Sunday Splash Page #373

"Monkey's Paw," in Munden's Bar Annual #2, by Kim Yale (writer), Hilary Barta (writer/artist/colorist), Willie Schubert (letterer)

Like a freak snowstorm in May, Grim Spring returns without warning!

We didn't talk about Munden's Bar much when discussing GrimJack three years ago, but it was a back-up story that ran most months. Typically, though far from always, more light-hearted than John Gaunt's adventures, and featuring a wide variety of guest artists, writers and stars. First Comics did two annuals, one in 1988 and the other in 1991, each a mixture of stories that ran previously in GrimJack and new stories.

Most Munden's Bar stories fall into two categories: Those that are about the bar and Gordon the bartender or the other regular customers; and those that are really just about having some notable guest-star from a different book show up. To the latter, this annual reprints the story from GrimJack #26 where the Ninja Turtles came to Munden's looking for a spaceship they could hitch a ride on back to Earth (if I remember the results of the annual poll First Comics ran, was the best-selling but least-popular Munden's Bar story that year), and end up first in a brawl, then in a dance contest. But the annual also includes Evan Dorkin having Milk & Cheese show up to wreak havoc, and Kate Worley and Reed Waller include a story where Omaha the Cat Dancer tries to escape a police raid by ducking into the bathroom and comes out in Munden's.

Those stories tend to feel weak, since they boil down to, "Hey, here's this character you might know from entirely different comics!" Not much else to them, and if you don't care about the character in question, the story hangs on nothing. Not always; the back-up in GrimJack #40 would probably fall under this category and I love it. But I tend to prefer the ones that are more about Munden's or Cynosure in general.

The first annual reprints a story - "Doppelgangster," drawn by Jerry Ordway - where a cop, heartbroken that his wife's been cheating on him with a sleazebag, sees said sleazebag murder him in the mirror over the bar. Except the mirror is actually a window to a parallel dimension. So the cop goes looking to avenge "his" murder. The story for the above image was a new one, although the drunk magician, Foody Magicker, is a character that had shown up and caused mayhem a couple of times previously. In this case, he's not even doing magic for free drinks ("tricky, drinky, drinky, tricky" as he puts it in one of those earlier stories.)

It's not included in the annuals, but I was always fond of "Closing Time" (written by John Ostrander and Del Close, drawn by Rich Burchett) from GrimJack #8, which is, as the title implies, what Gordon does to close down the bar every night. It ends with an amusing 4th-wall break that also gets neatly at how inured Gordon is to strange things, from living in this city and tending this particular bar.

Saturday Splash Page #127

"Let Loose the Bunnies of War," in Starslayer #17, by John Ostrander (writer), Tim Truman (artist), Bruce Patterson (guest collaborator?) Janice Cohen (colorist), John Workman (letterer)

Starslayer was Mike Grell's creation, about, near as I can tell, a Celt space pirate named Torin MacQuillon and his crew, getting into various space pirate-style hi-jinks. All while not wearing a shirt of course, because this is a Mike Grell character.

I say, "near as I can tell," because I only really own back-up stories. Dave Stevens' "The Rocketeer" started in the back of the earliest issues of Starslayer, when it was still being published at Pacific. That only lasted through issue 3 - long enough for Cliff Secord to use the rocket to rescue a stunt pilot. After issue 6, the book moved to First Comics, and in issue 10 John Ostrander and Tim Truman introduced a little character named GrimJack.

During its stint as a back-up feature, GrimJack had three storylines. The first, "Mortal Gods", establishes the nature of Cynosure, a nexus where different realities phase into and out of contact with each other, and where each has its own natural laws that govern it. A bum can cross the street and become a god, with all that entails. Truman establishes Gaunt's look, with the beret, the cloak that conceals pistols, the scar over the eye, the death's head grin when he's got a god that's wandered out if its realm dead to rights. It also establishes his version of Cynosure, all dirty, narrow alleys, buildings with peeling wallpaper crowded together.

Ostrander sets up not only that Gaunt knows all about how the city works, but also his unwillingness to abandon friends, even in the face of a beating, or when the friend is pleading with him to just go. Also, that if you decline GrimJack's first offer to walk away, you don't get a second chance.

"Buried Past" establishes vampires exist and that Gaunt knows a bit about them and magic, but it ends up being more about Gaunt's past. Only a bit, about the one period of time where he found a little peace before it all fell apart. 

And then you get "Night of the Killer Bunnies," where Gaunt (unwisely) agrees to help a dimension of talking cartoon animals avoid death at the hands of vicious, giant, heavily-armed rabbits. But it does expand the range of the types of worlds you could expect GrimJack to interact with. It's not going to be strictly medieval or gritty noir type settings.

As annoying and ridiculous as Gaunt finds the whole thing, he still completes the job. It's also when Ostrander and Truman introduce Blacjacmac, Gaunt's best friend and leader of his own team of mercs. Much busting of chops commences.

After that, Ostrander and Truman handle an entire issue of Starslayer, as Torin's been captured by some doofy aristocrat in Cynosure, and his crew hire GrimJack to help with the rescue. A lot of the interactions between the Starslayer cast tend to zip right past me, but this is first time we see GrimJack encounter Chris Heyman, a Space Marine that pops up later in GrimJack during a conflict with the serial killing cyborg Kalibos, and the Sphinx, a wizard Gaunt fights against and with at various times through the Ostrander/Mandrake run.

The team-up story highlights a certain tendency of GrimJack's, where if you behave haughtily towards him, as the woman who owns Torin's ship does, Gaunt will really jam you up on his prices. If you behave fair and honorably, he might make a decision that's very poor for his bottom line. That would come up early in GrimJack, where a kid has only single coin to his name, and Gaunt accepts that a sufficient payment to find the kid's dad.

Sunday Splash Page #217

 

"Room Full of Future Luggage," in GrimJack: Manx Cat #6, by John Ostrander (writer), Timothy Truman (artist), Lovern Kindzierski (color artist), John Workman (letterer)

Set between the end of Killer Instinct and the beginning of the stories from the '80s, Manx Cat continues to fill in some gaps in the backstory, while providing a fairly entertaining adventure. 

It's a difficult stretch for Gaunt. He's still settling in to being independent again, and seems to take that to mean he should keep everyone away from him. Gordon's acting as bartender, but the two are hostile to each. Gaunt barks orders, Gordon makes smart-ass remarks, and is clearly more than a little resentful of what happened to Jo Chaney in Killer Instinct. Gaunt saves Bob the Gatorlizard, but keeps trying to make him leave. It's a contrast with BlacJacMac, who's been leading a merc crew since the Demon Wars. Gaunt lives in a crappy bar, BlacJac has an entire multi-story compound. BlacJac has a new steady girlfriend (Goddess, who hasn't decided she hates Gaunt yet), Gaunt has an employee that gives him shit constantly. He's not really close to anyone, and he's going to have to decide if that's how he wants to keep it.

The Manx Cat is a MacGuffin that popped up from time to time, starting with the very first GrimJack story. It's an obsidian statuette, and Gaunt seems to be forever stealing from one person for another person. This story reveals there's a reason it constantly ends up with other people, and that there's much more to it than just being a feline-themed Maltese Falcon. Gaunt finds himself in a situation where he doesn't know everything that's going on, isn't sure who's telling the truth, and has enemies on all sides. Which I believe is what GrimJack calls "Tuesday." 

The middle issues send him into the past, suggesting that Gaunt's been tied up with Cynosure since long before his "first" death. That felt contradictory to me the first time I read this, but some of other GrimJack stories (including Demon Knight) had established the notion time isn't a straight line when it comes to Cynosure. So maybe Gaunt's decision during the Ostrander/Mandrake run cast ripples all along the timeline.

This mini-series has more of a murky feel to it than Killer Instinct, but I think that owed more to the printing, or maybe the coloring. Truman's linework seemed blurred and things weren't shadowed so much as muddied. Truman opts for an look to the buildings during the sequences set in the past. A little Victorian, a little Renaissance era maybe. Lot of tiled roofs and narrow walkways. Even though there are demons openly roaming about, the city doesn't seem as dark or a closed in as it does in Gaunt's time. And St. John of Knives isn't nearly as morally compromised as Gaunt, either.

Sadly, this marks the end of Grim Spring. There will be no more GrimJack-related splash page for quite some time. But next week begins a 3-week stretch on a different (very different) creator-owned series.

Sunday Splash Page #216

 

"Extreme Vamp Makeover," in GrimJack: Killer Instinct #5, by John Ostrander (writer), Tim Truman (artist), Steve Becker (assistant inker), Lovern Kindzierski (color artist), John Workman (letterer)

You didn't think Grim Spring was over, did you? Oh no, like the character himself, it won't stay dead. In the mid-to-late 2000s, Ostrander and Truman reunited for a pair of mini-series, Killer Instinct being the first. During the Flint Henry run, Steve Pugh had drawn a couple of different stories that covered most of John Gaunt's life from childhood up through the Demon Wars, but there was still a gap from there to the first story published as a back-up in Starslayer. It's in that gap this mini-series is set.

In some ways, it feels like a story designed to answer questions we don't really need to know. Was anyone demanding to know how Gaunt came to own a bar called Munden's, where the bartender is Gordon Munden? Or how Gaunt's cop buddy Roscoe lost his eye? Or why Gaunt favors "Chaney" as an alias?

I tend to doubt it, but maybe it's wrong to look at those as anything other window dressing. Easter eggs for the fans. In the larger sense, the story is about how Gaunt became his own man. His history is of other people using him. Fighting for the amusement of aristos in the Arena. Being led around by Major Lash. Working for sniveling bureaucrats in the Transdimensional Police, and, when this series starts, for Mayfair as part of Cadre. It's Gaunt as a gun, someone who simply allows himself to be pointed at a target, and then he kills them, no questions asked. How did he become the guy we see in the ongoing series? The one always determined to do things his way, to seek out answers no matter who gets hurt or pissed off?

So it's GrimJack's journey to reassert control over his life. Who he aids, what he seeks, who he kills, those are going to be his choices going forward. But Ostrander and Truman make sure to keep it interesting, with lots of interesting bits and pieces. Telekinetic ninja mimes as assassins. Stones that can contain a person's soul, and are admissible as testimony because a soul can't lie, apparently. The Knights Sewar. One of the very earliest GrimJack stories was about people who played at being vampires or creatures of the night. In this story, we get a glimpse of what it's like for the actual vampires and their somewhat tenuous place in a city leery of another demon incursion.

I said I didn't really need to know how Gaunt came to own Munden's Bar, but I did actually enjoy his introduction to Gordon and the hostile start to their relationship. The notion not everyone in the Pit saw the Dancer's rebellion the same way as Gaunt.

As you might guess, Truman's not one for splash pages (I think Mandrake's run as artist had more splash pages than all the other GrimJack comics combined), but he brings back the same look and atmosphere to Cynosure from his original stint on the book. Most of the places Gaunt goes are dingy and cramped. Subways, apartments, clubs, everything has a grime to it. Even Mayfair's private office feels close, the tight panels making it seem like there's no room to move. While the improvements in printing and color certainly make Truman's art clearer, I think it takes a bit of the gloom away from the surroundings. 

His GrimJack is also a bit bulkier, but he's also younger here, so maybe that's to be expected. Have to cinch up the belt when you're self-employed instead of living on a government paycheck.

Sunday Splash Page #215

 

"This Neighborhood's Going to Hell," in GrimJack: Demon Knight, by John Ostrander (writer), Flint Henry (artist), Martin Thomas (colorist), Gary Fields (letterer)

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.

Sunday Splash Page #214

 

"Back Where It Ended," in GrimJack #77, by John Ostrander (writer), Flint Henry (penciler), Hilary Barta (inker), Martin Thomas (colorist), Gary Fields (letterer)

In the last issue with Tom Mandrake as series artist, Gaunt learned a rather disturbing fact: Death was not going to be the end for him. His unwillingness to abandon a friend had far-reaching consequences, and the last third of the series starts to explore that.

Set 200 years later, GrimJack is a man named Jim Twilley, but he's also John Gaunt, whose fate is now tied to Cynosure's, condemning him to be reborn so long as the city exists. He takes it well. That's a lie, he takes it horribly, initially refusing to try and reconcile two sets of lived experiences. once he remembers his past, he goes out of his way to claim that Jim Twilley doesn't exist, his family and friends remember someone who doesn't exist. He eventually pulls his head from his ass, but as usual, his decisions had consequences.

This version of GrimJack is wilder, more vicious than his earlier incarnation. Which is saying something given what that guy got up to, but it's true. He has less control of his worst tendencies, or more likely he doesn't bother to control them. Learning that you're a long way from ever getting back to your loved ones in Heaven will do that to ya. In his previous life, he knew how to bargain with people, how to at least attempt to sweet-talk someone. Now he doesn't even try. Even when people agree to help him or extend a helping hand, he goes out of his way to push until he pisses them off. His best friend BlacJacMac made allowance for him if he did return, GrimJack burns that bridge down in one issue.

I think the first third of GrimJack (roughly the Truman and Tom Sutton issues) is about how Gaunt how Gaunt's stubbornness and loyalty lead to him standing by his friends and they, in turn, stand by him. The second third (Mandrake's run) highlighted how that, stubbornness and loyalty can go awry for his friends. The final third seems to highlight that GrimJack is his own worst enemy. He grows more reckless and desperate as it progresses, the faint hope of what he might get back to someday failing to keep him going. 

All his attempts to improve his lot, or even to help save a long-lost friend, end up failing because he can't put his own selfish desires aside. He can't let what Major Lash did pass, which would have let him stay dead. Instead, he takes revenge and ensures he'll have to deal with him again, and again. So that when he does finish it, he puts everything else he was trying to accomplish at risk. As he can't seem to find any pleasure in anything other than tormenting people or taking revenge, he just keeps pissing different people off until he's besieged from all sides. All the times he just had to have it his way coming back to haunt him. Not even in any coordinated, "super-villain team-up" manner, just all these people deciding, "fuck it, I'm sick of that asshole," at the same time.

(There's a series of back-up stories that run near the end that detail Gaunt's life growing up, and what happened between him and his brothers. The main thing is we learn that is was impressed on John very early in life that he should never allow anyone to disrespect or harm him. Every injury must be repaid in kind, or worse. He never unlearned that lesson.)

Flint Henry's GrimJack is different, and not just because it's an entirely different physical body. His version is more expressive, less guarded. Truman and Mandrake's GrimJack has a death's head grin that suggests a cold enjoyment of the fact they're about to kill an enemy. Henry's is wilder, like he's either not even aware of what he's about to do, or he's planning to go a lot further than just killing. And Henry is more graphic with the violence. When GrimJack cuts somebody apart, there's blood and guts following the arc the sword. 

The whole run looks more, I'd almost say lurid. The closest thing Twilley gets to a romantic relationship in this run (minus some time travel hijinks) is with a sorceress who draws off tantric energy. So, you know, a fair amount of implied fucking to charge her engine. The colors are brighter, the oppressive shadows of Mandrake's run largely banished. Henry's version of Cynosure is the most crowded, the most hi-tech. It feels like it owes more to Blade Runner or sci-fi of that sort, whereas Truman's ran more to noir and Mandrake's to horror or German Expressionism, maybe. It is 200 years into the future, so that makes some sense, though I'd also expect there to be dimensions coming into phase that time runs backwards, or it moves faster and civilizations have been destroyed.

Sunday Splash Page #213

 

"Return to Maker," in GrimJack #39, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Ken Feduniewicz (colorist), Ken Holewczynski (letterer)

After Tim Truman departed, Tom Sutton took over as artist for 9 issues (minus the anniversary 24th issue, where Truman returned for a short story). Then there's two guests artists, including Shaun McManus, and in issue #31, Tom Mandrake steps in as the regular artist, a role he would maintain for the 25 issues, the most anyone drew of the ongoing series.

Mandrake brings the deep, creeping shadows and faces that look fluid to the work. Most of the time. There are issues in the middle where someone else is doing the inking (Jim McDermott takes a turn or two) and the shadows become a more solid, flat presence. There's none of that sense of them being alive and trying to swallow everything on the page. Mandrake's Cynosure is a bit cleaner, and the streets aren't nearly as crowded. Gaunt seems to be spending more time in places with high walls all around, hemming him in.

I think the big internal conflict up through Truman's run was whether what Gaunt believes about himself is true. Is he really true to his friends? Is his stubborn pushing for the truth, his refusal to let certain people have their way, get away with shit, actually for the best? Is there really any point to anything he's tried to do?

The Trade Wars seemed to answer solidly that he is a person that stands by his friends, because they did the same for him when he needed it. Whether his stopping Dancer and Mayfair from taking over the city was the right move probably depends on what one thinks is best for Cynosure, and how many people it's acceptable to sacrifice to get it.

The time where Mandrake is the artist would seem to reaffirm this, but it also presents more of the downside to his personality. GrimJack being exceedingly stubborn and refusing to give up is great when he's fighting on your behalf and things are bad. Less so when it makes him put you in danger because he's determined to have things a certain way.

The main plot is that Mayfair and Dancer are no longer allies. Instead, each of them are trying to assume power in their own way. Mayfair ropes in BlacJacMac at a time when he's lonely and frustrated, while Dancer finds allies in a lower quarter. Meaning demons. Ostrander knows to give Mandrake the opportunity to draw creepy, crawly monstrous looking things with slime and too many eyes and teeth.

GrimJack finds himself in the middle, trying to piece everything together and get enough people on his side to actually win. But, he wants the win on his terms. Specifically, he wants to be the one who kills Dancer, for a specific reason I will try not to spoil here, and that leads to him making bad decisions. Bad decisions that result in additional casualties on his side.

Ostrander puts Gaunt through some heavy trauma as soon as Mandrake's on-board, and then, gives him a chance at some peace and resolution. It seems to work. A few characters remark he seems less haunted. But what we see over time is that he hasn't abandoned his old ways and gradually, the same flaws resurface. What looked like an unwillingness to abandon a friend, might have just been Gaunt being pissed someone was trying to use him. 

He lost a couple of friends during the Trade Wars when he got outmaneuvered. He loses a few more here, but they're more self-inflicted wounds. In the first go-round, those losses sent him into a dark place. He doesn't fall as far this time, but he gets a glimpse of the consequences of his actions, and it's a whole lot worse from his perspective. But we'll get to that next week.

Sunday Splash Page #212

 

"Do Not Disturb While Drinking," in GrimJack #1, by John Ostrander (writer), Timothy Truman (artist), Janice Cohen (colorist), John Workman (letterer)

Aw yeah, welcome to Grim Spring! Where bullet holes bloom like wildflowers. If I could be said to be ride-or-die for one comic writer or artist, it would be John Ostrander, and this is the series that started that, even if it was an inauspicious start.

Back around 2000, my cousin who is 15 years older, gave me a longbox of comics he had. This included the first 48 issues of GrimJack (minus issue 23 for some reason). I didn't know what it was, so at first, I passed them over. Read everything else in the box (about all I remember were some DeFalco-era Thors, about 10 issues of The 'Nam, maybe some black-and-white indy comic stuff), but there's not a hell of a lot to do at my grandmother's in August, so I finally gave GrimJack a shot. I was quickly hooked.

The series is set in Cynosure, a pan-dimensional city where all realities intersect eventually. Each reality retains whatever laws of physics it runs by, which allows Ostrander and Tim Truman to present basically any setting they want. If they want hi-tech robots and such, they can do that. Spirits and the supernatural, sure. Talking fish-people, absolutely. As GrimJack describes it, 'Guns work here. Magic works there. Swords work everywhere.'

GrimJack (real name, John Gaunt) himself is a mercenary, for hire to do most anything you need. Which again, allows for a variety of stories. Mysteries, supernatural horror, stories about cloning or even an issue long-Smokey and the Bandit riff with a guy who had himself built into his big rig and talks in music lyrics. The first issue is a fairly standard noir about a missing diary, with the added twist that the diary's author's ghost is hanging around. 

For most of Tim Truman's time as artist, which is the first 19 issues, that's much of what the book is. Mysteries. What Ostrander is good at, though, is having smaller mysteries or cases that might only run an issue or two, but they feed into something larger that builds slowly but surely. And sometimes those mysteries involve time travel to the Old West, or children being abducted for gladiatorial combat, just to change things up.

Ostrander and Truman use the variety to gradually fill out Cynosure. How the size and constantly shifting boundaries of the city make it difficult to run effectively, so that business is king. Which is why time travel is strictly regulated, because it might void a contract. The rivalries between the different law enforcement agencies. The fact clones have no rights. The way elections work. All these bits get referenced or revealed, and there's some care to how it's done, so the pieces seem to fit. It makes the city feel like more of a place, despite being such a haphazard amalgamation. And GrimJack's been around a while, and has a busy history, so he acts as our guide. He's seen and been most places, knows how things work, and Ostrander makes that experience one of the character's advantages that he uses to survive.

That and he's willing to fight dirty. Actually, enthusiastic to fight dirty might be more accurate.

Truman's art is well-suited for the noir elements, as even the nicer parts of Cynosure have a grimy feel, while the less nice parts are drenched in shadows and garbage. GrimJack spends a lot of time in places that have gone to seed, assuming they were ever good enough in the first place to get worse. But he can also draw monsters for the horror elements. Things with too many teeth and sharp talons, vacant red eyes. There are a lot of bridges and structures that have an almost organic look, with spires and ridges like pieces of bone. Adds a bit of menace to everything.

Likewise, the characters tend to wear their age on their faces and bodies. In the lines and wrinkle, the grey hair and the scars. Gaunt's in shape, but he's also around 50, so he's not Captain America or Thor. None of the major characters are like that. They actually remind me of Joe Kubert's, in that they have that wiry musculature that makes them look like they've been rough-hewn from stone. They haven't lived the sort of lives that allow for any fat deposits to build up. Hard times.

As mentioned, Truman departs (I believe to work on Scout) after issue 19. Which is right in the middle of the Trade War storyline that acts as a sort of mid-stage denouement. Some plotlines are wrapped up, and some characters have to step back and reassess. One of the interesting things about the Trade War is how GrimJack's own flaws help bring it about. He's portrayed right from the first issue as someone who is uncompromising about the truth. As he puts it, if he gets a glimpse of it, he has to have it all. That, combined with his unwillingness to let anything go, can be a strength. It's what means he won't abandon a friend, or a client. It also means he'll dig up things better left buried, without considering the wider impacts.

One thing that's an issue throughout the series I might as well mention right at the start is, GrimJack's love interests die. A lot. Granted that a lot of people around him tend to die, but he has more dead girlfriends than Matt Murdock and Kyle Rayner put together. I feel like Ostrander can usually show how the characters' own choices brought them to that place, but he does get a lot of mileage out of Gaunt's inability to handle losing people he cares about in a healthy manner. Though I'm not sure anyone in this series actually deals with their emotions in a healthy way. If they did, they probably wouldn't be hanging around Gaunt.

Random Back Issues #72 - GrimJack #64

John Gaunt's looking a bit different than the last time we saw him, but that's because he's also a guy named Jim Twilley!

By this point, we're following one of GrimJack's reincarnations, 200 years later. He's still getting the right people pissed off at him, though. Hired by a man named Alfred Godden, who feared he was going to be killed by someone named Dis, Twilley arrived to find Godden dead. Godden's daughter shouted an accusation at him, which is enough for Justice Drok (has to be a Judge Dredd spoof) to carry out an execution.

Gaunt/Twilley gets a reprieve in the form of Justice Peece, who resembles Commissioner Gordon a bit. Peece is a robot cop capable of non-linear thinking, so he's been assigned to investigate murders. Peece hears GrimJack out, who explains Godden believed he was going to be killed by someone named Dis, for doing them dirty in a past life. Godden's daughter explains she was just pissed GrimJack didn't protect her dad, so Peece commutes the sentence and takes over the investigation, sending both Drok and GrimJack on their way. 

Neither is happy about it, but Drok can't disobey programming. Gaunt however, does as he pleases, and heads to the suburbs. The Bainbridge family's kid had lots of souls, but only inhabited the body at the time. The rest roaming Cynosure, learning anything they want. Like, possibly the location of a person named Dis. Chuckie's not interested in sharing, but Twilley's magic speaks louder and the kid coughs up the goods. Chuckie relinquishes the body back to Zack, who breaks down sobbing. At the dad's question of how he did that, GrimJack only replies 'I know the dark better than you son will ever know it.' That's an understatement. Also awkwardly worded.

Meanwhile, a group called the Ninth Circle, is making backup plans. They're a bunch of demons using human bodies for shells, including Godden's daughter. The Circle isn't convinced they can pull off their scheme without some help, so they summon a 'True Hell's Angel,' TDP bike cop Jericho Noleski. Who arrives on a flaming motorcycle with four cans of a six pack left.

The last time Noleski showed up was 200 years (and 14 issues) ago, when he drove into a demon gate to seal it up as a final act. Hard to believe he only drank two of those beers in all that time, but Hell probably has some decent booze, and Noleski's the sort who would find it.

GrimJack, following Chuckie's information, heads to the Thatcher Building. An entire apartment block on wheels, endlessly circling a massive highway, offering temporary housing for the poorest of the poor. Dis is hanging out inside Li Ho Fok's opium den. They don't remember killing anyone, but do know about the Ninth Circle. And that's because. . . well, if you had, "Dis is the first thing formed after the great battle between two primal gods and created the multiverse," you are correct. Also, you're probably cheating.

Dis created different universes by dreaming them, but lost energy in the process. They created the demons to build Cynosure to gather back that energy so Dis could achieve full strength, split back into the two gods, and start the whole thing over. The demons decided they preferred the universe gradually burn out, and designed a building to keep Dis trapped. Essentially, the Big Bang/Big Crunch theory versus the entropic universe theory. Did the Legion of Superheroes do that with Time Trapper versus the Infinity Man or something?

Anyway, GrimJack destroyed that trap 200 years (and 10 issues) ago. Dis isn't sure they care whether the demons succeed in killing them or not, and neither is GrimJack. If Dis dies and Cynosure eventually burns out, Gaunt can't keep being reborn, since his fate is tied to the city. Sure, but how quickly does that happen? There's gotta be a quicker way to end that cycle.

That's about when Noleski makes the scene. GrimJack tries getting his attention, but remember what I said about Noleski plunging into a demon gate? Gaunt's partially the reason Jericho needed to make a grand final act at that moment, so Jericho goes ahead and causes the building to crash.

In the Munden's Bar back-up (set 200 years in the past), a reporter waits for his informant, I mean snitch. Flea had been a series regular whenever Gaunt needed information, but even he has scruples. Mac Heath (who was the loan shark that was an literal shark in GrimJack #29) killed a judge brutally enough, Flea's gonna tell the papers. If he makes it to Munden's Bar.

[5th longbox, 10th comic. GrimJack #64, "Catspaw" by John Ostrander (writer), Flint Henry (penciller/inker), Gerald Horton (inker), Martin Thomas (colorist), Gary Fields (letterer). "Snitch" by Kim Yale (writer), Tony Akins (penciller), Tom Baxa (inker), Paul Mounts (colorist), Gary Fields (letterer)]

Random Back Issues #41 - GrimJack #29

Maybe let's just let Mr. Bullet stay in the barrel.

We've got a standalone issue of GrimJack today, which means I don't have to explain a lot of backstory, but there's still a lot going on. Tim Truman left 10 issues ago, and we're still two issues away from Tom Mandrake stepping in as artist. Shawn McManus is the guest artist, but as I recall, some of the readers were not fond of his version of GrimJack. I think someone described him as looking like a troll. Not like Gaunt was winning any beauty contests before.

Anyway, issue starts with Gaunt getting his new, cybernetic hand put attached. He lost his hand during the Trade Wars storyline, after he was in a giant floating pyramid when it fell from the sky. The first replacement (a big clunky thing more like a multitool than a hand) got busted in a fight with the serial killing cyborg Kalibos. So Gaunt took the guy's hand as a replacement for the replacement. Seems fair.

Now with two hands, Gaunt takes the case of Ann Carpentier. She's a widow, with two sons. Mark's successful, Danny's a junkie. Danny was found murdered in Hogan's Alley the day before. Mark feels responsible for not protecting his brother, and is hunting the killer. Ann wants Gaunt to stop him. He takes the case, but points out you go to Hogan's Alley to get leg-dropped, I mean, to escape Stalag-13, I mean, to hire a killer, so why was Danny there?

The last place Danny was seen alive is a diner that promises "home cooking". Gaunt says that might be true. . . if you lived in a toilet. Not all that different from the Perkins near my last apartment, then.

The cook (seen above) isn't helpful at first, but quickly changes his tune. Shotgun is very persuasive. Danny was with a collector/enforcer named Kaliber, who works for Mac Heath. Heath (a talking shark) says Danny owed him money. Kaliber wasn't supposed to kill him, 'cause the dead can't pay debts. Mac tries to hire Gaunt to find Kaliber, Gaunt refuses, Mac has his boys try to muscle him, Gaunt shoots one. Once there's blood in the water, it's a feeding frenzy and GrimJack bails, although he has to shoot one more fish on the way out the door.

Ann meets him, and says Mark talked to an informant named Flea who promised to take him to Kaliber. He did, he just also told Kaliber they were coming. Gaunt gets the location out of Flea, the shotgun being a solid 3-for-3 in problem-solving this issue, but Kaliber's a little big for Gaunt to tangle with. Kaliber explains he felt bad for Danny, who was suffering. So he ended it for him, even though it's got him in dutch with his boss.

Gaunt warns Mark killing someone will change him, speaking from (considerable) experience. Mark lets it go, and Ann gives Kaliber some money to try and pay Mac, case closed. Except Gaunt admits to Ann he'd have killed Kaliber if it was his son that died, and after she and Mark leave, he wonders if she'd be so merciful if the successful brother was the one murdered.

That GrimJack, always looking sunny side up. He just happens to live under a dumpster.

The Munden's Bar back-up is written and drawn by Fred Hembeck, and involves a guy trying to sell Gordon on a table that will grab people from other dimensions and bring them here for the amusement of the patrons. The bar's mirror is already a dimensional interface, what more do you need? Anyway, the guy grabs Lou Grant and Ted Baxter from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, of all things. Is Hembeck from Minnesota?

Ted's pretty freaked out, especially when one of the customers wonders if vanilla Earthlings taste as good as chocolate ones. Lou gets in his face and rallies the whole bar behind him, dismissing it as no big deal because, 'I've dealt with the network guys.' More comfortable, Ted brags about being the best darn anchorman on Earth, leading to the lady confusing him for Walter Cronkite. Ted drives everyone out of the bar with his life story, the salesman sends them home. Gordon chucks the salesman out, and GrimJack comes back to an empty bar in which to do his 'existential brooding.'

If I remember right, someone wrote into the letters page complaining angrily about how disrespectful this story was, because Ted Knight had passed away not long before it came out. He died in August of '86, and the inside cover says this came out December of '86.

[5th longbox, 54th comic. GrimJack #29, "Mercy" by John Ostrander (writer), Shawn McManus (penciler), Hilary Barta (inker), Linda Lessman (colorist), David Cody Weiss (letterer). "The Best Darn Anchorman in Cynosure!" by Fred Hembeck (writer/artist), Linda Lessman (colorist), Steve Haynie (letterer)]

Random Back Issues #18 - GrimJack: Killer Instinct #5

Maybe so, but you gotta admit it'll fit easily on a tombstone.

As usual, GrimJack's gotten himself tangled up in something big. In this case, his boss in Cadre, that'd be the eloquent Mayfair up there, setting Gaunt up as a patsy in Mayfair's play to seize control of all the security angencies in the city.

Gaunt had been unwinding things steadily with the aid of the only other person to survive the fake mission to kill a politician named Ilsa Kalter, Jo Chaney. That included figuring out Kalter's body was being possessed and manipulated by a vampire named Simone, while Kalter's soul is trapped in a ka stone. Good news is, you can question ka stone's and they can't lie, so they're admissible as evidence. Bad news, Chaney's been a plant of Mayfair's the whole time.

This gets Gaunt thinking about how he keeps taking jobs that let everyone else make his decisions for him, and why. He decides he's done with that, dons the outfit that was his standard for the first three years of his ongoing series.

He has a decent plan. Give the kaa stone to his old cop partner Roscoe. Kalter's soul will help bring down Mayfair and his whole scheme. Plus it earns Roscoe brownie points with his angry boss. Little bit of an apology for costing Roscoe his eye back when they were chasing the Dancer. Meanwhile, Gaunt gets himself out of town for a while until things settle. If he can get past the sentient dinosaurs hunting for him at the train station. Fortunately, John's willing to resort to chemical warfare with his grenades from the "Knights Sewar". I love the random stuff Ostrander and Truman throw into this series.

Unfortunately, Gaunt may have underestimated Mayfair's reach, as the kaa stone gets confiscated, and the whole thing is quietly buried. Leaving GrimJack no choice but to return to Cynosure to confront Mayfair, but his old boss has his own problems. All of his other agents have been turned by Simone and her newest recruit, Chaney. Gaunt's bad luck with women holding true to form. Plus, Mayfair released Kalter's soul, so there goes the evidence against him, if they even make it out.

There was one more issue to go in this mini-series after this, which gets the status quo to where it was when Ostrander and Truman originally started GrimJack as a back-up series in Starslayer. They did one more mini-series, The Manx Cat, through IDW a few years after this one that was set some time after this one.

{5th longbox, 210th comic. GrimJack: Killer Instinct #5, by John Ostrander (writer), Lovern Kindzierski (colorist), John Workman (letterer)}

31 Days of Scans - 5 Character Dream Team

I said last December I wanted to do a few of those "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" rosters this year, and thus far, I haven't. Because I decided to wait and kick it off with this one. As usual, these can be difficult, because there are so many options. Which is why I have to restrict myself in some ways, or I'll never make a decision. This time around, I opted for characters created outside Marvel and DC. So, same rules apply as the last time, only there'll be no Mastermind, since it states 5 characters only.

The Leader: Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener's Atomic Robo. For the purposes of this exercise, Robo is in his normal body. However, I'm not sure precisely when I'm taking him from. It might be simpler, in terms of getting the team together, to take him from the 1940s (for reasons that will become clear shortly). But if I take '70s Robo, we get possible Carl Sagan appearances and Robo wears a Gilligan hat sometimes. If I take current day Robo, we get the benefit of considerable experience and greater scientific knowledge in our Robo. With the present day, it's easy enough for Dr. Dinosaur's Time Bomb to throw Robo to the '40s, or perhaps another universe. There were his multiple run-ins with the Shadow from Beyond Time, or Tesla's device that opens a doorway to the vampire dimension (which Majestic-12 later got its hands on). Or something else we haven't seen yet. The options are there, and really, any Robo will be good.

So Robo is going to be the leader, but he's also going to be the brains of the outfit, at least as far as science goes. In more criminal areas, there are at least 2 characters on this team more experienced. However, given the nature of the world some of these characters inhabit, Robo is going to run up against some things he is going to have difficulty squaring with his views on how things work. Magic for one, time travel for another. One of the things I greatly enjoy about Atomic Robo is when he gets exasperated with stupidity or nonsense and resorts to sarcasm. Probably because that is how I respond to stupidity and nonsense. I expect this team to exasperate and confound Robo repeatedly. And everyone is a strong personality in their own way, so keeping them together is going to be a challenge. Especially because, in a crisis, Robo seems inclined to try and do everything himself and keep his Action Scientists at a safe distance. Understandable, since he's bulletproof and they aren't, but I doubt this crew will be as accepting. But he'll bring lightning guns, and lightning guns heal all wounds. With horrible burns, but still.

The Man with a Boat: Doug TenNapel's Earthworm Jim. This one is fudging it a bit since, a) Jim was originally a video game character, and b) the comics he did appear in were published by Marvel. But once again, Blog Commissioner allows it (all those illegal payoffs, er, paid off). Jim may or may not have a boat, but he does have a rocket large enough to carry a couple of passengers, and capable of traveling to other star systems. Close enough. (Note: One could substitute the Tick, and it would largely achieve the same effect, but I prefer Jim and it's my team, so nyeah.)

Jim operates in a sort of Silver Age world (which is why I can't be sure he doesn't have a Worm-Boat. He had a Worm-Cycle in the cartoon). Heroes keep their word, and triumph because they believe in things greater than themselves, like honor, or true love. Things that ought to be bizarre are treated as largely unremarkable. Radiation gives you super-powers, not cancer (though the powers are more likely to be funny than useful, as the need for jokes requires). Problems can be solved with science that makes not the slightest bit of sense. In a lot of ways, putting Jim on this team is a way to torment Robo with a heroic version of Dr. Dinosaur. There are going to be times Jim will suggest a completely idiotic solution to a problem (like dressing up as waiters to fool pursuing henchcats into eating explosives dressed up as seafood), and in the time it takes Robo to start listing all the ways that's nonsense, it'll work.

Of course other times, the nonsense solution won't work at all, because it's nonsense. In that event, Jim can just fall back on blasting things. Robo should at least appreciate having another person on the team who solves many of their problems with combinations of shooting, jumping, and hitting.

The Rogue: Colleen Coover and Paul Tobin's Bandette. This could put Bandette out of her depth, which by itself might make it worthwhile. Robo and Jim have both dealt with threats that could have ended existence. Then again, Bandette quite likes the world, because it has so many things for her to take from people, she'd be quite willing to help. Neither of the first two characters are all that great at stealth. But they are both fairly upright guys, so I wonder how much friction there would be about her stealing. Because it's a certainty if they storm the combined lair of Helsingard and Professor Monkey-for-a-Head and she sees a painting she likes, she'll take it. I'm pretty sure she can talk circles around Jim at will, which won't stop him from pleading she abandon her life of crime, and when that fails, probably trying to haul her off to jail.

Robo's going to be a harder sell. But Robo has worked with governments in the past, even though he doesn't trust their motives, because he fears how much worse they'll make things if he leaves them to clean it up themselves. So working with a thief who is more than happy to assist the police in bringing down other, more serious, criminals might be something he can live with. Until it puts the whole team in the crosshairs of someone better left alone. . .

I expect Bandette to enjoy the experience immensely. She's going to have an opportunity to steal things no one else from her world might ever have a chance to even see. She has the chance to become the greatest thief in the entire multiverse, which is the kind of challenge she'd love.

The Muscle: Dave Stevens' Rocketeer. Making Cliff the Muscle is a bit of a joke. If this were the old JLI, Robo would be J'onn, and Bandette would probably be Ted (she's too clever to be Booster). I'm not sure who Jim is, maybe the Big Red Cheese? He has that sort of upright, honest outlook, albeit a little more wacky than Billy. Cliff would be Guy, shooting off his mouth and getting punched in it. I fully expect him to be knocked unconscious within 5 minutes of this group being put together (and I expect Bandette to borrow the rocket pack about 5 seconds later).

Still, Cliff is generally an upright guy despite his temper, and he's more than willing to put his neck on the line. He has a little experience with super-science, so he ought to take a liking to the lightning guns at the very least. I do expect a giant talking worm to shock him (Bandette would probably just respond with some variant of how marvelous it is to meet a giant worm, and set about charming the pants off Jim. Even if she were flustered, she wouldn't show it). Cliff is probably the one who is going to struggle the most to prove his value, so he's going to overreach, make mistakes, try to butt into things that he should have stayed out of.

Also, if you think that Betty will team-up with Bandette at some point, probably to get their hands on some important classified documents, you're absolutely right. Betty's stubborn and enthusiastic nature ought to play well off Bandette's more playful outlook. There will also almost certainly be a team-up between Bandette's dog Pimento, and Butchie, that bulldog that hangs around the diner Cliff eats at most of the time. Hell, we have the possibility of an Atomic Robo/Doc Savage team-up, since the Doc is the one who designed the rocket pack. Hmm, could we tie that into Robo's Flying She-Devils of the Pacific mini-series? Rival jetpack designs, or the She-Devils could have improved on the Doc's design. Basically, my reason for possibly having '40s Robo is to say he and Cliff already inhabit the same universe. Their worlds can at least sort of coexist.

The Woman of Mystery: John Ostrander and Tim Truman's GrimJack. I know you're thinking John Gaunt isn't a woman, and you'd be correct. However, it was established that - spoiler for 25+ year old comic! - having rejected Heaven to save his best friend, Gaunt's fate was tied to the city of Cynosure, and he's doomed to be reborn until the city is destroyed. At least some of the future incarnations we saw in the double-page splash that explained this were female. It could be one of those GrimJacks. A good writer could do something with a character who is a woman currently, and has grown up as a woman, but also remembers past lives as a man just as vividly, and how they choose to identify themselves in light of that. I have no idea, frankly, how GrimJack would approach it, though I expect there'd be an adjustment period when he recalls his past lives and handles it badly. You need someone who isn't me writing this thing for that, but the potential is there.

Setting that aside, GrimJack brings a lot of experience to the table. Even if were aren't using a reincarnation (in which case he has multiple lifetimes), he has decades of conflict in his life. Robo's been alive for awhile, but he's lived comfortably enough he could spend time going to school, running a company, developing entirely new disciplines of science. Gaunt had to spend almost his entire life struggling to survive. Grows up in the shittiest part of Cynosure, the Pit. Gets sent to the Arena to fight for his life for the amusement of the upper class while still a kid. Gets out as a teen, finds a little love and peace in a pocket dimension, then returns home and finds himself in a battle against the literal forces of Hell. Survives that, joins a bounty group called the Lawkillers. Survives that, joins the Transdimensional Police, then the Cadre as an assassin, then becomes a freelance mercenary. He lives and thrives in a city that is constantly changing in size, shape, and population, where the physical laws that govern one street corner may have no bearing around the next block, and that too, is constantly changing. He's pissed off innumerable people, from politicians to bounty hunters to gods. Even if he did catch a bullet eventually, he made past 50 in a profession where a lot of people would be lucky to reach half that. He knows how to survive, is what I'm saying.

It's that knowledge I think the team really needs. Robo can be deceptive, but for him, that means he plays bullet magnet while someone else sets things in motion. Cliff is a generally lousy fighter, and not much good at making plans, and abandons the ones he does make at the drop of a hat. Bandette is sneaky, but tends to let fights drag out because she's having fun. As for Jim, well, despite his great big muscles and his really big ray gun, Jim is still an earthworm, which means he is pretty dumb. Gaunt fights dirty, using any edge he can get. Any weapon, any bit of his surroundings, any distraction, any moment of weakness in his opponent, GrimJack takes advantage of it. He wouldn't have lived as long as he did if he hadn't. Plus, he's getting old, and with the aches and pains, it's just better to end fights quicker sometimes, you know?

Also, I'm curious how he'd respond to Robo. Gaunt had a rule about not allowing Tourbots in his bar (those are ways for people to cheaply travel the city while sitting safely in a chair in an office somewhere, by placing their consciousness in a rolling trashcan), and once of his worst foes was Kalibos, an artificial intelligence that merged science with magic, and kills people to wear their skins so he can roam the city doing as he pleases (sowing discord and chaos as the ultimate expression of his freedom). So GrimJack might have some problems with artificial intelligence. Until Robo helps him put Kalibos down once and for all. Gaunt is, again in JLI terms, Batman, which is not something I'm hugely happy about given my frequent antipathy towards the Bat, but I don't see a better comparison. I do think that, once he got to know them, he'd develop moderately warm feelings. Jim might remind him of his friend Judah the Hammer, Cliff's a young hothead GJ would probably try to keep from getting his head blown off (that said, GrimJack is the one I expect to put out Cliff's lights in the first 5 minutes). I think he'd have to respect Bandette's skill (there will NOT be any romantic relationship between those two. however. Bandette is not spinning the wheel of likely death all his girlfriends have).

As for how you get them all together, rough draft, assuming Robo and Cliff occupy the same universe. There's a mishap with the portal, only they're thrown somewhere other than the vampire dimension, probably Cynosure (or the vampire dimension went into phase with Cynosure and they survived it long enough to emerge into the city, probably joining whatever forces from the city are keeping the vampires from overrunning the susceptible dimensions). At the same time, Bandette's world came into phase, and through some circumstances, she's come into possession of the Manx Cat. Maybe someone from Cynosure came to Paris and found her, and offered her the job. When the Cat gets stolen, GrimJack is the one who always gets dragged in to retrieve it. Which sets off a chase through the city, and Cliff, observing the chase, tries to help Bandette. Which doesn't go well, so Robo jumps in (literally), and GrimJack brings out the heavy artillery. Bandette probably hangs around to watch, or recognizes she has no idea where home is at this stage, and at some point, Robo falls into a section of the city where technology doesn't function, which hopefully slows things down enough nobody gets killed. As for Jim, I expect him to abruptly arrive after an incident involving him trying to make root beer in his garage for a box social he invited his rogues gallery to. He shouldn't have accepted a golf club from Psycrow to stir the mixture doing a thunderstorm. They could potentially end up in a section where technology can develop low-level sentience, in which case his suit would go out of control, and the whole group has to try and contain it, destroy it, or get it to a different area where it'll revert to normal.

Robo ponders the choices that have brought him to this place in "Why Atomic Robo Hates Dr. Dinosaur", by Brian Clevinger (writer), Scott Wegener (artist), Ronda Patterson (colorist), and Jeff Powell (letterer). Commandeering a giant hamster to stop a shotgun wedding is just another day in the life in Earthworm Jim #2, by Dan Slott (plot), John Lewandowski (script), Barry Crain (pencils), Sam DeLa Rosa (inker), UL Higgins (pencils), Ed Laz (colorist). Bandette is living the dream in Bandette #3, by Paul Tobin (writer), Colleen Coover (artist), Ryan Jurgensen (digital production), and Irina Beffa (design). Cliff is more confident than he ought to be in Rocketeer, Chapter 4 (I couldn't figure out which comic specifically it would be in), by Dave Stevens (writer and artist), Laura Martin (colorist), and Carrie Spiegle (letterer). GrimJack's stint as a dentist ended swiftly amid complaints about his primitive working conditions in GrimJack #1, by John Ostrander (writer), Tim Truman (artist), Janice Cohen (colorist), and John Workman (letterer).

31 Days of Scans - Day 20

A story or book I could read over and over again. There’s a lot of those, but I’ll pick one in particular, though it isn’t a very happy one. I don’t know if the arc has a name, but it ran from GrimJack #31 up to #38 or 39, depending on how you want to look at it. Really, that doesn’t even cover it entirely, because there were so many things in this arc set up a year or two earlier in the book, and repercussions from it carried the rest of the way through the series.

I was going to do a plot recap, but trying to cover 8 issues of this series would have gone on too long, especially since I’d have to keep going back to describe things that happened earlier in the series that factor in. Basically, Gaunt’s worst tendencies and fears about himself all come together at the worst time. He’s dating an actual ghost, the fact she can’t die quite possibly part of the appeal to someone concerned about how many of his loved ones end up dead. He tries to help his best friend, BlacJacMac, get back together with his lady, because he feels each of them is letting their pride get in the way of something good (this turns out to be something Gaunt knows a little about), without success. Surly over that, he delivers some bad news to an old flame of his in a callous and straightforward fashion. The straightforward part is standard for Gaunt, who is big on truth, but not too concerned with its effects. As usual, this causes problems for him down the line, as it leaves Shari understandably furious.

Spook comes to him asking for help, and even though doing so will mean losing her forever – it involves completing her unfinished business – he agrees. Then he won’t leave when she asks, his stubborn desire to stay with her and see this thing through (and not walk away from someone he cares for) speaking up. It nearly gets him killed, and this puts him in a position where he’s all that stands between her and an innocent. Up to that point, he’s protected her, because he felt she deserved some revenge (not being above that impulse himself), but all the time he’s been hoping she’d be satisfied before it came to a certain point. He's out of luck on that score, as usual.

So Gaunt does what he has to, whether to protect Spook or that innocent live is up for debate, but either way, it leaves him drained. It confirms his fear that he’s poison. That all his talk about standing by his friends is a lot of hot air, considering that what he ends up standing beside is a bunch of corpses. Coming back to a trashed Munden’s Bar full of dead customers, injured friends, a triumphant Shari, and the Lawkillers - having escaped being marooned in the past where Gaunt and Spook left them, and looking for payback on both - doesn’t help. That’s a problem for Gaunt, he sometimes makes decisions for petty reasons, or just because he’s hurting and doesn’t care if others do as well, and they come back to bite him. They may take a circuitous route to do it, they may gather momentum and extra suffering as they go - a person looking for payback on GrimJack will find no shortage of potential allies - but those ugly choices he makes always have consequences.

He ends up in a graveyard, alone against three killers, doing what he seems to do best, piling up corpses. I do want to take a minute to highlight the following exchange between Gaunt and the Preacher. As awful as the whole situation is otherwise, I find it really funny (Ostrander's knack for humor amidst serious moments coming through, or maybe it's Kim Yale. I read someone online this week who attributed much of the lighter bits in some of Ostrander's work to her.). It’s also a decent representation of a lot of arguments about differing interpretations of religious texts over the course of human history.

Interesting points, Mister, err, Preacher. Mr. Gaunt, your rebuttal?

Excellent points, GrimJack wins the debate for Cynosure Seminary and Bar and Grill! It all leads to Gaunt and the Major, a passel of history between them (some neither of them even knows or understands yet), in a crypt. Even as Gaunt’s run his target to ground, and readied him for the kill, all his ghosts are doing the same to him. Throughout the series, other characters have talked about “the Dark” this state of mind GrimJack descends into where he’s extremely dangerous to everyone: Whoever he wants to kill, his friends, and himself. Up to now, he’s either had someone there to pull him back, or he’s managed to survive through luck or fortuitous happenstance. This time, luck turns against him, and there’s no one else around. Some are injured. Some are dead(er). Some are distant physically, others emotionally, and Gaunt pushed everyone else away because he feared what might happen to them. Which means he’s on his own, and that’s not good.

Of course, even when the Major appears to win, appearances can be deceiving. So we get an issue of the Major, a man who knows how impermanent death can be, unable to enjoy his victory, chasing the man he was sure he’d put in the ground. Then we find out what happened to Gaunt, and Ostrander and Mandrake put some wheels in motion for further down the line, with the Dancer and his plans, with Gaunt, and with Spook.

What’s impressive is how, as I read the story, I can feel all this building up against him. Not just the enemies he’s made, but all the weight he carries inside. Ostrander and Tim Truman did this to good effect on a broader scale  in their run, with the Trade Wars. We saw how Gaunt, who tends to focus on the small pictures because he can’t stand the bigger one’s stench, can be manipulated by people claiming to be all about the big picture, and it leads to a lot of death and destruction. But he’s a means to an end, which doesn’t make him feel less responsible, but it affects mostly people he doesn’t know or care about, and the ones truly responsible would have done it with or without him. This one is more personal, everything is aimed at him, everything is happening specifically because of him. Because of things he did or didn’t do, jobs he left unfinished, jobs he should have considered finished sooner, words he delivered carelessly.

And it's a good story for Mandrake's art. Lots of atmospheric fog, mist, and smoke. Plenty of high dark ceilings, creepy graveyards, or bombed-out bars full of looming shadows. The characters are mostly older, worn, the years showing clearly, except the one who's already dead, and half the time she looks like a wailing banshee thing. It's not a pretty, happy place, but it's not a pretty story, either.

A best friend ought to know when to butt out in GrimJack #31, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), David Cody Weiss (letterer), and Linda Lessman (colorist). Gaunt doesn’t know when to give up the ghost in GrimJack #32, by Ostrander, Mandrake, Lessman, and Ed Panosian (letterer). Gaunt makes one last, doomed appeal to Spook in GrimJack #34, also by Ostrander, Mandrake, Lessman, and Panosian. Gaunt fights 3 crazy assholes in a cemetery that is naturally shrouded in mist in GrimJack #36, by Ostrander, Mandrake, Ken Holewczynski (letterer), and Ken Feduniewicz (colorist). The Major chases a GrimJack up, down, and all around in GrimJack #37, by Ostrander, Mandrake, Holewczynski, and Feduniewicz.

31 Days of Scans - Day 14

It took a little longer to choose a subject than last week’s, because I would think of a writer, then think of a project they did that either sorely disappointed me, or had not interested me in the slightest. Then the answer came to me, and it was so obvious I couldn’t believe I didn’t hit on it immediately. Don’t get me wrong, it took like 5 minutes to figure out, but it was a long 5 minutes at the time.

John Ostrander’s the only comic writer I can think of where I’ve sought out complete runs of 4 different ongoing series he wrote, all of which were at least 20 issues, 3 of which were over 60 issues. I’ve even considered buying his run on Firestorm, and I don’t give a flip about Firestorm, but Ostrander wrote it, so I figure it might be worth a shot. I’ve considered buying Star Wars comics, just because he wrote them (I didn’t buy them, but he’s the only writer that got me that far).

The first time I read Ostrander’s work and knew it, was GrimJack. My cousin had given me a box of comics he couldn’t sell, and inside were the first four years of that book. The cover for the first issue did not impress, so I passed it over. But once I’d read everything else in the box, I had no choice. And I was hooked instantly. Gaunt being this old, battle-scarred guy, for hire for just about any job you’d care to name. In spite of his outward (and justified) cynicism about the world, he nonetheless has certain principles he tries to stick to. He tries hard to be a good friend, he tries to get at the truth of things, and to see a job through to the end, but can’t escape the fact his friends tend to die, and the truths he uncovers cause a lot of damage (both the truth itself, and what he does to get at it). All of this set in a bizarre world, where anything or anyone could be waiting around the corner. GrimJack was the first series where I felt compelled to track down what I didn’t have. First, just through the end of Ostrander’s run with Tom Mandrake, so I could see how the battle with the Dancer played out. Later, all the rest, the Jim Twilley run with Flint Henry, the Demon Wars saga, the Demon Knight graphic novel, the Starslayer back-ups, the mini-series he and Tim Truman did that IDW published in 2005 and 2009.

By then, I’d been in the comics’ blogosphere enough to hear about Suicide Squad, and so I had to go get all of that. Chris Sims talked at length about what made that book so great a few weeks ago – the development the surviving villains get, all the bad ass moments everyone gets, Amanda Waller in every way possible - but I also like the bits of humor Ostrander includes. Dr Light’s desperate attempts, first to fit in, then to be the big hero, all of which backfire on him horribly. Waller and Boomerang’s back and forth, leading to the bit where Waller plays a massive joke on Boomerang because he’s been posing as Mirror Master to commit crimes while pretending to honor the terms of his deal. The unknown pie thrower of Belle Reve. I would expect a certain amount of gallows’ humor in a book where characters can die at any moment, and there is a fair amount bit of that – or maybe it’s just the cruel joke many of their missions are for nothing – but a lot of it is just straight up meant to be funny. Pie gags are always good.

There’s his Heroes for Hire run. It’s not mentioned as often as some of his other work. It’s considerably shorter, it kind gets undercut when Heroes Reborn crapped out after a year (the premise being Iron Fist had formed a team to try and pick up the slack in the wake of all the heroes “dying” fighting Onslaught). It uses the High Evolutionary, and no one likes that guy, and pits him against Exodus, and nobody likes him, either. But he pulls together a lot of disparate characters, some of whom I like already – Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Scott Lang – but others I don’t care much about, like the Black Knight and Thena of the Eternals, and makes me care about them. They have their own stories that take them into or out of the book in ways that make sense, and also contribute to the feeling Danny didn’t really think this through, as usual. It gives the cast a makeshift, almost Defenders feel to it, though with considerably less infighting. 

The book has a much more irreverent tone, as the narrator is prone to freaking out when things start to look bad (to the point She-Hulk tells him to scram in one issue, back when she was still breaking the 4^th wall regularly). There’s also a strong core of friendship in there, which is something Ostrander often seems to write well, especially between two guys. Luke and Danny, obviously, as old friends, but even between Luke (who is sort of being a triple agent, working for the Master by joining H4H, but really trying to learn the guy’s plan and stop it) and the bad guy. Luke understands the man’s goal, but can’t tolerate the methods. When Luke mentions he is not going to call the guy “Master”, the villain relents, and gives Luke a name he can be called by (I don’t have the issue handy, but it was something like Esau, maybe). You could consider that simply good management strategy, but it’s clear he respects Luke enough to care it would bother him (he didn’t have any trouble treating the U-Foes like lackeys). He’s genuinely hurt when Luke turns against him, and Luke actually feels bad for the guy. I know, Ostrander writes a compelling C-list villain, big surprise. But it was good stuff.

And again, the humor. Namor and Jim Hammond chatting it up like old buds.Calling Hammond "Firebug", which is cute and friendly, but also maybe a little condescending, which sounds about right for Namor. I like the idea that Hammond is one of the people Namor will loosen up around a little, as opposed to most other heroes, or even Captain America. For the record, I know the dialogue is blurry, and I tried to find a better scan online, and you all let me down. So you’re stuck with a picture I thought was a lot clearer when I took it.

In the last year, I hunted down his Spectre run with Tom Mandrake. I’m not religious, but I enjoy the conflict between how Corrigan and the Spectre see themselves, the ideals they claim to serve, the reality of what they are, and what they do. There’s some interesting work there about the nature of faith, and forgiveness, the lies we tell ourselves, the crap we let weigh us down, the judgments we make in ignorance, also about the ideals of the United States versus the reality of its history.

A lot of his work seems to deal with the nature of people, their flaws and hang-ups, and whether those can be overcome. Most of the characters in Heroes for Hire have made bad decisions in the recent past, usually when they were at a low point, or otherwise desperate, and there’s a question of whether they can fix things, or pick themselves back up and try again. That book seemed to respond in the affirmative, but Suicide Squad and GrimJack are somewhat less positive. The members of the Squad seem eternally tripped up by their issues, Waller’s struggle for control and power, Flag’s Daddy issues, Bronze Tiger’s fears about himself, Deadshot’s myriad family and guilt issues, even the question of whether anything good can be accomplished by something like Task Force X. The overarching feeling seems to be no. Most of their missions fail or are pointless, and by the end, Waller’s legacy may be that someone else took her idea and used it as a merc scheme for super-villains to help run a country. As for GrimJack, Gaunt is constantly making the same mistakes, unable to see when he needs to bend a little, pissing off the wrong people, being callous when a little more compassion might have made the difference, then letting it all eat him up inside until he does something stupid and dangerous, which usually causes more trouble for him down the road. He’s survived too long doing things his way to really change, except for temporary moments where he recognizes a singular past mistake, and by then, the damage is done. And when in doubt, he will constantly revert to that willful type that enjoys making people in power look foolish because he can, thumbing his nose with no regard for the consequences. And there are always consequences.

John Gaunt covers all the theological bases in the second part of “Mortal Gods”, a two-part back-up story running in Starslayer (probably issue 11, but I took this from a reprint in GrimJack #24), by John Ostrander (writer), Tim Truman (artist), John Workman (letterer), and Janice Cohen (colorist). The universe shudders at Amanda Waller’s fury in Suicide Squad #21, by Ostrander (writer), Luke McDonnell (penciler), Todd Klein (letterer), and Carl Gifford (colorist). Luke Cage feels bad about stopping the misguided, would-be savior, and Namor wonders how an android grows a beard in Heroes for Hire #12, and #8 respectively, by Ostrander (writer), Pascual Ferry (penciler), Jamie Mendoza (inker), Joe Rosas (colorist), and Jon Babcock (letterer). Corrigan and the Spectre reflect on the nature of the lives together and apart in Spectre #62, by Ostrander, Tom Mandrake (artist), Todd Klein (letterer), Carla Feeny (colorist), and Digital Chameleon (color separations).