"Cynosure. Sweet, cynical Cynosure - where the dimensions meet. Magic works here, science works there, swords work everywhere."

Grimjack was the story of John Gaunt, a sword for hire in the dangerous city of Cynosure, where realities fade in and out of synch with the city, and literally anything can happen. A former gladiator, spy, demon fighting soldier, and much more besides, Gaunt was known on the streets as Grimjack, one of the deadliest men in a deadly world.

Created by John Ostrander and Tim Truman, Grimjack was published by First, and ran for 81 regular monthly issues, having started as a back-up feature in Starslayer, another First title. It also had a graphic novel, two Munden's Bar specials, and Grimjack guested in some First specials, such as Crossroads and The Gift. Since the company went bust, Grimjack has been tied up in litigation, as Ostrander tries to sort out the legal mess of who actually owns him and bring him back into print (for my money, whatever the legal case, the moral one is clear - Ostrander created the character and wrote him for his entire run).

Grimjack went through a number of changes and growths during its run, most noticeably having John Gaunt replaced by Jim Twilley, his own reincarnation some two hundred years later. It was an exciting, daring series, that never failed to amaze or deliver. Hopefully one day soon, Grimjack, in whatever incarnation, will raise his scarred face once again, show us that death's head grin of his, and we'll again be treated to the kind of mayhem only Cynosure can give us.

Friends and Allies of John Gaunt

Friends and Allies of Jim Twilley

Enemies of Both Grimjacks

Enemies of Gaunt

Enemies of Twilley

Other people, groups and events in Cynosure that didn't get their own entry

THE PIT - The nastiest section of Cynosure, where poverty and violence are a way of life. Gaunt was born and raised there.

THE ARENA - During Gaunt's youth gladiatorial games were legal, and children could even be sold to fight and die, as Gaunt and Blackjac both discovered. The Dancer was the most famous of the fighters to come out of the Arena, but after he led an uprising following the Demon Wars, the games were finally banned.

WOLFPAC - The young toughs of the Arena, which included Gaunt, Blackjac and Nasty Detmer, were called the Wolfpac.

UNCLE WILLY - Trainer of the kids in the Wolfpacs in Gaunt's arena days. By his own admission he "never like Wolfpac - then, now. Then I trained cubs so mebbee some survive, eh? Some few." After the arena's were shut down he made a new profession for himself. "These days he ran the Powder Bourne, where he tended, mended, and supplemented my (Grimjack's) supply of weapons." When Gaunt lost his hand at the end of the Trade Wars, it was Uncle Willy who outfitted him with a prosthetic.

DEMON WARS - Some twenty years before the start of the comic, the gates of Hell opened on Cynosure - literally. Demons poured into the city, preying on anyone they could find. Only the fact that some parts of the city would not support magic, and hence were inaccessible to the demons, prevented Cynosure from being overrun - these sections became the Havens. Gaunt and Blackjac were amongst the warriors who fought to contain the demons and drive them out. Eventually, at great cost, they succeeded, but the city remains in constant fear of their return.

FEETUS - "Feetus was a war vet. Both his legs got blown off while he was saving his battalion from a demon attack during the Fort Leone siege. While Feetus was in surgery, his C.O. grabbed all the glory. Feetus got an honorable discharge and a surplus anti-grav sled." "Feetus supplemented his income with information - gathering and disseminating. He had the best ears and the most discreet mouth in the pit." Just prior to the outbreak of the Trade Wars Gaunt trusted Feetus to hold some letters for him as a form of insurance. Unfortunately for Feetus, the Dancer's agents Dink and Katar were watching, killed him and took the letters.

PDWYR - Just prior to the start of the Demon Wars John Gaunt stumbled into an idyllic pocket dimension hidden from Cynosure. He fell in love there, but when Major Lash stumbled in, having narrowly escaped demon forces, and told Gaunt of the battle going on elsewhere, Gaunt felt his duty forced him to return to assist in the fight. However Pdwyr's position was betrayed to the Demons by the Major, and their ravening hordes laid waste to the land and killed all its people. For a long time Gaunt guiltily believed it was his fault the land had been found.

MAETHE MATHONWY - Lord of Pdwyr, magician, mentor to Grimjack and father to Rhian. He died when Pdwyr was invaded by the Demons.

RHIAN - Lady of Pdwyr, she and John Gaunt fell in love when he unwittingly stumbled into her dimension. She died at the hands of the invading Demons while Gaunt was away fighting.

THE DANCER'S UPRISING - Shortly after the Demon Wars the former gladiator turned crimelord known as the Dancer forged an army out of ex-arena fighters and the poor of the Pit in an attempt to seize power. He failed, and he and his lieutenants were believed to have burned to death in a fire. Arena blood sports are banned as a result of his insurrection.

CADRE - "Cadre was created to deal with threats to Cynosure's safety after the Demon Wars." "Cadre was Cynosure's answer to the Dancer's rebellion. Cadre's orders were simple: to deal with any and all threats to the city's safety." John Gaunt was one of the first recruits: "When I first joined Cadre there were only twelve of us, operating out of the home of Cadre's founding director, a man named Mayfair. We were told the ends mattered, but the means didn't. By the time I left Cadre it had swollen into an organisation employing thousands and occupying its own high-rise fortress. The means by this time had become ends unto themselves." The agency was run by Mayfair. The employed teams of assassins dressed in clown costumes, known as Harlequin Squads.

TRANS-DIMENSIONAL POLICE - The police force of Cynosure, mostly corrupt. Doesn't care what happens in the Pit so long as it stays in the Pit, because the people there are poor. Gaunt worked for the TDP for a while, and Roscoe and Noleski still do.

PORTABLE REALITY GENERATORS - "Back-pack sized units; projects a relative functional reality around the wearer - lets your weapons and vehicles work no matter what the physical laws are of the dimension you're in. PRGs let the TDP function in all the dimensions of Cynosure and were sometimes the only edge they had."

THE SHADOW COPS - "The Shadow Cops were the TDP's answer to Cadre." An "elite bunch of undercover cops. Work in the Pit, playing bad guy to bust bad guys, keepin' their ears to th' ground so's to nail th' big stuff before it happens." One member went rogue and when the rest of his unit discovered this, they covered for him, even killing and framing a regular TDP cop to hide their man's crimes. But Gaunt exposed this, and those Shadow Cops went down in a hail of gunfire. The rest of the Shadow Cops were disbanded, leaving Cadre the only sanctioned covert unit in the city - just the way Mayfair planned it.

LILLIAN SEFFINGTON - Head of the Shadow Cops and one-time lover of John Gaunt. When Gaunt exposed the corruption in her unit, she disbanded it and retired. When the Trade Wars erupted she was returned to work as the head of the city's security, since she was untainted by the corporations. She was killed by the Bullyboy attack on the peace conference which had been called to end the war.

MUNDEN'S BAR - "A small dive on the lip of the pan-dimensional city of Cynosure." Owned by John Gaunt, with Gordon as the barman, Munden's has hosted many illustrious visitors from other realities who have wandered into the city unknowingly. By Jim Twilley's time a creature called Skuzzy was running it, but Gaunt's will allowed Twilley to reclaim it as his base of operations.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CYNOSURE - "The only artificially created dimension in Cynosure. All rules of science, magic, and alien technologies work within its walls - the better to be explored and exploited. The university reflects the city. Commerce is Cynosure's politics and its religion. So the only thing they don't teach at the U of Cyn is ethics."

THE ETERNITY ROAD - "Actually a paved dimensional portal that allowed transportation of large amounts of goods with the dimensions that aren't in phase with the city."

THE OUTLANDS - "The ring of blasted and baked territory that ringed Cynosure. Some thought it was a dimension of its own. Mostly what it was was desolate. And in some spots, dangerous." Jericho Noleski patrolled the outlands on behalf of the TDP.

TOURBOTS - little robots controlled from a distance. The user sees and feels what the tourbot sees and feels, but without pain or risk of injury if the robot is damaged. They are used in Gaunt's time by tourists to sight see around the sometimes dangerous city. They are not allowed in Munden's Bar. By Twilley's time the remote control technology has been combined with "virgin cloning" techniques to create the Zuvembie's.

BOB - the watch lizard, who eats the vermin in Munden's Bar, as well as sitting with Gaunt during his dark moods and drinking sessions. Originally he and his family lived in the waters under Devil's Bridge with the rest of his kind, until trappers turned up to capture the males for their singing voices, killing the rest. All but Bob died very quickly in captivity, before Bob was sold to a rich aristo who used him as a party animal for his guests to torture. But Gaunt crashed the party on the trail of the Manx Cat statue, and rescued Bob as an afterthought. Now Bob considers the merc as his family.

PROFESSOR ALTHEA MUELLER - scientist at the University of Cynosure. She suffered a stroke from overwork, but her patron (the Dancer) wanted her to continue her research. Her mind was transferred from her damaged body to that of a "virgin" clone whose body was undamaged. However it took help from Grimjack to re-integrate her mind with her new body. A few months later she called on his help again, and he discovered that her clone body, artificially aged to adulthood, has a deficient immune system leaving her dying from multiple infections. She had created a device which would allow the user to prevent dimensions from joining or rejoining Cynosure. The Dancer used this during the Trade Wars he had engineered to cut Cynosure off from the rest of the multiverse, and had Mueller hidden in another dimension until he needed her again. But when she found out what her invention had been used for, she sacrificed herself trying to stop it.

THE TRADE WARS - Fifteen years after the Dancer's last attempt to take over the city, he tried again. His last attempt had exploited the fact that the city had been weakened by the Demon Wars. This time he engineered a war between the corporations in the city, deliberately leaking to the press that the Alpha Centauri Commercial Empire had been covertly taking over the Council one seat at a time.

Grimjack Stories and Tales

Starslayer #10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, Grimjack #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81

Starslayer #10 Mortal Gods

Grimjack retrieves the Manx Cat for a client, before being hired by Elvanna, the last surviving follower of the god Manwyyes to locate her deity. All the rest of her people have been slaughtered by Zago, God of the Blood Red Sun, and Elvanna used a mystic ritual to take her to her god, only to end up in Cynosure. Gaunt takes her to a run down bar where he introduces her to a drunk Manny Weese, a.k.a. Manwyyes.

Starslayer #11 Mortal Gods (conclusion)

Manny is a drunk who stumbled into Elvanna's dimension, only to discover he had god-like powers there. But the pressure got too much, so he returned home to Cynosure. Zago turns up, looking to kill his rival, but Gaunt manages to slice and dice him with his own sword.

Starslayer #12 Buried Past

Gaunt is hired by Cracker, an old acquaintance, to find out who has turned him into a vampire. Cracker believes the guilty party is the boyfriend of a girl he was with, a vampire known as Grinner. Grinner used to be Gaunt's street name twenty years back. Gaunt finds the girl at Wolfingham's, a werewolf joint. She flees, Gaunt in pursuit, but he is attacked by a Harlequin Squad.

Starslayer #13 Buried Past Chapter Two

Grimjack makes short work of the Harlequin Squad, recognising them as operatives of Cadre, Cynosure's secret service which he used to belong to many years back. He then tracks the vampire girl back to her home in Suburbia.

Starslayer #14 Buried Past Chapter Three

Grimjack eliminates the vampire girl, but after he leaves her home he is cold-cocked by her boyfriend Grinner.

Starslayer #15 Buried Past Chapter Four

Gaunt awakens, surprisingly unharmed. He goes to visit Cadre to find out their involvement with the case, and meets his old boss Mayfair. Mayfair admits that CADRE is trying to recruit the "vampyr" as an agent, believing it may be the last one left over from the Demon Wars and thus an irreplaceable resource. Escaping from CADRE's headquarters, Gaunt next visits his old partner Roscoe at the Transdimensional Police, who helps him locate which dimension was last in phase during the Demon Wars and has only just returned to Cynosure - the likely home of the vampire. The only one that fits the bill is Pdwyr, and Gaunt, now realising who the vamp must be, heads there to bury his past.

Starslayer #16 Buried Past Final Chapter

Gaunt returns to Pdwyr where he confronts Grinner, a.k.a. Gdeon, brother to his dead love Rhian. Both Cracker and a Harlequin Squad interrupt the conversation, which gets them a terminal rebuke from Grimjack. Gaunt then puts his old friend out of his misery.

Starslayer #17 Night of the Killer Bunnies

Grimjack is hired to protect the cuddly inhabitants of Ch'ukee from an attack of killer rabbits known as Lupoos. He brings his old friend Blackjac in on the case.

Starslayer #18 Blood and Thunder

While chasing up an old debt, Gaunt comes to the aid of Torin MacQuillon, the Starslayer, and his crew, assisting them in their battle with Count Ariosto. He makes a new enemy in the wizard Sphinx.

Grimjack #1 A Shade of Truth

Gaunt is hired by Sondra Grant to find the truth behind why her daughter committed suicide, and why her soul, unable to rest, is now coming back each night to repeat her traumatic demise. It turns out the girl had been tricked into becoming a drug addict in order to use her as blackmail material against her influential father, finance minister William Honesworth, and rather than allow this to happen, had killed herself first. Tracking the truth down leads to the deaths of all those who had been involved in the sordid attempt at blackmailing Honesworth.

Grimjack #2 Blood Sport

A young boy hires Grimjack to save his father. Their family has fallen into poverty, and in a desperate attempt to get some money, the father has decided to enter an illegal arena death match. Gaunt locates the arena and takes the father's place, winning the bout against his titanic opponent Bullyboy (though not easily). But the announcer at the match is MacCabre, a follower of the Dancer, and long believed dead. His return means that the Dancer, and major trouble, cannot be far behind.

Grimjack #3 Blood Relations!

Gaunt informs Blackjac of his father's return, and the two go to Blackfriar's Hall, MacCabre's former stronghold. Breaking in, they discover that MacCabre is growing hundreds of Bullyboys like the one Gaunt faced in the blood match. The fights have been a test for the prototype, checking it for endurance and ability to take punishment, before the rest are used by the Dancer as the vanguard of his army in a fresh uprising. Discovered, Gaunt and Blackjac face off against MacCabre, who claims he used Blackjac's siblings as the raw materials for the creatures. Blackjac defeats his father in combat, and Grimjack cuts off his hand when he subsequently tries to shoot his son in the back. The two mercenaries leave the wounded villain to his fate and get out just before the grenades Gaunt planted amongst some oxygen cylinders blow the place sky high. They are watched as they depart by Katar and the Dancer.

Grimjack #4 Legacy

Grimjack is hired to protect a singer after he is grazed by a would be assassin during the run up to a one off comeback concert. But Gaunt fails, and the mad fan kills his true target - the singer's wife whom he blames for his idol's retirement.

Grimjack #5 Dead End

Asked by Roscoe to investigate the death of his wife's nephew, who has been used as a patsy to cover up thefts of PRGs from the TDP, Gaunt follows a lead out to Eternity Road in the Outlands, where he runs into TDP cop Jericho Noleski. Ambushed at Noleski's home, the Dead-End (Service) Station, the two manage to get away, but the station is blown up. Jericho has also been used as a patsy in the thefts, and is less than happy about it, so he decides to accompany Gaunt back into Cynosure to get to the bottom of things.

Grimjack #6 Shadow Cops II: Over the Line

Noleski and Gaunt run the police blockades back into Cynosure, and hide out in Roscoe's office at TDP Central. Noleski goes through police files, trying to locate a man he saw with Roscoe's nephew prior to his death, but he is not on the TDP books. Gaunt and Roscoe figure this makes him a Shadow Cop, the TDP's answer to Cadre. So Gaunt calls on Mayfair, head of Cadre, to provide the files on his rivals for Jericho to peruse, and this time the man they want is in there. Having identified the culprit Gaunt turns to Lillain Seffington, head of the Shadow Cops and old flame, to tell her of the corruption in her organisation and enlist her aid. She refuses to believe him, so Gaunt knocks her out and carries her out her house over his shoulder.

Grimjack #7 Shadows of Doubt

Using Lillian as a bargaining chip Gaunt confronts the Shadow Cops. They plan an ambush, but Noleski puts a stop to that idea. It turns out that one Shadow Cop was blackmailed into stealing a PRG for an unnamed criminal, and upon discovering this, the others covered for him, even though it cost the life of Roscoe's nephew and led to framing Grimjack and Jericho. Planning to murder the two, plus Lillian who has witnessed their confession, they are themselves caught in an ambush, this one set by Gaunt and Roscoe. Surrounded by regular TDP they die in a hail of gunfire trying to shoot their way out. The Shadow Cops are discredited and disbanded; Gaunt meanwhile realises the whole thing was engineered from the start by Mayfair to eliminate Cadre's only rival.

Grimjack #8 Exit Poll

Its election time in Cynosure. When Gaunt recognises one of the candidates as being an old associate, Crayne, a con man, he decides to help him survive the election feeling that having a tame politician may be useful after some of the recent events in his life. But Crayne doesn't want to win, as he has taken so many bribes in return for services to be rendered if he wins that he would never be able to fulfill all the promises he has made. Unfortunately his airhead act endears himself to the populace, and he wins by a landslide. In the end he fakes his own death to avoid his creditors catching him up.

Grimjack #9 My Sins Remembered

An attempt to revive the mind of a scientist (Professor Althea Mueller) at the Uni of C goes badly wrong, and Grimjack has to go into a psychic vortex where the subconscious is given form in order to rescue her. But given the state of his own mind, this is not a venture without risk.

Grimjack #10 Hardtimers

Gaunt has travelled back in time to the Wild West period of America's history, having been hired by the TDP to retrieve anachronistic weapons that an unscrupulous trader has sold to the locals (uzis and the like). He encounters the (now arrested) trader's agent on the ground, a lady known as Spook, and offers her a deal; he'll let her go if she helps him retrieve the weapons. The locals who bought the weapons object to this deal, but can't stop the two from Cynosure from hijacking a train that was taking the guns south, where their American buyer was planning to use them to establish a new Confederate republic.

Grimjack #11 Long Time Dead

Briefly eluding their pursuers, Spook and Gaunt are prevented from accessing the entrance to the Eternity Road by Major Lash and his Lawkillers. Lash wants Gaunt to hand Spook over to him, but he refuses to co-operate. A stand-off lasts into the night, until Gaunt and Spook manage to set the pursuing locals off against the Lawkillers, gaining them the chance to get through the gateway, which Gaunt explosively seals, leaving the Major and his men stranded.

Grimjack #12 Charnel House

Manwyyes and Elvanna ask for Gaunt's help in locating a young boy they had helped at their mission, who subsequently went missing; the boy had stumbled into Cynosure and quickly been forced to turn to prostitution to survive. He finds the child, but he is dead, and has been sold as food to one of the alien species that inhabit the city. It transpires that one of the other young prostitutes on the streets has found a way to make extra money and cut down his competition at the same time.

Grimjack #13 Suspect

Roscoe is ordered by his superior to bring Grimjack in after a young bravo who was seen to best him in a fight is found dead shortly afterwards. But Roscoe demonstrates his detective skills, proving that he is a capable cop when he puts his mind to it, and proves that the true killer was the young thug's business partner, who killed him to get his hands on the stolen Manx Cat. Gaunt, as always, recovers the Cat, while Roscoe clears his friend's name.

Grimjack #14 Decaying Orbit

Grimjack goes undercover on a space refinery, looking for a missing reporter.

Grimjack #15 This Wheel's On Fire

Grimjack is hired by Professor Mueller to deliver some cargo, in spite of the attempts of Lord Phaeton to stop him. He manages to do so, and drops Phaeton off in Ch'ukee (dimension of cuddly animals in Starslayer #17) as it goes out of phase with they city. But without knowing it, he has furthered the Dancer's plans.

Grimjack #16 Wolfpac Part I

Roscoe calls Grimjack to let him know someone has roughed up Uncle Willy, his trainer from the days he was in the Wolfpacs in the Arena. Willy had been asked to train a new Wolfpac, and had refused. Upon hearing this, Gaunt gets Blackjac, and after the latter has ordered his lady, Goddess not to try and accompany them, the two start to track down whoever is behind this new Arena. They trace their way to the estate of  Linus van Feldt, a minor aristo married to former Wolfpac member Nasty Detmer. Unfortunately both of them are captured when they try to break the children free, only to awaken in the Arena, unarmed and chained to a post, as the new Wolfpac, children they don't want to hurt, approach them with knives, drugged so that they do not know what they are doing.

Grimjack #17 Wolfpac Part II

In spite of Blackjac's instructions , Goddess intervenes. With her assistance, Gaunt and Blackjac escape the new Arena. Gaunt finds out that C'Janus, the heir of the Alpha Centauri Commercial Empire, is the real patron behind Nasty Detmer's games, and that the company has been slowly taking over the ruling Council using blackmail and other covert methods, removing those who couldn't be controlled, such as Lillian Seffington (#5-7), by other means. Gaunt gathers proof of this, gives it to Feetus as security, and then confronts the head of the company. Facing the threat of exposure, he allows Gaunt to kill C'Janus. However Katar and Dink, two of Dancer's lieutenant's, have killed Feetus and sent the proof to the press, and a trade war engulfs the city.

Grimjack #18 Trade War: Inferno

Finally the strands that have run through the previous issues come together:

The corporations have been at war now for five weeks, turning the city into a battlefield. The dimensions that can force themselves out of phase with the city, so that by the end of the third week, the city has lost nearly half it's mass. Then suddenly the walls of the bubble that contain the city within the pan-dimensional vortex polarize, sealing the city off. No longer can dimensions enter or leave Cynosure. A peace conference is finally arranged in a dimension that only allows low-tech and just enough magic for supernatural creatures to live, but not to use magical spells. William Honesworth (whose daughter committed suicide in #1, causing him to eventually resign out of grief) is the only person the guilds trust enough to listen to - Gaunt is his bodyguard. Lillian Seffington, former head of the Shadow Cops, also comes out of retirement to run what is left of the city's security forces. At Gaunt's suggestion Blackjac and his mercs beef up the security detail and Spook becomes Lillian's bodyguard.

Just as Honesworth seems to have made progress Bullyboys  (#2, #3) armed with PRG's (#5-7) charge in firing. Lillian is killed by the bullets from one Bullyboy, and the good guys are forced to try and kill the Bullyboys in hand to hand and then take their PRG's so that their guns can work. Roscoe takes a bullet, but survives. The truce that Honesworth arranged is shattered, as all the corporations blame the others for the attack. Realising that Professor Mueller may be able to explain what has happened to the vortex, Gaunt sends Spook to find her. He meanwhile is going to see Mayfair - Bullyboys with PRGs ties Dancer in with Mayfair. Gaunt accuses Mayfair of working with the Dancer to cause the Trade War - Mayfair admits as much - everything has been a carefully laid out plan - eliminate the rival covert agency that might uncover the plot - use Grimjack, known for his independence and honesty, to reveal the plot C'Janus had for taking over the Council, a plot Dancer suggested to him in the first place, and guarantee that Grimjack would be involved by setting up a new Wolfpac to get his interest - start a war that would undermine the current powers in the city and use Mueller's device to cut the city down to a manageable size, and then have Dancer show up as the hero who saves the day, thus bringing him to power. Mayfair believes that Dancer ruling would be for the greatest good of the city, and hence he went along with the plan.

Autopia (Munden's Bar back-up story, for once ties in with main story)

Spook tracks Mueller down to a high-tech dimension were she has been hidden by Katar. In this dimension Mueller is immortal, which is just as well, as time moves far faster here than in Cynosure. Mueller has been here millennia. But Spook can barely hold on to her own integrity in this dimension, and without a PRG cannot take Mueller back with her. So Spook flees and heads back to Munden's Bar to update the rest of the crew.

Grimjack #19 Trade Wars: Maelstrom

Gaunt is in the grip of the Dark, so Honesworth sends Jericho with Blackjac and Spook to retrieve Mueller. Honesworth meanwhile plans to contact the warring conglomerates again and try to arrange another truce, but when he gets back to his HQ he is met by Mayfair, who wishes to discuss terms for the city's surrender. Gaunt is on the trail of Feetus' killer, encountering Manwyyes while doing so, who is cradling his dead follower Elvanna in his arms. Asking Gaunt what he should do with her, he is told "Find a hole and put her in it." The trio looking to recover Mueller go through a dimensional gate to where she should be, only to have it blown up behind her by Dancer's men, stranding them. Mayfair threatens that if he does not get the surrender, the vortex walls will be turned off, destroying the city entirely, and Gaunt tracks Katar back to Fort Leone, the flying fortress he and Feetus were once based out off during the Demon Wars.

Sandtrap (Munden's Bar back-up story, for once ties in with main story)

The wounded Roscoe makes it to Munden's to share a drink with Gordon. Meanwhile the trio hunting Mueller find themselves on a dead world, centuries having passed since Spook's earlier visit. They start bickering almost immediately, with Noleski annoying Blackjac with his nicknames and refusing to trust a haunt like Spook. They are ambushed by the Dancer's men, and during the fight Blackjac is accidentally shot by Jericho. The raging emotions around her drive Spook away, as she cannot defend herself from them in this dimension. Jericho tries to carry Blackjac back to the city for help, but the wounded man awakens and thinking Jericho is trying to finish him off, stabs him. The two injured me collapse, dying under the desert sun.

Grimjack #20 Trade Wars: Holocaust

Honesworth sees no choice but to surrender to Mayfair and the Dancer. Meanwhile Gaunt sneaks into Fort Leone, confronting Mueller en route to his face off with Katar. Mueller longs for death, but is scared of suicide in case reincarnation brings her back in an even worse existence - Gaunt, fully caught in the Dark, asks her how another life could be worse than the one she has now, being stuck in a decaying body for the last several millennia. She realises the truth of his words, and as Gaunt leaves the room she picks up a gun. Gaunt confronts Katar, and the younger man is winning until one of Mueller's clones arrives with the news that Mueller is destroying the vortex walls. Katar strikes Gaunt with what he thinks is a killing blow and rushes off to stop her: Gaunt however survives. As katar kills Mueller, Gaunt gets to the control chamber and shoots him dead.  With the vortex walls coming down, Gaunt starts firing wildly at Mueller's machinery and the Fort's control mechanisms. The flying fortress crashes to the ground, but the vortex walls remain intact. Honesworth withdraws the city's surrender, and Mayfair and Dancer skulk off to try another day, happy that at least the seem to have killed Grimjack.

Dead End (Munden's Bar back-up story, for once ties in with main story)

Spook returns to her fallen companions, who are still narrowly clinging to life - but in her insubstantial state she cannot help them. She needs a miracle - and she gets one. Manwyyes, now a towering giant, looms overhead. It seems that this was the realm he was once a god for, and so he cannot be denied entrance to it by anything. He has come to take Gaunt's advice and put Elvanna in the ground. Spook convinces the god to heal the others, and they return to Munden's in time to stop some thugs from trashing the joint. Manwyyes remains behind, renewing the world in the hope that one day Elvanna might also be reborn.

Grimjack #21 Requiem

Grimjack, tired and injured, hides up in a safe house waiting to die. He knows that all those with a grudge will come after him with a view to finishing him off. He hallucinates the ghosts of past foes attacking him, but is saved from these dreams by the ghost of Maethe Mathonwy. One of his visions finally shows us how he got his trademark scar - his father slashed him with a broken bottle during a drunken rage. Meanwhile outside his friends stand guard over him: Blackjac, Goddess, Gordon, Roscoe, Jericho and Spook. But one enemy does penetrate the defences - the Dancer drops by to deliver a message. He and Mayfair have parted company, but "Sooner or later, we will fight another war for control of Cynosure. Unlike the Trade War, this one will be fought entirely in shadow."

Grimjack #22 Facets

Uncle Willy has outfitted Gaunt with a new prosthetic "hand", deliberately kept low-tech so that it will work in every dimension. Gaunt admits he is falling for Spook, perhaps because unlike the other women he has gotten close to, he believes he cannot hurt her; she is already dead. New "Hot Cops", cyborg police, have been brought in with so many of the TDP dead. Honesworth asks Gaunt to become a one-man version of Cadre, but he refuses, feeling he owes the city nothing. Later he rescues an aristo girl from some thugs, and she hires him to protect her family, who she believes are threatened by demons.

Grimjack #23 Demon Blood

The girl, Jennifer Welles, explains that after a party the night before she discovered one of her half-brothers dead, eviscerated in the way the demons used to kill their victims back during the war, and that his twin, her other half-brother, is missing too. With her father refusing to believe that a demon could be behind the murder, preferring to put it down to a wild animal, Jennifer felt she had to get real help, and went looking for Grimjack. The rest of her family are less than thrilled to have him on the case. That night he tracks down the gateway the demons need to access this domain using a Miller Medallion. He finds it, realising with horror that it has been constructed out of the still living flesh of the missing twin.. Before he can destroy it he is struck from behind and knocked out.

Grimjack #24 You Say It's Your Birthday (not a continuation of the previous issue's story, but instead a one-issue digression)

Gaunt has turned fifty, is sitting drinking in an empty Munden's, and is being haunted by the spirits of the dead, especially the ones he killed himself. Spook arrives, and can see the shades too, as Gaunt is manifesting, bringing them into existence. He denies this, refusing to believe that what he sees is anything more than a drunken hallucination, until the shade of Katar threatens Bob. Enraged, he banishes them all to hell, wrecking the bar in the process. (Timeline wise, this story must be set between #21 and #22. Katar is dead, meaning its after the Trade Wars, but Gaunt hasn't got the prosthetic yet (though his injured hand is bandaged), so it's prior to the start of #22)

Grimjack #25 Demon Blood Part 2

Gaunt awakens and warns the family of the threat, but the demons pass through into Cynosure as he is doing so. They possess the local animals, and assault the house. When Jennifer's mother dies, they break off the attack, causing some to believe it is she who summoned them. But Gaunt realises the truth; the only person who wasn't targeted was Jennifer. She goes for him, turning monstrous as she does so, but he dispatches her with silver and, locating the gateway once more, throws her decapitated head through it, sealing the portal. It transpires that Jennifer's mother had been raped during the demon wars and Jennifer had been born with a demonic split personality which had been recently awoken.

With the threat now past, Gaunt reconsiders Honesworth's offer to become a one-man version of Cadre, and takes up that role on his own terms.

Grimjack #26 Twisted Metal

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