arms, Daisy has to break to treat Tom's bullet wounds.
• Ambiguous Time Period: The setting is clearly meant to evoke the Old West or at least a Steampunk/ Cattle Punk version of it, but anachronistic technologies like radio sets, personal telephones, and holograms intermingle with more period-appropriate set pieces like steam trains, saloons, horse barns, a "cat house," and one-on-one Showdown at High Noon gun battles.
• Anachronistic Soundtrack: Waiting out the rain at Daisy's place, Tom tunes the radio to a Brazilian Jazz station that starts playing "Girl from Ipanema" — the song wasn't written until 1962.
• Arm Cannon: The security android on the train has a powerful, multi-function firearm built into it's forearm.
• Attack Drone: Winters forces Daisy to fight his "remote controlled attack mecha" in Needles, but it turns out not to be remote controlled: Winters was piloting it the whole time.
• Badass Longcoat: Daisy wears a long duster when she takes the train job, and keeps it up until she has to use it to make bandages in Chapter 4.
• Blown Across the Room: Daisy's massive shotgun/ rifle is capable of launching the android security guard through the back of the train.
• Book Ends: Chapter 1 begins with Daisy getting bored and doing target practice with a toy gun in her empty General Store before heading to a Poker tournament with Tom. Chapter 4 ends the same way, with the difference being that Daisy is now the Sheriff, and she's messing around with a toy gun in her new office.
• Cattle Punk: The wild west with androids, holograms, and steampunk mini-mechas.
• Character Title: Titled after the main character, Daisy Kutter.
• Fantastic Racism: Daisy professes that she "doesn't work with machines" and offers up several choice insults to Morris' robot partner Bloom, but she ends up working with Bloom and Morris on Mr. Winters' job.
• Fictional Currency: "Lugs" are the standard currency of Daisy's world.
• Fingore: When Morris tries to shoot the security android point blank, the android's faceplates disassemble and clamp down on Morris' gun hand, crushing it.
• From Dress to Dressing: The Badass Longcoat Daisy wears to Needleton gets turned into a bandage for Tom's bullet wounds. She doesn't seem to know what she's doing when it comes to first aid, so Tom has to prompt her to make it into bandages.
• Girls with Guns: Daisy is a typical gunslinger hero — a spectacular shot with pistols, able to hold her own against much better armed opponents, and her signature weapon is four foot long rifle she calls "shotgun."
• Gun Twirling: Before heading out to Poker Night, Daisy twirls and holsters her pistol in excitement.
• The Gunslinger: Protagonist Daisy Kutter, a crack shot with everything from toy guns to pistols, rifles, and her custom "shotgun."
• I Can't Feel My Legs!: Tom is shot in the back by Winters' huge security mecha. When Daisy tries to treat his wounds he tells her he can't feel his legs, and she responds that he's just in shock. At the end of the story, Tom is in a wheelchair with a doctor's prognosis that he'll never walk again. The narration explicitly states "so that was the summer Tom lost the ability to walk."
• Law of Inverse Recoil: Zig-Zagged depending on who's using Daisy's massive "shotgun" and when they use it:
  • When Tom uses Daisy's customer "shotgun" rifle against the security android, Tom winds up knocked off his feet.
  • When Daisy uses it against the security android, she braces the butt of the rifle against the bulkhead behind her to avoid the same fate — the bulkhead ends up dented, but the android ends up blown out the back end of the train.
  • When Daisy is down to her last shell and stuck in a standoff against Mr. Winters' hulking, armored security mecha, she braces the shotgun against the crook of her elbow and suffers no ill effects. She does slide a few feet backwards in the dirt, but without breaking her stance or dislocating her arm.
• Lawman Gone Bad: Inverted — Tom is a Retired Outlaw who took up a job as the Sheriff of Middleton when he went straight. He's also made it his mission to get Daisy, his former partner-in-crime, to join the force now that she's given up her life of crime. By the end of the series, Tom is forced into quasi-retirement by his injury and Daisy has taken over his post as Sheriff.
• Mini-Mecha: Mr. Winters is directly piloting the heavy mecha that attacks Daisy and Tom in the town of Needles. Winters announces over the mecha's speaker system that the device is the world's first "Remote-Controlled Heavy Artillery Mech," and that he is piloting it "from a safe distance," but Tom is able to discern that Winters is inside the machine and therefore vulnerable to attack.
• Misidentified Weapons: Daisy's signature gun is a custom, 4-foot-long rifle she calls a "shotgun." It fires huge cartridges she calls "shells" that pack an explosive punch, but with the precision and range of a sniper rifle.
• One Bullet Left: After the shootout on the train, Daisy has one shell left for her massive custom "shotgun."
  Tom: Shoot that bastard in the face then get back here before I bleed to death.
  Daisy: Tom, I only have one more shell.
  Tom: That's all you need.
• One Last Job: Although she initially refuses Morris and Bloom's offer of "one last job," claiming to have quit the business, she accepts after Mr. Winters cleans her out at Poker Night.
• Outfit Decoy: Daisy winds up shooting at the hat the security android on the train propped up on a stick.
• Outlaw Couple: Before their "retirement" and breakup, Daisy and Tom were outlaws and lovers.
• Punny Name: Daisy Kutter, aka "daisy cutter", a type of bomb designed to detonate at or above ground level so as to maximize collateral damage to the surrounding area and personnel.
• Retired Outlaw: Both Daisy and Tom have retired from their life of crime — Tom became a sheriff and seems pretty content with his lot in life, while Daisy opened a general store and is bored out of her mind.
• Shout-Out:
  • Daisy calls Bloom the android "Tin Man" in Chapter 2.
  • Daisy calls the security android on the train "Mr. Roboto" in Chapter 3.
• Showdown at High Noon: The final confrontation between Daisy and Mr. Winters happens in Needleton's main drag, just as the clocktower reads noon and tumbleweeds blow past.
• A Simple Plan: Discussed — when Morris expressed concern over Daisy's rather straightforward train robbery plan, she brushes off his doubt by telling him things always get more complicated in practice.
  Morris: Wait a minute. That's it?!
  Daisy: What did you expect?
  Moris: I just wasn't expecting it to be so... simple.
  Daisy: A simple plan is best. You can count on it getting complicated in the end.
  Moris: Yes, but you... you're considered by many to be the best strategist outside the military. Generals study your heists like they were textbooks. I've waited a long time to see how you work, to pick your brain... and you present us... with this!
  *cut to a stick-figure drawing of a three step plan, where step three is Daisy, Morris, and Bloom standing on a mountain of cash*
• Small Girl, Big Gun: Downplayed — Daisy is of average height, but her custom "shotgun" is a four-foot-long rifle.
• Terrible Artist: The "plan" Daisy draws out to rob the train includes a lot of stick figures.
• Those Two Guys: Morris and Bloom, the would-be train-robbers hired by J.C. Winters to work with Daisy to attack a train outfitted with his new security system. Morris is a human, and Bloom is his robotic partner in crime.
• Thriller on the Express: Issue 3 follows Daisy, Morris, and Bloom as they plan and conduct their Train Job. It includes the tense set-piece battle with the security android, dramatic running on top of the train, and Morris getting thrown out a window (presumably to his death in the ravine below).
• Train Job: J. C. Winters the security magnate hires Morris, Bloom, and Daisy to rob his train in order to test out his new anti-bandit security androids.

Daisy Kutter: Phantoms

• Genre Shift: From Cattle Punk to Weird West.
• Gonk: The minor character Archibald is drawn with massive ears, a huge nose, a lumpy jaw, unkempt hair, a scraggly mustache, glasses, and peg-like teeth prominently displayed in his overlarge mouth. Few other characters get so much detail put into their appearance.
• Helpful Hallucination: Daisy talks to a little girl in Werner's mansion who reminds her that all D.C. Androids have a weak spot on the back of their neck. The girl turns out to be a hallucination of Daisy's younger self.
• Little Miss Badass: Implied — Daisy terminated her first D.C. Android when she was ten years old. The D.C. Android in Werner's mansion managed to take out an entire posse.
• Made of Plasticine: The D.C. Android is supposedly an ultra-tough killing machine, but Daisy rips the robot's arm off without breaking a sweat.
• Real After All: Zig-Zagged — the dead man walking turned out to be nothing more than a D.C. Android wearing a mask, but Daisy does encounter a specter of her younger self.
  Daisy: I never said ghosts weren't real. I said I don't believe in them.
• Robotic Reveal: The "corpse" of Professor Colin Werner is revealed to be a "D.C. Android" wearing a realistic skin mask.
• Shout-Out: Daisy and a bloodied survivor of the posse sent into Professor Werner's house are cornered by what appears to be Werner's vengeful ghost and take shelter behind a locked door. As Werner begins to chop down the door with an axe à la The Shining, Daisy hides the injured man in a bathroom and escapes out a window.
• Weird West: The story starts with Daisy called out to the town of Romero to help Archibald, Sheriff Burkle, and Doctor Noonan deal with the case of a dead man attacking the sheriff's deputies. The residents of Romero believe they're dealing with a ghost, but Daisy remains skeptical about a supernatural cause for the mayhem.

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