Comics’ Greatest World—Arcadia

(Dark Horse, 1993)
™ and ©1993 Dark Horse Comics, Inc.

This title marked both the creation of Dark Horse’s “Comics’ Greatest World” and of this sub-universe, the city of Arcadia. Arcadia is a city rife with corruption, where the tendrils of organized crime have intertwined themselves with the most basic functioning of the city. It’s a place where life is cheap, as senatorial candidate Larry Briggs has discovered at the hands of the shadowy figure called X.

In Arcadia, the machinery has always run very smoothly…until X showed up to throw a spanner into the works.

The second week of the series introduced “Pit Bulls”: In the dangerous world of Arcadia, it helps to carry protection. Some carry guns, others carry knives; but if you’re the government you keep attack dogs: Pit Bulls, to be exact.

The Pit Bulls are a specially trained attack team, kept ready to handle the extraordinary situations which crop up all too frequently in Arcadia. Like their namesakes, they are determined and ferocious—but it’s their teamwork and skill that give them their real power.

In week three, we met Ghost: Beautiful, ethereal…deadly. No matter how many locks the door has, no matter how thick the wall, nothing can keep out the apparition known simply as Ghost.

In Arcadia, the forces of corruption and crime make the citizens fear to walk the streets at night. Now the avenging spirit of a murdered woman is making the criminals feel that same fear, even in their own homes. She is intangible—without substance. But in her ghostly hands are twin revolvers, firing bullets that are all too real.

A dealer of death from beyond the grave, she seeks the men who killed her, and the reason for her death. Let no one stand in her way, lest they wish to join her on the other side.

In the fourth and final week, we met Monster: Arcadia is a city with more than its share of secrets. Yet lurking beneath the city is a secret worse than any of them: a huge, terrifying being known simply as “Monster.”

Seemingly indestructible, and powerful beyond words, the Monster is Arcadia’s worst nightmare. But there’s more to the story: Monster is intelligent. Whether this makes him more or less of a threat is something that only time will tell.

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