Project 52: Grifter #1
Written by Nathan Edmonson
Art by Cafu
(read to Burial & Four Tet & Thom Yorke, “Ego”/“Mirror”)
A few years back, there was this TV programme called Lost. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it; apparently DC haven’t, given that the logo for Legion Lost (as reviewed by Tim) looks like this:
And it’s fine that DC have never seen, nor heard of, this moderately successful TV programme. Some would argue, after that ending, that it’s actually for the best for them. But you’d think they’d at least have a researcher with his eye on these popular TV things, in case something like Grifter ever happened.
Okay, so Grifter stars a ever-so-slightly-Southern conman with long blonde hair and swarthy good looks. I’m not great at visual description, so in case you need help, he looks roughly like this:
…oops, sorry, I meant like this…
I’m being unfair, aren’t I? I pulled the oldest trick in the book there, switching the pictures round for a cheap laugh. It was beneath me and I apologise. And I’m led to believe that Grifter is a pre-existing character (and frankly, looking at that costume, he could only be a product of the ‘90s).
However, what I’m saying is: if you have a character who is really rather similar to another character so embedded in the collective pop-culture consciousness, it might not be all that wise to open your first issue on an aeroplane.
And as the weird stuff on that aeroplane starts to mount, and you make dark references to mysteries not yet of the reader’s ken, it might not be the best idea to start revealing that by flashing back to the character’s life before things got all weird. And then proceeds onto several shocking reveals, including a 'messing with your sense of time’ twist.
(Admittedly, there are aliens or some such. Which Lost didn’t have. However, which existing Lost-ripoff The Event did have. On an aeroplane. With someone pulling something out from under their skin, in a slightly gross way, as also happens here.)
I mean no disrespect to Nathan Edmonson here. I’ve heard Who is Jake Ellis? is a fine comic book, but this issue seriously reads like he got the call from DC, found out he’d pulled the short straw labelled 'Grifter’, and decided to spend his advance getting bombed in his flat in the company of a couple of boxsets.
Which, being fair, is exactly what I’d do too. LAD.
Rating: E
