Sunday Splash Page #408

"Spider-sicle," in Peter Parker: Spider-Man (vol. 2) #37/135, by Paul Jenkins (writer), Mark Buckingham (penciler), Wayne Faucher (inker), Transparency Digital (colorists), RS and Comicraft (letterers)

Following the general mess that was The Final Chapter, Marvel canceled most of their Spider-titles, rebooting two with new first issues. Amazing Spider-Man, helmed by Howard Mackie and John Byrne, and Peter Parker: Spider-Man, by Mackie and John Romita Jr.

Quite why anyone thought having both books written by Howard Mackie of all people was a good idea escapes me, beyond the fact nobody at Marvel was making good decisions in the '90s. Case in point: that stretch, which lasted about 18 months, is known primarily for Mary Jane appearing to be killed in a plane crash and Peter dealing with being a grieving widower.

Romita Jr. eventually moved to Amazing when Byrne departed, which is also when Paul Jenkins and Mark Buckingham took over Peter Parker: Spider-Man. While they weren't able to entirely avoid plotlines in Amazing (such as Norman Osborn drugging Peter's toothpaste so he could make him dress up as the Green Goblin and attack Peter's friends in some twisted attempt to make Parker into his new heir, no I'm not kidding), they did get to do their own thing most of the time.

(They adapted pretty smoothly to J. Michael Straczynski having Peter move into his own apartment and become a teacher. Jenkins actually had Peter strike up a friendship with a neighbor, more than JMS did, and alluded to the difficulties of getting papers graded when you were out late fighting the Rhino.)

"Their own thing" was, especially for the first year, mostly done-in-one stories about Peter's life. How it shifts to accommodate Spider-Man, and frequently, how other people perceive Spider-Man. One issue might be about a young boy in a troubled home who imagined himself as Spider-Man's sidekick, with Spidey as a sort of parental figure who reminds him to work on his math and be forgiving when his mother forgets to sign his permission slip for the field trip. Another is about how different cops see Spider-Man, or a private investigator who thinks he's pieced together Spider-Man's secret identity (based on assumptions about what the man must be like in his civilian life to act like Spider-Man.)

Jenkins and Buckingham were also the creators of my favorite entry of Marvel's "Nuff Said" Month, as they penned an issue where Spidey comes under attack from a veritable army of criminal mimes.

Jenkins' version of Parker is a bit of a dork. Not as funny as he clearly thinks he is - there's an issue where Peter tries stand-up comedy and bombs completely - and always seems a bit harried. Like there's just a little too much on his plate for him to handle. It fits with Buckingham's depiction, where Peter always seems to have bags under his eyes and look a little older than you think he might. It's a stressful life, and all his neuroses and guilt complexes don't make it any less so. At the same time, Buckingham's Spider-Man can often look graceful, then just as swiftly look like a fool, but always seems to pick himself back up.

The few multi-part stories Jenkins did in his 30 issues were a mixed bag. There was a vengeful parent who at first appeared to be like a Super-Adaptoid, but was more of a low-grade mutant Mysterio. But, proving he didn't play favorites (or that he read the fan responses), Jenkins fed that guy to Doc Ock in a story that felt needlessly convoluted (chips that could control people being placed in advanced cybernetic limbs), but nonetheless played Octavius as a vicious, determined threat.

Then Jenkins brought Norman Osborn into play, although the story is most notable for Humberto Ramos shifting from cover artist to interior artist. Talk about whiplash, going from Buckingham to Ramos was like a brick to the face. Actually, a brick to the face might have been preferable to Ramos' weirdly disjointed, oddly proportioned, undead-esque sunken eyes, art. I could not figure out why Marvel thought this guy had any business drawing comics.

To be fair, even with Buckingham on pencils I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it. However cool I might have originally thought the reveal of Norman as the mastermind behind the Clone Saga was (and I have to sadly admit I was excited to get that comic because i thought it might be worth something, silly me), I was thoroughly sick of Osborn by the time this story rolled around. Especially when Jenkins goes to the edge of Peter killing Norman Osborn, only to pull back, because that would mean Osborn "won," somehow. Osborn had already, just in this story, beat the shit out of Flash, dumped booze on him, put him behind the wheel of a truck and driven it into the side of Peter's classroom, putting Flash in a coma that appeared to be the result of a relapse into alcoholism. That's a pretty solid win, but at least if he's dead he can't enjoy it.

I know, if Jenkins killed him, someone else would just bring him back, and we'd still have Norman trying to be good or whatever the hell is going on in the Spider-Man books right now.

All that is to say, that story got tossed from the collection (possibly into the trash) many years ago. Jenkins and Buckingham left the book at issue #50, turning it over to Zeb Wells and a host of pencilers for 7 issues until the book was canceled. Jenkins took up the second volume of Spectacular Spider-Man, occasionally working with Buckingham. While "Peter Parker" has been placed at the front of at least one volume of Spectacular since, this particular title has been left behind. 

Saturday Splash Page #210

"The Black Sun Group," in Roche Limit #2, by Michael Moreci (writer), Vic Malhorta and Kyle Charles (artists), Jordan Boyd (colorist), Ryan Ferrier (letterer)

On the edge of the Andromeda Galaxy sits an anomaly. Like a black hole in that it swallows light and energy, but without the intense gravity. Around it sits a dwarf planet, Dispater. On and within Dispater, a colony, Roche Limit. The dream of the son of a billionaire, the colony was failing before Moiratech and its 3 founders stepped in, with a vision of finding new resources beneath the surface. That vision has failed as well, and the colony is now a backwater land of criminals and addicts, in thrall to a drug made with the only unique mineral found on Dispater, a drug known as Recall. And it's into this that a cop from Earth arrives, looking for her sister, Bekkah.

Roche Limit was an odd book for me in a particular way. Up to then, certainly in the lifespan of this blog, the titles I bought were in some sense known quantities. The majority being from Marvel and DC obviously. Even the selections from other publishers were mostly things I knew previously from TV (the Buffyverse stuff, Boom's Darkwing Duck title), movies (the various Rocketeer mini-series), video games (all the Bloodrayne stuff.) Of the rest, I knew GrimJack from my cousin's collection of the original series well before the Ostrander and Truman did Killer Instinct or Manx Cat. Atomic Robo and Empowered had both been praised by multiple comics bloggers I read for years before I got around to try either.

Roche Limit? It was its own thing, not a continuation or extension of any pre-existing concept. I didn't know any of the creative team by prior work. The book being titled after an astronomical concept I was familiar with happened to catch my eye, and that, seemingly, was enough to take a chance. Which means this mini-series is, in some way, the start of all the oddball stuff I've bought from various other publishers over the last dozen years.

As to the mini-series itself, Moreci has things several threads that cross or combine at different points. Sonya, an Earth cop who spends all her savings and most of her pension to buy a ticket to come find her sister. She runs into Alex Ford, a slick-talker who knows more than he's telling. Alex is also the creator of Recall, which is all that's keeping him alive, but also what's keeping him in the colony.

There's also Janice, a nightclub owner missing an eye, and her chief goon, looking for several girls who've went missing just like Bekkah. You have Moscow, the drug lord who controls Alex, but is increasingly less concerned with such matters. A Dr. Watkins, who keeps dumping people into the Anomaly. The bodies he brings back are comatose at first, and rapidly rotting from within, while odd, glowing stone appear in the mines outside the colony.

And then there's the history of the colony itself. Each issue begins with part of a recording by Langford Skaargred, the idealist who started the colony. He had a dream for it, but like most dreams, when brought into reality, there were pieces missing, or things that just no longer made sense. He turned to Moiratech for financial help, but their dream, to the extent they had one, was simply more of what they already had.

Neither got what they wanted. Roche Limit is no shining waypoint on humanity's trek to another galaxy, nor is it a great hub of commerce and corporate profit; it's a decaying, crime-ridden backwater Earth is all too willing to ignore. What Malhorta and Charles show us are tight clusters of apartment buildings, rehab clinics with cracked walls and dirty floors. Watkins has a dingy dissection lab with pipes and cables all over, and rooms full of cages. Janice's nightclub looks a little brighter, a little nicer, but it's an isolated outpost. The Moiratech CEOs seem to live in a vast auditorium in a skyscraper overlooking the city. It's big, and empty, and there's just nothing to it. No business takes place, no discoveries, no growth. More a tomb than anything else.

Likewise, the people we see are often small, taking up limited space in the panel or on the page. They're dwarfed by walls that hem them in, or an Anomaly that sucks them in and spits them out like the husk of a sunflower seed. Lots of people brandish firearms in this mini-series, but even when they actually shoot someone, they're not drawn as looking powerful or cool. Guns aren't much use in this situation, at best a temporary reprieve. 

Faced with a spiraling situation, we see the choices people make when about what's important. Some, like Moscow, embrace nothingness as a truth. Others retreat into their pasts, via Recall, but it leads to the same point, rotting them out from within, just faster. Still others focused on meaningless turf battles. Moreci introduces another crook who thinks that Moscow's lost focus and he can seize control of the drug trade. Great, he can be the biggest tick on a tiny, disease-riddled dog's ass, but that's enough for him. You could possibly lump Janice and Woodbury into this category, but there's at least some suggestion Janice actually cares about the girls that are going missing, and is trying to protect more than just her status. And when things fall to pieces, she and her crew face it together.

Sonya and Alex, ultimately, are striving to find someone they care about to move forward. Even if Alex knows there really is no future for him, he figures he can help someone who believed in him. Sonya and Bekkah both have experience with what drug addiction costs, but rather than fall back into reliving the happy times before it ruined things, they each, in their own way, try to make something better going forward.

Which makes it seem like this is an existential struggle against nihilism, in which case Skaargred's failure was not in the attempt, but in the fact he gave up. He saw his dream fall apart, and rather than try to salvage it, or even help anyone, he consigns himself to the vacuum. As for the Moiratech CEOs, they were only concerned with profitability and found themselves engulfed by something greater. In the process, it seems to have taken the drive from them.

It's strange; I would have figured people considered as successful as the 3 "explorernauts" had a rapacious will to consume and control, to have. As they are now (that's them in the splash page), they're marionettes with a lazy hand on the strings. Maybe they think, by granting Watkins time for his research, they'll learn how to control all this, but it feels like they want the takeover, but have no drive to make it happen. Content to wait for some critical mass to be reached. It's Moscow who lights the match and Moscow who, eventually, eliminates them as surplus to requirements. Downsized, in a sense.

What I Bought 12/26/2025

Almost as obnoxious as all the ads for these sports betting apps I see on the rare occasions I watch TV, are the ads for this stupid Taylor Sheridan show. I'm tired of seeing Billy Bob Thornton, looking like a rotting cloth sack leaking cow shit, informing us that his wife owns the business, but he runs it. Yeah, that's what any sensible person would be concerned about. I wouldn't trust him to order a combo meal in the drive thru, let alone run an oil company, or whatever the hell the "business" is.

In other news, this is the last new comic of 2025. So next week, is Comics in Review.

Hector Plasm: Hunt for Bigfoot #3, by Benito Cereno (writer), Derek Hunter (artist/letterer), Spencer Holt (colorist) - Did Hector steal the live boar cloak from Bigfoot? Hope he washed it, that thing can't smell good.

Hector and the sheriff confront Jervaise in his office, where the instructor, sorry, professor, is only too eager to monologue about how he's communed with the spirit of some tribe of people that traveled here through subterranean tunnels. Not to prove how smart he is, but because he hopes to find the gold they used to make statues and idols and such.

Despite the sheriff's best efforts, Jervaise summons the ghost, eager for it to feed on Hector's blood for a boost. The caveman-ghost proving immune to bullets, it's a swordfight between him and Hector, while Jervaise goes increasingly loony on the sidelines, like some delirious sports fan. He's ranting and gesticulating wildly enough he tears the armpits out of his shirt (nice touch by Hunter there), not that it spares him the ghost's wrath.

Hector ends up beating the ghost, and the sheriff seems to deal with what's left of Jervaise. Which means, once Hector tells Lip all this, it's time to leave, Hector confident there are no Bigfoots around. Because, as he explains in a page behind some author notes by Cereno, the various subspecies were hunted to extinction during dedicated campaigns in the 1800s.

I'm left wondering about the witch and the ghost that Hector initially fought. Jervaise notified him about that as a lure, hoping to feed Hector to his caveman-ghost, but I'm not sure if the initial threat was something else Jervaise summoned, or a pre-existing situation. The ghost daughter said her mother bewitched her father to kill her fiance to protect their bloodline. Which makes me wonder if "Ferdie" (the fiance) was part of the same bloodline as the caveman-ghost (and Jervaise), or if that was just unrelated weirdness.

The Best and Worst Ways I Passed the Time Last Year

I'm not going to bother with a Music category this year. Not enough candidates. Just mark down The Catalogue featuring Requiem as the Best Album of 2025 and we'll move right along.

BOOKS

30 books read last year, 18 non-fiction and 12 fiction. The fiction was mostly in the first half of the year, and there wasn't a lot that stood out. A lot of things that were interesting or engaging in certain ways (the turns of phrase, the underlying concept), but less so in others regards (characterization, or the big reveal was something I figured out halfway through the book. Best would go pretty easily to Rebecca Roanhorse's Mirrored Heavens, where aside from one character implausibly surviving a situation with no real satisfying, she pulled together a lot of disparate threads into a cohesive and satisfying conclusion. The book never dragged, the dialogue had some snap to it, a well-written story to finish the trilogy. None of the others really come close.

For worst, as much as the good old boy in Randy Wayne White's The Man Who Invented Florida pushed all my worst buttons, I think I have to give it to Robert Richardson's The Lazarus Tree. It was a mystery, but there was never much tension or suspense. Certainly no one in the village seemed in any rush to solve the murder, and the main character really isn't trying to do that either, so much as figure out what his friend's teenage daughter is up to. It felt like Richardson spent a lot of time hinting at mysteries or secrets to us (but not his protagonist) about different villagers, but none of them were relevant to the actual story. At best, they felt like set-up for some future story, but that doesn't do much for me while I'm reading this.

The non-fiction tended to shift in areas of focus over the course of the year. A lot of baseball early, then a lot of biology in late spring-early summer. The back half of the year ran more to film history, with a little bit of political or archaeological history thrown in. I had a few more possible options here. I enjoyed Blood in the Garden quite a bit, which surprised me given my antipathy to the 1990s New York Knicks. No Name on the Bullet had some details and facts I hadn't seen about Audie Murphy, but a lot of things I had from other sources.

But for the best, I'd pick Roger Kahn's Good Enough to Dream and Edward George's The Cuban Intervention in Angola. Kahn captured a lot of the things I enjoy about baseball, without the irritating nostalgia-tinted perspective that jarred me out of David Lamb's Stolen Season. And Kahn also built a lot of humor into the book when describing the chaos of trying to run a minor league team on a shoestring budget. As for George, he gave me pretty much exactly what I was hoping for when I got curious about Cuba inserting itself into things in Africa. I got a sense of the different powers, the push-and-pull between them, the problems complicating any sort of resolution, and the descriptions of the battles were aided with actual maps and a clear organizational philosophy to the writing. On the Road of the Winds by Patrick Vinton Kirch would be a close third.

Worst would have to be Peter Polack's The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War. It was more narrowly focused than what I was hoping for, concentrating on one extended battle in Angola without going much into the context or history. But it still had time for strange digressions about how many private security companies from South Africa operate in the Middle East these days. The description of the battle and movements of the various sides weren't well-illustrated to where you could picture what happened, and there was little clear flow in how he went about describing it.

MOVIES

First off, films covered as part of Overdue Movie Reviews are not eligible, because they aren't new to me, which is what this is focused on. Which leaves 44 movies, 11 of which were from the 2020s. Which is not a pattern I would have expected at the start of the year. Second most common decade was the '50s (7 movies.)

For best films, for all the late-70s to late-80s comedies I watched, I'd say How to Beat the High Cost of Living was the best of the lot. Or at least the one that made me laugh the most. Kid Glove Killer was a quick, compact but clever little thriller, and Escape to Athena was fun simply for the bonkers cast it had. But the top 2 would have to be two movies I watched very early in the year, No Name on the Bullet and Prey.

The former was great in the way this one person arrives, and his mere presence - because Audie Murphy mostly just sits, drinks coffee, and watches people go by - causes to the town to basically tear itself apart. All the ugliness and guilt the supposedly nice citizens are hiding makes them throw away what they profess to believe in so easily. The latter just built things up so well, paralleling the Predator taking on greater and greater challenges while at the same time Naru is slowly building herself up into that great challenge, using the skills she already has.

On the negative side, well, even James Coburn couldn't make me enjoy Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (combined with the general dud that was Killer Elite, not a great year for me and Peckinpah movies.) Arrowhead had potential, but it was a '50 Western, so it was never going to be what I wanted. But I think I knew what the two worst films were going to be back in the summer, and sure enough, it's The End and Fear Blood & Gold. I mean, Throw Momma from the Train wasn't really funny outside a couple of moments of physical comedy, but it was funnier than The End, which went to exhausting lengths to assure us Burt Reynolds' character was a self-centered coward, then doubled down on that through the rest of its run time.

And Fear Blood & Gold? Just nonsensical. If Santiago wants to escape from Oscar, why doesn't he run when he successfully spikes his beans? Why does Oscar, having been drugged once by Santiago, accept a hallucinogenic drug from his later? Why does Oscar shoot with his revolver turned sideways like he's some '90s gangbanger? Why does the film need the odd old man? Who captured Oscar and Santiago at the beginning of the film, and why did they never appear again? Just a total disaster, and not even bad enough to put me to sleep. 

VIDEO GAMES

I beat a lot of games this year, although maybe that's the wrong word, given how so many of them were structured around dialogue, with only a limited amount for you to actually do. Did I really "beat" Dear Esther or Firewatch, or did I just reach the end of them? Maybe "finished" is a better word.

Anyway, worst game is really easy. It's 890B, which was a frustrating, pointless piece of crap with stiff dialogue, no character development, with almost all the run time burnt on puzzles I could play on a graphing calculator back in the '90s. The game apparently has good and bad endings, but it there's just a single Achievement for beating the game, regardless of which you get. Because they know nobody is going to play this trash twice without being reimbursed for it. A buck-and-a-half, and still a waste of money. I mean, I figured out after 30 minutes that Hello Neighbor was not for me, but I can see how someone else might enjoy that game. Not 890B. 0 out of 5, send the game designers to the gulag and leave them there.

Best games is trickier, because, with all these short, fairly limited games I played, it's a case of which thing a game focused on that I preferred. Abzu was a beautiful game, and mostly very relaxing to play, but not exactly challenging or the sort of thing where I felt really invested in the story. On the other hand, I enjoyed aspects of the story and the character development in The Fall, but it was such a murky-looking game and I really hate aiming using the right joystick.

So, if I just pick two, I guess it'll the The Stanley Parable: DeLuxe Edition, and The Sinking City. Stanley Parable simply because it was hilarious. It's probably the thing I laughed hardest at all year, outside of conversations Alex and I had at various points during our trip in October. As for Sinking City, while I'm not a huge fan of sanity meters, and definitely didn't love the wobbly screen effects that accompanied a wavering sanity, there was still a lot to enjoy in the game. Searching for evidence, being given the option what to do with that evidence once you had it. The visual look of the characters and setting. They kept crafting simple and straightforward, so it was useful without having so many options I got paralyzed by choice and couldn't figure out what to do.

Living in Winter, Looking to Spring

As we leave 2025, we will of course, look back. But not until tomorrow. Today, we look ahead - to March (and a little of April) of 2026! The solicitations have trickled out over the last two weeks, so let's see what spring holds.

What's new? Well, after a fairly interesting February, March settled back down. Not much new that caught my eye. DC gets first crack at Superman and Spider-Man. Judging by the number of creators I saw, I'm guessing they're sticking with the approach of a moderately-sized story about the title characters, and then a bunch of short ones about other combos. I'd prefer just giving the main story as much space as possible, but I'm not likely to buy this any time soon, so my preferences really don't matter.

At Marvel, I'm pondering the Moonstar series (mini-series?) by Ashley Allen and Edoardo Audino. I'm not sure why. I've never been a big New Mutants' fan, or had any strong opinions on Moonstar in particular. Maybe that's why. After the letdown of Black Cat, better to stick with a character I have fewer preconceived notions about, no specific runs or interpretations of Moonstar to judge this book unfavorably against.

Or maybe I just like archers.

What's ending? Image's solicits swear the final issue of Dust to Dust is coming out in March. That should be filed firmly under, "believe it when I'm holding the comic in my hands," but we'll put it here for now.

And the rest: Batgirl is the only title past 10 issues, and Cassandra is back in Gotham, but dealing with suddenly appearing shadow/blood powers, which the solicit says may be connected to DC K.O. Damn it, if I cared about that mess, I woulda bought it!

The Fantastic Four are still dealing with this "Invincible Woman" thing, Nova and Star-Lord apparently aren't pals any more (I have no idea why.) Babs and Spirit of the Shadows will both be on issue 3, while D'Orc, Is Ted OK?, Generation X-23, and Marc Spector: Moon Knight are on their second issues. D'Orc seems to have taken the reasonable approach of wanting to avoid all these people who plan to kill him for something he might do, while Moon Knight's got to enemies fighting over him like Betty and Veronica. Sarah tries to help Ted, as he uncovers a conspiracy in his company. Is he right it's run by aliens, or is this just the usual corporate malfeasance? The X-23 book? I'm not sure if she found another place experimenting on mutants, or one that's trying to make mutants. Mutates, I guess.

Dark Horse solicited the 3rd issue of Touched by a Demon, as the demon tries to help some lonely office worker with a more hands-on approach. Which seems ominous, but that won't be out until April. 

The Lost Patrol (1934)

The officer leading a British Army patrol in Mesopotamia is sniped from somewhere among the sand dunes. Whatever the patrol was meant to be doing, and where they were meant to go, the officer kept to himself, so The Sergeant (Victor McLaglen) has no better plan than to head north, towards the river.

They reach an oasis, but on the first night, the rookie is knifed in the back, and their horses stolen. So they have water, they have food - if you like dates - and there's even some cover to get out of the sun. But they still don't know where they are, where the brigade is, or where their foes are. The tension rises, especially in Sanders (Boris Karloff?!), whose religious fervor and complete lack of a sense of humor puts everyone on edge.

I forget how long John Ford had been directing films. I thought this would be one of his earlier works, but he's got director credits going back almost 20 years prior to this. He keeps the attackers hidden for almost the entire film. Their presence is marked by the sound of gunshots, sand kicking off the dunes as bullets hit, or by the body of the latest casualty of the patrol. We don't know what they look like, we don't know where they are, we don't know why they're doing this. Are they fighting on the side of the Ottoman Empire, do they just not like interlopers, do they think these guys have stuff worth stealing?

We don't know, and neither does the patrol. So they stew, as all their plans are thwarted. Climbing a tree to get a sense of the land from high ground gets that guy shot. A nighttime mission for two men to reach the river, ends with both bodies returning the next day, on a couple of the missing horses.

The exterior scenes don't really capture the sense of baking heat and blinding glare off the dunes that starts breaking their brains, to where more than one man charges into the dunes, firing at phantoms. Instead, it's the characters and how they interact that sells it. Every lighthearted moments turn ugly. The soldiers are lounging around the spring as Brown regales them with stories of his time with the women of Malay and Java. The next, Brown is mocking Sanders for imploring him to get right with God. Then when Abelson gets tired of Sanders, Brown's ready to fight with Abelson to protect Sanders. Morelli, who seemed so relaxed early in the film, nearly shoots Sanders to make him shut up when they're down to just a few.

A couple of deaths are almost comical. When one soldier climbs a tree to see what he can spy. He reports the only thing he can see is the sun glinting off something in the dunes, then he dies. He doesn't go so far as to say like a scope or gun barrel, but it's pretty obvious he's reporting his own death. In a similar vein, late in the film a British plane flies over and, rather than return to base and report, the pilot lands nearby, gets out of the plane, puts on a pith helmet and grabs a riding crop and makes it about two steps before he gets shot. Kind of a strange choice.

McLaglen, unlike his usual role in later John Ford films, is no loudmouthed oaf here. The Sergeant tries his best, but you can tell he's reacting, rather than acting. He can't anticipate, so he's always trying to douse fires after the fact. He doesn't seem to know what to do with Sanders other than keep him isolated, looking after their wounded corporal, but I don't think he frames it to Sanders as an important job, or something only he can do. A task he's performing to for the good of the patrol. It's more like sending a kid to his room.

In that vein, Karloff plays Sanders as someone who probably means well, but is so awkward people find him off-putting. When he freaks out Morelli, it isn't on purpose. He's probably scared, and Brown has just snuck out on his own, but he told Sanders, and asked him to deliver a note to The Sergeant. So he tries, the same way he tries to wet the corporal's lips while the man's unconscious. He's so earnest, but also so grave, eyes wide and sunken, a distant state like he's sees something in the distance. He's weird, but you get the feeling he's heard that plenty. He has this peculiar, toe-dragging walk, knees bent like he's gonna fall at any moment. Life's not been easy, and so he found refuge in the spiritual. 

Taking the Plunge

At least with Tsubaki's infatuation with Renji, I can be confident Konishi won't pull an "enemies to lovers" thing with these two. 

It's been about 5 months since we looked at volume 4 of Yakuza Fiance, with Kirishima and Yoshino on Yoshino's home turf around Osaka, dealing with a bunch of goons out for revenge after they got humiliated in volumes 1 and 2. Yoshino tried clearing a path for Kirishima to get at the guy who seemed to be masterminding it, and Kirishima promptly ignored her in favor of his own plan. Which is to lure the goons to a street that's crowded after a fireworks festival, then ambush the idiots one at a time. Simple, time-consuming, but probably ultimately effective.

But while he's doing things the slow way, Yoshino's still following the pretty boy, who confronts the main goon about not following the plan. More critically, Pretty Boy reveals someone is pulling his strings. A guy named Azami, who eventually confronts Kirishima.

Kirishima recognizes him once he gets off the surgical mask Azami wears to cover a facial scar, though how he knows him is not revealed. But Azami's not here for Kirishima. In fact, despite the knife fight with no clear victor, and Kirishima ending up with a bite on his forearm, Azami insists no one except trash like those goons would care about Kirishima. Azami was here to meet Yoshino. Why? Again, unknown, though the guy with the squirrel's nest hairdo fighting Shouma hints there's going to be some big turf war soon.

While the boys are having inconclusive fights, Yoshino manages to bring down the main goon, even if it isn't the prettiest win. He knocks out one of her teeth and bloodies her nose, while she bangs up her knees when she does a bike jump into his face. Still, she makes it work

With Azami and Squirrel Nest receding into the shadows, the goon squad back in the hospital, and Pretty Boy blackmailed into backing off, Yoshino now has to deal with the consequences of her bet with Kirishima. He did wrap things up before midnight, though it would have gone smoother if he just worked with Yoshino. Either way, between that and Yoshino losing at rock-paper-scissors, they are now officially dating.

Of course, Yoshino has no idea what that entails, and there's also the fact she's trying (and failing) to keep her grandfather from finding out what they were up to. . .

So the volume draws a line under a few minor things. I assume after this second ass-kicking these goons will finally get a clue and stay away. Kirishima presumably won't be sleeping with other women if he's dating Yoshino. But it's more about foreshadowing. We see Kirishima and Renji together, and Konishi also fleshes out some more backstory between Renji and Gaku (Kirishima's great-uncle.) Though I don't see the sharp resemblance between Gaku and Kirishima that Renji claims is their. Even the flashbacks to Young Gaku, his eyes are narrower and his forehead rounder.

I think that sequence is mostly to reinforce the idea of Renji as this sort of goofball, who stole his friend's car and wrecked it, then showed up with a bicycle he found abandoned and got his ass kicked. All of which set-ups the reveal he knew all about what Kirishima and Yoshino got up to, and he's not so mellow a guy as he appears. He knows something big is coming, and he may not be able to protect Yoshino from it. Or maybe from himself, as it's heavily implied he knows his son's death was no accident, but held off from going for revenge for some, again unknown, reason. 

Besides all that ominous stuff, we see more of Yoshino and Shouma's relationship, where he wants to look out for her, but also busts her chops when she does something like borrow the family truck for surveillance. The part where Yoshino explains how she figured things out, and Kirishima admits she slipped a couple of things past him was nice. Contrary to what Kirishima says about how he'd do anything to make her like him, he's always the one that seems to have the upper hand. It feels like Yoshino ought to get a win once in a while.

There's also a somewhat random reveal that Shouma and Tsubaki hate each other. I guess Konishi wanted a different kind of friction than between Shouma and Kirishima, since those two are quick to move to violence. And lo and behold, the volume ends with the two of them meeting in an empty park.