Angel & Faith #25, by Christos Gage (script), Rebekah Isaacs (art), Dan Jackson (colors), Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt (letters) - I'll tell you now, I had harbored a thought Sophie and Lavinia would rally the altered citizens they started helping last issue, and set them on Whistler to turn the tide of battle. Didn't happen. It's probably for the best. Would have been irresponsible to ask them to do that when they'd just changed.As it turns out, Angel feeds Whistler a little of the magic in the glowy orb, which sets Whistler's head straight, and the twerp sacrifices himself to keep his magic bomb from killing a bunch of people. Naturally before he goes he must exchange some heartfelt words with Angel about how much the two of them helped each other. Not the end I hoped for - I was picturing a thorough curbstomping of Whistler - but he's gone, so I'll take it. Afterward, everyone decides what to do next. Faith gave Giles his home and money back, and she's gonna go work for Kennedy. Angel's going to stick in London and help the magically altered helpless. And Giles unwittingly gut-punches Faith. He asks to accompany her, which makes her happy, then explains that he really just needs an easy way to get to where he thinks he'll be happiest: With Buffy.
It never ends for Faith. She's always stuck with the scraps of whatever affection people can spare after they've given most of it to Buffy. Sure, people care about her, as Giles puts it, but she's never the one they care about most, or first. That's what makes her losing all her Slayers so rough. They cared about her, and she cared about them, and she got so wrapped up in Angel's stupid crap, she lost one of the few things that was genuinely hers. It'd be enough to make me hate Buffy as a character, if I didn't already.
I want to talk some about how Isaacs sets the characters out on the page in that scene, but I'm going to save that for its own post. I want to make some comparisons to a page I analyzed from the arc Brian K. Vaughn and Georges Jeanty did for Season 8. And if it seems I'm focusing overly on Faith, well, she's the character I cared about. I would have cared about Giles, but once he enters Buffy's orbit, he drops off my radar. She's the Kucinich Ring Ostrander described in GrimJack: Manx Cat. She and things close to her don't become invisible, they just become inconsequential.
Atomic Robo Real Science Adventures #10, by Brian Clevinger (words), Erich Owen (art), Erica Henderson (colors), Jeff Powell (letters) - I didn't actually order this, but credit to my comic guy for keeping his eyes peeled for Atomic Robo stuff.
The primary reason I passed on the second round of Real Science Adventures was that I didn't like how much the stories were chopped up in the first go-round. This time, it appears Clevinger's telling a single story, or Tesla and his cohorts working to stop a trio of industrialists from overthrowing the government, using some of Tesla's stolen work. At this stage, the technology had already been stolen, so Tesla's trying to steal it back and wreck the weapons they're building with it. We're coming in at the tail end of that, so much of the story is the two sides trying to piece things together. Charles Fort and George Westinghouse have figured out who is doing the stealing, and what their goals appear to be. Meanwhile, the businessmen in question (Jack Wright, Franklin Reade, and Robert Trydan, are trying to determine who is hampering their efforts, so they can destroy them. You wouldn't think it would take long to determine that Tesla might be involved if you're using his designs, but just because they're rich and ruthless, doesn't mean they're terribly bright. They did figure it out quickly enough to ring Tesla's lab with armed men by the end of the issue, though.
It's hard for me to judge the story, coming in at the halfway point. It's reasonably easy to understand the overall plot, but I've missed out on a lot of details and character moments that would flavor it. Something I do want to mention is that Erich Owen's art reminds me of Rocky and Bullwinkle. It's something about the way he draws mouths, the sort of backwards "c", and the faces in general. The employee talking to Mr. Wright on the first page makes me think of Mr. Peabody's old companion Sherman, about three decades down the line. It's not a bad thing, just something I keep thinking about while I'm reading the comic. It's a simple-looking style, but he does well with body language and expressions. I'm not sure how he'll do with movement or action in the fight scene that's likely to occur in the next issue, though. His work feels flat and very static sometimes.
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