Samurai Jack Quantum Jack #1 is a strange compilation of Samurai Jack and Quantum Leap. In some way, it’s like the original television series, and in some ways, it isn’t. For readers, that might not be a bad thing. Similarly to the show, there is not so much dialogue used. Fabian Rangel Jr. and Warwick Johnson-Cadwell are certainly looking toward the art telling much of the story, which comics can do quite well in such a framework. In this sort of tale, Samurai Jack is taken out of his normal timeline and placed in alternate realities. It’s an interesting notion of taking Jack away from his usual plain of existence and into something completely different.
Rangel Jr. and Johnson-Cadwell place you into an almost Mad Max-like world, where Jack has a gang and he is taking down all sorts of things. At one point, there is a giant tank in the comic and it’s pretty crazy. Jack also meets an alien at one point and turns into a Super Saiyan-like character straight out of Dragonball Z. It’s a crazy mosh pit of different ideas for the book, which could be what pushes it into a different direction. Taking Jack out of his normal adventures and expanding him into different universes could offer many narrative possibilities that have not been explored before.
It’s what most great time travel stories can do. If you watch Back to The Future or Legends of Tomorrow, they enjoy taking their characters out of time and placing them in wacky stories. It’s what can create many different paths for a character narrative to explore. You never want to truly escape the essence of the character and keeping Jack to who he is regardless makes the tale palpable and pulls the reader in via the writing and the art.
For a reader who loved the original series, it will be interesting to see what the creative team, including editors, Joe Hughes, Carlos Guzman, Peter Behravesh, and David Mariotte, do going forward with the character. With it being the first issue, there’s still so much the reader doesn’t know about what might happen in the story. We have not nearly seen the end of the series yet at all, and there’s still plenty of fire this series has left.
Samurai Jack has always been a fascinating character just because of how much you can do with him. He always had the time-traveling adventures down as a part of his television series, and it seems only natural to now add some dimension hopping to the character’s stories. It would be interesting to see if Gendy Tartakovsky ever wanted to use such ideas for future Samurai Jack stories himself. Certainly, it would be expected that Rangel Jr. and Johnson-Cadwell would be interested in taking on such a work.
Looking forward to the future of the series, there is still quite a bit more they will be able to tell now having established Jack. Yet, they might always be establishing different versions of Jack until he may eventually make his way back to the original timeline. With things only starting, it’s likely the series will turn out more interesting and amazing adventures. Reader await with baited breath to see what’s next!
Tommy Zimmer is a writer whose work has appeared online and in print. His work covers a variety of topics, including politics, economics, health and wellness, addiction and recovery, and the entertainment industry.
