Having cast an eye over the combat magician’s most recent activities a couple of weeks ago, it seemed appropriate to consider Bill Gravel’s first arc as a whole, recently collected by Avatar in one of its famed slightly-too-expensive trade paperbacks. It’s a fascinating series of vinaigrettes, but it’s hard to tell if the creators are deliberately facilitating its flaws.

The anti-hero has become a standard comics feature, but there’s rarely been as thoroughly unlikeable piece of work as Sergeant Major Gravel. He exists solely to be contrary, defining himself as the opposite of whoever he is presently taking a dislike to. He’s the hardheaded squadie when facing Joanna’s mystical view of the world, but happily ignores order from his CO in order to pursue his vendetta. He’s the straight-talking southerner to Skyes’ poetic Yorkshire sheppard, but has no time for the silent acolytes who are all business just a couple of chapters later. What eventually becomes Gravel’s defining feature is his lack of imagination. When faced with the prospect of a real change to his life, with a lavish mansion and a group of obedient servants/followers, it doesn’t take him too long to find an excuse to “sacrifice” both as a means of completing his original objective. For all the stories he’s appeared in, Gravel’s utter refusal to grow or change has never been as strongly displayed.

The character’s always been the off one out in Warren Elli’s menagerie of self-aware, cranky heroes, but ongoing status may have tipped him over the edge into deliberate vacuousness. The most curious feature is the hollow nature of the book. Its star acts entirely without reason, and it’s impossible to by into the slight he claims to have suffered to a status that has never once been referred to in all his previous adventures. It’s impossible to know if this absence is a genuine flaw in the book or a deliberate parody of the likes of Garth Ennis, but Gravel spends the entire volume scrabbling around in the hope of finding a motivation to justify he predetermined course of action. The art takes the form of a trick not often seem these days, with Mike Wolfer providing breakdowns to be finished by other artists. Of the two other creators involved here, it’s Oscar Jimenez who is by far the most successful, allowing his work to breath and find its own way in contrast to Raulo Caceres’ lifeless mimicking of Wolfer’s finished work on the many volumes of Strange Kisses.

Although nowhere near the strongest work from its co-writer, its an intriguing read. It’s just hard to be sure if the joke is on the purchaser or the other titles that have walked this path before.

Despite his unwelcome ‘promotion’, the newest member of the Major Seven is in a mood more to consider the past than his current predicament. The latest instalment of Warren Ellis and Mike Wolfer’s Gravel ongoing is a strangely reflective piece, as the main character looks back to a time when the military ethic would have been more suited to his resolutely dispassionate view of the world.

Musing on his previous occupation leads Gravel to select which member of his new cotemporaries would be most likely to offer him advice over the mystery he’s been tasked with solving, but the temptation to simplify his new situation soon proves irresistible. Despite containing all the violence you’d expect from the title, the emphasis is very much on the middle section of the story, as a curiously respectful Gravel allows to Black Admiral to impart his tale, and muse on the nature of the life he chose. For all the title character’s emphasis on his Britishness, his nationality comes across far more strongly in his lament for the once-great shipyards of Bristol than the Gulf War flashback to his days of relatively conventional military service. The tone of disappointment and anticlimax resonates with Gravel’s lack of satisfaction with the nature of the Major Seven- the mixture of philosophers he’s encountering are obviously beginning to grate with his harshly practical nature. As usual, it’s the man himself’s iron core of purpose that solidifies to book, providing an unmissible focus for the story to centre on.

Co-writer Wolfer acquits himself admirably with an unenviable task, having to combine the realistic tone demanded by the story’s use of navel history with the Pirates of the Caribbean moment that the reader subconsciously expects throughout. His stylistic trait of leaving parts of detail absence from a scene adds much to the mood, and makes Gravel an unreadable silhouette as he takes stock of the situation. While some might criticise the issue for the minimal amount of plot that unfolds, ‘Reconnoitre’ lingers in the memory, providing a conversation and lament that lingers in the memory long after flashier comics have faded.