TRULY GONE&FORGOTTEN : The Adventures of Rank Johnson

THE ADVENTURES OF RANK JOHNSON
Created by Gregory Goodwin Newson
Appears in The Adventures of Rank Johnson #1 (Coup Publishing, 1986)

Rank Johnson — Karate Master and the World’s Most Famous Celebrity – bids farewell to his glamorous Hollywood career in order to help the cops demolish the international drug-smuggling ring which is filling America’s streets with death, and which was responsible for the murder of Rank’s wife!

Me too.

Aiding Rank in his mission is The Colonel, a.k.a. Michael Shannon (no relation), a former military man who could pass for a Tom of Finland model, and now Rank’s chauffeur and factotum. In some vague fashion at some undetermined point in the past, Rank somehow saved the Colonel’s life, earning Rank a heavy dollop of the big goon’s undying fealty.

Also aiding Rank are Chief Dagger of Los Angeles’ 49th District, as well as the 40th President of the United States Ronald Reagan – who calls in at one point just to check in on how Rank’s doing – and Ann, Rank’s deceased spouse. 

At different points in the story, Ann shows up as a memory, a helpful spirit and an enchanted dragonfly, but mostly as a dead person in a grave which Rank repeatedly visits to remember the purpose of his one-man war on drugs.

And then also one time she shows up like this.

Rank Johnson is advertised as “Doing the job cops can’t handle,” which is, let’s be honest, most jobs -- especially cop-related ones. Still, if Rank is the model of competence, then America’s war on crime is doomed. 

Sending the world’s most famous celebrity into undercover situations seems ill-advised at best. Rank's disguises are flimsy, his intelligence is out-of-date, he keeps getting captured, and any crook he puts behind bars escapes almost immediately. 

Far from a cool and collected agent of justice, Rank is so wound up that he almost ventilates a couple of Windex-wielding hoboes who try to clean the windows of his ostentatious Rolls Royce at a stoplight. At one point, Rank and the Colonel investigate a sunken yacht and are damn near murdered by a Great White Shark. He can’t catch a break!

Garp fumbling with his Rank Johnson action figure.

Most of Rank’s troubles can be attributed to Garp, a Professor Irwin Corey-lookalike as well as leader of the drug cartel and a white voodoo master who targets Rank directly with his sinister magic. He's a triple-threat!

At different stages of the story, he torments Rank with a voodoo doll, and even raises a zombie in the likeness of Rank’s late wife -- which Rank pokes holes in with a semi-automatic rifle. Not every voodoo scheme works as planned. 

In some ways, the most meaningful battle in the book happens between Garp and the enchanted dragonfly which is the material manifestation of Ann’s soul; While Garp sleeps, Dragonfly/Ann breathes a measure of life into the voodoo doll of Rank, who pulls Garp’s cursed needle from its own chest. Garp responds by shooting the head right off the voodoo doll, which I thought would at least give Rank a headache. Instead, it signals the end of Garp’s control over the celebrity crimefighter. Way to go Ann/Dragonfly! DragAnnFly!

"Perhaps you've heard of him."

With a name like “Rank Johnson,” you might expect some exploitation theater-level sex jokes and dirty storytelling, but this is a clean book. The closest you’ll get to even acknowledging the protagonist's moniker is an occasional caption which describes Rank being pulled from somewhere by someone. “The Colonel pulls Rank [out of the water]” and such. It doesn’t seem intentional.

Heavy on photo reference, crosshatching and pointillism, the art style has an outsider appeal. At one point, having struggled with rendering the dragonfly which plays a key role in the story, something much like a rubber stamp comes into play. 

At another point, about halfway in and for no good reason that I can imagine, the book presents one of the most carefully-rendered dick bulges ever committed to print outside of an actual pornographic comic. In some ways, you have to admire it.

Thar she blows!

A second issue of The Adventures of Rank Johnson was advertised but never published, which is seemingly also the fate of the absolutely rad t-shirts depicted in the back cover of the magazine. 

Pick your favorite: Listless Rank Johnson sighing that America is tired, leaving a vague threat unfinished, or the baffling construction of “Drugs Kill [says] Rank Johnson.” Imagine wearing one of these on the bus, or wearing any shirt that reads “Rank Johnson,” really. You’d get a whole row of seats to yourself.

Tag urself, I'm "Drugs Kill (says) Rank Johnson."