If you don't care how, when and why I discovered Grimjack, skip to the next paragraph, because that's where I'm starting for context. I was a huge John Ostrander fan, having picked up Suicide Squad and Spectre, and my local comic book dealer, noticing my pull list, informed me that he had picked up an almost full run of Grimjack, and would I be interested in buying it? Over the course of a month or two, I bought the issues, usually around five issues at a time but sometimes more, and that began an adventure in seeking out back issues that finally ended when I procured a damaged but readable copy of the near-impossible-to-find Demon Knight graphic novel. So you could say that I have a bit of an interest in Grimjack, more than a little fondness, and maybe a touch of completist. I figured that the trades would be a nice way to get the comics I loved in the format I appreciated. Imagine my surprise when I actually got stories I had never read before, along with some really interesting "behind the scenes/welcome back" notes from Ostrander, Truman and Gold, some of the forces who brought Grimjack to life in the first place.
The Legend of Grimjack, like Grimjack: Killer Instinct, walks the line between being for the new fans and for the old fans. What with reprinting the first-ever stories of Grimjack ever, it can't help but be the "ground floor" for the character and the book, but the new story and the text page intros are very clear about welcoming back those who fondly remember Grimjack as well. Like Killer Instinct, Legend of Grimjack pulls off this balancing act nicely, and as a fan, I felt plenty of nostalgic joy at seeing the character again, but I can't help but think that new fans will feel just as welcomed and maybe even more pleased when they realize that this book they've heard about is really damn good, and always has been.
For me, some of the most fascinating material comes in the opening text pages, which make it clear just how much a labor of love this book is for its creators. They talk about the genesis of the character (born of a cross between Robert E. Howard, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler to create a "hard-boiled barbarian"), how the pan-dimensional city of Cynosure got into the mix, how it led Tim Truman into the genre he wanted to create art for instead of the humor genre he feared he would be relegated into and even the permutations of red tape and legal maneuvering that Mike Gold went through to recover the book after First went down. It's all told in a conversational, entertaining way, and the sense one gets is the same one we used to get in reading the Grimjack lettercolumn: We're all part of a community, all fans of Grimjack but with plenty of other stuff to talk about.
Once you get past a pretty solid introduction to the book and its creative team in text form, you are greeted by a brand new story, created by Ostrander, Truman and the rest today. It's a clever tale, a framing device that has the characters speaking directly to the reader and shuffling them toward John Gaunt so that he can tell them some stories. It's the comic-book equivalent of the "Star Trek Experience" or one of those other motion rides at Disney World (except way cooler, with blood, danger and violence), where you're invited to think of yourself as part of the book, not just an observer of it, and it's another important part of connecting the reader to this alien world and seeing that beyond the alien trappings, the drama and driving forces are still all about relatable human motivations.
The rest of the book reprints stories originally printed as backups in Starslayer, a science-fiction/fantasy book written by Ostrander for First Comics. The art doesn't have the same photo-real sheen as Truman's modern work, but it's still damn impressive, full of the same detail and imagination we've come to expect from him as an artist. The colors, likewise, are not as shiny as the original work, but they hold up surprisingly well (better than most of the Marvel/DC reprints from the same era, in my opinion), and the result is a book that retains the look of something created earlier, but does not look dated in any way.
The stories are as good an introduction to the world of Grimjack as any you could find. The first story, "Mortal Gods," shows off the influence of Robert E. Howard more strongly than most Grimjack tales, as the merc is hired to find a god in Cynosure only to discover that he's nothing more than a booze-soaked friend in this dimension. The monster and the action is pure Truman, exciting and bloody and in line with Howard's style but very much bearing Truman's distinctive stamp, and the conclusion of the story has the same warmth and humanity I've come to expect from Ostrander, particularly his Spectre work, and it starts down the path that will eventually become the "anything can happen" science-fiction Cheers setting of Munden's Bar. That feeling, by the way, is exemplified by the other one-shot tale, "Night of the Killer Bunnies," which finds an incredulous John Gaunt and his buddy Blacjacmac battling evil bunnies alongside talking animals in another dimension.
The other pure Grimjack tale is a 45-page epic (you heard me right, 45 pages and epic, this is old school solid storytelling) involving vampires, old friends, dangers in the past and moral compromise that leaves our hero drinking to forget. It is here that the influence of Hammett and Chandler is really felt, and where Grimjack really began to take shape. I was amazed at how much was there right from the start, from the expansive and quirky supporting cast to the notion that Gaunt's past always comes back to haunt him and his friends always pay the price (seriously, it's like John Constantine was an ancestor or something). There are any number of great science-fiction/fantasy concepts introduced along the way as well, even though the core of the story is, again, all about relatable human motivations like parental love, the tough part of being a good friend and the pain left in the past. Along the way we've got fights with vicious black ops and deadly vampires, not to mention a story that goes from the slums to the upper class area all the way to another dimension ravaged by the "Demon Wars."
Completing the collection is the crossover between Starslayer and Grimjack. As a completist, I'm glad to have it, but while I found most of these stories approachable, I was quite lost throughout much of the Starslayer crossover. The setup isn't as neatly explained (or maybe just not as easy to explain) as Cynosure, and I didn't find the characters as engaging. There are still some fun moments, including the price that Gaunt extracts for helping out the crew of the Jolly Roger, but it wasn't quite as good as the pure Grimjack stuff in the rest of the book.
In the final analysis, though, this is a fantastic collection. Terrific production values courtesy of IDW, a real sense of involvement from all the creators and stories that stand the test of time. I can't wait until we get the next volume. 9/10
