Gun Honey Doubles Down #2 (of 4) Review: Joanna Tan Turns Siberia Into Her Personal Escape Room

Joanna Tan is back, and this woman does not infiltrate enemy territory like a normal human being. Nah, son. She gets herself captured, hauled into an underground Siberian prison, searched by people who believe they found everything, then starts calculating her escape before they finish congratulating themselves. That is Joanna Tan in one sentence: always dangerous, never rattled for long, and usually hiding something sharp where nobody wants to look.

Gun Honey: Doubles Down #2 throws Joanna deep into Por-Bazhyn, a remote Russian compound sitting on an island near the Mongolian border. Her mission is to identify which of three identical men is the real dictator Vulapin, but this chapter wisely focuses on one of his doubles, a frightened man imprisoned after refusing to keep risking his life for the state. Writer Charles Ardai gives him enough personality and regret to feel like more than another disposable face. He may look like Vulapin, but he is definitely not built from the same rotten material.

Ardai keeps the dialogue slick, sarcastic, and moving. Joanna remains cool even while restrained, tossing out jokes and studying everyone in the room. She is sexy, confident, and deadly, but her greatest weapon is still her brain. Every guard thinks they have her contained. Every guard is wrong. Watching these fools slowly realize they invited a hurricane into their secret base is half the fun.

The escape sequence is where the issue really gets busy. Joanna picks locks, frees the double, steals uniforms, crawls through an ancient grain chute, fights her way outside, commandeers a military truck, and makes a run toward Mongolia. Yo, she turns a frozen Russian fortress into an escape room with live ammunition. The progression feels natural because each solution creates another problem. Nothing comes easy, even when Joanna makes it look smooth.

The historical information about Por-Bazhyn occasionally slows the momentum, especially while Ardai explains the location’s original purpose and underground storage systems. It is not a major drag, though, because those details eventually become essential to the escape. The exposition has a reason for being there. It is not just the comic showing off that somebody visited Wikipedia before breakfast.

Ang Hor Kheng’s artwork delivers the grimy pulp energy this series needs. The prison feels damp, claustrophobic, and genuinely unpleasant. Tight panels keep Joanna boxed in during the interrogation, while wider compositions open the story once she reaches the surface. The truck chase has strong motion, clean choreography, and enough violent impact to make every collision land. Kheng also understands Joanna’s body language. Even when she is trapped, her expressions say she is already three moves ahead.

Asifur Rahman’s colors lean into cold blues, dirty greens, rough browns, and sudden bursts of red. Siberia looks miserable, which is exactly the assignment. David Leach’s lettering keeps the narration, location captions, dialogue, and sound effects readable without cluttering the action. The full creative team keeps the book visually sharp even when the story gets filthy, bloody, and wonderfully unhinged.

Joanna also gets a welcome human moment after the escape when she admits she is shaking. That small beat matters. She is not fearless or indestructible. She survives because she can function while terrified. That makes her tougher than any emotionless action figure pretending bullets are just loud raindrops.

The return of Joanna’s Mongolian warrior allies brings another dose of wild pulp madness, but the real hook comes on the final page. Tatiana arrives looking like she eats professional fighters between meals. She is massive, brutal, and apparently has a habit of dragging out her kills. One image tells readers everything they need to know: Joanna’s next opponent is not coming to talk.

Gun Honey: Doubles Down #2 is fast, sexy, violent, and smart enough to give its outrageous espionage premise some actual character underneath the gunfire. The exposition gets a little heavy in spots, and the mature pulp presentation will not be for everybody, but this series knows exactly what it is selling. Charles Ardai and Ang Hor Kheng deliver another slick Joanna Tan adventure filled with danger, humor, and old-school spy-thriller swagger.

Joanna entered Siberia as a prisoner and left with a stolen truck, a rescued double, and half the Russian military chasing her. That is not an escape. That is disrespect with horsepower!

CRUSADERS SCORE:
4/5

Writer: Charles Ardai
Artist: Ang Hor Kheng
Colorist: Asifur Rahman
Letterer: David Leach
Group Editor: Jake Devine
Senior Creative Editor: David Manley-Leach
Editors: Jonathan Wilkins and Ibraheem Kazi
Assistant Editor: Holly Smith
Designer: Dan Bura
Publisher: Titan Comics / Hard Case Crime

In Shops:
July 22, 2026