The protagonists of Brian Wood & Rob G's graphic novels The Couriers and The Couriers: Dirtbike Manifesto (AIT/Planet Lar) are two twenty-ish urban mercenaries named Moustafa and Special. The duo work as free-lancers for an unseen job broker named Hot Sauce: when we meet them in New York City ("Right Fucking Now," the caption clarifies), they're in the midst of a shoot-out in Chinatown, taking on a Russian mobster who's tried to stiff 'em big time.

Our trigger-happy lad and lady work in a murky legal realm, although Wood establishes early that they have their own code of ethics. When HS pulls them in to do a "biologic," the delivery of a living person, Moustafa initially balks: "It's always child prostitutes or prisoners or some shit that's against their will. It's wrong and we don't do it!" But they wind up taking the assignment, which involves transporting a helpless young Nepalese girl from the airport to an undescribed safety area, anyway. Said girl, who communicates to Special via personal sign language, is being pursued by a former Red Army General for reasons we don't learn until the end of the book. We know the General is a psycho s.o.b., however, since his first act in the story is to grab a cat out of the young girl's arms, then toss the feline out a window to its death.

Though the General has been exiled to Nepal by "soft" elements of the Chinese government, he has contacts with a Chinese gang called the Triad and with his former comrades in the Red Army. He utilizes the former to intercept the girl at the airport - which results in a violent gunfight and a car chase - then the army to interrogate and shoot every courier they can find. So far so good, but once the General's army shows up in the middle of NYC with attack helicopters, I could feel my willing credulity snap in twain. (Proof that what you can readily get away with in a movie - Whoa! Look at them bad-ass whirlybirds! - is harder to pull of in a gritty action comic book.) Moustafa rallies his fellow urbanites to strike back against the invading Red Army. And, like Ewoks defending their forest from the Empire, they do so. More ultra-violence ensues, though we never once see a representative of civil authority intervene even though events are occurring "right fucking now" in the aftermath of 9/11. You know how it is: the Man doesn't give a rat's ass for grown-up, punked-out street urchins in the city.

The Couriers, then, is set in a hyped-up metropolis that's designed to be the writer & artist's violent playground. It's about as close to the real thing as the title setting of Jackie Chan's Rumble in the Bronx, though both creators of this "Wood/G Joint" keep steady hands on the eccentric pulses of each character. (We learn, for instance, that Moustafa loves chow fun noodle soup with fish balls and that scarred and street-tuff Special decorates her bedroom with unicorn and big-eyed kitten posters.) Rob Goodridge's black-and-white art borrows from all over the place (in one panel, he even turns two characters into cartoon manga kids), which is apt considering the tale's multi-cultural urban jungle setting.