Barb Wire Omnibus

Mention barb wire and the first thing to pop into most peoples heads is probably fencing wire with metal barbs in it used to keep people either in a place or out of a place. After that some people might think of the crappy 1996 movie that took most of its plot from Casablanca staring Pamela Anderson. I have not seen that movie and from what I have heard about it, I would not want to see that movie. I did see That Guy With Glasses review of it though. I haven't watched many of his reviews but the few I did see were pretty good.

Barbara Kopetski, nicknamed Barb Wire, is the owner of the Hammerhead Bar and Grill located in Steel Harbor. Steel Harbor is a ghetto in which the police won't even come. She is, at least at first, an interesting character. She does not have complicated desires, basically she just wants to run the bar in peace with her brother and friends. Her main problem is that the bar is losing money and she has a lot of expenses, often caused by people damaging her bar, so to supplement her income she works as a bounty hunter, which even though she does not like doing she is very good at. She has an almost, maybe outright (not sure), super human ability to track people down. The most lucrative bounties, and the ones she really would like to avoid if she had the option, are to hunt down people with super powers. She ends up having to anyways, the reason she doesn't like to is simply because they are dangerous, she doesn't have powers, and she brings in her bounties alive (much more difficult than to bring them in dead).

This omnibus contains nine stories (originally contained in 13 comic books). Even though some of the stories are alright and the main character (comic book version) is interesting, overall I would recommend people not read this omnibus. The first few stories are not great but I'd still count them as good, then the quality of the stories drops significantly. First problem being that it makes too many references to other Dark Horse comics which I have not read and would probably help if I had (one story even seems to indicate that it is continued in another comic series not included in the omnibus). Secondly one of the most interesting supporting characters known as the Machine is written out of the story. The last story though Ace of Spades is crap, not only the story but I also dislike the art change, they for example changed Barb's design to look more like Pamela Anderson which I do not view as an improvement.