Before anyone asks, the name “Grissom” did not come from the TV show CSI. That would have been difficult since I came up with the character way back in 1994-95, long before the show ever started its world-wide domination.

Oddly enough, the name has its origins in the movie Young Guns II of all places! There was one scene where Alan Ruck’s character confronts James Coburn’s character and says something like, “You took my farm, Mr. Chisum. You took a lot of people’s farms.” But at the time, I heard “Chisum” as “Grissom” and I thought that was a pretty cool-sounding name. So there you go.

Hey, I just realized that in that very movie, Young Guns II, the sheriff Patrick Garrett, who is chasing Billy the Kid down throughout the movie, is played by none other than William Petersen, who plays Gil Grissom on CSI! How weird is that??

Anyway, back to RUNNERS. Grissom herself was originally supposed to be a guy, but my wife pointed out that I really needed more female characters so that I don’t fall into that  “sci-fi one token female in a cast of all guys” trap. Valid point. So I re-designed Grissom to be a female character and like her much better this way.

You can’t really tell from the art, but the small gun Grissom shows off is a “slim gun.” It’s a concept I wanted to use for a weapon that has an extremely thin profile, making it a great, albeit uncommon, weapon for people to keep hidden on them as backup firearms. In this instance, the reveal of the gun itself was more important than its slim dimensions, so I didn’t try to work that aspect into the art.