We saw the previous issue some time back--
three and a half years ago! I guess we've waited long enough. From 1991,
Grimjack #81, "Final Acts" Written by John Ostrander, pencils by Flint Henry, inks by Bruce Patterson.
The high school friends of the man they knew as James Twilley are more than a little concerned at his recent actions as Grimjack: to try and save his family from karmic foreclosure, he had threatened the family of vengeful adjudicator Jagart with death. Even though Jagart wouldn't back down, that still seemed like a bit much; and Jagart had ordered a illegal hit on Grimjack, which was on top of the usual batch that wouldn't mind seeing him dead. One by one the Twilley's are 'foreclosed' upon, with one selling out their own sister to try and save himself. Jagart's family is seemingly abducted, forcing him to take up arms himself.
Although his friends try to help, in the ensuing shootout Grimjack is eventually shot down, since he won't kill his old friend Spook, who had been retroactively corrupted by his old foe the Major. (If I have this right, in a previous issue, the Major had travelled back in time to become a father-figure to her, so when Grimjack killed him she would avenge him.) But, much as he might talk a big game, Grimjack wasn't hard enough to kill innocents: Jagart's family was unharmed, although more than a little mad, disowning him. He was also found to have abused his position, and the karmic debt was passed to him, with any surviving Twilley's to be freed. If any; we don't see them here, since there were only two pages left! Jagart kills himself, while Twilley's friends mourn him, Munden's Bar closes, and...curtain.
Also this issue: the conclusion of the back-up "Youngblood," the horrible childhood of young John Gaunt. (Written by John Ostrander and Kim Yale, art by Steve Pugh.) Either by intention or a lucky accident, good thing it ended here, since this was the last monthly issue of
Grimjack, as First Comics had intended to transition away from monthly 32-page "floppies" to 48-page squarebound books. Only a few actually reached publication, though; and
Grimjack wouldn't return to comics shelves until 2005. Ostrander and co-creator Tim Truman appear to have gotten the rights back; and there may be more projects with some version of him, someday.
Hmm, I don't think I've gotten around to the last issue of
Nexus, but the second-to-last features a cameo by a
Grimjack-looking type! And before I even started doing these "The End" posts, we looked at holiday favorite
Badger #70, another of First's last issues at the very end.
Never read Grimjack, but then even if I had had access to him I don't think I'd have bought any as I was too much into buying mainstream stuff, with an occasional odd indie that caught my eye.
ReplyDeleteHow many Grimjack issues do you own?
The Major had this thing, curse I guess, where every time he died, these little guys in a wagon would show up and bring him back to life. Don't know why, although they had his soul in a jar. He had, at one point, a trinket he got from the demons for leading them to a nice dimension where Grimjack had been living after getting out of the Arena, but the Jim Twilley version had time-traveled back there (in the Demon Knight GN) and used it as proof the Major was a traitor so a crowd would lynch him. So the Major got revived and proved a pain in Gaunt's ass for years to come.
ReplyDeleteThat's kind of the thing that runs through GrimJack, but especially the Twilley section of GrimJack, how much Gaunt's inability to let any slight, any failure, any loss, any little bit of disrespect go, makes him his own worst enemy. Which ties in with the back-up story about his childhood. That bit where his dad beats the crap out of the butcher that hit Gaunt and tells him to never let anybody get away with disrespecting him, I read that and was like, "Well that explains a whole lot."
I don't think I have a quarter of the series; but I have a lot of the double-sized issues. (In the same vein, I have a lot of Badger, but not all of it.)
ReplyDeleteI feel like it's from much, much later; but I'm pretty sure there's a Nexus appearance where he apologizes for blowing up Munden's; Grimjack just mutters it'd been blown up like four times since that.