Phantom Jack

(Image, 2004-2005, 2007)
™ and © 2004 Mike Sangiacomo
2007 reprint collection by Atomic Pop Art

Jack Baxter, young hotshot reporter with invisibility powers, stars in real-life reporter Mike San Giacomo’s Phantom Jack. Originally written for Marvel’s aborted Epic project for new writers, Image gave Phantom Jack a new lease on life, and it’s a good thing they did: This one’s a winner.

It’s set in real-life history, 2002, to be exact—just as the war in Iraq moves into full escalation. Jack’s on location in Iraq and uses invisibility to save himself rather than rescue his Iraqi source. It’s moving to see that Jack’s only human, after allzand, even with invisibility, the danger’s all too real.

It’s a great setup for a comic book and is helped by Mitchell Breitweiser’s photo-realistic art. It’s easy to tell that Breitweiser’s a little rough around the edges, but he can only get better from here. His rendition of Jack’s newsroom friend Wolf “Big” Bigelow makes the character seem like a real person.hat Jack’s source knows about, but, in real life, it’s 2004 and such weapons have.

One downside is that Phantom Jack contains topical references that become more dated by the week. The flashback involves a cache of WMDs t yet to be found. It’s a little like that episode of Star Trek where Fermat’s Last Theorem had not yet been solved.

— Steve Horton

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