Found this issue; feel like finding the ninth will be the tough one.

I had never read it before, but it came up last month, so of course I found a copy while I was on vacation! From 1992, Hammerlocke #1, "Now These Her Princes" Written and co-plotted by Tom Joyner, pencils by Chris Sprouse, inks and co-plotted by K.S. Wilson. That's an unusual divide, usually the penciler is most likely the co-plotter...!

Because I--cue monocle drop--am not classically trained, I had to look up the title; as it's not a Spin Doctors reference, it's from Shakespeare's King John. This was a fairly hard sci-fi book, with a couple super-powered types; although the titular Locke would not consider himself as such. He was an engineer of earth's first space bridge, a massive "glorified elevator" but one that solved a number of problems while causing others politically. We hear more about him this issue than see him, as he had been killed during the Starbridge's building in an accident! Too valuable to lose, he had been kept alive with cybernetics: at a glance, Locke appears to be an armored type reminiscent of a knight, but I wonder if he wasn't just a head kept alive by a robot body. Locke was returning after several years away, where his estranged wife had been managing the Starbridge's administration. But while a longtime rival plots to gain political control of the bridge, Locke's daughter is kidnapped by mercenaries, despite the efforts of super-powered operatives.

I thought I had read more stuff from Tom Joyner, but aside from that Batman I can't think of anything. I may have been confusing him with Legion of Super Heroes writer Tom McGraw, and confusing Chris Sprouse with...Stuart Immonen? No, Sprouse had done Legion earlier! And sometimes the same issue! Now I'm more confused, since I'm also picturing Jason Pearson's art in the same stretch, and it's all running together. Geez, you'd almost think 1992 was thirty years ago or something...Worse, this has never been collected, and I didn't have any luck on digital either.