 |
|
Volume 3, 5 June 1997 |
The title is "Private Lives", but this is Clay's story....  The Challengers are called for a grisly family murder. Why? They're not policemen or psychiatrists. There was a survivor, a little girl - who committed the murders. (Gruesome details omitted by ye webmaster.) What could incite a little girl to mass murder? And where's Clay gotten to? |
Clay is NASCAR racing. His car, 33, flips and rolls and burns. Pit crews drag Clay free. He begs, "Let me die."  (Note the clever play on words. SKOAL Bandit is a snuff. Clay is a "coal bandit".) |
Not long after, Clay's up, singing and grinning - and raising hell. At an outdoor cafe, he grabs a woman at random to drag away. Enter a stranger, who we'll learn is Del Colter, a psychologist. He enigmatically demands of Clay, "Let him go. You know what I mean."  Clay talks in two voices. One knows Colter, who's been tracking him. They brawl. Clay uses broken glass to shred Del Colter. Clay is shocked that he cut his own hand. He runs off. |
In another world... With a broken leg, Clay limps home to West Virginia, to the town of Pocket. His brothers Roy and Charlie aren't glad to see him. They parted on bad terms. Even with a leg in a cast, Clay has to work in the mines. This is obviously Clay's worse nightmare - helpless at the mercy of his merciless family.... |
The Challengers see Del Colter in the hospital. They're shocked Clay slashed him up. Colter has something clutched in his hand: the hourglass emblem from Clay's jacket. Clay takes on a motorcycle gang, demanding wheels, just like in a movie. Clay takes a beating but stays on his fee. His sunglasses lost, the gang sees his eyes. (Check the cover.) A biker gives up his keys. "Whatever you got, I don't want it!" Clay blasts off. |
In another world... Clay toils in the mine. Reckons they'll all die there, just like Dad. His brothers pound him for insulting Dad's memory. Oddly, Del Colter is there, underground, in his immaculate white jacket. To help. Clay wonders, "This isn't real?" Real enough. "You've been inhabited by something that's corroding your soul." Del shows Clay the hourglass emblem. "This is real too, remember?" Del Colter brawls with Roy and Charlie. He tells Clay to "dump the baggage!" Clay is terrified: he can't walk! Del needs Clay to get out - or they'll both die here. |
In the real world... Clay barrels through the streets and sidewalks on the stolen motorcycle. Marlon follows in a helicopter. "Let's take him. The police won't indulge us for long." Brenda and Kenn pursue in a car. Brenda asks, "Clay's a fighter. Think we can stop him without killing him?" Kenn says, "No idea. Go with the flow," jerks the wheel. The car sideswipes a fire hydrant. A torrent of water bowls Clay off the bike. He rushes Brenda. "I'll kill you!" |
In another world... In the mine, Clay bellows defiance. "All my life, Dad, Ma, Roy, Charlie - beating on me, on the girls - 'cause we were smaller, weaker..." Clay pick-axes his brother Charlie. Then beats Roy to death with a rock. Del Colter's a bloody wreck. "We shouldn't still be here. That should have scared the soul-taker out... I don't understand." Clay mutters, "I'm not done." |
In the real world... Marlon lowers the chopper to brush Clay back. The hydrant geyser fouls his rotor. Helicopter wind severs a neon sign. As Clay stands in water.  Clay is fried with enough juice to kill a normal man. But he's not normal. |
In another world... Clay smashes down the house door. Orders his sisters to "Run and never come back." And confronts his mother. "Why'd you do what you did to us?" Ma answers stoically, "I wanted you strong. It's a terrible world." Clay came to kill her, "you evil old woman. But I wouldn't soil my hands. Goodbye, Ma. You won't be seeing me again." |
Brenda holds Clay. "Why'd you go on that rampage?" Clay saw that little girl, the mad murderer, and "entered another world." "I never want to do that again!" Clay coughs up his guts - and a monster.  |
Del Colter, revived and immaculate, catches the soul-taker in a jar. "We all have worlds inside us. That's where we really live." The little girl was terrified her baby brother would replace her. "Fear and rage exploded in blood." The thing? A soul-taker. Marlon, a religious man, doubts it's "an aspect of the soul". Clay asks how Del Colter entered his dream. "It's my lot in life. What I do." Brenda always has to know. "If that thing's a soul, whose is it?" The ghostbreaker replies, "Mine." |
Comments Like many Steven Grant tales, the comic takes a few readings to become clear, but all the clues are there. Always an interesting idea: the worlds inside us. Oscar Wilde said something like, "The worlds of our imagination are the only things that are real." Art in comic books is getting steadily stranger, darker and twisted. The trend isn't confined to the stories, as the back cover Coke ad demonstrates. We've come a long way from Norman Rockwell and his gentle young couples spooning over Cokes.  |