Point Blank was a five-issue comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 limited series

Limited series

A limited series is a comic book series with a set number of installments. A limited series differs from an ongoing series in that the number of issues is determined before production and it differs from a one shot in that it is composed of multiple issues....

 written by Ed Brubaker

Ed Brubaker

Ed Brubaker is an Eisner Award-winning comic book writer and cartoonist. Brubaker first early comics work was primarily in the crime fiction genre with works such as Lowlife, The Fall, Sandman Presents: Dead Boy Detectives and Scene of the Crime...

 with art by Colin Wilson

Colin Wilson (comics)

Colin Wilson is a comic book artist, born in Christchurch, New Zealand on 31 October 1949.He is known for his detailed artwork which he uses in 2000 AD stories like Rogue Trooper and Judge Dredd. According to Andy Diggle, the 2000 AD editor who got him back to the title in the late nineties and has...

. It was published by Wildstorm

Wildstorm

WildStorm Productions, or simply WildStorm, published American comic books. Originally an independent company established by Jim Lee and further expanded upon in subsequent years by other creators, WildStorm became a publishing imprint of DC Comics in 1999...

 comics.

It starred Grifter from the Wildcats

Wildcats (comics)

Wildcats, sometimes rendered WildCats or WildC.A.T.s, is a fictional superhero team created by the American comic book artist Jim Lee and writer Brandon Choi.-Publication history:...

 investigating an attempted murder on his friend John Lynch

John Lynch (comics)

John Lynch is a fictional comic book character, published by Wildstorm. He is the head of Internal Operations. He has starred in Gen¹³, Team 7, Sleeper, and Wildcats.John Lynch is an homage to Nick Fury, the one-eyed head of Marvel Comics' S.H.I.E.L.D....

.

Plot

Cole Cash also known as Grifter is supposed to meet up with his friend John Lynch in a bar. Both were soldiers in Team 7 and despite their differences over the years, they still trust each other. He then finds out that Lynch has been shot and is in a coma.

Cole decides to avenge Lynch and find out who killed him. His investigation leads to Tao

Tao (comics)

Tao is a fictional character in the Wildstorm universe.-History:The Tactical Augmented Organism was created by Optigen, a subsidiary of the Halo Corporation, on behalf of International Operations. As a child, he grew at an amazing rate...

, a former member and enemy of Grifter's team the Wildcats. Grifter is contacted by Holden Carver

Holden Carver

Holden Carver is the protagonist of the DC Comics/Wildstorm comic book series Sleeper written by Ed Brubaker and drawn by Sean Phillips.- Early years :...

, a member of Tao's organisation, who turns out to be a sleeper agent

Sleeper agent

A sleeper agent is a spy who is placed in a target country or organization, not to undertake an immediate mission, but rather to act as a potential asset if activated...

. Lynch is the only one who knows about Carver's status as an agent and Carver hopes that Grifter can help him now Lynch is in a coma.

Grifter promises to bring in Carver, but returning to his room, he finds Tao. Tao tells Grifter that he had been under Tao's influence and that in fact Grifter himself was the one who shot Lynch. Tao then erases all memory of the past few days from Grifter's mind. Grifter returns to the bar to wait for Lynch, leaving Carver within Tao's organisation with no hope of extraction.

Collected editions

The series was collected into a trade paperback

Trade paperback (comics)

In comics, a trade paperback is a collection of stories originally published in comic books, reprinted in book format, usually capturing one story arc from a single title or a series of stories with a connected story arc or common theme from one or more titles...

:

• Point Blank (5-issue limited series, tpb, 128 pages, December 2003, ISBN 1-4012-0116-4)