Spring-Heel Jack: Revenge of the Ripper #2

From the Random Stack of Unread Comics.

Title: Spring-Heel Jack: Revenge of the Ripper
Issue: 2
Date: 1993
Publisher: Rebel Studios
Writer: David Barbour
Artist: Wayne Tanaka
Letterer: Gary Kato
Cover: Tony Harris, Tim Vigil

This story combines the 19th Century folk legend Springheel Jack with the infamous Jack the Ripper, and brings it all into a modern setting.

Although this was the second in a three-issue series, much of this issue was devoted to explaining the Ripper's backstory as Prince Albert Victor, grandson of Queen Victoria. His dealings in the occult granted him immortality through the commission of ritualistic murders, and he was later captured and held prisoner by the British government in a succession of psychiatric asylums.

Opposing the Ripper is Spring-Heel Jack, a tulpa conjured by a woman with psychic powers. As London detectives attempt to stop the Ripper from replicating his past crime spree, and Spring Heel Jack begins his own campaign to locate the Ripper, it becomes apparent that the Ripper has a new target in his sights: Diana, Princess of Wales.

The art style is is grim black-and-white, befitting the story's noir style with its callbacks to steampunk. Some of the action could be a bit hard to follow, and the incompetence of the Princess' security detail was a bit dismaying (although it's nothing that we haven't seen from the GCPD in pretty much any random Batman story).

I liked the Spring-Heel Jack character a lot. He's more interesting than the villain, and I'd be interested in reading more of this series and his previous series just to get more sense of his backstory, as almost all of the exposition in this issue is focused on the Ripper.

Rating: 6/10