By: Nathan Edmondson (writer), Cafu (penciller), Jason Gorder (inker), Andrew Dalhouse (colorist)
The Story: Seriously, Cole—didn’t anyone tell you, “Bro’s before ho’s?”
The Review: Ah, the brother-versus-brother showdown. Among classic fictional conflicts, there aren’t any much older, whether you’re talking Cain and Abel or Michael and Gob. And when you couple it with the family-versus-justice dynamic, you can’t have anything but major tension to start with, whether it comes to any good or not. The success of this end game largely depends on the character strength of the brothers themselves.
Right now, neither Cole nor kid brother Max have so enough going for them to make their confrontation all that intense. We know close to nothing about Max, other than an indubitably loyalty to his military higher-ups, and with Cole, the best thing most of us can probably say about him is that we don’t not like him, which is not exactly the strongest resonance in the world.
Whatever true drama Edmondson achieves from the scene comes mostly from his writing. In theory, he should have done a much better job than what we end up with. His dialogue in past issues has been on point, snappy, and natural, so the switch to overly complicated, expository lines (“You want to talk about pacts? How about shoulder-to-shoulder, forged in fire? Stained with cordite.”) that feel even more inappropriate given the context of what’s happening.
Otherwise, Edmondson continues to craft a very layered, long-term plot. This issue confirms our suspicions that the military knows far more about the neon-blue entities than they’ve let on, meaning their continued pursuit of Cole has little to do with a genuine belief that he’s a terrorist. Their beef with him goes much deeper, in issue and in time (“There are no mere chances when dealing with operatives of his caliber, Staff Sergeant.”), than that.
This explains the lengths they take to capture and intimidate Gretchen, who finally gets to do something other than serve as a wrinkle on her ex-boyfriend’s list of priorities. We’ve seen her pull some neat tricks last issue, but here she reveals a martial competence that proves all that time spent with a former military op hasn’t gone to waste. More than that, she shows serious grit when she literally spits in her captors’ eyes, even as they promise to “show you around” hell.
But you never once forget the real meat of the story revolves around the creepy blue creatures tagging after Grifter. Their direct attack on both Cole and Max prove a few key features: they may seem ghostly at first, but they have enough substance to get shot down, screaming; they senses vastly differ from ours (“We know you only by the smell of your spine.”); and they not only possess human bodies, but consume them from the inside, which may prove bad, traumatic news for Cole down the line, given the grim consequences at the issue’s end.
I’m convinced Cafu, with his innate sense and taste for the dramatic, can bring out the strengths of nearly any script, but he seems most in tune with sparse, short-spoken ones like Edmondson’s. He veers the POV wildly from panel to panel, driving the narrative with constant movement and flow, and he never hesitates to go all out when the action calls for it. A double-page splash of a helicopter crash? He’ll go for it if he knows it will awe us, which it invariably does.
Conclusion: While still a little unreadable, Grifter offers an important voice to the DCU—that of the cunning, sly, and take-no-prisoners antihero. But to establish himself as an icon, he’ll need to go beyond the type and forge his own, inimitable character.
Grade: B
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – Does anyone know what Grifter references by “Juliet Charlie”? I understand Juliet and Charlie stand for the letters J and C respectively, according to naval code.
– You know, I know the “whited eyes” thing is just a handy plot device in comics, but since Grifter’s “mask” is nothing more than a rag with some holes in it, it doesn’t make sense why we wouldn’t get to see his pupils.
Grade
Conclusion