Andy Burns: Congrats on a kickass first issue of Ballistic! For everyone who is about to discover the series, why don’t you give them the basics of what the series is about?

Adam Egypt Mortimer: Thanks man!  It’s taken us a while to get here and now the fun begins!

So… Ballistic is the tender story of a simple air conditioning repair man and his foul mouthed, drug addicted, psychotic gun.  So it’s kind of the ultimate buddy action story, really.

An eco-apocalypse has fueled a meltdown in the western hemisphere.  New forms of technology have had to replace the old, environmentally destructive forms.  Here on Repo City State, technology is alive.  Not only is it inspired by nature, it is grown from the endless possibilities of DNA.  Red algae converters and living solar panel membranes power a city full of jellyfish streetlights and winged drones that eat off off electrical lines.  Long extinct species live again and are engineered into unthinkably weird new forms.

But technology has not cured the human condition.  People are still assholes.  The dominant goal in this city is to be a famous gangster.  So much so that TMZ-like blogs cover the styles and tastes of criminals.

Our hero, Butch, is a guy that shares this view of celebrity.  He is an air conditioning repairman, but he longs to be the John Dillinger of his time.  He’s in that mode of life where he is trying to psych himself up to make some kind of big move — like rob a bank — but he keeps getting in his own way.  He partner and friend — maybe his only friend — is his GUN.  A living weapon, it is a cranky motherfucker who essentially berates Butch for being a failure and cajoles him into making terrible choices.

In the first issue, Butch is finally propelled into taking a shot at a big heist, and when his gun does not cooperate, their cataclysmic failure sends them off into a very unexpected adventure involving a city-wide plot involving warring crime lords, tech moguls, and a disease that drives technology insane.
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