Munden's Bar
Munden's Bar is a fictional bar featured in the First Comics title Grimjack. It is also the title of the back-up feature that ran in the GrimJack title for most of the first 69 issues and also received two annuals of its own, each mixing new stories and reprints. The feature brought some notoriety to the series with the appearance, in Grimjack #26, of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
In contrast to the dark tone of the lead story, Munden's Bar stories were often light-hearted and comedic in tone, although occasionally could be as dark as or darker than the feature story. Munden's stories were usually stand-alone and would rarely be related to the lead story. The lighter tone of the back-up feature sometimes led to the stories becoming repositories for sight gags, often referencing other comic book and pulp fiction characters. Among the patrons seen in Munden's were someone resembling The Shadow, armored men resembling various iterations of Iron Man, an anthropomorphic bat and cat couple called Bruce and Selina, and a dead ringer for Keith Giffen's Ambush Bug.
With issue #70, the feature was replaced by Youngblood, which delved more deeply into John Gaunt's past, especially his childhood. In the letter column, creator John Ostrander explained that he was temporarily pulling the Munden's series because it had gotten away from what he wanted it to be, but added that it would return upon the completion of Youngblood. As First ceased conventional comic book publishing at that point, several stories completed under Ostrander's new guidelines were released as a second annual, which also included a reprint of the Turtles episode (the first had been mostly reprints).
Staff
- see also List of characters in Grimjack
Gaunt-Era
- John Gaunt—Owner.
- Gordon Munden—Manager. Took over the bar following Gaunt's first and, presumably, second death.
- Bob—Watch-lizard.
- Harry Martin—Part-time bartender. An old friend of Gordon's, Gordon hired Harry after rescuing him from the demonic brothel "The House of Lillith".
Twilley-Era
- James Twilley—Gaunt reincarnated. Reclaimed the bar from Skorzy.
- Skorzy—Owned the bar in Twilley's time. Demoted to bartender, and then fired after repeatedly conspiring against Twilley.
- Jason Nines—Sentient robot and high school friend of Twilley's. Became bartender after faking his "death".