Mike Grell has a new Kickstarter campaign that launched March 22. The project promises the return of his popular character, Maggie the Cat, and if successful, the conclusion to a story which began in 1996 and has yet to be finished. You can find out more about the Kickstarter campaign here.
I've discussed before how I first became aware of Mike Grell's storytelling and artwork with his Green Arrow miniseries, The Longbow Hunters. From there, I discovered his earlier work on The Warlord and later Jon Sable, Freelance.
Maggie the Cat began as a secondary character in a Jon Sable story, but the character proved to be popular with her creator and readers. It would be easy to dismiss Maggie as a Catwoman knock-off for someone who has not read her stories. But the character is much more than that in Grell's hands.
Maggie is an American woman who married into the British aristocracy. Her husband is now dead, which is no great loss in Maggie's life. But much of her family's wealth and possessions have been scattered. She becomes a very accomplished cat burglar in an attempt to reclaim the various heirlooms and crosses paths with mercenary Jon Sable several times in his comic.
In the mid-1990s, Grell moved over to Image Comics, where he launched such series as Shaman's Tears and Bar Sinister. Image was also home to Maggie the Cat's first solo series in 1996. But the limited series was cut short by the comic implosion in the mid-1990s. Only the first two issues were published, and Maggie's solo story was never completed — until perhaps now.
In her solo story, Maggie is coerced by the British secret service into helping them thwart a terrorist plot. She is teamed with an SAS agent who bears a striking resemblance to a famous Scottish actor who portrayed an equally famous fictional British spy. This first Kickstarter project promises to update and re-release those first two issues with additional pages in a single volume. A few months later, a second Kickstarter will finally resolve the storyline. And based on response to these two volumes, more Grell Kickstarter projects may soon follow.
I encourage you to go check this project out at the link above. It's already well on its way to being funded, but if you have an interest in the storyline and are in a position to do so, I also encourage you to support the project. Grell is a proven writer and illustrator with a long history in comics. He has more stories to tell; let's give him an outlet to do so!
