What I Bought 3/24/09 - Part 2

Sunday night I had some odd dream about a small woman, we're talking the size of a ventriloquist dummy, who really badly wanted some item, a coin I think, which she absolutely could not have, so I had to keep shooting her, and she kept dying. Except it kept not sticking. The being dead part, and every time, I had to shoot her more time to stop her. The last time around, we had the item in a police station when she came after it, and I think I shot her 15 times, to no effect, then I slipped, and tried to trap her against a desk with a chair, but she slipped around the chair and was bringing a shiny knife with an ivory handle towards my throat (and I was trying to swing my left forearm up to block her forearm) when I woke up. Don't know where that dream came from. It doesn't have anything to do with today's reviews, I just needed something interesting for the opening paragraph, and I hadn't gotten around to mentioning it yet. Certainly didn't fit with Monday's post, you know? Onward, to ribaldry! Well, probably not. I just wanted to use the word "ribald" today.

Guardians of the Galaxy #11 - Captain Mar-Vell: Abusive parent, or rageaholic? Relax, it's not really him. The whole issue is Drax and Phyla wandering through a otherworldly realm (which they spend some time arguing about which it is, before the find out the truth), trying to find some trace of Moondragon. Which they do, but not until after they run into Maelstrom, who wants out of this realm, and says they have the spark of life he needs to escape. Ohhh-key-dokey, then. Oh, and they find Moondragon, but not in the form they were hoping for.

Wes Craig handles the art chores, and he's another fellow I'm not familiar with, but I dig the work. There are times I think he exaggerates the expressions a bit, mostly with Phyla since Drax is remaining calm, but he makes Maelstrom look properly, off his rocker I'll say. Not a lot, just a little, which works. Really, Craig's art reminds me a little of the Bruce Timm/Mike Parobeck style. Not that it's necessarily their style, but he seems to also use an economy of lines, keep things simple, but still expressive. Writing, I like how calmly Drax handles all this, and the idea that it can be just as bad to have too much Life as too much Death. Which means, Thanos was right all those times he was going to kill lots of people to redress the balance between life and death? Wild.

Immortal Iron Fist #23 - Danny learns stuff from the other Iron Fist, comes up with a way the Immortal Weapons can communicate with each other, gets called on it by Changming (the dude running things in the 8th City), and looks like he's gonna catch a whuppin' from that other Iron Fist. Damn, Danny, you're about to get your ass beat by an old man!

OK, probably not. I'm sure it's all, how they say, part of the plan. Either way, Danny's a clever boy, and resilient too. I doubt I'd be standing if some guy jammed meat hooks through both forearms and had me hanging off the ground that way. Course, I'm impressed they got those around the bones and any major arteries. After all, they wouldn't want him to bleed out. That'd be too quick. I like the bit where Danny decides he might as well hit his demon opponent a lot. I thought Foreman depicted that nicely. That's how you use lots of little panels, if you're going to. I've definitely liked his art more in this arc than "The Mortal Iron Fist", and apart of it is just I think he's using the space allotted him more effectively. And Timothy Green III, artist of that solo issue a couple months back, draws a couple pages of this issue, and I guess he affects the style of art from the time period he's trying to represent. It looks right to me, though I didn't realize it was him until I noticed his name in the credits on my second read-through. It doesn't necessarily show off his style, which is fine. Sometimes the story asks you to set your style aside for something else, I guess.

Moon Knight #28 - I like the spikes on Moon Knight's gloves. Nasty-looking accessories. Lockley defends the girl who would be a witness from the tag-team of the Zapata Brothers. More people try to chase Jake and Carmen, only to get chopped by weird sword guy, who is apparently called the Toltec. OK, then, good to know. And the Carmen's father is not pleased the Zapata's didn't recover or kill his daughter, because that was his big way of showing off to the Russians, who are remarkably not already dead by Frank Castle's hands.

This is moving slow. It's like a dance, where everyone is circling the floor, but nobody's actually picked a partner yet. I have this sense everyone has plans, but no one has put them into motion quite yet. Somehow I don't it's the Zapatas that will light the fuse, so much as it'll be some random idiot, probably trying for the reward on Spector that gets it started. That's how these things seem to work. Everyone painstakingly prepares, then some unexpected thing happens, and plans go out the window, and there's only action.

Street Fighter Legends: Chun-Li #2 - Confession: I stink at Street Fighter games. I mean, I'm terrible. Granted, I don't play much, and I'm bad at most fighting games (Super Smash Bros. and maybe the Dead or Alive games being the only ones I'd even rate myself as competent at), but I mean really bad. Like, "loses first fight on difficulty between really easy and normal" bad. Still, I like the series anyway, like the characters, and I think it's cool how they've built this whole world out of the games, even if I'm not that well-versed on all of it. Besides, Chris Sims touted the face-kicking properties of the series, so what the hell, right?

There's not actually much face-kicking in this issue, speaking quantitatively. But Hibiki does kick Sagat in the face hard enough that Sagat loses an eye, so qualitatively, I'd say that's some good face-kickage. Other than that, there's a bit about Chun-Li and her partner having the usual problems trying to stop Bison's schemes. You know how that goes: Vast organization, very secretive, can't get a bead on what they're up to, etc. Somehow I'd expect a guy who dresses in bright red with a cape to flaunt his activities a bit more. You know, "Yes, I delivered those drugs to your city, and I'll do it again, because my organization is invincible, you can't stop me, ha, ha, blah, blah."

And that's the haul.