Ignition City is a five-issue limited series by Warren Ellis & Gianluca Pagliarani from 2009. It is set in The '50s of an Alternate History where a Martian invasion interrupted World War II. Its story is focused on the eponymous Ignition City, the last spaceport of Earth, as it seems that the nations of the world practice an increasing isolationism. A young woman called Mary Raven investigates the murder of her father who lived there.
Tropes:
- Badass Boast:Mary: I'm 26 years old. I've been to the Moon, and Mars, and Venus. I've slept with asteroid gypsies, broken sloats, and fought with the eighth insurgency on Forest. I shot a man on Khargu because he needed to die more than any I've ever met. I repaired three rocket tubes with a wrench and a knife while hanging upside down over Titan during the syzygy. I'm 26 years old and my life is over now. So direct me please to the man who'll sell me a gun, and the place where my dad was shot dead in his sleep, for I have business to attend to before I lay down in my grave.
- Descriptiveville: It's a spaceport.
- Expy: Most of the characters are expies of classic figures from 1930s-1950s 'raygun' science fiction comic strips gone to seed. Notable examples: Buck Rogers, Dan Dare, and most of the cast of Flash Gordon.
- Genre Mashup: Pulp 1930s SF adventure meets Deadwood.
- Mad Scientist: Doc Vukovik, as an Expy of Doctor Zarkov, is an archetypal example of this trope.Doc: Science will fuck you!
- Raygun Gothic: All the ships, planes, and weapons are designed with this aesthetic, but in the decaying browns of dirt and rust.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The story kicks off with ex-spacer Mary learning that her father was killed in Ignition City. She doesn’t take the news well.
- Songs in the Key of Lock: One shows up, triggered by the owner's favorite song - "A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square
". - Used Future: The titular city is a spaceport constructed from rusted spaceships that has a lot of expies of classic sci-fi heroes as its residents.
