Jon Sable
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Jon Sable: Freelance was one of the first comic books created for the fledging publisher First Comics in 1983. It was written and drawn by Mike Grell and was a fully creator-owned title, as were all of First Comics' titles.
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[edit] Origins and influences
The character of Sable was that of a bounty hunter and mercenary who had started as an athlete who competed in the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. After witnessing the terrorist outrages at those games he married a fellow athlete and they relocated to Rhodesia where Sable became an organiser of safaris for tourists, and later a game warden. It was during this time his family was murdered by poachers. After avenging his slain family, Sable returned to the USA and became a free-lance mercenary.
He also has a double identity as a successful children's book writer under the name of B.B. Flemm. Unlike many such characters, his literary agent is aware of his other identity's bounty hunter activities, but is most persuasive in enforcing his writing contract obligations as well.
The character was heavily influenced by Ian Fleming's James Bond novels as well as drawing on pulp fiction crime stories.
At a convention in the late 80s, Grell stated that his idea for Sable was "something like a cross between James Bond and Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer."
[edit] History
Jon Sable: Freelance lasted 56 issues from 1983 to 1988 before being cancelled. While Grell wrote and did all the covers, he stopped drawing the stories after #44. It did have a brief spinoff called Sable which lasted 27 issues before cancellation. This spin off was a tie-in to the short lived TV series simply called Sable, and Grell was not involved in the story or art for it. There was a third series, "Mike Grell's Sable" which reprinted the first 10 issues of the original "Jon Sable Freelance" series.
The TV series was notable only for its changes to the premise, and for introducing Rene Russo to audiences as one of the leads. In the TV series, instead of Sable being the public face and masquerading as a children's book author, 'Nicholas Fleming' was the children's book author and Sable the mysterious masked do-gooder. Sable was wanted for murder in Africa, it was explained, and the vaguely effete Fleming persona was the only way he could live safely in Chicago. A new character for the tv series was 'Cheescake" Tyson, the inevitable hacker friend who supplied exposition.
There was also a tie in miniseries featuring one of the semi-recurring characters, a thief called Maggie The Cat who featured in her own self-titled -but uncompleted- mini-series.
After the title's cancellation, the character made some cameo appearances in some of Grell's other titles over the years. He did not receive his own series again until March 2005, when IDW Publishing released the first of a new six-issue mini-series titled Jon Sable, Freelance: Bloodtrail (originally announced as Jon Sable, Freelance: Conspiracy) written and drawn by Grell. On top of that, IDW have been reprinting the entire original run in a series of trade paperbacks.
Grell wrote a prose novel featuring the character, simply titled Sable, which was published in hardcover in 2000 and in paperback in 2001. The book was partly adapted from early issues of the comic series, with some changes in chronology.
[edit] Collections
- The Complete Jon Sable v1 (collects #1-6) ISBN 1932382771
- The Complete Jon Sable v2 (collects #7-11) ISBN 1932382798
- The Complete Jon Sable v3 (collects #12-16) ISBN 1933239395
- The Complete Jon Sable v4 (collects #17-21) ISBN 1933239425
- The Complete Jon Sable v5 (collects #22-26) ISBN 1933239689
- The Complete Jon Sable v6 (collects #27-31?) coming March 2007
- The Complete Jon Sable v7 (collects #32-36?) coming April 2007
- The Complete Jon Sable v7 (collects #37-41?) coming ?? 2007
- Jon Sable: Bloodtrail (collects JS:Bloodtrail #1-6) ISBN 1933239727
