Waiting for Steranko

Jim Steranko.

I have been in awe of the man's ability to tell a story in pictures ever since I first saw his work in the old Strange Tales comic books.

Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, never looked as good as it did in those early years.

The fact that Steranko left the comic art field just a couple of years later, around 1970, after his one and only love story, "My Heart Broke in Hollywood" and yet, he is still considered to be a seminal influence on the medium, speaks for it's self.

Unfortunately, any project that has the Steranko name attached to it, either comes in exceptionally late or completely disappears without a trace!

Many years ago, there was the promise of a book that would teach or explain the Steranko way of making comic books and graphic works, the name of which escapes me now but it never happened and there was never any explanation for it's failure to arrive.

Today, we are still waiting on the second volume of his comic book stories about Nick Fury, another Artist's Edition from IDW.

It has been delayed and delayed again, which, given the rapidly dwindling interest in the Artist's Edition format, must be more than a trifle worrying for the publisher.

It must be even more irksome to IDW, given that the first volume was such a raving success.

It is now promised for a December 2015 release and I really hope that it makes it.  As usual, I will be there, waiting in line, money in hand, panting to buy a copy... in the twinkling of an eye, I will be 17 years old again and floating on air, having just parted with a small fortune to buy a copy of Captain America 113!

I have been a collector of comic books and related things, for about 45 years and I have finally started to wonder how much longer I will go on collecting.  Perhaps, with the publication and purchase of this book, I will have reached a milestone and I will finally leave the party and walk away.

I don't think that my interest in the art form will stop but I am seriously considering ceasing to collect.

Paul Grist's Jack Staff

I am in the process of rereading all of the issues of Jack Staff that Paul Grist has put out over the years and they are still as entertaining as they were the first time that I read them.

A page by the great Frank Robbins,

from The Invaders #15 page 3, 

showing the creation of a Super Hero Team.

Despite, as Paul freely admitted in the past, being

a story that takes it's inspiration from a couple of Mid Seventies Marvel Comics, it is as engaging and satisfying as the first Alan Moore stories for the reintroduction of Marvelman in Warrior.

Paul manages the amazing feat of incorporating some fairly "cheesy" story lines, at least that was how I viewed them at the time they came out and without destroying anything,

come up with a comic book that is deeply engaging.

It is a great shame that it met the same fate as Paul's first series, the police drama called KANE, which came to an untimely end 

at issue #31.  The combined issues of Jack Staff, self published under the Dancing Elephant imprint, that ran for 12 issues as a complete mini-series.  Jack Staff, under the Image Comics imprint, that ran for 20 issues plus a Special Issue.  Then finally, The Weird World of Jack Staff, still with Image Comics, that began with the Special, a reprinting of a sequential story that had originally appeared in Comics International #185 to #191 and was followed by 6 more issues...

My mathematics isn't what it used to be but I 

calculate that as a total of 40 issues!  All in a continuous storyline.

Paul Grist has a style that often incorporates playing with time or perhaps more accurately, playing games with timing.

It can be a little bit disorienting at times but there is no denying it's effectiveness as a storytelling ploy.  I believe that the late great Wally Wood was supposed to have given this piece of advice about making a comic book story, "Start in the middle of the action and move backwards and/or forwards from there".

I wish there were more Jack Staff stories but I buy anything that comes out by him, most recently the aborted Mud Man.  I hope too that his latest work, Demon Nic, will be collected for me to buy.