He has a gun. And he runs.
Gun Runner (renamed to Gun Runner and the Enhanced for the last two issues) is a Marvel Comics miniseries, published as part of the Marvel UK brand in 1993-1994. It was written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning and drawn by Anthony Williams.The series stars Brell, the titular Gun Runner, an alien soldier who awakes from cryogenic sleep after 200 years to find that he’s far from home and his defeated enemies - the Cynodd - are returned.
Aided by Las Vegas casino owner Gale Patric, Brell returns to the stars to reassemble his old squad and finish the Cynodd for good. Of course, it may not be quite that simple…
Aside from Brell and Gale, the core cast are four more of the Enhanced:
- Oracle, who’s permanently integrated into her spaceship, the Warbird.
- Heavy Duty, an Enhanced with increased size and strength.
- Smith, who can reshape the alien metal Pulsarmite into anything from spears to guard robots.
- Lure, who’s bonded to a birdlike metal drone, Gyre.
Almost all of these characters were new creations for the Gun Runner series - the exception was Smith, who’d been introduced as a supporting character in Battletide, although nothing about his background or the Enhanced was mentioned in that book.
Tropes present in Gun Runner:
- Aliens Speaking English: Brell arrives on earth and immediately seems to understand English. Gale heads into space and has no problems communicating with the other Enhanced.
- Always Chaotic Evil: So far, the Cynodd are firmly in this category.
- Amnesiac Hero: Brell lands in Nevada with no memory of who he is or how he got there.
- Attack Animal: Lure’s robot bird, Gyre.
- Badass Boast:Tactical: Targets expunged. Time elapsed: three point eight seconds.
Gale: What do you do for an encore, Brell?
Brell: I save your world, Gale Patric. - Badass Normal: Gale is apparently an ex-cop. She’s an extremely good shot with everything from handguns to ship’s guns and - after a little culture shock on her first trip into space - generally holds her own.
- Big Bad: Shakata, the Cynodd overlord.
- Body Backup Drive: The Cynodd’s path to immortality. They still fear death, but a copy can be stored and revived in a new clone body.
- Boom in the Hand: The Zoo’s bruiser, Payload, picks up one of Heavy Duty’s bombs, seemingly without realising what it is. Then looks at it, quizzically, for a second. And then boom.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Gale when the Synergist under Las Vegas is activated. She recovers when it’s destroyed, but Oracle has to subdue her in the interim.
- Cold Sniper: Ballistik is described this way when the Zoo is introduced.
- Contrived Coincidence: Brell’s escape pod reaches Earth and lands near Las Vegas. Not only are the Cynodd midway through invading Earth, but they’re based in Las Vegas - and their presence there is led by his old enemy Shakata, who is (or was) commander of the entire Cynodd.
- Cyborg Helmsman: Whereas the other Enhanced are frontline warriors, Oracle’s permanently integrated into their ship, the Warbird.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Smith first appeared as a minor character in the Battletide series, a year before he reappeared in Gun Runner.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Synergists. They’re innocent alien lifeforms that naturally dwell between the stars, in places where nothing else lives. But corrupted by the Cynodd and deployed on inhabited planets, they start to warp minds, erase free will and twist reality.
- Escape Pod: The series starts with Brell being sent to Earth in one, as the ship can’t safely repair itself while he’s still onboard.
- Fantasy Metals: Pulsarmite. Used by both the Enhanced and the Synodd. As well as armor and blast doors, it’s key to Smith’s powers - he instantly shapes it into whatever weapon or tool he needs.
- Flaming Hair: Laz-Fire. Her hair’s fire. It’s also prehensile. And it’s her weapon of choice.
- Foreshadowing:
- The ship’s computer reports effectively narrate the start of the first issue, explaining why Brell’s pod is being jettisoned. At the end the tone shifts from purely factual to a more personal commentary, hinting at Oracle’s existence and role.
- The Warbird picks up no signals from Vasyyra, foreshadowing Lure’s revelation that it’s fallen to the Cynodd.
- Friendly, Playful Dolphin: Not exactly dolphins, but Glora’s spending her retirement on a boat, swimming with the alien cetaceans on the water world she’s settled on.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Oracle is not exactly happy that Brell’s brought Gale onboard, even if he insists that nothing romantic’s going on.
- Hard Light: It takes a lot of power, but Oracle can manifest a hard light ‘hologram’ form on the Warbird.
- Human Popsicle: Brell starts the series this way (although, technically, he’s an alien popsicle).
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Aided by Tactical, Brell’s good enough to shoot the Ghost Rider’s chain-link projectiles out of the air.
- Industrial World: The ‘facteroid’ Isambard, where ten million labourers work in shifts.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Oracle can’t remember what happened to the Warbird 200 years ago, when she and Brell were returning home.
- Magitek: The Cynodd run on a mix of science and dark magic
- Meaningful Name: Brell was a runner. And now he has a gun. There’s no hint that he realises his Enhanced codename has other connotations for English-speaking humans.
- Mugging the Monster: Lure’s retired to Isambard, where he’s drinking a lot and doing as little work as possible. The management sends a security team to eject him via the shuttle bay, not realising what he is. It goes badly for them.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: War-Crime.
- Prehensile Hair: Laz-Fire has prehensile hair of fire and uses it as a weapon.
- Putting the Band Back Together: The middle section of the series sees Brell reunited with Oracle and tracking down the other Enhanced to reunite the squad.
- Quirky Mini Boss Squad: The Zoo fill this role for the Cynodd.
- Razor Wings: Lure’s avian drone, Gyre, slices foes with its wings. Or simply flies through them.
- Really 700 Years Old: Brell’s been in cryogenic suspension for 200 years, but none of the other Enhanced have. Smith, Heavy Duty and Lure don’t seem to have aged much, if at all, though. And if he hadn’t been on ice, presumably Brell wouldn’t have aged much either…
- Retired Badass: Smith, Lure and Heavy Duty. All of them opted to skip the celebrations at the end of the war and go their own way. Smith and Heavy Duty chose isolation and a hermit’s life, Lure mixed into a civilian population on another world.
- Super-Soldier: The Enhanced are elite alien volunteers who have been cybernetically and biologically boosted to defend their world with individual weapons and powers.
- That Man Is Dead: Glora’s reaction when Brell reappears in her life and refers to her as ‘Heavy Duty’.
- The Blank: Laz-Fire has no facial features. No mouth, eyes or nose. She can still talk, though.
- The Bus Came Back:
- Brell makes a minor appearance in the first Annihilation event, many years later.
- He also gets a cameo in Revolutionary War, so it seems he survived Annihilation.
- The Casino: The miniseries starts and ends in Las Vegas, so of course there’s a casino. Two of them, in fact. “The Blue Chip” is Gale’s place; “The Lucky Shoe” is a front for the Cynodd presence on earth.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Nobody’s all that happy about recruiting Lure again.
- The Mole: When Gale first brings Brell to the casino as the amnesiac “John Doe”, head croupier Babet is the nicest and most welcoming of the staff. Too bad he’s also a Cynodd acolyte.
- The Quiet One:
- Smith, to the point where other characters tend to call it out whenever he does speak.
- On the villainous side, Payload’s almost entirely silent. There’s a non verbal grunt of surprise when he finds a bomb, and that’s it.
- Uncertain Doom: During the final battle, Smith is grabbed and crushed by the massive hand of the Synergist. Meanwhile, Lure and Heavy Duty are left behind, seriously injured. Brell ahoots the synergist… and the story jumps to its epilogue, with Gale in Las Vegas, handing over the Blue Chip before she leaves for space. We don’t see the fate of any of the Enhanced - and Brell’s the only one who’s appeared again since.
- Virtual Sidekick: Brell’s onboard computer, Tactical.
- You Can't Go Home Again: Lure reveals that the Enhanced’s homeworld Vasyyra was razed by the Cynodd while they were lost and isolated.
