Vol. 1: The Mission

Vol. 2: The Betrayal

Vol. 3: The Contract

Vol. 4: The Survivor

Vol. 5: The Vengeance

There are 13 Wayne Shelton albums/volumes. To the best of my knowledge, only these first 5 have been translated. Jean Van Hamme created the character and wrote volumes 1-3 & 10-13 with Thierry Cailleteau taking over writing duties for volumes 4-9. Christian Denayer was the artist for the entire series. Here’s the synopsis for the first Volume:

When a high-ranking official of a small nation in the Caucasus is killed in a car accident, the plans of a massive multinational corporation are derailed by one man: the unfortunate French trucker who caused the accident. Pressure from the unions in France and the military in Khalakjistan prevents a quick diplomatic solution. So, to secure its own interests, the corporation calls upon the one man who can break the trucker out of prison and disarm the confrontation: Wayne Shelton.

Wayne Shelton is a character straight out of old-school men’s action adventure books. He’s a tough, resourceful, international man of action. He’s also a ladies man because hey, what woman could resist all of his masculine charms ::wink:: He has a deep bench of bros that he can rely on for the jobs he takes.

As the synopsis states, the job is to break a man out of prison. This is filtered through a kind of heist story lens. Wayne Shelton will gather together a crew, they’ll hatch a plan, they’ll execute the plan, and, as must happen in these types of stories, not everything goes accordingly. The prison breakout story arc is covered in the first two volumes.

The aftermath of the prison breakout story will bleed into volume three with a new story arc organically coming out of that aftermath and this new story arc lasting through to volume 5. New characters will be introduced and a new core gang will coalesce and a new nemesis will emerge.

While the series does go on longer, these 5 volumes do tell a complete story. So if you decide to give them a try, you don’t have to worry about some dangling cliff hanger ending that you’ll never see resolution for.

Every tough guy character needs some version of a Hawksian woman by his side and in these 5 volumes, the only other constant character besides Wayne Shelton is Honesty Goodness. While their relationship may wax and wane she is his main companion.

Wayne Shelton (the character and the story) is a bundle of cliches and tropes. But they’re fun cliches and tropes.The series suffers under the weight of the limitations of the story type. It’s a near total sausage party, there’s a dose of misogyny/sexism. The story arcs become more expansive than you might at first think and the art is a fine example of men’s action stories. Wayne Shelton is a fun action/adventure story and I do hope to be able to read the rest of the series one day.

Mixed positive/recommended

Availability: Vols 1-5 are available in print through Amazon|Vols 1, 2, 4, 5 are available through Kindle|All 5 Vols are available through Hoopla, which is how I read them.