Jack Staff Volume 2: Soldiers

Jack Staff #2

by Paul Grist

Twenty years ago, on the streets of Castletown, Jack Staff fought Hurricane, the most destructive weapon ever developed by the British Army. It turned out to be his final battle. This volume reveals the full story behind that final fight and why Jack Staff walked away from his place as Britain's Greatest Hero, and what happened twenty years later when the Hurricane hits Castletown for a second time.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Comic Book, Fiction, Superheroes, Graphic Novels Comics

160 pages, Paperback

First published December 14, 2004

About the author

Paul Grist is a British comic book creator, noted for his hard-boiled police series Kane and his unorthodox superhero series Jack Staff.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

20 years ago, Jack Staff disappeared after fighting The Hurricane. But what does that have to do with the rage plague afflicting Castle Town?

The first volume of Jack Staff was great and this was more of the same, live and in color!

Grist's cartoony, gritty art sets Jack Staff apart from most super hero books and his style of story telling does the same. For what appears to be a solo super hero book, Jack Staff uses a large cast of characters and frequent shifts in viewpoints between Jack Staff, agents of Q, and the rest of the supporting cast.

Soldiers fills in some gaps in Jack Staff's mysterious past. It's frankly amazing how much worldbuilding Grist sneaks into this book. There are almost as many new questions raised than there are answers to old questions.

Four out of five stars.

[Michel Siskoid Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Soldiers, collecting the first 5 issues of Paul Grist's all-color Jack Staff series at Image (so Volume 2, the black and white stuff published at Dancing Elephant Press came first) makes for a pretty odd read in this format. Since every subset of characters involved in a pretty tangled story occurring in two time periods enjoy their own splash page every issue, there's an awful lot of stop, recap and go in the trade. It's not just that we're being told over and over again who Jack, Becky Burdock Vampire Reporter, etc. are, but the sequences usually retread the last few seconds from the previous issue, for each character. I do like Grist's art a lot. Became a fan of his when he was doing Kane, where I thought of him as a more cartoony Frank Miller, really adept at playing with light and shadow. Jack Staff looks nice in color and I still like Grist's sense of design and action. We're thrown into the deep end, in a superhero universe that comes ready-made, but it's too quick a read. Better in singles, waiting on a monthly schedule. As a collection, it tries one's patience with redundancies.

[Buddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Previous familiarity with the Jack Staff characters helps. This is fast-paced storytelling and more complex than what you might notice on a first, casual read. I think it's best to read it in one or two sittings (otherwise, you might lose the thread of the narrative). My only complaint was that the climax was rather muted when compared to what led up to it.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re reading Paul Grist’s work
Now in color!

The multi-character narrative is now in full force and I love every page of it.

[Juan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This second volume delves into a part of Jack Staff's past and his connection to Becky Burdock. One of the questions left in the first volume, why did Jack Staff retire for 20 years?, is answered...but as usual with Mr. Grist, the answer brings more questions:
What are The Green and The Red?
Why don't they fight directly?
Can one escape their destiny?
Does The Red also have its chosen one?

Mr. Grist slows down a bit and lets his interesting cast of characters settle into this, now in color, weird world.

[Fred · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grist's work is totally is own vision, but somehow catches the spark of excitement from the Bronze Age of comics while being true to modern story telling techniques.

[Nigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Soldiers collects the first six issues of Jack Staff published through Image. It jumps straight into action, switching between the present day and twenty years ago with Grist's trade-mark expert playfulness. In the past, a military weapon called the Hurricane is accidentally unleashed on Castletown, and the only person standing in his way is Jack Staff. Today, violent attacks of uncontrollable rage are on the increase, and it won't be long before the whole town explodes.

Everyone's here: Jack, Becky, Tom-Tom, Maveryk, Morgan and the guys from Q, all running around ferociously fighting and exploding and making barbed comments at each other. The colours by Phil Elliot are a joy and the whole thing is so skillfully done and full of sheer unrestrained energy it leaves the reader giddy with happiness. Never mind Watchmen. I just wish more comics were like this.

[Jose Vidal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soldiers, pretende servir como nueva presentación del personaje en su nueva serie y lo hace contandonos una historia dividida en dos momentos temporales, el presente y el lejano día de los años 70 en que Jack Staff se retiró, después de que la pequeña ciudad de Castletown donde reside casi fuera completamente arrasada. Se trata de una historia quizás menos interesante que las anteriores (aunque desvela ciertos misterios insinuados en los números anteriores) y donde los saltos temporales a veces provocan cierta confusión. La verdad es que después del nivel de la colección anterior esta primera historia resulta un poco decepcionante, demasiado alargada.

http://aventurasextraordinarias.blogs...

[Damon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't like this quite as much as the black and white stuff, but I can see his point that superhero comics should be in color. (Oddly, though, there's one character who's now black. I guess he was always black, but you just had no way of knowing this in the B&W issues? There's nothing that identifies him as black except that he's now colored in brown - I feel like this is maybe a shortcoming on the artist's part.)

The jumpy storytelling gets a little easier to follow here, or maybe you just get more used to it.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun series, as Grist uses British pop culture to create a comic book universe and then squishes it all into one title.
Laid back builder, Jon Smith would like to just do his job and enjoy a quiet life, but he is also Jack Staff, hero of Castletown!

which means every five minutes there will be a rampaging robot, a vampire or two, mystics and WW2 reject super soldiers.

Big colorful and lots of fun, with a silver age vibe and an innovative style of story telling.

[E · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jack Staff seems to have lost something when it switched over to color, though the coloring looks as natural on the page as the B&W did. The story in this second arc drags its feet and the weight of the massive cast drags it further down. I think I enjoy Paul Grist more in theory than in practice. His art and his spirit are to my tastes, but this just isn't.