I haven't reviewed Jack Staff since the big news about the move to Image, but in short, my reaction was "Yippee!" Jack Staff, like Grist's Kane, has always been a book that doesn't get the attention or the sales it deserves, and if Image can help overcome that, I'm all for it. In the meantime, if you want to be just on the cutting edge so you can say "I was reading it when it was self-published in black and white," this issue is a great place to start, another reasonably self-contained issue with a variety of characters, a charming sense of humor and just enough of a hook to get readers coming back for more.
Grist's stories tend to reflect super-hero comic plots and characters, as he has created a lot of characters who will look familiar. The mystic, the national hero, the cat burglar, the mysterious organization that investigates the mysterious events in the world, the plucky girl reporter, etc. Grist is playing with archetypes. Of course, he also likes to give those archetypes a twist. The girl reporter? She's a vampire. The national hero? He's a fairly normal guy, a guy who does construction in his "secret identity." The mystic can see out of the comic and talk to the readers.
If you're detecting a certain wry sense of humor in there, you wouldn't be wrong. Grist has an impressive ability to play with the fun elements of the super-hero genre, even gently mocking them sometimes, without turning the book into a parody. Yes, a vampire girl reporter is a silly idea, especially when she's announced in each issue with onomatopoeia, but the tone of the book is such that the reader and the super-hero genre are both in on the joke, rather than being made fun of. And it's often quite funny; Morlan Mystic's prediction of what's going to happen is a clever bit of writing, and it makes for a great punchline (pun intended, you'll see what I mean when you read the book.)
Grist's art style is as distinctive as his writing style. He uses plenty of white space, and he's definitely not afraid of some of the goofy conventions of Silver Age comics, like announcing each character's arrival (or transformation into costume) with a bold logo. His designs for the characters are also delightfully retro, and I love that he'll occasionally split panels across what is one scene, using one image to give a sense of motion, thanks to the reader's conditioning to read two panels as a change in time and space.
Jack Staff is a light read, a throwback to the days when comics were fun and adventurous and didn't resolve around soap operatics. It's one of the most fun super-hero books on the stands, a contrast to the "mature readers" trend without going the other way and becoming completely retro or all-ages.
