Jess may have decided to declare war on Original Sin, but does she understand the complexities of war and how to keep her focus? Find out in Grim #16 from BOOM! Studios.

GRIM #16

Writer: ​​Stephanie Phillips
Artist:​​ Flaviano
Colorist:​ Rico Renzi
Letterer: ​Tom Napolitano
Editor:​​ Elizabeth Brei
Publisher:​ BOOM! Studios
Cover Price: ​$3.99
Release Date:​ April 3, 2024

Previously in Grim: The Fates ponder their current story while eating in a diner. Around them, people who cannot die any longer fight each other. The story of life and death is well off script,and they wonder if they can write something new. They meet a priest who is trying to do his own best to make sense of the world. Jess and Eddie enter Marcel’s hell of stage fright. Marcel’s boyfriend tells her that even if he leaves, he will carry his Hell with him. Marcel accepts this. If he must live with it, he will, but he needs to move forward. The Fates tell the priest that Hell was not built merely to torment people. It was built to hold the original sin. Sin starts small, with the seed of an idea, and can grow from there. Jess and her friends return to Earth to find that everything – life, death, and afterlife – are all on the same plane of existence. This is all part of Annabel’s plan.

THE PRIEST’S TALE

Grim #16 opens with the priest, Dom, telling a story from when he was in Afghanistan in 2003. He was eighteen and he was in a war zone. His friend Roe had just been hit by explosives and Dom was determined to get him back to safety. Roe insisted he should go on without him and save himself. Dom did not give up, but Roe was then shot and killed. And Dom was a kid from a family who had little money, and who had a tradition of joining the Army.

We touch base with the present briefly. Jess wonders how his story relates to their current situation. The priest reminds her that she has essentially declared war on Original Sin. He also sees the irony in telling a story about death to Reapers. But, he tells them, if they are going to war, they need to be very clear about who they are fighting.

In Afghanistan, he is injured. He comes to and has a decision to make. He is all but certain he is going to die and decides he would rather be moving than simply waiting for death to get him. He walks through the desert wondering how they will notify his mom. He collapses on the side of the road and a truck stops. A young Afghan man gets out. Dom weakly holds up his rifle. The man’s wife, Jamila, steps out in front of her husband daring him to shoot her. After this moment of tension, Dom realizes the young family are offering him a ride.

The young people are headed to a nearby village that was hit by an airstrike to check on relatives. Dom wonders if that was the same ruined town he had been in. Dom passes out from blood loss. They reach the town, now full of American soldiers and barricaded against incomers. The young man waves to get someone’s attention. He is immediately shot and killed.

The priest draws a parallel between this even and the story of the Good Samaritan. Latif, the young man, lost his life for trying to help Dom. But if he had not, Dom himself would have died. He has lived with this, but he also had a realization. If he wastes his life, he also wastes the efforts of those people who tried to help him.

WORLDS IN COLLISION

The art of Grim #16 leans heavily into limited color palettes and I like the way that adds a lot of flavor to the settings. For example, the extended sequence in Afghanistan has khaki as the main color. Not only does this echo the soldiers’ fatigues but brightening up the tone a little calls to mind the colors of the desert. The inking emphasizes darker shadows which provides a lot of depth. On top of it all, we get red as the contrast color. The blood of the wounded stands out, not in a gory or horrific way, but so that it brings it to the foreground and reminds us how easy it is for people to kill one another.

Color is used to different effect in the present. The main characters have holed up in a dinerwhich has a red, black, and white color theme, a theme which reflects the red and black of the Reapers. The contrast here is the Fates who each wear their own individualized bright colors. No matter where they are, we get the feeling that they are otherworldly. But here what I particularly like is the visual balance between the three Fates and the three Reapers. As the priest tells his story, the others are sitting at a table, three on each side. They sit like people normally would, but because of the colors, they feel like representatives of two forces. And the priest is at the fulcrum, the balancing point between them.

BOTTOM LINE: PREPARING FOR BATTLE

Grim #16 opens a new arc with all the characters together again, but now with a purpose. Jess has made up her mind who she is and what she is going to do. Now let’s see if she can pull it off.

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Grim #16

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New arc with a purpose

Jess has decided to go to war against Original Sin, but what is she getting into?

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