Posted up against a wall, arms folded defiantly and with a steely gaze trained at the world, is Detective Ben. He is the no-nonsense cop and lead character in the fictional black and white world created by illustrator Point Blank Evumbi. At his feet is “Round Sam”, the youthful and often clueless partner Ben tries to dump at every turn.

This is Homeguard, a limited edition Kenyan comic borne from “sketchpads, a pack of peanuts, nestle ice tea packs and the drive of a mad man”. It opens on a dark city street with a sequence of overlaid images of a nondescript car making its way down the stretch of road. Within the sleek ride in the comic’s antagonist, a faceless murderer whose thoughts betray an obsession with numbers. A body is bundled out of the car only to be discovered the next morning by police and eventually, Detective Ben.

This gets the whodunit detective drama rolling. What’s cool about Homeguard for local readers is that it calls to mind beloved Kenyan 90s TV series, Tahamaki that followed a similar vein. Internationally, one thinks of larger than life Hollywood cop characters such as Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, but with a hint of the more comical duos like Starsky and Hutch and Danny Glover and Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. Ben is big, brash and a bit of a bully who believes that “we are above all, two sides of the coin of great police work”.

Round Sam is his Afro-sporting sidekick, a little too concerned with his looks. In just less than 40 pages, the characters grow on you and you begin to see that there is more than meets the eye. And for a comic done completely in line art, the attention to detail is pretty good. The comic could do with a more thorough copyediting process and careful printing to avoid bleeding through as was evident in the copy used for this review. However, Homeguard is funny, intriguing, suspenseful and deserves two thumbs up for sheer effort and story delivery. We were left begging for more.

Homeguard retail at KES 200. To get a copy, visit www.facebook.com/HomeGuardByPBE