It was reading this comic while walking along the sidewalk that made me walk into a lamp post face first, on a school trip to Barcelona, to the amusement of my class mates.

Yes, I was the kind of teenager that would buy a superhero comic in a language he doesn’t speak as a souvenir rather than something more appropriate. I didn’t even have the decency to buy an actual Spanish comic! That was the kind of nerd I was unfortunately. The rest of school trip was eventful. We saw the usual things you see in Barcelona: Sagrada Familia, the parks, some musea I don’t remember. Got food poisoning with half the class from the dodgy paella served on the first night in the bording house we stayed at, drank sangria with a couple of class mates in a McDonalds, nothing as interesting honestly as that issue of Animal Man was.

That was in 1990 and the first issue of Animal Man I ever “read”. I knew about the series already, from an interview Grant Morrison did with comics Scene, but my local comic shop didn’t carry it. Which meant the moment I saw that Brian Bolland cover on some newsstand I had to buy it (together with a copy of Invasion 3).

Fortunately, this is not one of the more complex issues Morrison ever wrote. It’s just the Martian Manhunter visiting Buddy Baker’s family home to install a new security system and teleport system now that Animal Man is a member of Justice League Europe, following on from the Invasion crossover series. As his son is being bullied and has his bike stolen, Buddy himself is struggling with his powers, which have been affected by what happened during Invasion, consluting with the Martian Manhunter about it. The Manhunter also helps his son get even with the bullies.

There are several subplots going on in the background that will tie in with the series overall story, but on the whole this is a very normal sort of superhero story, one that could’ve been published in any other superhero series. A typical sort of breather issue, where we look into the hero’s personal circumstances while they rest between adventures and the stage is set for the next big event.

The reason I was reminded of this comic was because I’ve spent today reading the Animal Man Omnibus, which collects Grant Morrison entire run on Animal Man. Because it was one of the founding series of the Vertigo imprint a few years later, I always tend to think of Animal Man as being much weirder and isolated from the bigger DC Universe than it ever actually was under Morrison. This issue is a good example of how it was still a part of that wider, much more traditional universe even when Morrison was doing their best to kick the legs from under it later on.

It also shows that Morrison’s Animal Man was never a series that would appeal to a non superhero comics reading audience, like e.g. Sandman was. You can read the series while never having read any other superhero series, but its appeal is still firmly to the sort of nerd who’d actually care for an obscure character like Animal Man in the first place.

As I said when talking about The Jaguar 01, DC’s !mpact imprint was the first time I was in on the ground floor of a new superhero universe and therefore it has a special place in my heart. DC’s attempt at using the old Archie/MLJ superheroes to create a new reader friendly superhero imprint, !mpact lasted for little over a year. At the time I bought everything published under it, but there are still some gaps in my collection. This post therefore is a list for me to find when going comics shopping again. In total, !mpact published the following titles:

• Black Hood, 12 issues, 1 annual: complete
• The Comet, 18 issues, 1 annual: complete
• The Crucible, 6 issues: missing #03-#06
• The Crusaders, 8 issues: missing #08
• The Fly, 17 issues, 1 annual: missing #17
• Impact Christmas Special, one issue: complete
• The Jaguar, 14 issues, 1 annual, complete
• Legend of the Shield, 16 issues, 1 annual: missing #14, #16
• The Web, 14 issues, 1 annual: missibg #12
• Who’s Who in the !mpact! Universe , 3 issues missing #01-#03

Basically then I’m missing 11 issues out of 115. The Who’s Who in the !mpact! Universe will probably be the most annoying to find, as these were ring binder inserts (and I also need the ringband itself).

This is a 1992 science fiction series so the Simon Bisley cover is de rigeur even if the inside art is as different as it gets.

The first in a ten issue miniseries and the first ever Grendel story I’ve read. Bisley’s cover is what drew my eye but the interior artwork by Patrick McEown, of which more later, is what got me to buy this series.

The story is simple. We open with a hover motor and sidecar fleeing through the desert. Riding it are a man dressed in black, wearing a black mask with white eyes and a boy in a hoodie. We don’t know who or what they’re fleeing until we go to what looks like a simple chalet but which hides a much larger complex below to see various murdered soldiers and we learn that somebody has kidnapped the heir to the Grendel-Khan. An elite group of soldiers dressed in red body armour is sent off in pursuit on their own hover bikes. They ambush the black clad man and the boy but are killed by him. After they reach Chicago they run into a gang that hates Grendels and think the man is one. He kills them in hand to hand combat and they continue their journey, to New York.

We don’t know why this man has kidnapped the heir or what his goal is or even where they’re going to. Any context we get is from the people responding to the kidnapping, a nameless woman who clearly seems to be some of leader and her assistant Heath. We also meet the woman’s daughter, Crystal, who is kept in the dark as to what happened. But the real context is given in the text box of the front inside cover, that starts with “Chapter 41: Devil in the Desert”, giving us the title of the story and which explains the setting. It’s the 27th century: the late Grendel Khan Orion Assante unified the world. His heir, the boy is Jupiter, who has been cloistered away in that complex we saw, in the Dakota Black Hills, held captive by his stepmother, the reigning regent Laurel Kennedy Assante, the woman trying to get Jupiter back.

But wait a minute. Chapter 41? But isn’t this the first issue of this miniseries?

Well, yes, but this was supposed to come out as the 41st issue of Comico’s Grendel series. Matt Wagner had startedGrendel at Comico as a three issue black and white series: the adventures of gentleman villain Hunter Rose. Wagner reworked this story after the series cancellation in backups to his other big Comico series: Mage but then was done with Grendel, or rather, Hunter Rose’s Grendel. Grendel became a persona that other people could take over and use, or be used by and the second Grendel series explored this, with various new characters picking up the role. Unlike the earlier stories, Wagner would only write, not draw the series, getting new artists for each story arc. By issue forty Grendel has basically taken over the world and Wagner had reached the end of what he wanted to with it. ut then he thought off the story that would become Grendel: Warchild… The idea had been to hand over Grendel entirely to other creators, creating a second series called Grendel Tales, then continue Grendel with issue 41 some months later, but then Comico went bankrupt..

It took two years for everything to clear up and Grendel: Warchild would end up at Dark Horse instead. I’m not sure exactly how much of this issue had been drawn already, but Amazing Heroes Preview Special 11 from Fall 1990 had one McEown page featured in its Batman vs Grendel article. Patrick McEown is an interesting artist. At the time his artwork reminded me of European science fiction artists like Enki Bilal or even Moebius, but now it feels more mangaesque to me? Especially the fight scenes, which are both brutal and funny at times. McEown hasn’t done much else either before or after Grendel: Warchild, having mainly worked on various Aircel series in different roles. A pity, because I like his art.