The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life with the return of “Lavender Jack”. When we last left our hero things weren’t looking to good. His allies had been shot. His wife, the real brains of the operation, was kidnapped. Things were not looking good for Ol’Jack so how is he going to get out of this one?
Chapter 113-119
Schedule: Tuesdays
By Dan Schkade (art and story) Jenn Manley Lee (coloring)
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
“Lavender Jack” is back and I thought it time to do a little check in on this long running series. That last narrative episode was posted was Ep 112, Dec 6, 2021, with a Q&A episode following shortly thereafter. Having caught up on the series the series both ended on a thrilling cliffhanger during the origin of the Nightjar flashback art ‘The Isle of Pilaf’ as a young Endo Gall stood over the wreckage. That wasn’t the end of the Nightjar’s story with it concluding in the following episode 113, Sep 19, 2022. I can’t help but feel like leaving for the break on Ep 113 would’ve been a more if not effective (since the image of Gall standing there is more typical of a cliffhanger) more satisfying. But obviously something came up in the production of the strip and these things happen. There is a certain satisfaction in the payoff being Episode 113 after such a waiting period.
With the Nightjar in the Lavender League the strip begins to tie things up as it moves into its final act. Everyone is coming together both the good guys and the bad, or as Mimley artfully puts it “all the exes have come ‘round again and why look at that, they’re all arch villians now.” They really have that effect on people though, the Lavender League. It’s like reverse Goku syndrome. Goku fights you and you become best buddies. Here you run into Lavender Jack and Co. likely get exposed and put in prison/face social punishment of a sort and come back lookin for the most melodramatic of revenge. It does help build the sense of finality the series is building towards though.
One of the joys of returning to the series is reading Schkade’s word play once again. He brushes up against the fourth wall a little bit as Jack attempts to threaten Giddy, the first boy he kissed as it turns out. Filled with such righteous purpose Mimley-Jack doesn’t even attempt a playful jab, just a straight to the point jugular threat. Schkade sells this blunt purpose by drawing him closer to Lilac Jack aka Not-Lord Hawthorne with a hunched, rounded, imposing, figure draped in hard shadows. That feels like in retrospect the first indication that something was off about this half-brained rescue op. Even when Jack does say something witty about having God and Science watching as he threatens to paralyze Giddy it’s a violent threat that is trying to be violent in a way that Jack isn’t. He’s a vigilante sure but a vigilante that follows a mainstream visual representation that actively tries to undermine the violence he inflicts on people. Him trying to be violence is a sign of how something is off.
It’s a good example of visual storytelling carrying forward was if not purely dialogic, primarily told through dialogue in the previous episode as Johnny Summer tries to talk Jack out of being so rash. The visual clues are all there with Mimley’s sleep deprived state but the sequence is primarily built around the conversation between Summer’s and Mimley, the latter of whom is in something of a manic state.
The rhythm of Jack on the run could’ve been a bit boring but Schkade manages to make the run back and forth visually interesting in particular the long opening sprint at the top of episode 116. This batch of episodes all have strong panorama-esque paneling that nicely use the scrolling to create a unified sense of space. A unified sense of space that is undermined as Jack begins to tire and succumb to whatever poison Lady Hawthorne as coated her barbs in. A poison that almost made me thing that the revelation of the Black Note was a hallucination! But is in fact a very real return, the whole gang really is getting back together.
The revelation of how the Black Note survived feels a little yada-yada’d, I have to go back and see how it was originally told visually. The same goes for Duchess Okoyo and the subjugation of the Faternity to Lady Hawthorne, it all just kinda happened in moves in the gutter space. It’s not terrible but feels like something that either I’d forgotten as being setup during the lay off or something that just needed to happen and is a bit thudding in its placement.
On a slight visual note, it was fun to see the strip work in what appears to be a reference to the early Batman design, with the red wings and flying suit. The character is closer to Waid-Silver Age “Daredevil” but Batman is something of the king of vigilantes at this point.
