Grifter #13

Why the fuck is Liefeld's name on the cover of this comic book? Who the fuck is trying to give me a stroke?!

I don't know if Liefeld's name on the cover is just another cover mistake made by the perpetually stupid editors at DC Comics or Liefeld has earned a byline on this comic because it's still dealing with some of his story elements while Frank Tieri continues to do the dialogue. The inside credits are the same as the cover, so I have a feeling Liefeld's stink is still clinging to this piece of crap comic book.

Perhaps I should quit blaming Liefeld for this comic book sucking seal tits. Grifter's narration box was just as annoying when Edmondson was writing it as when Liefeld and Tieri were. And according to my friend Doom Bunny who owns the first three issues of WildC.A.T.S. debut, Grifter's narration was just as annoying as it is now. So perhaps I should be blaming Brandon Choi.

Holy fuck I really should! I just looked up Brandon Choi's wikipedia page and it shows that he wrote Fantastic Four for a few months while Jim Lee did the art. And what great company was Choi in on that title? Before Choi took over the book, Tom DeFalco was writing it. After Brandon Choi left, Scott Lobdell got on board. Now that's a comic book I'll never be interested in reading.

Grifter #13 begins with Grifter climbing across the outside of Stormwatch Headquarters, The Eye of the Storm. I don't know what kind of mission he's on but I'm pretty sure someone else would have been a better choice. Somebody who could fly perhaps? Or had super strength or invulnerability. Perhaps even someone who'd been bitten by a radioactive spider. But a guy that can shoot guns with his mind? It just seems like his skill set is wasted here.

"A space suit? No! Don't worry about it! It's in Hyperspace. You can wear your normal clothes. And the respirator fits snugly right over your face rag."

Being Grifter, he's Narration Boxing the whole time. But he's just going over his Bucket List so that he can drop the big twist surprise line that climbing the side of a space station wasn't on it!

Marat Mychaels really has been spending far too much time being Liefeld's back-up. He nailed this panel. You know, if he wanted the reader to think Grifter was jerking off on the outside of The Eye of the Storm.

Before Grifter lets himself in to the headquarters of the ultra-secret Stormwatch that it seems everyone in DC Continuity has now heard about (that'll happen when you lose Martian Manhunter and The Projectionist), he thinks back to how this mission started. Warick has now gotten in touch with Grifter so that Grifter can have a trusted guide to pull his plots together and maintain some kind of coherence in this comic. I don't know where Deathblow went. Perhaps he disappeared into whatever plot blackhole Buck vanished into.

Apparently Warick screams everything.

Helspont seemingly killed all of the Daemonites so Grifter doesn't see any need to worry. But Warick points out that the agencies that allowed the Daemonites to exist in the first place are Grifter's real threat. Warick wants Grifter to expose them all by hacking into their systems. And while Grifter is at it, he needs to erase all traces of Cole's existence. But that'll never work! Nothing secret in DC is ever secret if it serves a particular writer's plot point. Like now! Warick thinks Cole should break into STAR Labs since it would be the easiest of the agencies. But since Grifter gained a ton of information when he touched that piece of The Eye of the Storm during his fight with Midnighter, he knows a better place to get information. Which takes him to climbing on the satellite. The next few pages should explain how Grifter penetrated hyperspace.

And they do! Mercy! Grifter broke into STAR Labs with Voodoo because they had a machine that could shove him into hyperspace.

Pris now wants to be called Voodoo. But you can always tell who's who. Pris is the one with the brown crossed eyes.

Back in real comic book time, Grifter has made his way on board The Eye of the Storm and is searching for some place he can interface with it. I know he already interfaced all over the side of it earlier but now he needs to hack into the systems. The onboard Daemonite personality (I believe Stormwatch was calling it Charlie) is getting all Shodan-like on Grifter's pathetic meat and bone creatureness. Grifter just smarts off at the machine like he does with everyone. I think he might have intimacy problems.

All of my Grifter commentaries should be composed of simply this single panel.

Charlie the Daemonite Space Station decides to alert Stormwatch to their little problem. This time Apollo gets to fight with Grifter.

There might be some homosexual subtext here.

Grifter stuns Apollo with some kind of Neuroblaster and then begins to download all the files Stormwatch has on Amanda Waller. She isn't a super hero or a cosmic threat but I can believe that Stormwatch has files on everybody. So he's getting Amanda's file so that he can gain access to Amanda's files on everybody. Unless he's simply using the Stormwatch computer to grab Amanda's files! That makes the most sense! And then Grifter wouldn't need to appear in the pages of Suicide Squad.

While downloading, Midnighter shows up. Hopefully Grifter has Voodoo waiting back at STAR Labs to pull him out with the teleporter or Grifter won't be surviving this second encounter with Midnighter. You know, he shouldn't have survived the first encounter either!

Or maybe he will survive and actually beat Midnighter down.

Just wait until you're in the pages of Stormwatch, Grifter! Then we'll see how well you do against them!

No matter how many times Grifter's creative teams tell me that Grifter is a super bad ass chosen one, I just can't believe it. You can't have a world where Stormwatch is the most lethal group in the universe and takes care of the really crazy over-the-top cosmic threats and then simply use them to show how powerful somebody else's character is when he beats them up. Grifter is not capable of this shit! And yes, at this point, my judgment is completely biased! But that's what happens when a character is poorly written for a full year.

Grifter messes up his closing remarks after defeating Stormwatch's big guns. He says, "If there is a next time" but he never had a line where he said "Next time." You don't beat up the most lethal team in the DCnU and then fuck up your witty exit line! He's probably kicking himself for that at the other end of his teleport escape. Unless Midnighter is doing that for him since Midnighter hopped in the teleporter to follow Grifter down. Isn't that a little dangerous? I think we're going to have a Brundlefly moment next issue.

Grifter #13 Rating: No change. I almost considered giving this a +1 since it's possibly the most readable issue of the series so far. It makes cohesive sense. It strings a lot of past events together. And it's putting Grifter on track to build an actual story instead of random encounters with Daemonites and Chosen One bullshit. But the reason I couldn't give it a +1 was the art.

The art throughout is horrible. Mychaels use of space within panels is horrendous. His characters are generally making faces that don't match with what they're saying. The character's bodies are regularly misshapen and deformed (look at Midnighter in Panel Two in that last scan!). And a large percentage of backgrounds are simply no color. Nothing. Just white. Marat Mychaels may just be my new Rob Liefeld! He seems to have a lot of the same technical problems but he does seem to be able to draw more poses than Liefeld was capable of. Maybe next issue I'll concentrate on bitching about his art!

P.S. In regards to the cover, does Apollo really shoot beams out of his eyes? Isn't he a fisting kind of guy?