3 out of 5

Containing the first 12 issues of Grell’s First Comics series in a self-published 5″ x 9″, 450ish page softcover, we get to witness 4 or 5 goes at Grell… figuring his character out. There’s not much pretense to Sable, really – he’s a freelance whatever for hire – but Mike, acting as writer and artist, keeps bouncing back and forth between pulpy one-shot grisly actioners, and multi-part arcs that dive into Vietnam and Apartheid, while very lightly exploring hep feminism and “I’m cool if you’re gay” sexuality; i.e. I can imagine this hit pretty hard for DC / Marvel readers back in the day – if they chose to branch out to indies – but also reads exactly like what every middle aged white guy growing up in the sixties and seventies was trying to talk about or cope with. While absolutely there’s respect owed to how early Grell was getting in on the grimdark game, there’s not really the strongest line between the general wish fulfillment stuff here vs the Big Two, Mike just slapped a PG-13 rating on it and gave his guy guns instead of super powers.

Dialing down my snideness just a tad, Sable can definitely be a lot of fun. The more “grounded” arcs that look at African politics or the effects of war feel pretty forced and maudlin, but the pulps are generally great, especially after the first few issues’ overly bombastic approaches where Grell can settle in to his tone with some more patience, and have fun setting up repeating characters and playing with the stakes. But I get that opening salvo: it probably made a bigger splash (and was more enjoyable) to go all out in the first couple issues. Then again, it feels like it backed Grell into a spot where he had to explain some things like Sable’s in-it-for-the-money motivations and dumb domino mask, when those were probably just vibe-influenced details at first – making the explanations especially clunky, and ultimately pointless once Sable became more of an all-round gun-for-hire instead of focusing somewhat on vigilante-style stuff.

On the art front, it’s going to be a matter of taste. Grell has that kind of Kirby-inherited stiffness that got blended into the more detailed and realistic stylists of the 70s and 80s – I mean, Grell is exactly of that pack – but I find he generally reaches for a little more than he can comfortably portray in his work, both in terms of the actual depiction of action, and page layouts. For the former, I absolutely adore the pitch of like quick-cut editing in a comic, but you really have to zero in on the exact image for each “cut” to sell that, and Grell, especially with his hatched pencilling style, isn’t quite there. To the latter, his layouts can be a bit of a mess, though, again, we can kinda chalk that up to folks experimenting in the indie world with breaking away from Marvel / DC house styles; still, there are pages where my eyes would drift all over and read / see things out of order.

All of these things – the book’s style, the art, the storytelling, the focus – get better and better as it goes along: the last two issues that close out this omnibus are grand. Whether or not you’re down for dealing with some rougher, cringier stuff along the way will be down to how cheesy your pulp tastes go, and honestly maybe down to just how much of a fan of Grell’s art you are.

The omnibus feels / looks a little on the cheap side design-wise, but it’s got great weight and readability, considering it’s 400+ pages. You also get all of the covers in the back, though they duplicated a couple covers in the middle of the book to get the page spacing right, which is maybe charming or adds to the cheap vibes, up to you.