Bad Luck Chuck (comics)

Cursed at birth with extraordinary bad luck, Charlene "Chuck" Manchester provides disaster where someone else can profit.

Got a failing business? For a price Chuck will make sure you collect on that insurance policy, without ever getting your own hands dirty. But when a crime boss hires her to take out an evangelical cult, things don't go as planned. Now the mob boss, the cult leader, and a dogged insurance-fraud investigator all come for her at once.

Everything that could go wrong does--and only about half of it by accident. A dangerous liaison with the crime boss's daughter ups the stakes fatally for Chuck, as the curse she's run from her whole life finally catches up to her.

Lela Gwenn brings a fresh voice to comics with this twisty noir, full of outlaws who aren't so much wise guys as they are smart asses. Matthew Dow Smith, best known for a long run on IDW's X-Files, brings that weird detective vibe, placing the oddball villains and anti-heroes in a grounded world taking us from the bad side of town, through shadowy office spaces reminiscent of Sam Spade, to a fiery revival tent and the splendor of a Tibetan abbey.

Chuck will need more than a rabbit's foot to get through this.

Collects Bad Luck Chuck #1-4.