The original proposal for Jinx Jackson came from Pat Mills, when he was putting together story ideas for the launch of the title in early 1976. Mills wanted a story which showed the other side of the paparazzi life, focusing on grim and grisly situations away from the glamour. Ultimately, the proposal was binned, along with a story about fishing which never saw the light of day. Jinx Jackson went some way towards confirming that if a story's basic premise isn't that good, it's not possible to polish a turd. Like many of the second wave of stories that appeared in Battle, each one having been rejected in the initial phase of creation, only to crop up and fail with the readers several months down the line, Jinx Jackson should have remained in the bin. The story was episodic, normally running in self-contained single episodes, with Jackson as some sort of poor-man's Jimmy Olsen without a super-powered friend to lend a hand. He had a reputation for bad luck, hence the witty nickname, and a boss who might just as well have been a Scottish Perry White, Jock McBane. Each week another photo scoop would lead to a catastrophe or a crime of some sort that only a photographer could solve. The scripts were dull, the dialogue wooden and the situations beyond belief. The art gave the strip a style more suited to the 1960s, or DC Thomson, which was similar. Outside of Jackson and McBane, every other character looked identical and wore a hat. It's some measure of relief that the culprits behind this awful story have been impossible to identify. By comparison, it makes The Coffin Sub look like the work of Alan Moore and Brian Bolland.