Comixology Originals announced it is bringing Gary Phillips’ character Martha Chainey to a comic book adventure in Cold Hard Cash: A Martha Chainey Escapade.
Martha is a six-foot woman of color adept at martial arts. With no intention of winding up arm candy for some whale when she quit wearing forty-pound headdresses, she makes a living as a courier of off-the-books money—cold, hard cash. When her old friend, Rena Solomon, also an ex-Vegas showgirl, asks her in on a hush-hush job to find ten million dollars in stolen funds, Martha takes the gig.
Rena heads the Urban Collaborative, a nonprofit organization working to better conditions in South Central, which has recently partnered with Zentech, a Silicon Beach firm. Unfortunately, the Collaborative is computer hacked, and ten million dollars granted to the nonprofit for a cutting-edge center aimed at tech training and job placement goes missing.
As Martha delves into the theft, the evidence indicates the funds were converted to cash. The trail leads her throughout California from the seedy Salton Sea’s Slab city to the tony Zentech campus. Through the investigation’s twists and turns she encounters ski-masked hacktivists and the alt-right Reclaimers also on the hunt for the swag—as she seeks to uncover the truth.
Will Martha’s head slammin’ sleuth skills be enough to recover the missing cash?
The five-part series features art by Adriana Melo. The first issue is available today.
