DC's NEW 52-GRIFTER #1

Cole Cash, or as he is better know The Grifter, has been floating around the Wildstorm Universe since 1992, when he appeared in WILDC.A.T.S. #1. He has been a member of WILDC.A.T.S., Team 7 and I.O. and most recently was killed during the FLASHPOINT timeline. Proving you can't keep a good marksman down, the merged Wildstorm Universe presents THE GRIFTER as part of DC's NEW 52.

But maybe he should have stayed dead.

Cole Cash is on an airplane flight and hears voices in his head and proceeds to attack and kill the woman sitting next to him by plunging a long needlelike object into her left eye(of course, she did produce the weapon first). Cash threatens to blow up the plane and orders a flight attedant to open the cabin door. Then, hearing the same threatening voice as before, the attendant attacks Cash and they tumble out of the airplane.

We then get a flashback sequence where a con upon a con occurs. Cash is abducted by some sort of alien and ends up killing what we assume is one of his captors to get free. troubled by the whole incident, he decides to get on a plane and escape. According to his watch, he was unconscious for seventeen minutes.

We're back to the mid air leap and Cash and the flight attendant crash into the ocean below. Two hours later and he's on the phone with his female friends Gretchen who tells him he has been missing for seventeen DAYS. And his mid air hi jinx from earlier in the day has already made the news. As Cole Cash sits in a graveyard, hearing the demon voices and donning what has become his trademark red bandanna mask, the Pentagon has a briefing with another Cash: Colonel Max Cash who, in Wildstorm continuity, was killed by an assassin and came back as a zombie who was killed by Cole Cash.

Wow! I really don't know what to do with this book. It's not that it isn't bad, it's just I was a fan of the character and especially his later tenure with WILDCATS. But this goes nowhere except into a lot of places with a lot of plot holes. If I had to take a guess, I would believe the aliens and the voices are going to be revealed as either Kherubim or Daemonites and we';re looking at several key figures from the old Wildstorm Universe. Do we REALLY need that? No one read the books once DC got the imprint and those of us who did feel a little insulted that we're going down this road again. While Cafu tries to channel Travis Charest, Nathan Edmonson's story is just okay. Nothing fancy, nothing enticing and NOTHING about these characters makes me go "oooh...I can't wait until next month". Not saying it's a bad book, just not something I'm willing to drop three bucks on every month.

BTW: the mysterious hooded woman is in the third panel, seven pages from the end of the book. She's floating outside the window of the costume shop Cash is in stealing his disguise from.