Demon Knight was an original graphic novel, published the same month as GrimJack #64, which I reviewed for Random Back Issues #72. The machine which controls any and all time travel in Cynosure is glitching out spectacularly and GrimJack takes the job to go in and pull the plug. Except he gets distracted by a memory and falls back through time to his first life. Specifically his peaceful, happy times in Pdwyr, after he left the Arena, but before he went to fight in the Demon Wars.
GrimJack at least avoids meeting his younger, original body self, who is already off to war, but can't stay away from Rhian, the love of his life. He's determined to fix his past mistake, or so he says. He takes his sweet time getting to it, and by the time he decides to hunt down Major Lash and kill him, well, see the splash page. Never put off a manhunt until tomorrow when you should already be killing him today.
Ostrander presents GrimJack as the only one who knows what's coming but refuses to accept it. Rhian doesn't know exactly what's going on, but if her love has returned from the future in a different body it can't be good. But she doesn't fear death, because it's just the body not the soul. Likewise, her father Maethe knows exactly what's coming, but feels what would be required to avert it would be worse than letting events go as they do.
GrimJack, meanwhile, is so caught up in trying to break out of this cycle he's in he grasps at straws. Pdwyr is the place where he was happy, where he had peace. He left, it burned, so that must have been his mistake. If he just prevents that, he can escape everything else! Which ignores the fact part of the reason Maethe couldn't teach him to be a wizard was because of all the anger in his soul, that same anger that drove him to go fight in the Demon Wars. And even once he's failed, he can't let go. Has to take revenge on both the demons and Major Lash. Both decisions end up causing him trouble once he gets back to his proper time.
There's a strong current, especially in things Maethe says, that make me think GrimJack's doomed to this cycle because he can't ever simply accept his past failures and move on. He's always torturing himself over them.
Henry's version of GrimJack here is able to exhibit a wider range of emotions because there's a brief stretch where he's actually feeling good. But when things go wrong, he takes on a nearly rabid expression. Wild-eyed and grinning in a way that looks like his teeth are going to shatter. When he really starts to let loose and tap into the energy inside him, Thomas has it green and purple energy practically bubbling out of and off GrimJack. Like he's a bomb about to explode and just so gleeful about it.
Demon Knight isn't referenced in the ongoing series until issue #70, by which time the Steve Pugh-drawn "Demon Wars" story arc, detailing John's leaving Pdwyr to join the fight to drive the demons out of Cynosure, had concluded. And the decisions he made in this story accelerate his decline in the last dozen or so issues of the series.
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