A couple of years after the one-shot we looked at last week, and after ending the second volume of Jack Staff, Grist did this 6-issue book. I think it's meant to be a mini-series, although it's also possible Grist just lost interest and stopped. As far as I know, he's not gone back to the character since.
John Smith (aka Jack Staff) has lost three weeks of his life, with no idea how. He's also forgotten he's Jack Staff, which is rather inconvenient when an old enemy shows up. It turns out his memory loss is related to a whole thing involving a great hero who will wield the Sword of Devastation to save the world from a dire threat in the future. The threat being the local neighborhood coke dealer up there, and the hero being, well, that's the question on everyone's mind.
As the title of the book suggests, this is less a Jack Staff story than of the world he inhabits. There's a sense that for all he's supposedly Britain's Greatest Hero, John Smith has often been little more than a well-meaning guy getting jerked around by those who claim to be pursuing some higher motive. Even when Grist delves into Mr. Smith's origin, it involves a Victorian prognosticator who believes Mr. Smith is his key to grasping tremendous power. As it turns out, he is and he isn't, but John doesn't have any idea what he's landed in until it's too late. And for this time-traveling jaunt, it's much the same.
Jack Staff only pawn, in game of life. Or perhaps it's simply that he's never actually in his own book. There's still that sense that this is several comics that overlap. So that one is never quite sure whose book it is at any given moment. So anybody could be the star, and anybody could be the surprise guest star. So characters can be as competent of useless as needed.
Grist does use the old saw of the attempt to avert a dire fate actually bringing it about. Except the reason the person time-traveled in the first place to make certain the dire fate was avoided, was in fact, created by their time-traveling. It's a whole mess, but at least Grist writes Staff as annoyed by it as I am.
2 comments:
Grist showed off some new Jack Staff pages a few weeks ago. I think they are going in an anthology or one-shot or something along those lines.
That's cool. I knew he'd done some other comics since this, so i figured he'd moved on to other things.
Post a Comment