Button Man
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Button Man is a comic strip created for leading British comic 2000 AD, written by John Wagner and illustrated by Arthur Ranson.
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[edit] Plot
Harry Exton, ex-mercenary, is a "Button Man", a hired killer pitted against other killers in an underground sport. Each works for a mysterious "Voice", a rich man of unknown identity. The object of the game is to kill your opponent, or capture him and take his marker - the first two joints of a finger. Button Men who lose three fingers are shot anyway. The "voices" profit from the game by gambling on the outcome, and a ruthless killer like Harry Exton can make a modestly wealthy man extremely rich. Exton decides to quit, only to discover that leaving the Button Man game isn't so easy.
[edit] Publication
Button Man ran for three series, and remains one of the best-selling collections of 2000 AD strips (other than Judge Dredd) ever published. A new series entitled "The Hitman's Daughter" has been announced for 2006. [1]
The series three outtings, all written by John Wagner with art by Arthur Ranson, are:
- Button Man:
- "Book I: The Killing Game" (in 2000 AD #780-791, 1992)
- "Book II: Confession" (in 2000 AD #904-919, 1994)
- "Book 3" (in 2000 AD prog 2001 & #1223-1233, 2001)
There have been a couple of collections of Book I:
- Kitchen Sink Press (1995, ISBN 0-87816-276-3)
- Rebellion (2003, ISBN 1-904265-05-7)
[edit] Film adaptation
Movie rights are owned by Dreamworks, which has co-opted the producers of Wagner's A History Of Violence. The film is due for release in 2008. [2]
