ps. Gerald Forton passed away in 2021, at the age of 90.

You can read more about his work, here.....

We share the same respect for Forton's skills. 

He wasn't a favourite of mine when I was growing up. While I enjoyed his Teddy Ted, I preferred William Vance to Forton on Bob Morane. Years later, when I started to notice things like anatomy, storytelling, perspective and the like, I realized that Fortin could really draw. His pages might not be the most exciting, but you can be sure his characters won't gain ten inches or lose twenty pounds from one image to the next. And they'll also look like actual human beings.

I had forgotten he had passed away. May he rest in peace, and may his work be appreciated for many years still.

Jon Sable #53



Creative Team: Mike Grell-writer, Gerald Forton-art; Tom Addis & Ken Holewczynski-letters, Julia Lacquement-colors, Laurel Fitch-editor

Synopsis: Myke Blackmon is being repeatedly harassed by a guy named Geoff Markham, an ex-boyfriend.....



Guess Grey was busy when Myke put on that dress to ask Jon out, way back when.

Myke got pregnant, he wanted to get married, but Myke didn't. She didn't feel ready to raise the child and decided to give it up for adoption; but, she miscarried. Markham accused her of having a secret abortion, leading to fights and then she discovered he had switched her birth control pills with placebos, leading to the pregnancy. She calls him a world class manipulator. His wife has dumped him and he is chasing the past, but she wants none of it.

Markham is at his office and a colleague gives him the poop on Sable, which is a thick pile, but only goes back 4 years (after Sable purged his records, in issue #1).

Meanwhile, Captain Josh Winters is harassed by the press about the pimp from the previous couple of issues. Our old friend, Officer Rhodes (the rookie who shot Jon), is with him and Sable is discussed, since the press brought it up. Rhodes feels beholding to Jon, for clearing him in the shooting (by lying about the rookie identifying himself as police). Winters reveals he knows Sable lied; but that Rhodes was correct in what he did, as Sable had turned a gun on him, during a robbery situation.

Myke and Jon go out for the evening, to a jazz club and run into Josh Winters. Despite Sable's wariness, Myke accepts Winters' invitation to join him, at his table. Myke needles Jon about playing sax, in a swing band and Winters reflects on his own desire to study music, until he was drafted, during the Korean War. An incident with civilians, who didn't heed commands and led to soldiers opening fire, haunts him when he returns home....



Eventually, Josh meets the woman he will marry and applies to the police academy, to have a steady career, to support a family. He takes to the work and it gives him pride again. However, the job took over and the marriage fell apart. Things moved on and Josh met another woman and remarried.

Myke and Jon are leaving the club, when Jon notices to shady chaarcters entering. he tells Myke he has to go back in, for cigarettes. One of the men is at the bar and Jon acts drunk and bumps into him, blocking him as he reaches for a gun. He panics and pulls out a shotgun and Winters sees his back-up and pulls out his back-up piece, from an ankle holster and puts it to the man's head and disarms him, while Jon disarms the man with the shotgun....



However, Winters was there on a stakeout and his men are all over the club, setting a trap for the robbers.

Back home, Josh plays piano and asks his wife why he doesn't use Jon's secret (that he is children's author BB Flemm) against him. She says, maybe deep down inside, he likes Jon.

Thoughts: Interesting interlude, which is a character study of Josh Winters. We've mostly seen him as a cop, whose path keeps crossing with Jon. He doesn't like freelancers, as they don't answer to higher authority and are, too often, not trained. However, Sable has aided Winters quite a bit and he secretly appreciates it. He also respects that Sable has principles and understands the difficulties of policing and respects the police. It also helps that he has seen the other side, when Sable, as Flemm, spent time to make Winters' son's birthday special. then, he learned that his child's favorite author, the man who was so kind, was Jon Sable, mercenary.

We learn that Josh wanted to study music and plays piano, but that his experiences in the Korean War robbed him of some of the desire to play. He met a woman who helped him "come back home" and try to rebuild his life. he decided to give up music for the police and found it suited him, though the job took over. He lost the wife, but found new love.

There are a lot of parallels between Josh Winters and Jon Sable. Both had a love for music that is largely in the past. Both suffered trauma; Sable in Africa, Winters in Korea. Both were in wars that didn't make much sense and were treated as less than the veterans of WW2; Winters in Korea and Sable in Vietnam. Korea was known as "The Forgotten War," as no one seemed to want to talk about it. It was a Cold War chessboard and ended in a stalemate, so it couldn't be lauded as a great victory, it cost too much and its veterans didn't get parades. They just pieced up the pieces and moved on with their lives, as best they could. However, many carried psychological scars with them, especially survivors of heavy fighting, like at the Chosin Resevoir, or against Chinese assaults. It was an era where PTSD wasn't talked about; so, they masked it as best they could. Vietnam dragged on far longer, so there were more scarred veterans and the traumas became known. And, yet, the Korean War traumas were still largely unspoken, as the press focused on Vietnam, complete with film footage, while the best that Korea got was MASH, which was really about Vietnam, despite the setting.

Both men found women who knocked their socks off and made them better people, then lost them. Both have or are trying to rebuild a life. Both have or had kids, though Jon's were taken in a hail of bullets.

This was a nice issue. Nothing major happens, but we get to know Josh Winters better, though at the end of things. Gerald Forton handles it well, though he tends to make everything look like the 1960s. I can forgive that because he is such a good storyteller. I don't know that the fans noticed, though.

Myke's past is explored and we learn that she was once pregnant, but miscarried. Grell brings up the topic of abortion vs adoption, but then doesn't wholly take sides (as if you have to, when that has to be a personal decision) and we learn that Myke miscarried. Abortion was a hot topic, at this point, as now, though there were still legal protections, at this point. However, activism was growing rapidly and extremism was becoming a thing. For Myke, she couldn't consider an abortion and was going to give up the child, which is not an easier route. Fate made the choice.

Geoff Markham, her ex, is trying to get involved again. Myke calls him a master manipulator and we will soon see what that means, as he insinuates himself in Myke and Jon's lives. It will lead to bigger issues, for jon, as we wrap up Mike Grell's run on the series, as Markham will be the prime motivator in the final storyline.

The show was never aired in Australia (as far as I know) and as it was never released on home media, I've never seen it. It sounds not great, but I wouldn't mind seeing it just to form my own opinion.

Thanks. If I get some time, I'll check out at least the first couple of episodes.

Shaman's Tears #5-8



Thank you, Predator; now everyone thinks a mini-gun is an infantry weapon!

Creative Team: Mike Grell-story & art, Brian Snoddy-art assist, Steve Haynie-letters, Julia Lacquement-colors, Insight Studios & Hahn Graphics-color separation, Mike Gold-editor.

So, a little background; in 1993, Mike Grell, seasoned veteran, joined the Image bunch in one of the earliest non-core offerings. Grell seemed to be a very odd man out, as his style was very traditional and he had an extensive training in art, before comics, and an apprenticeship with Dale Messick, on Brenda Starr. He was also old enough to be most of the founders' father. However, Grell had been one of the guys at the start of the indie publisher phenomena, with Pacific Comics and Starslayer. Now, Image was the big indie revolution and, once again, Grell is there. The series he brought there is Shaman's tears, a somewhat more commercially focused series about a Lakota Sioux man, who works for the US Fish & Wildlife Service, as an enforcement agent. In this alternate world, they are also tasked with enforcing laws related to genetic experimentation on animals. The series antagonist is a corporation who has created a batch of human animal hybrids, which it has patented, but which prove dangerous and/or rebellious. It had a companion series, Bar Sinister, at Valiant/Acclaim, where a group of rogue hybrids tries to escape the control of the corporation. That series featured my first published fan letter, in issue #1 (actually written in relation to Shaman's Tears and addressed to the studio, after the announcement of the Bar Sinister spinoff. In my letter, I asked about Jon Sable and the response mentioned this 4 issue arc and also said he might turn up in Bar Sinister, later. Sadly, Bar Sinister only lasted 4 issues. Maggie the Cat did return, but only for two issues, with an unfinished storyline.

Synopsis" Issue 5-In New York, strange occurences are happening. A US Fish & Wildlife agent contacts Joshua Brand to go investigate, believing it is related to some unaccounted genetic experimental hybrids. In New York, Jon Sable runs into an old mercenary friend, Daniel Ryan, who has been looking for him and finds him at his favorite pub. he offers Sable a contract to act as his back up in a sort of manhunt. Jon declines, says he is retired, because of a promise. The friend scoffs and sows doubt in Jon's head....



Jon still declines and the pair parts. Later, he gets a call from Capt. Josh Winters, as they found a body, with Sable's card. they found it down in the sewers. Winters shows Sable the body. It is strunng up on a hook and dismembered. Spent shell casings litter the ground. Sable estimates over 200 rounds were fired. Winters thinks it is a ritual killing by a cult or something. Sable claims retirement and no knowledge. Later, Myke comes in to show Jon new illustrations, for the next book and finds Jon servicing a new weapon, an FN P90 submachine gun.....



The weapon fires the then-new 5.7x28 mm cartridge and has a magazine capacity of 50 rounds. Sable wants compact and high volume firepower. He claims he is testing it for a friend and swears that he is retired.

A man walking his dog, late at night, is dragged down into a storm drain. Myke Blackmon is awakened and goes searching Jon's place and finds him in Hogan's Alley, testing the P90, in his work clothes and battlemask. Jn is not retired.

Issue #6-Joshua Brand arrives in New York and finds his spiritual connection to the Earth and the natural world cut off. Meanwhile, a Native American passerby is attacked....by something.

Myke chastises Jon for reneging in his promise. He tells her about Daniel and his remains and something being in the sewers....



Joshua Brand has gone to Central Park, to try to commune with nature. Some gang punks, who have been out mugging people, come across him and try their luck and soon regret it.

Jon Sable goes down into the sewers and surveys the murder site. he then follows the trail and discovers other bodies of missing people. He sees someone and yells for them to freeze and fires when they move. Eventually, he is grabbed from behind, by Joshua Brand, the man he saw moving about. He tells him to be quiet, as monsters pass below them....



Issue #7-Some hybrids pass below. After they are gone, Joshua Brand makes introductions and explains who the creatures are, calling them "Rabids.". He also knows of Sable. he tells him to go home, that people are on this. Sable says he has a personal stake and Brand, again, tells him to go home and follows the path of the hybrids. Sable goes after and sees Brand's tracks change from boot prints to moccasins. he decideds that he needs a bigegr gun and goes back up to the street.

Meanwhile, Myke has left Jon and goes back to her old place, to cry on grey Adler's shoulders. Jon later returns home and finds Myke gone. he calls Grey and he confirms she is there, but that she refuses to speak to him. he tells Grey to take care of her, then goes to his armory and gets out the big guns, because this is Image....



Except Grell knows how to draw them and uses real weapons! Jon picks up his .375 H&H pepperbox, his .357 magnum revolver and .45 cal match grade pistol, his hunting rifle (sawing off the barrels), and a Pancor Jackhammer auto-fire shotgun...



Jon declares it Rabid Season!

Duck Season!

Rabid Seasons!

I say it's Duck Season and I say, 'Fire!'

BLAM

You're despicable!



A mugger accosts an elderly woman, but the attacker is dragged down into the sewer by a rabid. it comes for the woman, but Joshua Brand arrives and kills it, with his mystic knife. He drops down into the sewers to go after the others. Elsehwere, Jon Sable enters the sewers and goes hunting, vewy, vewy qwietwy, but is watched by something else. It tries to attack and jon kills it with a rifle blast in the face, then unloads with the Jackhammer, on the others....



One of them strikes Sable in the back of the head and he goes down. He comes to and finds himself strung up and meeting the leader of the pack.

Issue #8-Jon is introduced to his hosts....



Jon goads them into giving him a weapon, to see who is the better hunter and they give him the sawed off rifle. he tries to shoot the leader in the face, but the weapon isn't loaded. They aren't stupid. Jon is given one bullet and a head start. A short one, then the pack hunts. Jon decides that sportsmanship is for suckers and grabs the cotter pin off a grenade, from his weapons harness and runs off. the explosion reduces the size of the hunting pack.



Jon uses human cunning to elude the pack and discovers there are alligators in this New York sewer. However it dines on one of his pursuers. Jon ends up in a junction, but his escape is cut off. he targets the leader, but is told the rest will attack him after he shoots and tear him to pieces. The leader suggests using the bullet on himself. However, Fate, in the form of Joshua Brand, intercedes. He removes Sable from the sewer, then calls upon the waters to wash away the Rabids.



Sable and Brand exchange goodbyes, as Brand prepares to leave the city and head back to the Reservation. Jon says his whole world has changed, in one night and how can he forget. Brand tells him to try. At the end, we see the leader rise from the river, alive.

Thoughts: This is a weird crossover that is both faithful to the old Jon Sable series, yet a totally alternate world. Jon Sable, more or less, lived in the "real world," as we knew it. Shaman's tears lives in a fantasy world where genetically modified hybrids are created by a conglomerate and escape, causing havoc, and a Lakota Sioux undergoes a Sun Ceremony and has a vision of animal spirits and finds he can work miracles, while he tries to restore the balance. It's a mixture of A Man Called Horse, Animorphs, and ethics in science, wrapped in a sci-fi and comic book package. The two worlds are deeply at odds, if it weren't for the fact that Grell approaches the fantasy with an eye towards a consistent realism. He extrapolates a pseudo-science from actual experiments and the ethical questions raised by those experiments. Scientists have cloned sheep and artificially inseminated humans. The genome has been mapped. Crops have been genetically altered to create specific types. Gene therapies are being studied for medical breakthroughs. Stem cell research may bring medical miracles. it might be possible to genetically engineer away birth defects. The question becomes, at what price? It is in this world that Grell is operating. What is the cost of science development exceeding moral evolution? That is what Shaman's Tears was about, though wrapped in superhero trappings, for a 90s audience.

Grell made definite concessions to the modern audience, with fewer story panels and looser action. Oh, he may have pandered to the audience, but he couldn't leave behind a storyteller's experience and he showed the Image crowd how you can go big and still retain a level of quality and story. His designs were far broader and he joked that he still had pages of unused Legion costumes, though the bulk of the costumes he drew, in that period, had been designed by Dave Cockrum. Grell refined a couple (like eliminating the pink areas of Cosmic boy's costume and replacing them with bare, pink flesh. Grell tried to keep things grounded in as much realism as possible, while dealing in pseudo-science. he tried tomaintain a consistency with that pseudo-science, which helped keep it believable, for story purposes. Many of the rest just created stuff for story convenience and forgot it two panels later.

Grell addresses the absence of Jon, saying he had given up the adventure life for Myke, even though that isn't how the series ended. Still, you could believe that. Myke was living with him, in his brownstone, until he broke his word to hunt the Rabids. In his eyes, he was responsible for Daniel's death by not being there for him, when he asked. He also knew there was truth in what Daniel said, about hunting being a part of who they are, no matter what vows they make. It is part of the conflict that always lay at the center of Jon and Myke's relationship.

Really, this sets up things nicely for a new Sable series, or just to exist within the world of Shaman's Tears. Mike Gold's response to my letter indicated Sable would turn up in Bar Sinister, but it was not to be, as the series sold less than Shaman's Tears. Plus, it sounded like there were issues with Valiant/Acclaim.

At one point, Mike announced a Sable and the cat series, to feature Jon and Maggie the Cat. However, he decided to do Maggie as a solo. At the end of Shaman's Tears #12, the Bar Sinister file (with details of the Hhybrids seen there) is stolen, by a certain cat burglar....



In Shaman's Tears 0-issue, Mike Gold announced the Maggie mini-series and the prospects for Shaman's Tears. he said they had a storyline for 4 issues or a graphic novel. He said they had issues with Image, when they dropped non-core titles, in the wake of threats by Diamond and Capital of financial penalties for all of the late shipping, and they started kicking out everyone but their close friends. They worked things out, but it led to a long delay between issues 2 and 3, which hurt momentum. Also, Grell had been fighting to get monies owed him by Eclipse, for James Bond and had to take other work to pay the bills. Gold announced that Jon would also get his own mini-series, at some point; but, it didn't occur. nor did any further Shaman's tears material. Instead, Grell ended up writing Iron Man, of all things, before eventually returning with more Jon Sable material.

One of the things Grell demonstrated here was that it was possible to give the same tropes that Image was known for, with a bit of craftsmanship and realism. Sable festoons himself with weaponry, but has a clear motivation for doing so: he is facing something beyond a hunt for a lion or a terrorist. He is dealing with a pack of mutated creatures and he needs firepower. Grell has jon decked out like an Image hero, complete with weapons strapped to the thighs and a big damn gun! the difference is, Grell knew something about equipment rigs for combat and drew it in a realistic and functional fashion, more or less. For the big gun, he chose an actual big gun....prototype. the Pancor Jackhammer never went beyond a prototype phase. The weapon was an auto-loading and firing 12 gage shotgun. The ammunition was in a drum -sghaped cassette, which slotted into a magazine well and fedd shotgun rounds. It used the blowback principle to use combustion gasses to cycle the bolt and load the next round for firing. Automatic shotguns, used for hunting do this. however, this was capable of actual automatic fire, where the weapon continues firing while the trigger is pulled. A traditional "automatic" shotgun iis actually a semi-automatic, in that the firing causes combustion gases, a portion of which are colelcted and used to force the feed mechanism to eject a spent round and feed a new one, from the magazine. Hoever, the trigger must be pulled again, to fire the next round. A true automatic keeps firing as long as the trigger is held back, as on a machine gun. Such developments for shotguns had been going on since Vietnam. Shotguns were a good jungle weapon, especially on point, on a patrol. It gave heavy firepower, at close range. the problem was firing more than one shot. In Vietnam, they primarily used pump-action shotguns, which required a soldier to hand pump the next round. This could be done rapidly, though not as fast as an auto-loading system. The other problem was reloading, as even with magazine extensions, a shotgun couldn't carry more than 8-10 rounds, which had to be individually fed into the internal magazine. One solution was to use a detachable box magazine, like an assault rifle. the problem there is the traditional manufacturing of shotgun shells. originally, they were paper, with a brass end cap and crimped shut, containing the powder and shot charge, with a primer cap to ignite them. This eventually gave way to plastic. However, in tests of prototypes, the plastic shotgun rounds could melt from the build up of combustion heat. The solution was metal cartridges. A true auto-loading shotgun was developed, the Atchison AA-12....



The design was similar to the AR-15 Assault rifle, which the military used as the M-16. However, it was much heavier, in weight and recoil. It was not adopted by the military. The Pancor company developed the prototype for the Jackhammer and had interest in foreign sales, depending on the outcome of military testing. There were only 3 working models developed and it had issues, due to manufacturing techniques to create the prototype. Actual production would require higher standards; but, the test weapon did not stand up to abuse because of the methods used to build it. This killed foreign interest and no investors could be found to continue development and the company went bankrupt. Due to it's futuristic design, the weapon became a favorite for role playing game sourcebooks and similar things, since it looked like some kind of raygun or future hand cannon. Perfect for a comic book about genetically modified monsters.

The mini-gun seen on issue 7's cover did not appear, as that was Mike just fooling around for a commercial image. Despite what you see in Predator and Terminator 2, the GE mini-gun is pretty damn heavy and requires an electrical source to fire the weapon and rotate the barrels. It also requires a feed mechanism and ammo storage. The movie props had a heavy battery pack, to operate the motors that spun the barrel. However, there was no ammunition for it. As it was, the prop rig weighed about 50-80 pounds and it was actually suspended by a cable, for firing scenes, with battery source and ammo feed offscreen. What Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger carried was a prop and not the actual blank firing weapon. Grell served in the USAF, in Vietnam, and knew about the mini-gun, which was a crew-served weapon, mounted on helicopters and Magic Dragon gunships, where the weigh was supported by a gun mount and power could be provided to the firing mechanism. They fired at a rate of 2,000-6,000 rpm. The firing rate in the movie was slowed way down, to fire blanks and be visible. Grell knew he wouldn't get away with that, unlike a superhero comic, like Wetworks, where Whilce Portacio armed his characters with such things. Even firing a GPMG, like the old M-60 or the MAG is not an easy thing, for the average person. The machine gunner, in a squad, tended to be a large framed person, who could carry the weight, yet it was usually fired using a bipod, for support. same was true for other support weapons, like the BAR, in WW2, or the German MG 34 and 42, or the .30 cal Browning M1919, as used by John Basilone, at Guadalcanal. Alternatively, they were tripod mounted or fixed mounted on vehicles.

The best part of all of this is that even though Sable goes hunting with all of those weapons, he only fires a few rounds from the Jackhammer and the sawed off rifle, and explodes one grenade. earlier, he fired some rounds from the P90, but not in a firefight (just when he sees the silhouette of Joshua Brand move.

There is a subplot running through the issues, which was relevant only to Shaman's tears. One of the cast, a boy, finds one of the cylinders of mutagenic compound, at the ruins of the Circle Sea laboratory, from the initial storyline. he shows it to his surrogate father, who ends up messing with it and is contaminated and transformed. Borrowing from Kafka, he at first tries to hide what he has become, before succumbing to the animalistic instincts. The character who does this is a rival to Joshua Brand and took in the love interest, after she was pregnant with Brand's child. he is not a true villain, but a pretty complex antagonist, whos is present in the remaining issues.

So, that is it for Sable, for the 90s. A series or mini-series was planned and scrapped. Another series/mini-series was announced, coming from Caliber; but, it never materialized. Eventually, a new mini-series would come from IDW, in the 00s. In the meantime, we will next explore the two issues of Maggie the Cat. As you can see above, Grell made commercial considerations there, too. Starting with the "boob window" and high heeled boots. Just what every cat burglar needs, right Michelle?



Notice how the heels disappear during the cartwheels? I once saw the beginning of a Cynthia Rothrock movie, where she is an undercover cop, dressed in pencil skirt and heels, who si accosted by muggers. He skirt is suddenly looser and she is wearing black tennis shoes when she executes a roundhouse kick to the perp's face, yet is standing in heels afterward.

Maggie the Cat coming, but later this weekend, after I just accidentally closed the window on my review and lost everything!