"Tattered Man" should be in quotes, everywhere, here.

Sometimes I buy comics on clearance on a knee-jerk reaction to the price; getting sold on the sale. Like today's book: The Tattered Man, written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, with art by Norberto Fernandez.

On Halloween, a trio of junkies in costumes, desperate for a score, plan a little home invasion. They crash the home of an old Jewish man, telling themselves that he must have gold or money, but all he has is a box of rags. The old man was a Holocaust survivor, who nearly died in a final purge at the war's end, but was saved when the rags rose out of a mass grave and killed every Nazi there. Although he remembers being angry that this spirit of vengeance didn't show up until his family was dead, the man takes the rags with him to America to start a new life and a family.

The lead junkie, not buying the story, shoots the man's daughter when she arrives with his granddaughter for trick-or-treating. Then the old man, then his fellow junkie David when he tries to stop him. Dying, the rags enter David, telling him he will feel the suffering of all the victims. Until he avenges them, as the Tattered Man.

If this sounds familiar, well, it sounds a lot like a reworking of DC's Ragman. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing: sometimes proposals don't go through. I'm pretty sure Warren Ellis's Gravel was reworked from plots he had planned on using in Hellblazer, and those were pretty good. (Although, giving John Constantine SAS training and guns is like giving an unfair advantage to an undefeated team.)

Still, I thought this was going to be something else. Oh, well.