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? |
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. |
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
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.