Post by rberman on Oct 31, 2019 7:34:21 GMT -5
What better way to celebrate Halloween than with a ghost story?
Midnight Nation #1-12 (2000)
Creative Team: Written by JMS. Art by Gary Frank and Jason Gorder.
#1: Detective Lieutenant David Grey investigates the homicide of a drug dealer and is attacked by leering wraiths known as “The Men.” When Grey awakens in the hospital, he is stuck in some sort of wraith-form, and he’s greeted by a sexy-but-mysterious woman named Laurel.
#2: Laurel shows Grey the rules of his new existence, including “you can interact with abandoned objects but not claimed ones.” She takes him to Arthur, who delivers exposition about how people who get neglected by society long enough can fall through the cracks of the universe and enter this nether-existence. But Grey became ghostly through the direct actions of The Men, who took his soul. If he can’t reclaim it within a year, he’ll become one of The Men himself.
#3: Laurel and Grey spend some time with the biblical Lazarus, still kicking around 2,000 years after Jesus raised him from the dead, and guarded by an angel with a flaming sword. That comes in handy when Grey takes a detour to rescue some kids from The Men, now also known as The Walkers even though we mainly see them driving around in an unmarked van.
#4: On the road, Laurel and Grey hear campfire stories from other in-betweeners. Cathi spent decades tending her controlling, hypochondriac mother. When mother died, Cathi discovered she had faded from everyone else’s awareness. Miguel was a gang-banger, in and out of prison, who was ostracized when he refused to rape his former high school guidance counselor. That skirt seems shorter than a guidance counselor would wear. Anyway…
#5: Grey has a nightmare of his future as a Walker. He meets a Walker who once was Drake, the last guy that Laurel tried to help, and failed. Laurel agrees to relay a message to Drake’s widow. The encounter renews Grey’s sense of urgency for his mission.
#6: Grey regrets putting his work before his ex-wife. He drops by Chicago to see her. She can’t see him, but he is able to leave an apologetic letter on the table. This makes her a target for the Walkers, from whom Grey is forced to rescue her.
#7: Grey starts to temporarily transform into a Walker and go on the prowl. His time is running out. Laurel offers to kill him now, before the transformation becomes permanent. The Satan-figure known as “Other Man” makes a pitch for why Grey should want to join his team and help expose God’s lies that life is rich and full of hope.
#8: Time is running out. Grey switches into evil mode again and attacks Laurel. The two of them run a combat gauntlet of Walkers. Then Grey meets with an older version of himself who says that (1) he will fail to reclaim his soul, and (2) he will kill Laurel. Grey turns down two more offers from Laurel to kill him.
#9: Arriving in New York City, Grey and Laurel are imprisoned by Other-Man, who tells a version of the creation story from the book of Genesis. God was imperfect and lonely, so he made various things until he was practiced enough to create man. When man asked too many awkward questions, God sent misery into the world to distract man. Other-Man wants the misery to end, so he pulls men into his nether-world, building an army which soon can break the tyranny of God and break the wheel of human suffering. He opens Grey’s mind to experience the totality of human misery, completing Grey’s transformation into a slathering Walker who will soon murder Laurel.
#10: Monster-Grey is released to rampage through NYC while Other-Man continues a philosophical monologue and crucifies Laurel so that Grey can kill her upon his return. Will Grey’s love for Laurel be his salvation, or his damnation?
#11: Other-Man drops the other shoe. Laurel is a soulless angel. Grey can either reclaim his soul and enter Other-Man’s service, or else gift his soul to Laurel, allowing her to be born and experience humanity while he himself fades into oblivion. All the other Walkers are men who chose to reclaim their souls at this stage of the game, forcing Laurel to take another ride on the story-go-round. Grey is the first to choose to save Laurel.
#12: David Grey awakens in the NYC hospital a year later. He’s back in the real world; everyone can see him. His ex-wife is by his side. Down the hall, a baby named Laurel is born. Grey can still see the people of the netherworld; reclaiming his police job, he helps people on both sides of the veil. Years later, he encounters teen Laurel, who remembers him.
My Two Cents: It’s a road trip anthology series that turns into a metaphysical monologue on the way to an origin story for a mystical super-cop. The lettercol cautions us that we shouldn’t take Satan’s explanation as necessarily true, but God doesn’t show up to give any alternative— or to do anything else overtly, though we might speculate that He is at work behind Grey’s sacrificial choice.
JMS revisits these liminal themes of good/evil, light/dark, life/death again and again. He did it in Babylon 5, and here also. He’ll do it again in The Book of Lost Souls, whose protagonist could be seen as continuing the story of David Grey. Unusual for JMS, the protagonist here lacks the author’s initials “JS.” But Grey (the in-between shade for an in-between guy) is another JMS favorite, showing up in Babylon 5’s Grey Council for instance. And “Laurel” was a character on Babylon 5 too.
Gary Frank’s art is somewhat less bug-eyed than in Supreme Power. I saw a few Easter Eggs, including a restaurant called “Brad’s Pit” and a comic book store. Issue #10 (January 2002) defiantly left the World Trade Center on the cover, a rarity in post 9/11 comics.
Midnight Nation #1-12 (2000)
Creative Team: Written by JMS. Art by Gary Frank and Jason Gorder.
#1: Detective Lieutenant David Grey investigates the homicide of a drug dealer and is attacked by leering wraiths known as “The Men.” When Grey awakens in the hospital, he is stuck in some sort of wraith-form, and he’s greeted by a sexy-but-mysterious woman named Laurel.
#2: Laurel shows Grey the rules of his new existence, including “you can interact with abandoned objects but not claimed ones.” She takes him to Arthur, who delivers exposition about how people who get neglected by society long enough can fall through the cracks of the universe and enter this nether-existence. But Grey became ghostly through the direct actions of The Men, who took his soul. If he can’t reclaim it within a year, he’ll become one of The Men himself.
#3: Laurel and Grey spend some time with the biblical Lazarus, still kicking around 2,000 years after Jesus raised him from the dead, and guarded by an angel with a flaming sword. That comes in handy when Grey takes a detour to rescue some kids from The Men, now also known as The Walkers even though we mainly see them driving around in an unmarked van.
#4: On the road, Laurel and Grey hear campfire stories from other in-betweeners. Cathi spent decades tending her controlling, hypochondriac mother. When mother died, Cathi discovered she had faded from everyone else’s awareness. Miguel was a gang-banger, in and out of prison, who was ostracized when he refused to rape his former high school guidance counselor. That skirt seems shorter than a guidance counselor would wear. Anyway…
#5: Grey has a nightmare of his future as a Walker. He meets a Walker who once was Drake, the last guy that Laurel tried to help, and failed. Laurel agrees to relay a message to Drake’s widow. The encounter renews Grey’s sense of urgency for his mission.
#6: Grey regrets putting his work before his ex-wife. He drops by Chicago to see her. She can’t see him, but he is able to leave an apologetic letter on the table. This makes her a target for the Walkers, from whom Grey is forced to rescue her.
#7: Grey starts to temporarily transform into a Walker and go on the prowl. His time is running out. Laurel offers to kill him now, before the transformation becomes permanent. The Satan-figure known as “Other Man” makes a pitch for why Grey should want to join his team and help expose God’s lies that life is rich and full of hope.
#8: Time is running out. Grey switches into evil mode again and attacks Laurel. The two of them run a combat gauntlet of Walkers. Then Grey meets with an older version of himself who says that (1) he will fail to reclaim his soul, and (2) he will kill Laurel. Grey turns down two more offers from Laurel to kill him.
#9: Arriving in New York City, Grey and Laurel are imprisoned by Other-Man, who tells a version of the creation story from the book of Genesis. God was imperfect and lonely, so he made various things until he was practiced enough to create man. When man asked too many awkward questions, God sent misery into the world to distract man. Other-Man wants the misery to end, so he pulls men into his nether-world, building an army which soon can break the tyranny of God and break the wheel of human suffering. He opens Grey’s mind to experience the totality of human misery, completing Grey’s transformation into a slathering Walker who will soon murder Laurel.
#10: Monster-Grey is released to rampage through NYC while Other-Man continues a philosophical monologue and crucifies Laurel so that Grey can kill her upon his return. Will Grey’s love for Laurel be his salvation, or his damnation?
#11: Other-Man drops the other shoe. Laurel is a soulless angel. Grey can either reclaim his soul and enter Other-Man’s service, or else gift his soul to Laurel, allowing her to be born and experience humanity while he himself fades into oblivion. All the other Walkers are men who chose to reclaim their souls at this stage of the game, forcing Laurel to take another ride on the story-go-round. Grey is the first to choose to save Laurel.
#12: David Grey awakens in the NYC hospital a year later. He’s back in the real world; everyone can see him. His ex-wife is by his side. Down the hall, a baby named Laurel is born. Grey can still see the people of the netherworld; reclaiming his police job, he helps people on both sides of the veil. Years later, he encounters teen Laurel, who remembers him.
My Two Cents: It’s a road trip anthology series that turns into a metaphysical monologue on the way to an origin story for a mystical super-cop. The lettercol cautions us that we shouldn’t take Satan’s explanation as necessarily true, but God doesn’t show up to give any alternative— or to do anything else overtly, though we might speculate that He is at work behind Grey’s sacrificial choice.
JMS revisits these liminal themes of good/evil, light/dark, life/death again and again. He did it in Babylon 5, and here also. He’ll do it again in The Book of Lost Souls, whose protagonist could be seen as continuing the story of David Grey. Unusual for JMS, the protagonist here lacks the author’s initials “JS.” But Grey (the in-between shade for an in-between guy) is another JMS favorite, showing up in Babylon 5’s Grey Council for instance. And “Laurel” was a character on Babylon 5 too.
Gary Frank’s art is somewhat less bug-eyed than in Supreme Power. I saw a few Easter Eggs, including a restaurant called “Brad’s Pit” and a comic book store. Issue #10 (January 2002) defiantly left the World Trade Center on the cover, a rarity in post 9/11 comics.
