Review by Diego Guerra

The American John Sable met Elise, the love of his life, at the Munich Olympics in 1972, yes, the infamous one with the attacks. Neither won medals, but they found each other, and Sable and his wife lived in Kenya, then Rhodesia, with two children, as he dedicated himself to protecting nature reserves from poachers.

Enraged by the business that ruined him, the ivory cartel boss ordered Sable’s murder. The hitmen killed his wife and two children but couldn’t find the ranger. Sable spent six months in the jungle, searching for the killers, almost went mad, almost became a wild beast, an animal. Finally, he avenged his family, but the pain remained.

Back in the United States, he tried to sell a book with his memoirs to literary agents, but no one wanted it. Sable turned to what he knew best, being a soldier of fortune, and had immediate success. Saving President Reagan from an attack, and then a beautiful witness in a mafia case gained him fame and renown as a mercenary.

Almost simultaneously, a literary agent offered him an interesting deal: in his memoirs, he mentioned stories about elves in Central Park that Sable used to tell his children. According to the agent, there was a great market for such stories. Sable became an extremely successful author of children’s stories.

There was a problem; it was impossible to reconcile his two professions and be credible in both. So, he created an alter ego, B.B. Flemm, the writer, with glasses, a wig, and a fake moustache, and continued being Sable.

The chief of the New York police hates him. His literary agent, the beautiful Eden Kendall, adores him because she knows the burden of pain that he carries inside. Myke Blackmon, the illustrator of his stories, also falls in love with him on learning about that burden. Assassins are chasing Sable, innocent people need rescued from lethal threats, two businesses are too lucrative to be rejected, and Mike Grell throws in pursuits, shootouts, and a bunch of beautiful women.

On this far-fetched premise, Grell constructs a captivating universe, bordering on the implausible yet fun. Sable is not completely realistic, but has a foot in reality that superheroes lack, the pacing and mood closer to some successful TV series of the 1980s like Miami Vice. The blend sustained the series for over fifty issues.

Grell had previously drawn and written Warlord, a great success, but less plausible, about an army pilot ending up immersed in a universe of swords and sorcery, always accompanied by stunning women. The women surrounding Sable are also beautiful but much more realistic, both as drawn and in the dramatic depth they contain.

If there’s something to criticise about the series, it tends to lean towards short episodes, contain stories for the monthly magazine when there was potential for expansion, to tell extensive stories over several issues, although that wasn’t the trend of the time.

This Volume 1 supplies Sable’s origin and some initial cases of the mercenary. It’s an enjoyable, fun series, and although some elements may have aged, there’s has no equivalents in the current American comic landscape. Volume 2 follows.