Reviewer: Tim Stevens
Story Title: The Lonesome Death of Jack Monroe
Written by: Ed Brubaker
Art by: John Paul Leon
Colored by: Frank D’ Armata
Lettered by: Visual Calligraphy’s Randy Gentile
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Publisher: Marvel Comics
When someone mentions Jack Monroe, the former hero known as Nomad, I immediately flash to a leather, stubble, and wrap around sunglass wearing vigilante bearing a baby on his back. I am aware of the original blue and yellow masterpiece of a costume (sarcasm? You be the judge) and his time as Scourge, but for me, Jack Monroe will always be a symbol of 90’s guns and attitude “kewl” (god, I hate that expression). So why should I care if he dies?
Initially, honestly, I didn’t. I applauded Brubaker for bringing back a character from Cap’s past, but had little feeling about it one way or another. If anything I was a little disappointed. I think, for the sake of drama, death in comics should happen to characters you care about, who have potential to go further. There’s more power there. Now, I’m not saying Nomad didn’t have his fans, he just didn’t have many. For me, it felt a bit like killing a red shirt on Star Trek. I mean, a man’s dead and that’s sad, but there’s not much impact. Turns out that all it takes is an issue to change my mind.
By taking us back to the past year of Nomad’s life, Brubaker gives us a great feel for what has befallen him since we last saw him in the Marvel U (as Scourge in Thunderbolts, if memory serves). We see him catching up with his “daughter” from that 90’s series and pulling a Deadshot, trying to clean up her neighborhood. The thing is, Jack is sick…very sick and what he sees might not be what’s really happening. As Brubaker switches back and forth between Monroe’s unreliable narrator perspective and a rational “real world” one, we see how horribly his life has spun out of his control. When we finally “catch” back up to present day and he is shot, it feels almost like an act of mercy.
I am not very familiar with the artist Leon’s work and initially, in the first two or three pages, I was concerned that he was too cartoony for the plot and Brubaker’s approach. However, as soon as we are dropped into Nomad’s “mission” those concerns disappeared. A great credit for that goes to D’Armata as well, who effectively drenches the majority of the book in deep colors and flitting shadows.
