Sunday Splash Page #405

"Farewells at the Fountain," in Patsy Walker, a.k.a Hellcat #17, by Kate Leth (writer), Brittney L. Williams (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer)

In 2015, Marvel canceled all their ongoing series as part of Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic's Secret Wars (since the universes all those books took place in were gone.) Even before the event was over, Marvel began relaunching the books. Because the mini-series was behind schedule, plus Marvel probably worried they weren't flooding the market sufficiently with just tie-in mini-series.

The number of books I was buying did not recover to where it was the year before, and most of what I did buy were titles I was buying that Marvel canceled then restarted. Duggan and Hawthorne's Deadpool. G. Willow Wilson and Takeshi Miyazawa on Ms. Marvel. Ryan North and Erica Henderson's Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. There were a few new titles, but Joshua Williamson's Illuminati died in about 7 issues, and I dropped Waid and Samnee's Black Widow after 6. Which leaves this book, also part of one of Marvel's periodic attempts to possibly broaden their market. Maybe draw in some younger readers, maybe draw in some readers who, gasp!, aren't dudes.

Charles Soule and Javier Pulido used Patsy in their She-Hulk series, Hellcat acting as Jennifer Walters' investigator. But the client list is kind of slim, and Patsy has to seek other employment. Where she's confronted with the fact that a) she's not cut out for retail, and b) people know who she is.

On the former, in addition to her low tolerance for unpleasant customers, she's too prone to changing into costume to pursue thieves, though that brings her into contact with a telekinetic named Ian, who eventually becomes friend and roommate. His using his powers to commit larceny because there were limited other employment opportunities gives Patsy the idea of starting a temp agency for people with powers. So they can pay bills without breaking laws!

On the second point, the issue becomes people know her not as Hellcat, but as Patsy Walker, star of all those comics about her teenage years. Comics which are being reissued by her old rival Hedy, who finagled the rights from Patsy's medication-addled mother. This forces Patsy to face a past she would rather flee, an image of idyllic teenage years that were followed with a lot of heartbreak and bad decisions. That Hedy later tricks both of Patsy's ex-husbands into attacking her, resulting in Hellstrom sending Patsy to Hell, doesn't help.

The book loses She-Hulk thanks to her grievous injuries at Thanos' hands in Civil War II, so Kate Leth brings in Jubilee (still a vampire and single mom) as an assistant for Patsy. Outside the sometimes-visible fangs, the main aspect of her vampirism is turning to mist, which art team Brittney L. Williams and Rachelle Rosenberg depict by drawing Jubilee as a fluffy pink cloud wearing her trademark sunglasses.

Most of the conflicts end up resolved with at least some talking, but also some punching. The main antagonist usually gets the latter, the flunkies the stern talking-to (or a kind ear, depending how stupid they were being.) Which is kind of funny since Leth writes Patsy as very eager to jump into action. But she's also willing to listen. Truly, Patsy Walker contains multitudes.

There's also a lot of magic. Magic and mysticism have been a big part of Hellcat's deal since at least her return from the dead, if not going back to Moondragon trying to train her mental abilities. Englehart and Breyfogle's mini-series gave Patsy a better understanding of magic and how to avoid it, via time spent fighting in Hell. Immonen and Lafuente's mini-series suggested Patsy had a lot more going for her than being able to simply sense magic.

(Christopher Cantwell will lean way into this in his 2022 mini-series, with Hellcat being a drug-addled mess haunted by her dead mom, and a "true form" that looks a lot like Tigra, but as that description should make clear, that mini-series was trash and is better off chucked into a black hole.)

Anyway, Leth and Williams keep bringing Patsy into conflict with magic. An Asgardian goddess using unhappy mortals with powers to commit crimes. Hellstrom dumping Patsy in another demon's realm. Even when Leth brings in the Black Cat - unfortunately in her terrible "Queenpin" phase - Felicia is out to steal a set of magical claws that let her control people if she slashes them. Finally, Patsy seems to catch some sort of other-dimensional flu that, when she sneezes, makes weird magic crap happen. Her favorite stuffed animal appears as a giant tiger that claims to represent all her fears. America Chavez's costume gets changed to rep Canada.

(That ends up resolved by Patsy talking about feelings with a demon, and accepting she can't try to hide away in an ordinary life.)

Williams tends to keep the art simple, though there's a lot of attention paid to clothes. Sometimes it's simplified even more, like when Patsy gets really excited and starts bawling or hopping around, eager to punch things. With most of the other characters drawn as significantly taller, she looks like a child wound up on energy drinks. It's a little strange to see in stories where Patsy's tormented with poor life decisions, or Ian runs into his abusive ex-girlfriend, but those are usually the times where Williams sticks to the stronger lines and stable designs, which gives the book about as serious an air as it can achieve.

The book ended at 17 issues, with Jennifer Walters sorting out the rights issue around the comics off-screen, making Patsy independently wealthy. It's unclear if she'll abandon the temp agency idea, but if her discussion with the demon was anything to go by, she's going to embrace being Hellcat again. Whatever that means when she was regularly changing into the costume during this series. I guess she might join the Avengers again or something?

It feels a bit like the end of Dennis Hopeless' first Spider-Woman series, where the Black Widow chides Jessica Drew for ditching the Avengers to go help people on Ben Urich's list. Like superheroics only matter if you fight the big fights, the ones that already have 50 heroes facing them down. Focusing on small-scale problems, people stealing purses to pay the rent, that doesn't count.

Saturday Splash Page #207

"Jetpacks, Ray guns, and Dinosaurs" in Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom #3, by Mark Waid (writer), Chris Samnee (artist), Jordie Bellaire (colorist), Shawn Lee (letterer)

The actual amount of Rocketeer comics Dave Stevens wrote and drew is surprisingly small. The "Complete Collection" consists of around 140 pages, total. Once IDW started having other people make Rocketeer mini-series, they probably blew past that in a year or two.

There were a couple of Rocketeer Adventures minis, anthologies that were often pretty to look at, but not much else. But in 2012 we got Cargo of Doom, a full-fledged mini-series by the writer and artist that had recently been killing it together on Daredevil. A mysterious cargo ship sails into L.A., the man in charge with an important cargo, but also another goal: Take the rocket pack from Cliff Secord.

Cliff, meanwhile, has other problems. He punched out a federal inspector who was getting handsy with Peevy's niece, which does nothing to dim Sally's crush on Cliff. The new inspector is much bigger and unaware of the reasons, so he's quick to goad Cliff into trying to punch him. And Cliff is quick to comply.

Waid really leans into the pulp influences. The dinosaurs were collected on Skull Island, and there's a reference to King Kong's disastrous stint on Broadway. The guy who captured the dinos is Doc Savage enemy, John Sunlight, who is working for some other shadowy figure (a Mr. Trask) that can't see the possibilities in stealing the rocket. Dinosaurs with rocketpacks. The world we could have had.

Samnee goes with the vibe, too. The dinosaurs are old-school. Massive, scaly reptiles. No feathers (minus the giant bird) or quick reactions, just big and powerful things that stomp around. The same could be said of Sunlight's goons aboard the freighter. Big and powerful things that stomp (on Cliff.) Cliff does get beat up a bit, but also manages to use the rocket in some clever ways to get out of trouble.

I don't like how Waid handles Cliff and Betty's relationship, as he writes Betty as being the manipulative and jealous type, who gets mad when Sally starts mooning over Cliff. He tries to paper over it at the end, that Betty is used to having the upper hand, I guess because guys drool over her. She didn't like that the tables were turned, with Sally swooning over Cliff, and that's why she was jealous. I don't think it tracks. Did Betty really have the "upper hand" in the Stevens' stories?

Cliff is the insecure one, yes, the one chasing after her. But that's a function of his insecurity, that he thinks every moment she's not with him, she's with another guy. We never see Betty actively flirting with another man. She's trying to get her career off the ground, so it's not as though Cliff was a kept man. He just doesn't like the way she's going about it. He's always suspecting Marco - with good reason as it turns out - and taking it out on her. Sometimes Betty tried to reassure him, and sometimes she gave it back at him with both barrels. She gets annoyed with him if he tries to control her, or forgets a date, especially during the stretch where she doesn't know he's fighting crime as the Rocketeer.

I think Stevens wrote Betty as reasonable with Cliff as he deserved, if not more, so I don't know where Waid was coming from with his take.

What I Bought 12/11/2025

The seventh issue of Dust to Dust, originally solicited for October, then pushed back to December, has since been pushed back into late January. J.G. Jones apparently waiting for the universe to end, restart and for time to once again reach the 1930s before he finishes this mini-series.

Nova: Centurion #2, by Jed MacKay (writer), Alvaro Lopez and Matteo Della Fonte (artists), Mattia Iacono (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - If you didn't spot the red suspenders, you'd think Nova was fighting Drax.

Cammi relates everything she went through preparing to pull this heist, before someone who might be Ravenous decided just blast his way in. Nova has another passenger on his ship, an Accuser who works for the Kree-Skrull War because she believes it's the best way for their people to work together: A group full of people who spent their lives up to then trying to kill each other.

Prediction: "Ravenous" will actually turn out to be a Skrull member of the group, maybe the leader from their side, maybe not, and Yr-Kett will be disillusioned by this betrayal.

They track down Ravenous, stealing power from a grid on some weapons disposal planet. Nova fights like a dumbass, needing several pages to be informed Ravenous is absorbing the energy he's throwing around. And Yr-Kett's not much better. I should have known things were gonna go badly when Nova got clean-shaven because he wanted to make sure Ravenous recognized him. The guy was on par with a Herald. Focus on winning, worry about introductions after.

We're two issues in, and Lopez is already sharing artist credit. Even for Marvel, that's a really quick bait-and-switch. Fonte leans harder into solid blacks, and Iacono's colors shift to duller or darker shades on those pages. Maybe the latter is just because they're fighting on a messy planet. On the other hand, Lopez makes Cammi look like a middle-aged woman, while Della Fonte doesn't. I don't know how much time has passed since Annihilation, but it can't have been that much.

I'm still not clear on this recurring mention of Nova and the Worldmind having limited power available. This was not a problem the last time I was watching Rider carry the entirety of the Nova Force. Where were they getting the power to "recharge" during the entirety of the Abnett/Lanning run?

The Partial Pieces of the Family Tree

What Remains of Edith Finch details the title character's return to a family home she hasn't seen in years. Not since her mother took her away, leaving her great-grandmother Edie (actually Edith Sr., but "Edie" is going to be easier to differentiate her from the younger Edith) behind.

Edie vanished. Presumed dead, but there's no body, no trace of her. Edith hasn't returned in the idea of finding her, so much as maybe trying to understand what the hell is going on with her family. Because pretty much everyone dies under bizarre or disturbing circumstances. Her mother's response was to seal off almost every door in the house, and Edie's response was to drill peepholes.

As it turns out, there's one, mostly empty, room still open, and it's there Edith learns there are other ways to get into the rooms. So you move from room-to-room, studying the lives of people who mostly died decades before Edith was ever born. The rooms were preserved as is even before Edith's mom started closing them up like she was entombing someone who she perceived as insulting her family's honor, which makes it feel less like Edith is roaming through a familiar house, and more like she snuck into a very strange museum.

In each room, there's some item, that once Edith finds it, triggers a vision or recreation of the person's end. These are the parts that are most like a game, as you have a little more control. Great-Aunt Molly's diary details her waking up and feeling so hungry since she was sent to bed without supper, that she turns into a cat, chasing a barn swallow through the tree branches outside her window. Then she's an owl, and you guide her over snowy fields, before making her swoop down to snatch rabbits and swallow them whole.

Edith's older uncle's epitaph is a poem her mother wrote about him refusing to participate in their father's wedding to his second wife, opting to fly his kite instead. You guide the kite across the sky scattering the words of Dawn's poems, or knocking them loose from where they're wedged against a wood sculpture.

The visuals shift depending on whose story you're exploring. Great-Aunt Barbara's story is told as a comic book, with cell-shading that reminds me of that Gamecube game Killer 7, where you wield a crutch as a weapon. Edith's younger brother Milton's is a flip book, with simple cartoon characters. The depiction of the fantasy world her older brother used to escape the drudgery of his job seems artistically like Journey, though maybe that's just the robes the ancillary characters wear.

The game tells me I found all the stories, which means I don't know what's going on with this family. Edie's father left Norway to escape the ill fortune that dogged the Finch family, but tried bringing his house with him. They both sank. Dawn seemed convinced the stories Edie would tell were somehow responsible for what was happening, but Edith never learns what that means. So we're left with questions. Where the hell did Milton go? What actually killed Barbara? I'm left wondering why there was a train line on a remote island to where Walter could get run over by it. Edith gets there by ferry at the start of the game, so what the hell was the train connecting?

I don't have the answer, and I don't think Edith does, either. Which is too bad, since she seemed to be there looking for something to pass on. I guess it provides a lesson that you lose people, and you may not ever understand why, or even how. I figure there's probably something in not following either Edie or Dawn's approaches.

There are all these pieces or sights that suggest the house was slowly coming to a halt. Each time someone died, the place associated with it was fenced off, to be left unchanged and sacrosanct. But at a certain point, what's left for anyone to live in? At the same time, Dawn seems like she's following "out of sight, out of mind." Whatever she thinks is picking off Finches one after another, she also thought could be contained by closing doors. Literal, in terms of the house, and figurative in how she closes off from Edie and keeps Edith from any answers.

Which leaves me wondering how to interpret her giving Edith a key that would unlock the secret passages. A recognition avoidance was no answer? Edith mentions she hadn't been back since they left, and that, once she gets there, she realizes the feeling she always had at seeing the house was fear. So it seems like there was little chance she would have gone back snooping on her own, if Dawn was worried about that, and figured she might as well give Edith a safer way to explore.

How to Beat the High Cost of Living (1980)

Jane (Susan Saint James), Louise (Jessica Lange), and Elaine (Jane Curtin) have money problems. They also have men problems, but the two are unfortunately interconnected. Elaine's husband took off with a 19-year-old, leaving her with a house and (all the attendant bills), but no cash (he cleaned out their bank accounts and stole all her jewelry from the safe-deposit box.) Louise keeps getting "loans" from her veterinarian husband to keep her antique store afloat, but the IRS has gotten suspicious of multiple years of interest-free loans and Albert's in deep financial shit if he doesn't sue her. The child support from Jane's loser ex can't cover raising two kids, and her current boyfriend just keeps talking about how he needs $25,000 so he can buy the hardware store he works at.

More accurately, he needs $24,943, because he's got $57 in the bank. Almost there!

Frustrated and hemmed in by this lack of cash, Elaine hits on the idea of stealing all the money brought in during the big anniversary sales event at the local mall. So the remainder of the film is the run-up to the heist, both the planning and execution, and all the complications that arise from the 3 of them being broke.

The movie leverages certain things it sets up with regards to the guys in their lives. Elaine's husband is an architect, and just so happened to design the mall. Which means she finds the point of entry in his blueprints. Jane's boyfriend works at the hardware store they rob for equipment, because Jane can just sneak the key out of his pants after they finish making out.

Louise? Her husband being a vet doesn't really factor in, but her situation seems different from Elaine or Jane's to an extent where it doesn't entirely feel like she fits. The other two, the guys in their lives either just took the money and ran (Elaine), or are full of excuses for why they can't help (Jane.) Albert has, according to the IRS, given Louise over $36,000 in "loans" (whether he calls it a loan or a gift depends on whether he's talking to the IRS or Louise, though Louise insists they're loans) to keep her business afloat. It is clearly not a viable business, but rather than change her approach, or try something else if she wants independence, she just keeps asking for money she insists she'll pay back.

It isn't great his solution is to sue her and have her declare bankruptcy to settle the whole thing, but if he wasn't giving her money for who knows how long, she'd have declared bankruptcy already.

That aside, I laughed more than I expected. The movie portrays all three women as long on grit, but maybe a little short on skill and trying to learn fast. Elaine's idea that they need to prove they're psychologically capable of a robbery, with Jane trying to stick up the grocery store, was pretty funny. I thought the follow-up heist of a canoe was just them setting their sights lower. "OK, robbing a grocery store failed. Let's see if you can steal a canoe that's only guarded by one bored guy in a clapboard shack." But no! The canoe is actually integral to the heist.

There's a funny bit when they rob the hardware store, where things are going smoothly until Jane can't control her Mom instincts, and another when they're planning the heist during one of Jane's kids' baseball games, and they casually tack on the cost of dental bills for Jane's ex after her dad punches him out for arguing calls, then go back to making plans. It feels like Elaine and Louise are the driving forces - maybe because they don't have any kids that will lose a mom if they get arrested - but a fair amount of the humor is around Jane maybe not being in the right mindset for all this. She's going to do it, but she's got a lot of other stuff on her mind, where the other two are more locked in. 

What I Bought 12/3/2025 - Part 2

Thursday last week, my car wouldn't start. And I was supposed to meet my coworkers at one of our work vehicles at a specific time. Not being certain they'd check their office phones beforehand, I was left to bike to work. Which I've done before, but not when it's 15 degrees (-9 Celsius). And then there was still the mess of trying to get home, get a new battery, install the new battery, which resulted in my losing two hex nuts somewhere underneath the engine. Just an exhausting day.

Batgirl #14, by Tate Brombal (writer), Stephen Segovia (artist), Rain Beredo (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - Fighting ninjas under the stars with a woman you unsuccessfully tried to blow up once. How. . .inconvenient?

The attack is kind of a mess, as everyone seems to have their own irons in the fire. Cass' attempt to kill Kalden is interrupted by Tenji, Kalden somehow unaware of all this when the art makes it look like Cass was already on the downward arc of her leap, sword drawn, when deflected. Then Cassandra veers off again, because she spots their shapeshifter ally trying to steal the holy seed pods of the blue poppies for Nyssa. Again, how shocking the al'Ghul was not open about her plans. Then Tenji spots something down a dark tunnel (we aren't shown what) that spooks him, but he gets spotted.

End result? Angel Breaker does manage to blow up a supply of the blue flowers, though I'm dubious it's all of them, and Cass cuts up the seed pods so Nysssa won't get those. But there's a mole in the ranks, and the Unburied still have some big plan they'll get to eventually.

Amid all this, Cassandra is being hounded by a vision of her mother. Encouraging her to take revenge, to abandon her brother when he's overwhelmed. And as they flee, with chaos on their heels and the folks just carving out an existence in this cave system, Shiva calls Cass a Destroyer. I would think Cass knows about hallucinations, but she keeps acting like this is actually Shiva. Getting surprised when she decides to respond, and Shiva's not around. So I don't know if this is guilt, or something one of the Unburied is doing to her.

If it is an attack, what's the goal? Wreck her confidence, drive her nuts, make her a truly lethal weapon Either way, she is definitely drawing a lot of blood with that sword of Shiva's, which is not encouraging.

Fantastic Four #6, by Ryan North (writer), Humberto Ramos (penciler), Victor Olazaba (inker), Edgar Delgado (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Another day, another batch of tentacles swarming from a hole in the air.

As per the solicitation, aliens show up with a device to stop Earth's rotations, creating extreme environmental conditions they love. The Invisible Woman handles that in 6 pages by tricking them into retreating by making it look like she can do the same thing, easily, with her powers. This brings Maria Hill - 

BOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Sorry about that, reflex. She has an offer for the FF to help build a new version of SHIELD, focused on helping people with superpowers figure out how to use them to make the world a better place. Which, as everyone in the conversation notes, sounds a lot less like SHIELD, and more like Hickman's "Future Foundation." Also, not clear on why the FF need any help to start that up again.

Around the dinner table, the FF for some reason debate whether to trust Maria Hill - BOOOOOOOOO! - who has never had an idea that actually worked or, for that matter, one that was worth a damn. Thankfully, the Wizard breaks into their lab, freeing us from Ryan North's attempts to get me to take M - that character seriously. Even having hacked all Reed's stuff, the Wizard barely lasts any longer than the aliens. Because he's a loser. Reed can't figure out how the Wizard could break his encryptions, as they're somehow based on cosmic background radiation to generate truly random numbers.

Yeah, man, I don't know. Might as well say a sorcerer generates the numbers. Point being, the radiation is somehow not random any longer, and there's a message in it. From Galactus. About Sue.

Not a great issue for Ben. He can't clobber the aliens' machine. Hill - BOOOOOOO! - dismisses him as the only member of the Four that couldn't end all life on the planet. Excuse you, the Thing could definitely punch a dormant super-volcano hard enough to make it erupt, causing a mass extinction event! And then he gets sucker-punched by the FF's old robot receptionist, which Ramos depicts as having knocked off a chunk of Ben's rocky hide. Based on where she punched him, I thought she's knocked off part of his jaw, but apparently not, so I have no idea where it came from. 

Sunday Splash Page #404

"Hellcats and Dogs," in Patsy Walker: Hellcat #3, by Kathryn Immonen (writer), David Lafuente (artist), John Rauch (color artist), Dave and Natalie Lanphear (letterer)

Patsy Walker gets sent to Alaska as part of the Initiative. Proving what a genius Tony Stark is, he only sends one hero to the biggest state in the U.S., and it's one who can't fly, teleport, or run fast. At least Patsy didn't have to worry about a having a Skrull infiltrator as a teammate!

What Patsy does have is an ability to sense magic and a nose for trouble. She's quickly on the trail of some suspicious bears, who lead her to a group of shamen (sha-women? Google says "shamaness," assuming I can trust it, which I probably can't), who task Patsy (or as they dub her, "Double-clawed Cat Full of Red Hellfire with Her Head Against the Wind and Comes Not Quietly from the Great Sea Road") with recovering their daughter, Ssangyong, from the terrible beast that has taken her.

It's a quest then, complete with an assortment of allies and an irritating guide that, like Navi in Ocarina of Time, Patsy just wishes would shut the hell up. With magic involved there are rules and traditions, but Immonen writes a Patsy Walker who is both well aware of these things, and confident/flighty enough to interpret those rules as she sees fit. At one point, to draw out an ally she requires but pissed off earlier, Patsy is told to 'lie by a grave.' Once the grave is located, Patsy stands atop it and announces that everyone loves her. Which is, of course, a lie, and the angry, antlered bear appears.

Things are not what they seem, the young girl (whose parents named her after a car, ouch) less an abductee and more a runaway. In a way, this makes Patsy even more qualified to help, as she's well-acquainted with an overbearing parent who tries to control your life. Two, if you count Moondragon's "mentoring," which mostly took the form of berating Patsy, if what I saw in Defenders was any indication. So she can try to reach Ssangyong through some oblique references to her own poor life choices and, when that fails, get frustrated, slug the girl, and haul her out like a sack of potatoes.

This was my favorite mini-series of 2008 (though the last issue got delayed and didn't come out until January '09.) It was funny and absurd. Crossing a chasm via a bridge made of little white rabbits, or Patsy arguing with herself about Iron Man blaming her for burning down Alaska. Lafuente's art is exaggerated without getting too loose or uncontrolled. You can tell who you're looking at or that Patsy's dealing with, even if circumstances alter them. He's got a good eye for detail in the clothes or the settings - Ssangyong's living in the wreck of an old sailing ship at the base of some frozen tower, with a Sasquatch who wears plaid pants and suspenders. (Phil's a real sweetie.)

Immonen's Patsy Walker is so many things, though I think most of all she simply follows her whims. If some creepy guy in a bar is bothering her, and dares her to chuck her mug at him, she'll do it without blinking. If the local guide is reluctant to help, she slides a big wad of SHIELD's cash at him to change the attitude.

She's able to adapt quickly or brush off disappointments. When Iron Man calls, she asks if she'll be assigned to Miami. He corrects her that it would be Florida, which causes her to shriek ecstatically until he tells her she's going to Alaska. One panel of a devastated Patsy, staring into space in a dress she's modeling for her neighbor, and then she's over it, asking who else is on the team and envisioning her and Beast skiing together in a daydream where Lafuente exaggerates his art a bit more for imagination effect. Did she want to apologize to the antlered bear, or track down the water lemming that kept smacking her in the face? No, but she needed them for the quest so she got over it.

(And when the bear demands she properly bury the dead body she lied beside, she tricks the wolf into attacking the bear to create the grave via impact crater. Again, she knows how things work, and knows how to bend the rules to her advantage without breaking them.)

The mini-series ended with Patsy's managing to broker a truce between Ssangyong and her mothers, and Ssangyong warning Patsy that she's got more magic inside her than she realizes. Immonen never got the opportunity to explore that, but another writer would.