I should say up-front that this review might be biased as I believe Paul Grist is a genius and should be honoured as a sacred wizard of comic book fun. That said, ‘The Weird World of Jack Staff’ is amazing, this issue is amazing and if you don’t agree with me then you hate comics. In fact, you hate all fun and joy. You are on the level of a genocidal dictator to me, and your chosen victim is happiness itself!

Or, y’know, we just have different opinions.

I understand there are reasons people wouldn’t like this book, reasons why its number of pulls on iFanboy has yet to exceed fifty and reasons why I’m the only person at my LCS that buys it. I’m going to try and explain away these reasons, but ultimately I think people just need to bite the bullet and buy it in order to see why no new series this year (except maybe ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’) has excited me as much as the new ‘regular’ Jack Staff title.

That’s a potential negative, right there. I say ‘regular’ in inverted commas because the book comes out whenever Paul Grist finishes it, which isn’t as regular as most (including himself) would like; issue 1 was in February and we’re only on issue 4 now. A lot of people in this day and age of super-fast broadband and next-day delivery don’t want to wait for things, and I can totally understand that. When the thing you’re waiting for is this perfectly crafted and original then the wait becomes something you savour. The anticipation becomes a wondefrul thing in itself. The weeks when Jack Staff comes out are like amazing miniature birthdays thrown for you by Image! Much celebrations are had, much reading is done! Then re-reading. Then re-reading previous issues. Then letting it melt into your brain…

There’s another potential negative. You can’t read this book the way you’d read an average comic book, no matter how hard you try. Jack Staff has never starred in an average comic book, indeed the word ‘Weird’ is now proudly displayed right there in the title. This is not written like an average comic book, with Grist instead utilizing a quasi-anthology format that allows him to bounce between several characters, storylines, ideas, time-periods, dream-sequences, alternate views of the same event, premonitions, fourth-wall breaking druids, reality-bending chimps and everything in between, with it all bleeding into each other in a glorious kinetic rush of pure enjoyable comics! At first, no doubt, it can be confusing. There are no real captions to position us in time except for the occasional promise that this thread will be ‘continued’ or, as in this issue, a rather blunt caption merely stating ‘Monday’. This is not how we have been programmed to read. If you just let yourself go along with it, however, it becomes incredibly rewarding. Connecting the dots and spinning the threads of the story becomes as exciting as the adventures themselves! In this issue, for instance, the first three pages lead directly into the opening three pages of issue 1. Does that make the first three pages of issue 1 less enjoyable? No! It does, however, make the first three pages of this issue more enjoyable as you realise where you are and what it’s leading to.

Oh, there’s another potential negative. The actual story. Now, I’ve read all of the trades and I’m still not one-hundred percent sure what’s going on. I’m not even one-hundred perecnt sure Grist knows exactly what’s going on, but I trust it to be entertaining all the same. Jack Staff has been around for ten years now, and we’ve only just had a glimpse at his origin in the past three issues. Characters appear seemingly fully-formed in one issue, only for us to find out there is a much deeper side to them we may not fully be privy to for several years. The huge over-arcing story that has been slowly building these past ten years involves a battle between the Green and the Red and we still have no real idea what that means! In lesser hands, the sheer complexity of how everything fits together would drive you insane with frustration, but with Grist it’s more like a magician juggling lots of amazing things at once, and though you only get glances of what he’s juggling, you are mesmerized all the same. The huge cast of characters in this story are inbcredible. Becky Burdock, Vampire Reporter, is one of the greatest characters created in the past ten years, and she’s just the tip of the iceberg. Tom Tom the Robot Man – neither a robot, nor a man, The Claw – thief or agent of Q?, Helen Morgan – the woman who cannot be killed, Commander Hawkes – formerly of Unit D, Charlie Raven – The Greatest Escapologist of the Victorian Age, D.I. Maveryk – the old-fashioned copper, Bramble & Son – Vampire Hunters, and so on and so on… All of these characters and more besides have appeared in the first four issues of ‘The Weirld of Jack Staff’, but I’m willing to bet that you don’t need a knowledge of the old British Heroes that they’re based on or the four four previous trades to enjoy them. What Grist does expertly is create comics that work on whichever level you want. Yes, these four issues have featured Jack’s origin (sort-of) and a glimpes into his ultimate destiny, (sort-of) but the main story that concludes in this issue has actually been a straight-forward (sort-of) super-battle against a super-villain called the Skull who never appeared before issue 1! New readers know as much about that guy as I do, and I enjoyed the heck out of that fight!

Which brings me to the one thing I’ve never heard used as a negative against Jack Staff: Grist’s art. There has never been an issue of Jack Staff with less than stellar art-work. Grist’s instantly recognisable and utterly wonderful style suits the book perfectly, and Bill Crabtree’s colours let the art sing off the page at you. Combined with Grist’s spectacularly conceived and effortlessly executed lay-outs and even his marvelously detailed lettering, this is a master-piece of comic book story-telling. This issue is mostly made up of beautiful two page spreads detailing the the fight against the Skull in the present and a future vision of Jack fighting at the end of the world. Both fights are interspersed with smaller insert-panels filled with dialogue and smaller action and in lesser hands it could easily becme a confusing mess. Grist, however, manages to bleed these threads together (quite literally on the last four pages) to create a flowing, fast-paced story crammed with imagination, action, style and at least one instance of someone getting their head smashed onto another page! Great comics, in other words.

I know I’ve rambled on and have seemingly talked about Jack Staff as a whole more than this particular issue, but its hard to focus when it is ALL THIS GOOD! Buy this issue and the previous three or wait for the trade. Buy the previous four trades. Enter the Weird World of Paul Grist and his insane genius.

You will not be sorry.