Grifter #13 (New 52) Review

Left: Grifter #13 Cover


"The EYE of the STORM"

Story:  Rob Liefeld

Dialog:  Frank Tieri

Pencils:  Marat Mychaels

Inks:  Dave Beaty

Colors:  Andrew Dalhouse

Letters:  Wes Abbott

Editor:  Brian Smith

ART

Even though I was saddened to lose Scott Clark on penciling duties on this title, we picked up the awesome Marat Mychaels. I really enjoyed the art in this issue, mostly because I love Mychaels’ rendition of Grifter. He really does the coolness of the character justice, and he has a great grasp of how to draw the mask and not make it look completely ridiculous (I’m looking at you Jesus Merino).

Of course, we continue with the super solid team of Beaty (inks) and Dalhouse (colors), who never disappoint and in reality, have kept this book to a consistent look throughout, which has been great.

The only downside to the art is that the backgrounds are very sparse and some of the scenes that were picked for the double-page spreads were not the scenes that I would have picked to showcase. Either way, if minimal backgrounds is going to allow Mychaels to keep putting a very high level of detail into his character work, I can deal with that.

STORY (SYNOPSIS) & DIRECTION

***BEGIN SPOILERS***

Hey, It's Warick--who the heck is he anyway?

This issue was a little hard to follow upon my initial read-through, due to the flashbacks and quick cuts between scenes, so that had a little bit of impact on my overall enjoyment of the issue’s actual story direction, but not that big of deal.

Side Note: In the future, if we are going to see any flashbacks or anything along those lines where we are taken out of the present and shown a different scene, a slight difference in the coloring (or maybe some kind of photoshop filter) or an art style tweak would go a long way to letting the readers know that we are looking at a different time and place. The backgrounds on the EOS and in STAR Labs looked so much alike that it was very hard to know that those were two different scenes (other than the cross-eyed Voodoo being only in the STAR Labs scene).

The story begins with Grifter meeting with the ever-mysterious Warick who is helping Cole plan an information-gathering mission. We don’t learn a lot from this initial scene, as far as who Warick really is and what his ultimate motivations are. We do see, because of some little red exposition boxes, that Grifter knows a little more than he is willing to tell Warick at this time…interesting. But this is totally in character for Grifter, as a good con-man always keeps his cards close to his vest, so to speak.

We flash forward to Grifter and Voodoo (really, Priscilla, the original non-clone character) breaking into STAR Labs and utilizing a teleporter to beam Grifter into the Bleed so he can infiltrate the Eye of the Storm (EOS - Stormwatch team headquarters) and retrieve some very important information on Amanda Waller, who in turn will have the information that Cole Cash ultimately wants. I know, it’s just a little bit convoluted.

Our protagonist makes his way into the hyperspace ship and is immediately detected by the ship’s AI, the Daemonite consciousness known as Charlie, lol. They have some funny dialog back and forth and then all of a sudden Grifter gets cold cocked out of nowhere by none other than…Apollo. Apparently, being the nice guy that he is, he was holding back on Grifter, but this was his first and only mistake as Cole takes his chance to produce a flamethrower on steroids (originally designed to take down Martian Manhunter, presumably designed by Team 7 tech guys) that briefly incapacitates Apollo long enough for Grifter to close ranks and hit him with a hopped up taser of sorts. This puts Apollo down for the count.

Side Note: A lot of the old-school Wildstorm fans are crying foul about how this should never happen and Grifter shouldn’t be able to hold his own at all in a fight with either Apollo or Midnighter. But I say to that…this a new comic universe and things have changed. DC has gone to pretty great lengths to establish how telepathically powerful and competent Grifter really is. He is vastly more powerful in the New52 than he ever was in the past. Now, this is a point of contention, but it’s what is happening, so we have to live with it. Or you don’t, I guess, if you choose not to read this comic…but then why would you be reading this review???

Grifter isn't bad, but Voodoo's cross-eyed!

Immediately after that brief scuffle, Grifter gets to a computer interface and pulls the information out of the EOS’s database and gets ready to make a quick exfiltration. But it’s not going to be that easy, because Midnighter appears on scene and attempts to subdue (or kill, more likely, because Midnighter is a giant douche like that) Cole. Grifter avoids his attacks and hits him with a powerful “TK punch” and that makes quick work of him as well.

Cole isn’t here to hurt the members of Stormwatch, he just needed the information, so rather than continuing fighting with them he makes a quick jump through the teleporter, but Midnighter jumps through and…

that’s the end…

...a big cliffhanger that will presumably have another fight between Grifter and Midnighter. But I hope that’s not the case because the hero-fighting-hero schtick is getting a little played out in this series. I really hope that Grifter can use his smooth-talking skills to talk Midnighter down and avoid another brawl.

As for the overall direction of the series, it seems to be heading on the path of Grifter finally taking the fight to the individuals who allowed the Daemonites to exist on earth (possibly for their own gain). This group, or person, must be bastards, because they knowingly allowed the Daemonties to kidnap, experiment, and murder untold numbers of humans. We, as the readers, really don’t have a clue who the ultimate baddie is going to be, but we do know that Grifter is looking for Amanda Waller’s files (so there is most likely a Team 7 connection) and that Waller herself could be responsible for all or some of the horrible things that have befallen Grifter since the beginning of this series, but I’m pretty sure that is just a misdirection to keep the readers guessing and allow for a plot twist when the antagonist is finally revealed.

Only a breathing mask for the Bleed...crazy.

Last Side Note: We just found out that this series is being cancelled with issue #16, which leaves us three (3) more precious issues. I can’t describe how bummed out I am about this news, as I was always more excited about the monthly Grifter comic that every other comic I read, combined. What that says about me is that I’m a HUGE fan of the character and love it when he is featured in a monthly book, because this character’s appearances has been so few and far between over the last 5+ years. It seemed like sales on this book were stabilizing around the 13,000 mark, but apparently that wasn’t enough to keep it going.

Ultimately this book failed to find an audience, not because Grifter isn’t a great character, and not because the art wasn’t beautiful, but because Nathan Edmondson, the original writer failed to create any sort of cohesive direction for the book, and subsequently shed the vast majority of the readers during his run. Through the first 8 issues, there was virtually no character building, and no solid direction…it was merely a series of vaguely-connected action and fight scenes that were just not interesting enough to keep the readers’ attention. And to top it off, the dialog was atrocious (which is very hard to understand, because that is typically one of Edmondson’s strong points in his creator-owned books). I don’t want to place all the blame on him because it is also obvious that there was a significant amount of editorial involvement in this book from day 1 and that has potentially played a part in stifling some of the creativity that could have saved this book.

After issue #16 I will go a little more in-depth about how I think the overall alien-centric direction of this series was not the right decision for a character such as Grifter, and what I hope for in the future as far as what stories DC chooses to include Grifter in.

***END SPOILERS***

DIALOG

There were a number of laugh-out-loud moments for me in this issue (courtesy of the always-awesome Frank Tieri) when it came to Grifter’s dialog with the Daemonite ship AI and with his comments to Apollo and Midnighter. I thought it was pretty funny stuff, and really continue to like the light-hearted nature of Grifter’s internal thoughts and spoken quips alike. It offsets the darker nature of the overall story, a story that is essentially becoming a tale of revenge for the murder of everyone that the main character cared about and loved…pretty dark stuff.

IN CONCLUSION

This issue continued the action of the series that we know and love, but upped the ante on the espionage element, which was very cool. We saw Warick briefly (but I seriously want to know more about this guy), and some additional foreshadowing elements were introduced with mentions of Amanda Waller’s files and what her involvement in the conspiracy against Grifter could be. How much will Grifter’s story tie back to his Team 7 teammates?

The art continues to be a high point of this book, and I really want Marat Mychaels to maintain a high level of detail and consistency on his character work through the rest of this series’ short life. He has just three more issues to wrap up this story and I think he can knock it out of the park.

There is one more issue planned that has Liefeld influences, and then we get full-on Tieri doing the plot and scripting for the last two (2) issues, which I am very excited for. Frank, if you are reading this (and I hope you are), please do right by all the Grifter fans out there and bring his series to an awesome and proper end by writing for Mychael’s strengths and showing how much of a badass Cole Cash really is.

Art = 6.5 / 10

Dialog = 7.5 / 10
Story = 5.0 / 10

Overall = 63% --> This book still remains a solid action book, the the quality trend is on the decline...so let's hope it takes some steps forward next issue in the art (mostly the addition of backgrounds) and story direction.

Grifter #0 (New 52) Review

Left: Grifter #0 Cover (no logo)


"DEPROGRAMMED"

Story:  Rob Liefeld

Dialog:  Frank Tieri

Pencils:  Scott Clark

Inks:  Dave Beaty

Colors:  Andrew Dalhouse

Letters:  Wes Abbott

Editor:  Brian Smith

ART

The art in this issue was great, as usual for the Clark/Beaty penciler/inker team. Once again, we had some really cool and inventive stuff in this issue compared to what has come before. I really liked the short action scene at the beginning of the issue, and this is just the BEST rendition of Grifter that I’ve seen in a long time. Then we get some very detailed and cool scenes that show our main character in a stasis tube, attached to one umbilical that keeps him alive, and another that presumably mainlines the augmented reality program that the antagonists have created for Grifter, directly into his brain. There was so much amazing detail on these pages, that sometimes when I see Clark's work, I wonder why he’s not a top tier artist. Hopefully it's only a matter of time. Did I mention how awesome the stasis tube scenes were...lol, moving on!

A man on a mission!

One little nitpick with this issue is that on a few (one in particular, really stands out) of the supporting character face close-ups, some of the cross-hatching gets a little out of control and thick and makes the characters face look pretty funky. But that is really my only negative about the art this month.

I say all this with a heavy heart though, as this issue is the swan song for the Clark/Beaty art team. It appears from comments made on twitter a few weeks ago by Liefeld that Clark will be moving over to Deathstroke as regular artist. I will definitely still be pulling that book, if for nothing other than his art. Looking to the future of this comic, Marat Mychaels will be coming on board, joining Dave Beaty and Andrew Dalhouse. I’m excited about this art team, because while I didn’t love the art for issue #11 (the only other issue that Mychaels has done so far) as much as the others, it was still well above-average in my book and we will still have the constants of the same inker and colorist, so it should be awesome. Also, it should be stated that the story for issue #11 was pretty much a stinker, so with a better plot/supporting characters/story setting, Mychaels should be able to really break out and hopefully do the best work of his career.

Dude, that's your brother...

STORY (SYNOPSIS) & DIRECTION

I’m going to do a slightly shorter story synopsis with all of my reviews going forward, and focus a little more on some of the best and most interesting moments and questions that are raised during each issue (of which there are a ton this month).

***BEGIN SPOILERS***

This is that great scene I was talking about.  Look at the detail, it's ridiculous!

This story is set 2 years ago, which in my calculation must put it somewhere in continuity between the end of Team 7 (new DC book that debuted this month—chronicles the early adventures of a lot of the group that will be known as Team 7, which is made up of John Lynch, Dinah Drake – Black Canary (future), Kurt Lance, Slade Wilson – Deathstroke (future), Alex Fairchild – father of Caitlin Fairchild, James Bronson, Summer Ramos, Amanda Waller – leader of Suicide Squad (future), Dean Higgins, and Cole Cash – Grifter (future)) and around the time that Grifter has had his first few run-ins with the earth Daemonites (which are different than the space Daemonites that are led by Helspont). This also means that this story is 2 years prior to the events shown in Grifter #1.

Question #1: It is unclear if the group of Daemonites that has experimented on and augmented Grifter is the older, more established earth faction that was referenced in the 2012 Superman Annual, and if this was the faction that was chasing Grifter at the beginning of this series. My inkling, based on reveals in this issue, is that the Deamonties (earth faction) started a program of kidnapping humans (most likely all or most of the subjects were ex-military) that had the potential to react well to gene-splicing and other augmentations and eventually got to Cole and started the process. The reason for this was to create a telepathic super-soldier that could stand against Helspont (leader of the space faction of the Daemonites) when the time came. For more information on the civil war between the Daemonites, read Superman Annual, which somewhat describes the strife between the two warring factions. What is most unclear is at what point in the story does Grifter stop fighting the earth faction and start fighting the space faction? I think the answer is pretty simple if you look at the facts – as soon as Liefeld came on board with issue #9 is when the factions changed (evidence of this is the upgraded Daemonites and the Resistance team being introduced that had the mole on it, the superpowered villains suddenly being thrown at Cole, and the increased focus on Helspont in the story itself).

Cross-hatching...lots of cross-hatching.

The action starts straight away in the initial 3-4 pages of the story, with Cole attempting a daring night-time raid on an undisclosed location in order to obtain some powerful and unknown artifact. John Lynch and Max Cash (Grifter’s brother) are with him on this particular mission...but that cannot right…because Cole realizes that his brother shouldn’t have been on this mission with him, and Lynch never actually saw action, he was the mission designer and the team mastermind.

We then see a few pages of the captors discussing the difficulties they have been having keeping Grifter’s mind reigned in, so to speak. One of them poses the question whether or not he is worth it, and the head scientist refers to him as the “Chosen One” again and basically says what we have already heard before, that Cole Cash is the only one (possibly prophesied) that can stop Helspont.

Jumping ahead, it is quickly revealed that Grifter is in a Matrix-like alternate reality, and the bad guys, who are also revealed to be Daemonites, are attempting to change his memories, and make him think/believe what they want, and not what really happened. Next, we see Cole suddenly pointing his guns at his teammates and shooting both of them…this is unbelievable!

Who's the Jedi Badass now?

Question #2: Does this fake betrayal happen because the Daemonites want to pit Cole against his brother and Lynch? If so, why? It seems to me that the Daemonites have a reason for inserting programming into Grifter’s mind to make him see Max and Lynch as enemies, but I can’t guess why. Maybe divide and conquer is their best plan…

Grifter sees an apparition (or more accurately, a morphing of Max into someone else) of another character that we have never seen on the pages of this comic (or anywhere actually) up until now. This is apparently a good guy and possible mentor to Grifter by the name of Warick, who has come to Grifter’s aid in the real world and was desperately calling out to him to resist the programming. The side effect of this was that he actually appeared to Grifter in the midst of the programming/fake mission.

Question #3: Who really is Warick? We are not given enough details to make any kind of accurate guess. I noticed a few things about him, both aesthetically and from his dialog:

1. He slightly resembles Jacob Marlowe (Lord Emp), who was the original benefactor and creator of the old Wildstorm WildC.A.T.s team. But not exactly like him appearance-wise, because Emp was a midget (or whatever the correct term is) and this character isn’t shown that way, but is a LOT smaller than the Daemonite security guards (he looks to be almost 2’ shorter and much slighter built than them).
2. In one panel, Warick pulls off his hood, and his face is completely revealed, and it looks like his ears are pointy, like an alien or something…not sure if this means anything at all, but you never know.
3. Some of Warick’s dialog to Grifter is what I would call personal, as in he says “You rest boy, you deserve it” at one point, and generally seems to know a lot more about Grifter than the reader does. This leads me to believe that either he could be related to Cole (possibly his father) or just familiar with him because they’ve been through a lot together or known each other for awhile.
4. Warick is an excellent hand-to-hand fighter, despite his diminutive size. My prediction is that it will be revealed that he is part of the real Resistance force, possibly its leader.

Naked dumpster fighting...AWESOME!

Question #4: If Warick is part of a true Resistance team, how do they know about, and why are they standing against, the Daemonites? Is the Resistance completely made up of past subjects who have been experimented on by the aliens? How did Grifter become involved with this group? Obviously from the future stories (started in issue #9), Grifter doesn’t know anything about (or his memory of them has been erased) the Resistance or that he is the “Chosen One”. So it seems like Warick saves Cole on behalf of the Resistance, and then sets him up with tools/documents to move on, and Grifter is left with only fleeting memories of what happened. Why won’t Warick simply stay with Cole until he wakes up and fully explain what is happening to him? Wouldn’t that be a smarter thing to do than simply allowing Cole to stumble along, not really knowing what is going on around him?

Basically the rest of the issue is Warick retrieving our main character from the Daemonite facility and hiding him safely in an inconspicuous motel somewhere (we don’t know what city this story occurs in). Warick gives a little going away speech (to an unconscious Grifter, which is more than a little weird, but it simply served as exposition in the story, so I can let it slide this time) that tells us that this is the third time this has happened (Grifter being kidnapped, Warick liberating him) and he needs to keep his head down and get ready to step up to the big challenge when it reveals itself.

Grifter awakes and sees a note on the night stand that says “See you soon”, signed “W”. He doesn’t know exactly what to make of that, but obviously bits and pieces of his memory are starting to trickle back because he has the feeling that he needs to get ready for a big fight (possibly the biggest of his life), and very soon. Cole goes through the bag that Warick left for him, assumes his new identity, dresses, and moves on with what must be a new drive and determination to find out what is causing his “blackouts” and what needs to be done to get control of his life.

And next...Voodoo!

***END SPOILERS***

DIALOG

Not much to say about the dialog in this issue.  It was good, it served the story.  The characters voices were consistent.  Tieri has been doing a great job, IMO, with lightening up Grifter's character, but leaving the darker undertones, the knowledge that he (Grifter) is always out-gunned and out-manned.  The inner monologue is where some of the angst comes out, but Cole always puts on a hard facade, in order to make everybody think that he's always got every situation figured out, when in reality, he is pretty much bouncing from one violent encounter to another and flying by the seat of his pants.

Awakening from the "blackout"

Frank Tieri takes over full writing duties (plotting and scripting) with next issue, and I am seriously very excited that with the reins completely in hand, he can do something special with this series.  Let's be honest, pretty much every know-it-all fanboy prognosticator on the net has already written this series off to be cancelled with DC's next wave, but I think it still has some legs, and if Tieri can turn it around with a solid story and people like it, the positive word of mouth could save this title.

IN CONCLUSION

As a carry-over from what I was saying above, I have the feeling that DC really, really doesn't want to have to cancel this title (this is based on some things that Liefeld revealed during his stepping down from DC).  My hope, and my educated guess is that the next wave of books won't be here until January or February of 2013, which would allow a minimum of 3-4 more issues (to #16 or #17), and even then, it doesn't seem like DC has any other titles on board to fill the void that Grifter would leave.  I am positing that this series won't be cancelled until the long-rumored Wildcats book is released, because it would look bad for DC to cancel the book that contains both Grifter and now, Voodoo, who are possibly one-third or one-forth of the future Wildcats team, before the new one comes out.

***MORE SPOILERS***

As for this issue, it was good, and got better on subsequent re-reads, but I was a little annoyed by the fact that really nothing of substance happened...other than the fact that the Daemonites were revealed for sure to be the group that experimented on Grifter and thus, gave him his powers.  A fairly big plot/character development, but it just didn't have that much impact.  I was maybe hoping to see some flashbacks from Cole's childhood or just stuff from early in his life.  What shaped him into the Grifter that we have today?

Too many additional questions were raised here, which can be good sometimes, but I'm afraid a lot of them will never been answered if DC and/or Tieri drastically changes the direction of the series again now that Liefeld isn't helming the book any more, or if the series simply gets cancelled before they can get around to answering the lingering questions, the biggest of which being:

Who the hell is Warick and how is he related to Cole Cash?  If they're not blood relatives, why is he helping Cole?  I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

***END SPOILERS***

Also, it will be very cool to see Voodoo (or more accurately, Priscilla) in the pages of this comic.  I'm hoping that the addition of another Wildcat can give people who are on the fence another reason to try this book.

On a little side note here, I would like to say that I hope someone at DC (or possibly even Mr. Tieri himself) reads this, because even though I've been enjoying it for what it is, I desperately want the whole Daemonite angle to end and I want Grifter to start taking on some more street-level, or human opponents.  This character has always worked much better as a gritty, con-man, dealing with non-super-powered (or at least the super stuff is not the focus) issues.  Look at Wildcats Vol. 2 for great examples of this.  I think a larger group of people would respond to this story direction.  But...I'm not a professional writer or editor at DC, so what do I know...

Here's looking forward to a new era of creative chemistry on this title with Marat coming on board as regular artist.  I have high hopes, as usual, and will continue to spread the word about how fun this series is!

Art = 8 / 10

Story/Dialog = 7 / 10

Overall = 75% --> The mystery quotient has officially been upped on this story, and while I liked some of the questions that were raised, I fear that this series might not last long enough to wrap them up and give us readers, who have been here from the start, the payoff we deserve.  So you all better add Grifter to your pull list, starting with issue #13.  That's right, DO IT!