PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:

For every action there's an equal reaction. Or at least that's what we're told, but Rey Quintana just learned the hard way what Noah Conway already knew. Rey's a good kid who's made some mistakes. He doesn't run with a gang and he's working hard both at his job and in his community college courses. Noah's an ex-cop who became a bondsman in a failed attempt to salvage his marriage. It didn't work and now his job has taken over his life all over again. One choice is about to send both their lives into chaos and set the pair on a collision course that can only end in tragedy. With a unique dual-perspective storytelling, Three Strikes fearlessly calls what's foul and what's fair.

(preview | official Three Strikes website)


AUTHORS' COMMENTS:

[Christina] Writing with a partner is an interesting experience. People are stunned when we say we're married and work together. The common response is "I'd kill my husband/wife if I had to spend that much time with them!" Fortunately, it has not destroyed the marriage. But when we do fight, it's seldom about who left the cap off the toothpaste and almost inevitably about whatever character/story we're discussing. But I digress. It's not the fights that make writing with Nunzio interesting. It's his "shower thoughts." Seldom does a day go by that doesn't start with him coming out of the shower saying "So I had this idea..." Sometimes it's a challenge to keep up with him because he'll start mid-thought and I'll have no frame of reference. Anyway, so there we were one Thursday morning (I have no idea if it was a Thursday, but these stories sound better the more specific the details are), and Nunzio comes out of the shower angry. I mean, he was mad! He had worked up a full head of steam thinking about California's Three Strikes law. There was a case here in California where someone had stolen golf clubs and because it was their third felony offense, they were going to jail for the rest of their life. He ranted about how stupid the law was. And the next thing I knew we were plotting our second miniseries for Oni.

[Nunzio] This was our second collaboration with Brian Hurtt. This time, he was on his own - no toning by Arthur de la Cruz (as with Skinwalker) and I think some people were concerned when they read the advance press on Three Strikes that we'd broken up the team. But while Arthur's dark tones were perfect for the mood of Skinwalker and enhanced Brian's already-impressive work, I think this book is stronger for letting Brian fly solo. He's an artist who seems to get better every time he works, and his sensibilities were perfect for the story. His characters feel real, and he's the kind of artist who can make the characters 'act' on the page. You'll notice that we used less text in Three Strikes than in Skinwalker. Part of that was our own learning curve, but part came from knowing, this time around, how much we could rely on Brian. When your artist can really get the characters to act, it allows you to underwrite certain scenes, and let the characters (and Brian) sell the emotion and the mood. This book also marked another kind of step forward in our collaboration with Brian. We started asking him what he wanted to draw. He asked for a car crash, and that's why we wrote one (in Issue Four). We didn't know Brian all that well when we did Skinwalker. But by Three Strikes, we were talking to him pretty often, getting his feedback on the story, letting him rework page structure and pacing, and then, when the business talk was done, discussing Buffy The Vampire Slayer.