Jack Staff: Yesterday's Heroes TPB
By Paul Grist
Published by Dancing Elephant Press
Because it's black and white, because it's British, because it's small press/alternative/independent, or a combination of all these and more, Jack Staff seems to fly beneath the radar of many comics readers (and reviewers), but hopefully this beautiful new collection will go some way toward solving that problem.
As you'll learn in this volume, Grist's writing and art reveal a major talent in the field, with a strong visual style reminiscent of such design-oriented greats as Alex Toth, Jaime Hernandez and Mike Mignola. Grist also shares a dry sense of humouor with Mignola, and now that I think of it, fans of Hellboy will most certainly want to give Jack Staff a try. It's not in any way a tribute/homage/ripoff, but the two (two of my favourite titles, it should be noted) share a definite point of view and sense of the absurd. A team-up between the two of them would be sublime and delicious, and hopefully Mike Mignola and Paul Grist are listening.
Grist has an affection for superhero comics, and the springboard for the story-arc collected here was a fondly-remembered Roger Stern/John Byrne Captain America story involving Baron Blood and Union Jack. In much the same way as Alan Moore did with Supreme, Grist rises above his inspiration, to create a gripping and unique tale of vampires, superheroics and journalism that is witty, spare and utterly delightful. "Becky Burdock, Girl Reporter" is typical of the way Grist takes a genre convention and twists it into a new shape that deconstructs both the character and the archetype in memorable and pleasing ways. It's a telling note on Grist's method and motives that Betsy gets a new title by the end of this initial storyline, and that the new status quo is not a temporary gag but a life-altering event that lends itself to dizzying storytelling possibilities. And he did it in the first four issues.
These, then, are serious events that affect our hero and his colleagues; Grist's sardonic wit and brilliant use of black ink to open up or confine space as needed to tell the story combine to make Jack Staff one of the most visually involving and striking titles ever. His visual style has been referred to as appearing "crude" "on the surface" by one online reviewer, but I don't see that at all. I see an elegant line on the surface that works in service to a startlingly mature sense of pacing and staging that draw the reader into the reality of the story in a way few comics are able to accomplish.
It seems like I don't read a whole lot of superhero comics these days, but Jack Staff is a title that shows there's life left in the genre, and if more kid's cape-fetish comics were this damned good, you can bet I'd be buying more of them. Brilliant fun, Jack Staff deserves wider attention as one of the landmarks of the artform. Grade: 5/5