Hawaiian Dick was a comic book created by writer B. Clay Moore and artist Steven Michael Griffin, and published by Image Comics. The first Hawaiian Dick mini-series hit comic shops in December 2002, and was subsequently followed in late 2003 by a second four issue mini-series called Hawaiian Dick: the Last Resort. The second series ran into numerous publication delays, but was completed in July 2006.
The trade paperback collecting the second mini-series was published in October 2006.
The comic book received extensive media attention upon its arrival, including favorable reviews in Entertainment Weekly and Publishers Weekly. In 2004, Hawaiian Dick was optioned by New Line Cinema for development as a feature film, but efforts failed.
Artist and colorist Steven Griffin was nominated for the 2003 Russ Manning Award for his work on the book, and subsequently received three separate Eisner Award nominations for Best Colorist for Hawaiian Dick, receiving those nominations in 2004, 2005 and 2006.
The third Hawaiian Dick series ran five issues, and was subtitled Screaming Black Thunder. Artist Scott Chantler illustrated the lead stories.
The fourth series, Aloha, Hawaiian Dick, began publication through Image Comics on April 20, 2016, with artists Jacob Wyatt and Jason Armstrong handling the art on the lead and back-up stories, respectively.
Hawaiian Dick appeared on the Wizard Top 100 Trade Paperbacks of the Wizard Era, clocking in at number 92. In an article on WeAreAtomik.com talking about making the list, B. Clay Moore confesses to being Atomik.
The setting
Hawaiian Dick takes place in the fifties, in a noir version of Hawaii. Byrd, the main character, lives in Honolulu. The Hawaii of Hawaiian Dick is also home to all of Hawaii's legendary supernatural anomalies, each able to manifest when the time is right.
Plot
Hawaiian Dick: Byrd of Paradise
Hawaiian Dick: Byrd of Paradise begins innocently enough with Mo Kalama visiting his friend, Byrd, to tell him about a stolen car that is a little hot for the police to handle, but not too hot for someone with the outside interest that Byrd would present. Together, they find out that the car, being paid to be delivered to a man named Grimes, has a stash that will be going to notorious island criminal and drug-baron Bishop Masaki, a Japanese expatriate who runs a criminal syndicate in Hawaii. Shortly after discovering this, Byrd, Mo, and Grimes are involved in a high-speed shoot-out in which the car gets riddled with bullets and they end up off the side of the Pali Highway.
Byrd and Mo discover that instead of drugs being stashed in the car's trunk, Bishop Masaki's lover, Leila Rose, was in there bound and gagged. However, the shoot-out resulted in her death. While they make this horrifying discovery, they also hear a steady drumbeat growing on the night air. Moving as far as possible, Byrd and Mo just escape from the clutches of the Pali Highway Night marchers, the spirits of Hawaiian warriors, though Grimes is swept away in the tumult, screaming. After the Marchers have passed, Byrd and Mo return to the car and discover that Leila Rose's body is gone as well.
Byrd investigates Leila Rose, and ends up meeting her sister, Kahami, at a bar called the Outrigger. Kahami, saddened by her sister's death, takes Byrd to visit her aunt, Auntie Chan, a woman who, in Hawaiian culture, is a sort of witch-doctor (similar to a bruja in Mexican culture). While Byrd meets with Kahami's aunt, revealing that it was she who raised Leila Rose and who got the girl killed in the first place, feeling it would be better to have dead nieces than ones who were in the thrall of Bishop Masaki, Mo investigates a disturbance at one of Bishop Masaki's warehouses. While there, he is knocked unconscious by Leila Rose's zombified corpse, who proceeds to leave the warehouse.
As the story rumbles towards its conclusion, Byrd and Kahami go to the docks to face Bishop Masaki as a storm rages around them. During their confrontation, Auntie Chan arrives. A shoot-out begins, during which time Auntie Chan gets shot, but stops when Bishop Masaki sees Leila Rose coming toward him during the storm. It is only when a flash of lightning strikes too late that Masaki sees Leila for the corpse she has become before she embraces him and they fall off the pier and into he roiling ocean. Byrd and Kahami flee the scene, as does Auntie Chan. The book ends with Byrd setting up his new offices in Auntie Chan's old storefront. Auntie Chan herself ends up stalled on the Pali Highway. She gets out of her car as a series of drumbeats begins.