Enter The Hunter

Mike Grell has done a lot of comic books work over the years. I haven’t researched him enough to provide a detailed listing of all his credits, but several people’s first exposure to him as an artist seems to be his early work illustrating the adventures of DC Comics’ Legion of Super-Heroes, the teenage titans from the far-flung future.

I never much got into the Legion back then, so its no surprise that my first exposure to Grell’s talents came much later during his work on the ground-breaking miniseries The Longbow Hunters, which updated Green Arrow for DC and served as the launch point for the emerald archer’s first self-titled ongoing series. Before that time, however, “Iron Mike” gained a following not only for illustrating, but also creating and writing the adventures of The Warlord, a series we discussed last time. In that earlier discussion, I also mentioned Grell leaving Warlord after a time.

At that time, he also left DC to join editor Mike Gold in creating First Comics. American Flagg and E-Man are some of the more popular titles released monthly by First Comics when they started. The character and title Grell created, wrote and illustrated was Jon Sable, Freelance, an adventurer-for-hire grounded in the real world, without any superpowers of any kind, who relied on his wits and skills to survive political intrigue “ripped from the headlines.” The main character was a combination of James Bond and Indiana Jones, a real-life “Batman” operating without a Halloween costume. And he was a hit in 1984.

My first exposure to this character was in a later relaunch of the title simply called Sable and written by Marv Wolfman. I enjoyed that incarnation for several months, occasionally picking up back issues of the re-launched series. I learned that Mike Grell had created the character when I happened across a trade paperback collecting the first six issues of the original series.

For a long time, that was all my collection included of Jon Sable. This is one of the titles for which I have recently filled in the holes, having purchased a copy of all issues of the original series, as well as the missing issues of the relaunch, initially title Sable, Return of the Hunter, and finally dropping to just Sable.

Through 1984, readers have been treated to an epic-length “origin” tale telling of Jon’s life and family in Africa, how he came to be a writer of children’s books in his alter ego of B.B. Flemm, how he came to know each of the small circle of people who know him, and followed him from the jungles of Vietnam in search of MIA/POWs to the Olympic games, opposing petty criminals, beautiful jewel thieves and corrupt officials in foreign countries.

Jon Sable, Freelance also gets a “thumbs up” recommendation as a series worth checking out.

And as a side note, through the house ads in the early First Comics, I learned about yet another Grell creator-owned series, Starslayer, a sci-fi tale originally launched for another company, but picked up by First Comics. I haven’t read any of this series yet, but I like The Warlord and Sable enough to purchase all of the issues from a mail-order back issue company a few months ago. That’s the “drawback” of this hobby -- each new discovery often leads to finding and wanting other new titles.

Happy collecting.