Button Man

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Button Man is a comic strip created for leading British comic 2000 AD, written by John Wagner and illustrated by Arthur Ranson.

1 Plot
2 Publication
3 Awards
4 Film adaptation
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links

[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 four series, and remains one of the best-selling collections of 2000 AD strips (other than Judge Dredd) ever published.^{[citation needed]}

The series outings, all written by John Wagner, are:

Button Man:
- "Book I: The Killing Game" (with Arthur Ranson, in 2000 AD #780-791, 1992)
- "Book II: The Confession of Harry Exton" (with Arthur Ranson, in 2000 AD #904-919, 1994)
- "Book III: Killer Killer" (with Arthur Ranson, in 2000 AD prog 2001 & #1223-1233, 2001)
- "Book IV: The Hitman's Daughter" (with Frazer Irving, in 2000 AD #1551-1566, 2007)

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] Awards

2000: Nominated for the Eagle Award for "Character Most Worthy of Own Ongoing Title"

[edit] Film adaptation

Movie rights are owned by Dreamworks, which has co-opted the producers of Wagner's A History of Violence. The film was due for release in 2008, however there has been no recent news, suggesting that this may have stalled .^[1]