Steel - The Jersey City Era, Part 5

[superboyprime]

We continue with STEEL #40-41, in which Natasha Irons faces sexual harassment on her first day at her new school and Steel gets arrested for murder. #40 also marks the debut of the most well-known version of Steel's hammer, thanks to its usage in his JLA appearances -- the one decked out with hi-tech gizmos that famously flies faster the farther its thrown.



#40 begins with Steel going after an ice-cream man.





See, scenes like this are why I assumed it was meant to be some other, fictional Jersey City.

Up till now, Steel's been hammer-less for the past five issues, ever since the weapon got jammed in an engine block in issue #34. Presumably, he finally gave up on successfully extracting it, because this issue introduces the new, improved one.




What follows is a weird scene where Steel drops the guy off with the real Garacci crime family and tells them the man's been using their name. It's a scare tactic, obviously, but the weird part is that he just leaves him there, telling the Garaccis to deliver him to the police. Shouldn't he be concerned that they'd kill the guy? These are big time mobsters. Falsely claiming to represent them isn't the sort of you'd expect them to let off with a slap on the wrist, you know?

Elsewhere, Nat is having her first day at her new school.







Nat gets into a confrontation with the local Mean Girls, during which she accidentally breaks both the windshield of Kilo's car and her phone.





The next day...




Wait! Why does John have a cast on his arm? It was fine the day before. The answers to that and more are revealed in #41.

Before we begin with that issue, though, I should point out that #41 is pretty much impossible to cut down to one third and still do justice to. It's a very dense issue, with plot-vital scene or reveals on every page. I gave it my best shot, though.

The issue begins with John in lock-up. He's a suspect in the murder of Kilo, who was found dead the night before. Some guy in John's cell tries to make a name for himself by beating up the superhero in the room but meets little success.



Notice that Margot Fields has undergone a race-lift and is now white. She stays white for the rest of the run, so I'm assuming it was the earlier issues that were in error in making her black.

Speaking to their street contacts, the police have worked out some of what went down the previous night: Sometime after midnight, John attacked Kilo's bunch as Steel. They were prepared for him, though, and had set a trap with high-powered weaponry. They managed to hit him hard enough to turn his armor into its "off" mode.









She tried to kill Kilo but was blocked by one of his guys, then promptly ran off. Skorpio stayed in the area, thinking that Steel would show up.

He was still surveilling when Steel arrived, and he witnessed the whole confrontation. He also saw the person who showed up after Steel left.







So none of them did it, either. Skorpio tells Amanda he'll talk to her some more later, and at first she's like, "Sure," but then she remembers that he's a serial killer and tells him to leave her alone.

But wait. If none of them killed Kilo, and John and Nat didn't either, who did?

Comments

[eightleggedbeast]

Tell me there's trade paperbacks of this. Please. Please.

[blake_reitz]

Of a highly underrated series from the DC in the 90s?
Ha!
I'm sorry.

[zechs80]

A Christopher Priest run? HARDLY. Okay who did he piss off that much to deserve this? For Deadpool (which is about to be fixed), BP, and this? His runs where great?

[taggerung301]

I'm really liking Dr. Villian

[doomisay]

Will-HANE!

It's french.

[destroyed]

"See, scenes like this are why I assumed it was meant to be some other, fictional Jersey City."

Yeah, pretty much what I remember.

[alphamonkey]

Admittedly, a bunch of street punks holding up an ice cream vendor does seem more like a Newark thing, but it's not like they have a monopoly on that particular felony.

Yay for J.C.

[terrykun]

I can't help but hear that "Oh no" in the second page as anything other than the gay guy on Family Guy.

[bradhanon]

"Okay, I feel bad enough selling my soul to you to gain superhuman comics-writing powers, but I need to know you're not gonna pull a Robert Johnson on me. I want that in the contract."

"Oh, you're referring to the dead-at-27 clause? Well, it is standard, but... fine, we'll take that out."

"All right, then, good... hey, wait. Did you just scribble another clause in there? What does this one say?"

"Ah-ah-ah, Mr. Owsley, or should I call you Priest? You forget the ancient law of my kind... NO BACKSIES!" *vanishes in a puff of brimstone like his name was Kurt fucking Wagner*

"...did... did the devil just tell me 'no backsies'?"

[arbre_rieur]

So... what did the small print say?

[bradhanon]

The added clause specified that no matter how good Priest's work is, no matter how much people love it, any book he writes will be cancelled, and never collected. If his work is the best-selling title from a particular company, the entire company will be destroyed. Twice, if necessary.

[psychopathicus_rex]

"Look out! Mr. Freez-Cone has an Ingram Mac-11 Machine Pistol!!" If nothing else endeared this to me, that line would.
And I'd like to know just how the hell Steel's new hammer WORKS. I mean, the whole 'gets faster the longer the throw is' thing I can handle - that's standard comic-book made-up science, like 'the angrier he gets, the stronger he gets' - but how on Earth does he get it to stop in midair an inch or so away from its intended target? I'm no physics genius, but I do know that if something is going really really fast, it doesn't just STOP - you've got to slow it down first, or it'll just keep going no matter how hard you put the brakes on. That hammer must have an insane amount of hardware packed into it - forcefield generators and inertia dampeners and such - to be able to just stop on a dime and hover there.

Lemme break it down for you;

[mcity]

Science.

The rest is just details.

Re: Lemme break it down for you;

[psychopathicus_rex]

Well, yes, but they're maddening details if they're not there.

[jlbarnett]

does it hover? It's not there in subsequent panels so maybe it just drops.

[psychopathicus_rex]

I think that would defeat the purpose of what Steel's doing, which is going 'look how close I came to killing you - I think you should surrender now, don't you?' I mean, for all that guy knows, all Steel has to do is say 'Go', and the hammer will resume its flight and pulp his head - after all, he's a superhero, who knows what he can do? If the thing just drops, the guy would probably just go 'whew!' and keep on doing what he's doing - in order for it to remain an effective threat, and maintain the 'do I feel lucky?' aspect, it'd more or less HAVE to keep hanging there.

[superboyprime]

It was floating, yeah. In fact he frequently has the hammer fly alongside him instead of holding it in his hand.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Yow. Even Mjolnir can't do that one.