Site icon The Thrilling Detective Web Site

John “GrimJack” Gaunt

kevinburtonsmith

Created by John Ostrander and Timothy Truman

“Call me mercenary. Call me assassin. Call me a villain. I am all that and more.”

GRIMJACK was the titular hero of a hard-boiled mid-80s sci-fi comic book, set in an alternative reality, a weird mixture of Conan the Barbarian and Star Wars, with dashes of every genre you could imagine, from film noir and cyber punk to westerns and pirate movies, thrown into the mix. Lots of swords, lots of capes, lots of long hair on broad-shouldered men, lots of cussing and fighting and drinking.

The series was probably best remembered for upping the ante on comic book violence. Somebody died, often horribly, and, of course, graphically, in every issue. “Grimjack” was the nom de guerre of intergalactic mercenary, wannabe wizard, private eye and shit magnet JOHN GAUNT, he of the murderous disposition, nasty facial scar and even nastier smile. Sword and pistol at his side, cigarette jammed in his maw, and clad in a military costume right out of a Gilbert and Sullivan operatta, he stomped through a city called Cynosure that existed in every dimension at once (sort of the way the comic itself appropriated every genre trope it could use), which allowed the writers to change the laws of physics/nature at will.

Fortunately, for fans of blood and guts, a blade apparently works everywhere.  There were femme fatales, corrupt politicians, missing persons, robberies gone wrong, illegal blood-sports, a seedy bar and haunted pasts. Great stuff for maladjusted teens of all ages, and still loads of fun.

Grimjack originally appeared in the November 1983 issue of Starslayer, as a back-up feature, before moving on to his own book, Grimjack (1984-1991), which lasted over eighty issues, and featured a letters page titled “Spill Yer Guts.”

Also of interest was the back-up feature, “Munden’s Bar,” which featured various barflies (from gods  to just plain drunks) gathering in the Cynosure’s most notorious dive bar. The tongue-in-cheek feature was often taken over by various guest artists and writers, and often featured their own characters, adding an anything-can-happen moment of lightness to the on-going carnage in the main feature. The back-up feature proved popular enough that it even got its own annual, a handful of specials, and eventually a formal collection.

Meanwhile, GrimJack got a standalone  graphic novel, Demon Knight (1990), and a second series, Grimjack Casefiles (1990-1991), which reprinted his earlier Starslayer appearances. He was also popping up in in other comics (the 1980s indie comics scene was awash in crossovers), including a couple of Munden’s Bar specials, a few First Comics crossover specials, and even a one-panel sight gag cameo in issue #5 of the DC Comics horror anthology title Wasteland that probably got a few lawyers all hot and bothered.

Ahhh… Lawyers. And misplaced ambition…

GrimJack the comic was chugging along, doing just fine, making money, when, sometime in the early nineties, First Comics got the bright idea to revive Classics Illustrated, the beloved American comic series from the 1940s through the 1960s that adapted classic literature. Alas, it wasn’t to be–First Comics went belly-up, and GrimJack became entangled in the First Comics’ bankruptcy and copyright issues that lasted for years. To their dismay, Ostrander and Truman no longer owned their own character. It took until 2005 for them to finally regained control, almost 25 years after GrimJack made his debut.

Seemingly instantly, Ostrander, Truman and the rest of the original team published Grimjack: Killer Instinct, a 6-issue miniseries that served as a sort of prequel to the original series and his first appearance in Starslayer. 

In January 2011, GrimJack was back again in The Manx Cat,  a serialized web comic that later saw print as a six-issue miniseries, a sly take on on Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon.

And that’s it, so far.

I think.

There have been tons of reprints, shout outs and tributes, along with the usual killings off of characters (including GrimJack himself), clones, alternate universes and other comic bullshit, but the character himself has remained popular, achieving almost cult-like status among fanboys of a certain age, and as recently as 2019 or so, there has been talk of the Russo brothers developing an animated TV series or possibly a movie for Amazon. 

UNDER OATH

COMICS

GRAPHIC NOVELS

COLLECTIONS

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Timothy Truman for the scoop, and the heads up.

 

Exit mobile version