The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1848: John Sable, Freelance #7, December 1983

Before we get started, I'm going to be prefacing my posts with a link to the World Health Organization's suggestions for mitigating the spread of COVID-19. If you're not taking this as seriously as you should, have a look at these videos and information. This is a huge threat to life around the planet. Even if you're not in a high risk group, you likely know someone who is, and it would be horrible to be responsible somehow for their suffering or death.

For information on stopping the spread of COVID-19, and on what to do if you are quarantined, have a look at the World Health Organization site.

Back to the present and to New York City, and Sable is contacted by a witness whose official protection doesn't seem to be doing the trick. While the story itself is pretty good, there's a section where Sable, as children's author Flemm, runs into an old colleague and expresses some of his feelings about having a dual identity. It's interesting because we get to see a take on the idea of a mask on one's face, or a secret identity, that we don't usually get in superhero comics. To Sable, Flemm is the mask, and it's a mask he actually hates wearing. As he notes to his former fencing instructor, he's in it because there's so much money to be made, not because he actually likes writing books for kids. And this is understandable, given that the genesis of his worldwide success in children's publishing are stories that he told his own children before they were brutally murdered, along with his wife.

What does it say about Sable that he's willing to deal with that pain in order to make money? That said, he never once mentions the fact that the leprechaun stories he tells remind him at all of his children. Perhaps this will become fodder for another story, later down the line.

The last thing that occurs to me about this comic is that Sable definitely has something of James Bond to him. Specifically, at the end of the issue we find Mr. Sable in the arms of the lady he's been protecting for the last 22 pages or so. They don't appear to know one another very well, or have time to get to know one another very well, but by the issue's end, they're quite cozy. Ah, the Eighties. Remember, this comic came out before we really knew what AIDS was.

More to follow.