In my intro to Video Jack I wrote that it was a six issue limit series but I don't actually know that to be true. It does last six issues and it does have an ending but they may have rushed out the ending once the series was scheduled to be cancelled. I'll speak more on that later but it is about impossible to find out anything on Video Jack on the internet so I can only speculate. Suffice to say I don't see anything on the comic labeling it as a limited series which in 1987 would have been standard.

Issue 3 opens with Jack and Damon as Muppets and editor in chief Archie Goodwin explaining the story thus far. Goodwin explains that in other realities people behave according to their true nature which I guess means that Damon's true nature is dastardly. Marvel must have felt that the readers were getting confused with the concept since they devoted 5 pages to explain the backstory of a comic series only on its third issue. We return to the story in progress where Damon is shown to have a 3D TV which in 1987 would have been futuristic but is now somewhat common. Truly the future is now. A pair of resistance fighters break into Damon's pad but are blasted into oblivion by his laser light show causing Jack to accuse Damon of turning into a monster. Seeing Jack's reaction Damon decides it would be safer just to lock him up in chains but Jack is saved when Kojak uses his long cartoon tongue to reach out and push the remote in Damon's hand sending them back to the real reality.

Damon, now normal again, is genuinely distraught over what he did in the video reality. He recognized the two resistance fights as classmates Wally and Todd and wonders if their deaths in the video world translated into the real world. As they walk through town they come across an ambulance pulling the bodies of Wally and Todd from a wrecked car confirming Damon's fear. They also come across a cop arresting the serial killer from the first and second issue.

Jack and Damon sit around debating their situation in one of my favorite scenes in the series. Jack tries to console Damon by suggesting the possibility that Wally and Todd actually died in the car crash which then prompted their deaths in video reality but the conversation is interrupted when Jack inadvertently pushes the remote again sending them into a cartoon and then into a black and white television program. They're in the wholesome Andy Griffith show but the shadow has moved back over Damon's face showing him to be evil again and he fights with Jack for control of the remote before Kojak eats it. The two are arrested by Barney Fife and put into a jail cell next to Otis the town drunk who in the last frame of the comic is revealed to be the serial killer.

For me issue 3 was the peak of the series. I liked the way Damon vacillated between being evil and being tortured by his own actions. The idea of having various realities that can affect each other had a ton of potential and the creepy, unnamed serial killer was shaping up to be a great villain. Keith Giffen's art brought a huge amount of style and fun to the story and THEN issue 4 happened.....

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