Welcome to our recurring feature in which I take on reading, viewing, or reviewing suggestions from MCC readers and sharing my results in the interest of entertainment science. Today’s suggestion was offered a few months ago by wwayne, who left me an English comment that seemed like quite a departure from his own moribund Italian blog. Nevertheless, a suggestion is a suggestion. This one’s for you, wwayne, wherever you are.

Today’s subject: Grifter, one of the initial titles from DC Comics’ “New 52” relaunch of September 2011. For review purposes I picked up the most recent issue, #13, which was new in stores last Wednesday.

What I knew beforehand: Grifter was created in 1991 by superstar writer/artist Jim Lee as a cast member of the creator-owned super-hero series WildC.A.T.s: Covert Action Teams, about a team of heroes from space who travel to Earth to hunt their nefarious arch-nemeses, the Daemonites. I was indifferent to the Image Comics series except for a handful of issues written by James Robinson (Starman) and a memorable run written by the legendary Alan Moore before comics publishers and Hollywood turned him bitter and X-rated. Grifter was present in those days but not a focal point. Lee later sold his babies to DC Comics and is now one of the company’s reigning vice presidents. His creations were later integrated into the DC Universe in altered forms.

As far as I could remember, Grifter’s super-power was being a guy with guns. One sentence in one panel of this issue hints at telekinesis, but I don’t remember that from my prior WildC.A.T.s reading experience. Perhaps it was always there but never mattered.

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