Rockford Files redux

Imagine The Rockford Files with more blood, but set in the Pacific Northwest with a bisexual female PI who drives a beat-up Mustang convertible instead of a beat-up Firebird. Too much imagining? Pick up Stumptown and see how good a detective comic can be with a woman in the lead. In “The Case of the Girl Who Took Her Shampoo (But Left Her Mini),” Dex (short for “Dexedrine”) Parios is looking for the missing granddaughter of an Indian casino chairwoman—she’s taken the case to wipe out a gambling debt—but she attracts the attention of a mobster who has his own reasons to find the girl. Dex also juggles caring for her developmentally disabled little brother and fights off a pair of really big, mean dudes with guns. Stumptown is a worthy entrance for a comic-book heroine who has something between her ears rather than just below her neck.