Compared to the Destroyer or the Punisher, the Grackle isn't a name that strikes fear...

...although, it isn't really supposed to be. From 1997's the Grackle: Doublecross, written by Mike Baron, pencils by Paul Gulacy, with some inks by Charles Yoakum.

Derek Cross used to be a cop, then was moved to internal affairs after a shoot-out where he allegedly abandoned his partner. Cross would go on to bust thirty-nine dirty officers, earning himself "a lot of hatred" and the nickname "the Grackle," after the bird that makes its home in others' nests. Eventually, his luck ran out, and an investigation of "a group of rogue cops moonlighting as hitmen" ended up with Cross himself under indictment. At his lowest point, Cross was recruited by the mysterious Colonel, and now performs the odd job of investigation or security.

A lotta backstory for a little four-issue miniseries, but it's never dumped all at once like that: everything about Cross is doled out in small portions over the course of the book, and even by the end you don't know it all. Looks like they were leaving something for future books, but Acclaim's Crime Fiction line didn't go much further than this.


One of the points I most remember from this one, was Baron's one fantasy/sci-fi conceit for the book: Firefly. Not the TV show, but a drug, like a better crack, but one that occasionally causes spontaneous combustion. Cross describes the users at one point as smelling like cooked meat, and several smoke themselves into flames over the course of the series.

While Cross is a bit of a gloomy-gus, despite not completely hating his job and having a hot model girlfriend; the Grackle does have it's fair share of black humor to go with the manly action. It's nowhere near as brooding as Baron's work on the Punisher, but it's a good read. And Paul Gulacy delivers the fight sequences you would expect. (I wasn't as impressed with the covers, and the odd cover copy.)

This is another one that I don't think was ever collected, and the sales may make it a little harder to dig up, but if you're a fan of Baron, Gulacy, or seventies-style men's action novels like the Destroyer, it's worth a look.