Westfield: For those who have never read the book, who is Jon Sable?

Mike Grell: Jon Sable is an adventurer/ bounty hunter/bodyguard/mercenary/ former professional African Hunter & anything-for-a-buck-for-hire. He's also a closet nice guy. He writes children's books about a troop of leprechauns living in a fairy mound in Central Park. But he'd be horribly embarrassed if any of his knuckle-dragging friends down at the guys club ever found out about it. That's the shorthand version. You want the longhand version?

Sable was a character that I created specifically to help me break away from the super hero genre of comics. It was done at a time when we were struggling to get the independent publishing business up and running. I was approached by my old pal, Mike Gold, who was then editor at First Comics, a fledgling company that was trying to do just exactly the same sort of thing that I had been working towards. He gave me the opportunity to create a book on pretty much anything that I wanted. So I created this character who essentially broke all the rules of comics.

Your standard comic book hero had a flashy costume of some sort and a mask that concealed his identity and some sort of deep, dark secret that he protected jealously and nobody around him knew he was the action hero. My guy turned all of that 180 degrees. Sable is the kind of character that if you look in the yellow pages under "Blood/Guts," you'll find an ad for him. Everyone knows he's Mr. Action/Adventure. Everybody around him knows that this is what he does for a living. There are only a few people who know that he actually writes children's books under his pen name , B.B. Flemm. (Which, when it's written, doesn't look too bad, but when you say it, you realize it's the stuff you hack out of your throat when you have a bad cold.) The thing that keeps him going is that he's greedy as hell, but it's also a catharsis for him. The stories that he writes about are the bedtime stories that he used to tell his children.

His family was wiped out in a reprisal made by ivory poachers. Sable went off his nut and lived like an animal in the bush while he hunted down and slaughtered them one by one. But what happens when the vengeance is done? Sable became a drunk before falling in with a band of mercenaries who gave him a better than even opportunity of getting himself killed and that's really what was driving him and, to a certain extent, still does. Sable is a man with a death wish, struggling to put his life back together with the aid of his friends. He's the kind of guy who suffers for what he's done, and not just the emotional aspects. I made him a character who not only bleeds when he's shot, but in the next issue, he hasn't snapped back.

I made Sable a couple of years older than I was, at the time, but I hesitate to do that to him now so I'm sort of passing over what his actual age would be. But bear in mind guys like Mel Gibson, Sean Connery and Bruce Willis are no spring chickens anymore, but are still great in action roles because the action is handled on a level where you can believe these guys could do it at their age.

I've tried everything that I can to make Sable as real and as tightly linked to the real world as possible, which is another reason I got a good reaction to the character. I set the story in New York and in various places in Africa not just because they are areas that I knew firsthand, but because it helped to bring the character into the real world. These are stories that people would be familiar with if they pick up a daily newspaper or watch the news.

Westfield: Why bring him back now?

Grell: The obvious response is: why not? This is probably the ideal time for the character because of who he is and what he does and what's going on the world. The nature of the hero is determined by the nature of the adversary. Sable is affected by the world we live in because it's the world he lives in, a world of conflict and terrorism. But he has the abilities and skill to do something about it on his own personal level. If there's a criminal warlord committing atrocities in a foreign country and you need him gone, Sable is the kind of guy who can go there and do that. He can also work on a strictly local level, dealing with human interest stories where he can get close to the people, involved in their problems, and have his actions not only affect their lives, but his as well.

Sable changes as he goes along. He's not always the same as he was and he's not always going to be the same as when you first see him, because that's an essential part of any good storytelling, the evolution of the character through change.

The other answer to your question is really very simple. From a practical business standpoint, comic book properties are very hot in Hollywood right now and having a new comic book property out there in front of the public not only gives me an outlet for my storytelling, but it makes the Sable movie project a much more viable entity.

Westfield: What can you tell us about the new mini-series?

Grell: I can tell you anything you'd like to know about the mini-series except how it ends. Not because I don't know, it's because I won't. The story is called Bloodtrail and it's set in the real world of new New York, which is considerably different than it was 20 years ago, not just because of the events of 9/11, but also the changes that have been made in the city itself. Twenty years ago, if you walked through Times Square at night, it was filled with some very interesting and colorful characters. These days, it's like a trip to Disneyland. 42nd Street is probably one of the best examples, it's brightly lit, garish, like giant carnival. Far from a place where you're risking life and limb by walking the streets at night it's much safer. New York has become a much friendlier place, but at the same time, it's got a dangerous under current. You need that in order to create an atmosphere for a good story. You need to have a setting that can be entertaining and threatening at the same time. New York certainly has those aspects.

My approach to the character has been to pick up where I left off as opposed to picking up where someone else left off. I'm not discounting the work that Marv Wolfman did on the Sable series after I left, but the changes that he made do not affect me or my storytelling. If anything, I'm picking up almost where my novel left off. There are things in the new comic series that relate directly to events that took place in the novel. It's better from that standpoint.

Myke Blackmon is still Sable's romantic interest, but their relationship has broken. They're going through a period of separation that may or may not be ended successfully. People do that in the real world. If you have a character who occasionally straps on a gun and puts his life in danger, it can be very hard on the people around him.

Eden Kendall, his literary agent, is struggling to keep him working because Harry Potter is kicking his ass. The combination of having an author who is always distracted by something else that he would almost rather be doing than knuckling down to the hard business and the fierce competition in the children's stories market from Harry Potter has destroyed the sales on Sable's books. He's lost his flashy townhouse. He's moved in with his old coach and mentor, Son Pratt, and the two guys are essentially bach-ing it. So there's a strained relationship between Sable, Myke and Eden.

Sable's having a terrible time with his drinking problem and Sonny Pratt, in the role of mentor/father-figure, is trying to keep him sober. Not always an easy thing to do.

In the middle of all of this, Sable's old friend Jacob Inyati, who was his tracker in Africa before going into politics, arrives in New York as ambassador to the United Nations and is immediately attacked by an assassin. Despite bitterness between them because Jacob was responsible for having him deported from Africa, Sable is drawn into the hunt for the assassin. And that's about as far as I feel like going at the moment. You have to read the book.

Westfield: Did it require a lot of work to make this book accessible to new readers?

Grell: Not really, because over the years I've evolved the character while developing first the novel and then the screenplay I wrote. Each time I re-approached the character, I was essentially reinventing him in my mind and in my approach to reach the audience that I have today. The guest shot in Shaman's Tears was the first step in that process, followed by the novel, followed (almost simultaneously) by the first draft of the screenplay. Since then, I've done a second screenplay draft and done work on the second novel in the series. Through all of that, I've been able to evolve the character and evolve the approach to the storytelling to suit the audience that we have today.

Westfield: If the mini-series does well, do you have plans to continue?

Grell: Yes. That would be the easiest thing in the world.

Westfield: Also coming from IDW is the first collection of your previous work on Jon Sable. Is there anything you'd like to tell people about that?

Grell: Other than the fact that I'm really excited about it, there's not much more to tell except that in being able to access this material now, I think we have a great shot at reintroducing the entire legend of Sable and helping the audience to understand exactly how he got to be what he is. Naturally, I'm incorporating the backstory into the mini-series as well, but there's less of the flashback type of storytelling. There's less recapping involved because I know that readers will have the reprints available at the same time.

It was interesting going back and looking at the material again. In some cases, it had been years since I've read the stories. Looking back, I'm frankly surprised at how well some of them work. I didn't realize that I had done as good a job as I did. I think that with the marketing and packaging that's available, we can reach a new audience and new generation.

It was a real kick painting the covers of the books, creating a single image that describes the character, the setting and the story is always a challenge. You have to approach a book cover the same way you would approach a movie poster. Tell as much of the story as possible in a single image.

Westfield: Do you have any other projects you're working on?

Grell: I'm developing another, yet to be announced, comic project. We haven't made enough progress in discussions yet to talk about it in any great detail.

In addition to that, I just completed a screenplay for Shaman's Tears and I have a second Sable novel in the works plus another adventure -type novel that's progressing as we speak. I also begun a series of paintings 100 Angels. The first one is complete and it's out in a print that will be available shortly from a new web site 100Angels.com.

Westfield: Any closing comments?

Grell: It's a real kick to be going back to my favorite character again and to work once again with my old friend Mike Gold who's editing the books. It's like going home. Can't get much better than that.