Sunday Splash Page #272

 

"The British Riddler," in Jack Staff (vol. 2) #3, by Paul Grist (writer/artist), Phil Elliot (colorist)

The original, black-and-white volume of Jack Staff ran 12 issues across 2000-2003. Then he took the concept to Image, or they approached him about publishing it, and boom! New #1 and away we go.

Grist started with a story about Jack's last adventure before his 20-year absence, which also served to hint at something larger, a war between two forces, "Red" and "Green". We don't know what's at stake, or what either side represents, besides themselves. I'm not sure we ever see someone specifically allied with the Red. Maybe the shadow that helps out Becky Burdock, Vampire Reporter.

That thread never really gets anywhere within this volume, though we might have seen parts of it in Weird World of Jack Staff. What it does accomplish is to alter the view of Helen Morgan. In the first volume, Helen seems like the all-knowing puppet master. Jerking around and manipulating people with a mysterious smile on her face. She keeps her cards close to the vest, even with the people she ostensibly works with.

What this volume reveals is that Helen herself is a puppet on the strings of the same Ragman-looking being that was using Jack before he retired. That it swept her up in a moment of desperation and now she can't get free, not until she accomplishes something very difficult.

In that sense, not unlike the Eternal Champion who appears midway through the series. A warrior condemned to fight on behalf of "the Cosmic" until it deems that he's done enough to redeem himself. Allowing the jailer to have total control on when the sentence is up works as poorly for the jailed as you'd expect.

Between those two, Jack's WW2 antagonist Kaptain Krieg, and with all the forces circling Becky, a real theme seems to be people at the mercy of greater forces. Becky's the only one who might, again, based on Weird World of Jack Staff, have managed to slip the noose, but it seemed so easy how she rejected what seemed to be fate that it's hard to believe she did more than get a reprieve. Krieg's attempt to take control of his existence succeeds in killing him, but not the thing using him. Helen and the Champion seemingly can't die, or don't stay dead if they do, so even that exit's denied them.

Makes the book kind of depressing when I think of it that way.

Grist's figurework is much the same as it was in the first volume, and you can see elements of his design sense in the page layouts some times, but he shifts his approach a bit to account for being in color. Less emphasizing negative space, more taking advantage of the color work to create theme or mood. Elliot (and later Erik Larsen a few times) use vivid swirls for the scenes with the Druid or when the Eternal Champion falls through space. Or Helen Morgan's dreams, shaded in green.

The second volume ran for 20 issues over about 6 years, going through long stretches of absence. A year between #13 and #14 (though there were a couple of oversized Specials in the gap), 8 months between #19 and #20.

Sunday Splash Page #271

 

"Candid Camera," in Jack Staff (vol. 1) #6, by Paul Grist

Jack Staff! Britain's Greatest Hero, for a certain definition of "hero." Jack always seems to be where someone needs him to be, if not always where someone (including himself) wants him to be. He doesn't often win, but he always tries, even if it costs him. That's a hero, I suppose.

The original Jack Staff adventures, done in black and white, which seems to suit Grist. He really uses the negative space, outlining the setting or the shape of a character or object by the solid shadows around it. The scene with Jack and the Spider in the thief's lair being a prime example as Jack spends pages in what looks like a void, with only narrow traces of light in a web pattern as a guide. Very dramatic, very atmospheric.

I've remarked at different times in the past that it may be Jack's name as the title, but it isn't always his book. I would have sworn Grist said something to that effect in the foreword of the collected edition, but no. Maybe it was at the start of the second volume. Either way, Grist spends as much time on other characters as he does on John Smith, builder, aka Jack Staff. Becky Burdock, Girl Reporter, then later Beck Burdock, Vampire Reporter in particular, as Grist seems to be steadily building her up for something that sort of paid off in Weird World of Jack Staff.

I'm not actually a huge fan of Becky. When she's not bugging Jack Staff to save her, she's yelling at him for getting her mixed up in something, when it was usually her investigative reporter snooping that got her involved in everything to begin with. When he's not around, she yells at him for not showing up to save her. Like he's got no life beyond bailing her out.

There's also Q, the group that investigates weird crimes, of which there are plenty in Castletown. Helen Morgan seems to be the focus, the one who always knows more of what's going on than everyone else, the one content to play mind games (literally) to get the results she deems necessary.

Beyond them, Grist introduces a father-son vampire-hunting team, a dimwitted cop named "Maveryck", an "escapologist" from the Victorian Era, and The Druid, who keeps trying to communicate with us about matters of dire import. Grist takes advantage of the medium as a way to avoid giving up too much information, which was a nifty touch.

It's also kind of the nature of the game with this book. He drops a lot of hints about Jack. He was definitely around in World War II. He claims he saw the escapologist, Charlie Raven, perform live. He has energy powers he only rarely uses, though the particulars of "why", like most things related to him, are left unknown. It's all a big mystery, and only a few are ever answered.

Saturday Splash Page #39

 

"Jack Splat," in Weird World of Jack Staff #5, by Paul Grist

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.

Saturday Splash Page #38

 

"Down the Spout," in Weird World of Jack Staff King-Size Special, by Paul Grist

We'll get to Jack Staff proper in Sunday Splash Page some time next year, but for now, a two-week foray. Grist explains on the last page, that this was a story originally serialized in Comics International sometime earlier, and then reprinted as one big comic through Image in 2007. Grist mentions one thing he learned is that you shouldn't do a comic that's being released in 3-4 page chunks on a monthly release schedule, because it loses momentum. Weekly works better, apparently.

The story itself involves Q (really, the Q acts as the dot at the bottom of a question mark, but I have no idea how to type that), who are your sort of shadowy group that investigate mysterious goings-on. 3-person team. Helen Morgan (???), Harry Crane (ex-cop, precog), Ben Kulmer ("reformed" thief). In this case, that involves a mysterious meteorite and people being turned into walking, talking plant-folk. Grist, as was typical for his Jack Staff stuff, populates the book with other characters who feel as though their stories have just happened to intersect with Q for the night. Hints at their backstory, but nothing more. The Starfall Squad. Sommerset Stone, Gentleman Adventurer.

It works as its own standalone adventure for Q, while also letting Grist hint at a few different threads with those characters. That Helen's playing some sort of long game the other two don't grasp, and that Ben's probably not as much his own man as he thinks, with that weird claw on his hand. Mostly, it's just a nice creepy adventure. Grist uses the nighttime, woodsy setting to play with shadows and negative space, which he's pretty good at. The plant-folk are weird, but not too monstrous.

Jack Staff - Everything Used To Be Black And White

One of the occasionally frustrating things about reading Jack Staff is how many plates Paul Grist has spinning at one time. Normally, this isn't the sort of thing that bothers me; I grew up on '80s Marvel comics with multiple subplots. But Grist moves back and forth between them so frequently that just as I'm settling into one thread, he jumps to another*.

What helped though, was an introduction Grist had on the inside cover of an issue of Weird World of Jack Staff. He explained his approach was the book was essentially a whole lot of different comic strips, which all just so happened to be taking place in the same universe, and all of them were kind of happening around the title character. So Jack isn't necessarily the main character, he's the lucky (unlucky) fellow who keeps getting sucked into other people's problems, in addition to some of his own. The structure of the story made more sense after I that.

That actually isn't an issue in Everything Used to be Black and White, which contains the first 12 issues of Jack Staff, those published under Grist's own Dancing Elephant Press. It's just a particular thing that keeps cropping up in my mind as I reread the issues. In those early stages, Grist has to go through the process of introducing these characters to us for the first time, sketching out personalities and quirks, backstories, making us care, and getting the ball rolling.

He's very successful at all that. He starts with a story that moves between a wartime adventure of Jack's and the present, when the threat seems to have reemerged. From there, some of the characters have to deal with the fallout of the battle, the injuries, changes, or even deaths they incurred, and then it moves into a couple of odder stories. One about a book actually coming to life and trying to construct a physical form for itself. Then one about a "time leech", which had tangled with a master escape artist a century ago, and is just now starting to get back into circulation (as is the escapologist).

I'm very impressed with how Grist weaves it all together, bringing in new characters, who end up starting their own arcs and progressions, but it doesn't feel forced. He introduces them smoothly, and then later starts devoting more page time to them. So we're introduced to the Q Branch (who investigate "question mark crimes") in the initial story, but we don't necessarily know that much about them. Then Grist gives them a little more page time, and we see how Harry Crane and Ben Kulmer got into it. If we don't learn the same about Helen Morgan just yet, we do learn about some of her abilities, and her personality**. Or we meet Detective Inspector Maveryck's partner, "Zipper" Nolan as they investigate a murder, and the story hints at something going on with Nolan, but that also won't come to the forefront until later. It's all very skillful, and I wonder at how mapped out Grist had all this beforehand, and how much he pulled together as he went along. Either way, it seems to run together very well, one story creating situations that lead naturally into another.

I think, on the whole, I prefer the book in black and white, compared to the later volumes published through Image in color. Not because the color work is bad - it's vivid and bright, and used effectively to create mood. Like I've said before, I'm a sucker for using negative space, or letting shadows or their absence suggest at things, and Grist does that quite well. And it seems more natural when the whole book is in black and white. Either way, Grist has a good sense of page layout and design, and he's able to create distinct characters who all seem as though they can occupy the same world, be it a regular cop, a demon, or a giant robot person.

I really like the page above, with the Spider's lair shown as this cavernous place where anything could be lurking, and you're stuck navigating by moving from the platforms. Which are in a web motif, so Jack is caught in the web, even when it appears his old foe is being entirely polite and open with his intentions. And the image of Jack on the monitors, which could be the appearance of him being a barred gate, suggesting the Spider's possible eventual plan (I'm not sure if he counted on Maveryck to that much of a crooked cop as to try burning evidence that exonerates a suspect).

* Also, coming to the series now, after the fact, there's the knowledge a lot of those threads are not likely to ever be resolved. Which, again, is something I should be used to from Claremont if nothing else, but it's still a little irritating.

** In general, Helen seems like the sort of person I'd want to trust, because she seems to be generally decent, but I don't think I could ever be certain she wasn't just setting me up to be used for something down the line. Has that air of constantly appraising whether everyone around her is useful or not. With reason, which makes her both a sympathetic and frustrating character, in addition to frequently being very cool.