That is a bummer, but it's a surprise the series has gone on for as long as it has.

That is a bummer.. probably means he's taking more Big 2 work, and this will be a 'when I have time' sorta thing.  OGN can be whenever.   

Yeah, that's true, but maybe he got a good offer, or maybe he needs money. It'd be great if it was more creator owned stuff.. I hope that's the case!

I'm surprised it sells better in trades.. the combo of not having long story arcs and it being some targeted to the direct market crowd, I'd think it would be the opposite.

Volume 1, Issue 3: A Little Knowledge (October 1995)

Theme: Villainy trips on itself. (Or, the hapless life of a comics creator.)

Focus Hero: Jack-in-the-Box is a Spiderman-ish acrobatic hero who throws sticky confetti or puts electrified foam noses on villains to immobilize them. He wears a red/green harlequin suit with accordion feet that give him a distinctive, elongated silhouette throughout the series. Also, a white Bozo mask with no visible nose. Tough to breathe! His secret identity is Zachary Johnson, inventor and toymaking entrepreneur. His wife Tamara Dixon is a morning TV personality. Both are black, but their names suggest integration into white society. He spends this issue busting up an arms smuggling ring. However, the POV character in this issue is…

Focus Villain: “Eyes” Eisenstein is a petty crook who provides labor for mobsters. While fleeing a crime scene, he accidentally sees Jack-in-the-Box unmask himself, then later sees that same man on the street with his celebrity wife. Much of the text in this issue is Eyes’ internal monologue, and much of the action is in his imagination. A little research and a little moxy, and he’s figured out Jack’s secret identity. But he goes nuts trying to think of a way to safely enrich himself with this knowledge. Everyone he knows is a criminal who would torture or kill him to learn what he knows, without paying him. And he’s stressed that Jack may be onto him as well…

Other Villains: The Deacon is a mob boss whose sprout of hair looks like an inversed tonsure. Boilermaker is mentioned. Is Middleman a super-villain codename, or just the description of a stolen goods fence? Either way, it was also the title of a fun little sci-fi TV show that aired for a single season. The stolen weapons were confiscated by Samaritan from the Pyramid gang before getting hijacked.

Other Heroes: The Confessor and Winged Victory are mentioned. Quarrel zips through without being named.

Places: Astro City neighborhood Chesler, also known as The Sweatshop, seems like a Hell’s Kitchen homage, a rough place full of ne’er-do-wells. Ingels Street has gentrified; Elder’s Gym is no longer operating there. Zachary and Tamara live in a brownstone on Craig Avenue.

Civilians: Goodman-Donenfeld is an unattractive company to work for, surely a dig at original Marvel Comics publisher Martin Goodman and Silver Age DC executive Irwin Donenfeld. Jimmy and Gleason are petty criminals.

My Two Cents: One story from the perspective of the hero (usual for comics), then one from a bystander, and now one from a villain. Eisenstein gives a fake name of “Jack Bachsinger” to Tamara, but we don’t learn whether Jack is his real first name, or he just couldn’t stop thinking about Jack-in-the-Box. If so, then the hero and villain have the same name, but the story doesn’t encourage us to consider parallels between them. We get little insight into Jack-in-the-Box’s thoughts, and indeed he seems completely oblivious to Eisenstein’s existence, let alone the danger that he could pose. We do get the hint that JITB has taken up the mantle from a previous adventurer; Eisenstein remembers seeing JITB when he himself was a kid, and he’s taken aback by how young the unmasked JITB is. Overall, the story is a cautionary tale about the dangers of forbidden knowledge, another conservative moral. We also see that some communities are toxic, lacking enough of what scholars call "social capital" (more informally, mutual trust) to allow their members to leverage resources effectively.

This issue is also something of a satire on the low-man position of comic book artists and writers. They are stuck working in Chesler's Sweatshop because Marvel and DC don't pay well. They know the secrets of the heroes but can't seem to leverage it for financial security, because both their bosses and their colleagues are out to exploit them. "I would do it to them if I could," confesses Eisenstein at one point.  Sometimes all you can do is give up and take the bus to Alaska.

Yes, so far I've seen reference to two Cleopatras, two Quarrels, two Jacks, and two suits for N-Forcer.

I also added a bit at the end of my article about Eistenstein being a stand-in for frustrated comics creators. It's obvious in retrospect but didn't hit me at the time.

Irwin was the second generation; his father Harry Donenfeld was the owner of DC, after he took it away from founder Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson.