Created by Robert Venditti and David Lapham
“Just because pizza is round doesn’t mean you can cut corners.”
Sure, he’s a private eye, a hard-boiled and slightly rumpled doofus right out of central casting, complete with the obligatory fedora and raincoat, and topped with a steady stream of tough guy cynicism, but he really only has one client: his employer, Big Caligula Pizza, an American pizza chain with national ambitions.
It’s all slightly tongue-in-cheek, offbeat if not off-kilter, with an almost-Rockford Files mix of wry skepticism and world-weary humour. Plus pizza, which Hank takes seriously. Very seriously.
Maybe even too seriously. As he puts it, “My nine-to-five is twenty-four seven.”
And that worldview seems completely shaped by pizza. He’s prone to offering such pie-shaped observations as “Too many bakers burn the cheese” and “Pizza is a greasy business.” Behind the cynicism, though, lurks a crushed idealist, hoping to bring back the good ol’ days when pizza “used to be an honest business.”
Hell, the guy carries a pizza cutter in his trench coat pocket.
In The Two Hollywoods, for example, in his efforts to make the world safe for pizza, he’s dispatched to a Hollywood, Florida restaurant to investigate some delivery shenanigans when he stumbles upon a case that will send him scurrying cross-country to the other Hollywood, pitting him against an Australian drug cartel, fire-spitting flamethrowers, plenty of gunfire, a thug kangaroo and various local and federal law enforcement agencies.
All in the name of pizza.
* * * *
Hank Howard, Pizza Detective has a rather convoluted and confusing history that I’m still trying to sort out. The initial, originally crowd-funded issue, subtitled Caligula’s Safe, was originally offered in 2021 as a 24-page one-off, available for a limited time only in selected comic shops, and going for a mere buck. Put out by tiny, idiosyncratic publisher Bad Idea, they issued an expanded version of the story as a two-issue comic book in 2026 as The Two Hollywoods. Or maybe it was a whole new story. It’s hard to tell. But since then, the title has coined on a more-or-less regular basic, as a string of one or two issue story arcs.
So far, my favourite is A Slice of Life (2026), with Hank will be back in Florida, returning to his hometown of Tampa, investigating a murder, and “locking lips with a long-lost flame.” But what really sticks is the brief but surprisingly touching flashback to his childhood, being raised by his grandmother, and the role pizza has played in his life.
Lord knows how that one will be offered…
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
New York Times bestseller Robert Venditti has written more than three hundred comic books and graphic novels, including stories featuring The Flash, Justice League, Superman, Hawkman, Green Lantern, Wesley Dodds: The Sandman, and X-O Manowar, and has adapted Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians for comics. He lives in Atlanta, where he both writes and serves as a storytelling consultant for various entertainment brands.
Eisner-winning artist and writer David Lapham is pretty much a legend in comics, best known for Stray Bullets, a long-running and possibly on-going series which he wrote, drew and lettered himself (and published with his wife Maria), and the classic noir miniseries Murder Me Dead. He’s written and/or drawn Batman, Daredevil, The Punisher and Wolverine, and more recently the crime titles Good As Dead, American Caper and Hank Howard, Pizza Detective, where he even slipped in a sly wink to Stray Bullets.
UNDER OATH
- “The thing to establish right out of the gate is how seriously Robert Venditti writes this otherwise ridiculous premise: Yes, he’s using tropes and prototypes of the hardboiled, noir genre, but instead of injecting some silly joke in every page, Venditti just allows the absurdity of the situation to drive the comedy and, naturally, provide action and suspense just by virtue of the story that he’s telling.”
— PirateDaveZOMG, on The Two Hollywoods (Leagueofcomicbookgeeks.com) - “The lead story is illustrated by David Lapham, whose Stray Bullets is the single greatest crime comic of all time… One of Lapham’s great skills is illustrating ordinary people in his style in ways that are evocative of their actions and character, and he shines here…”
— Zack Quaintance, on Caligula’s Safe (comicsbookcase.com)
THE EVIDENCE
- “I’ve been in hotter kitchens. I can handle the heat.”
- “Granny always said every day with a pizza is a gift I’m glad she didn’t live long enough to know the crust can bake hard.”
- “Pizza is a greasy business.”
- “I’ve got enough years behind to know the dough never cuts easy.”
- “She learned the hard way… Don’t bite off more pizza than you can chew.”
- “Maybe none of us get to have the whole pie. But maybe — maybe — we each get to have a slice.”
- “Pizza. Round and inviting like a dinner table. Doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from, everyone can pull up a chair and pull off an equal slice.”
- “Did I choose a life of pizza, or did pizza choose me? I’m not sure it matters. Man can’t live on bread alone. But toss on some sauce and cheese, and you might get by.”
- “We don’t get to choose if there’s right or wrong in the world. But we do get to choose a side.”
COMICS
(2021, Bad Idea)
Black & white
24 pages
Writer: Robert Venditti
Artist: David Lapham- HANK HOWARD, PIZZA DETECTIVE: THE TWO HOLLYWOODS
(2026, Bad Idea)
2 issues
Black & white
Writer: Robert Venditti
Artist: David Lapham - HANK HOWARD, PIZZA DETECTIVE: A SLICE OF LIFE
(2026, Bad Idea)
Writer: Robert Venditti
Artist: David Lapham - HANK HOWARD, PIZZA DETECTIVE: THE INSIDE JOB
(2026, Bad Idea)
Writer: Robert Venditti
Artist: David Lapham- “The Inside Job”
- “Caligua’s Safe”
- “The Counterfeiter’s Gamble”
- HANK HOWARD, PIZZA DETECTIVE: FAIR PLAY
(2026, Bad Idea)
Writer: Robert Venditti
Artist: David Lapham
THE DICK OF THE DAY
- August 26, 2026
The Bottom Line: Sure, he’s a PI; a hard-boiled, slightly rumpled doofus right out of central casting, complete with the obligatory fedora, raincoat, and snappy line of patter, but he really only has one client, Big Caligula, an American pizza chain with national ambitions. But Hank takes his job seriously. Very seriously. Maybe too seriously. It’s all served up slightly tongue-in-cheek, offbeat if not off-kilter, but this almost monthly (for now) comic is one of my all-time faves. No matter how you slice it.
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
