What I Bought 10/31/2013 - Part 3

Back to comics, with a mini-series. I haven't bought many mini-series these last couple years. I miss Marvel pumping out a lot of odd mini-series. I understand financially why they stopped - they rarely sold - but they seemed like a good way to try out new writers and artists, and they could be a lot of fun, precisely because they weren't really important.

Rocketeer/Spirit: Pulp Friction #2, by Mark Waid (writer), Loston Wallace (pencils), Bob Wiacek (inks), Hi Fi Designs (colors), Tom B. Long (letters) - I just noticed the plane is upside-down. You can just see some water and land in the upper right corner. That being the case, should the Spirit be dangling in the other direction? Or is it a case that the plane is still in mid-roll, so gravity hasn't really taken effect yet.

Betty can't really tell the Spirit much, so it's off to the morgue, where Dolan's able to confirm the body is the alderman. Which still leaves the question of how he covered all that distance in so little time, but the coroner is more concerned with the condition of the alderman's innards, which have all been mashed together, even though his outsides show no sign of it.  Meanwhile, Betty's back at the airfield with Peevy, who has been tinkering with a primitive TV in his spare time. When he turns it on, the image that comes in is of the dead alderman. Intriguing, but the good guys may not have time to do anything with this information, as Mr. Trask has sent a couple of planes to attack them, even as he and the Octopus work to remove the witness, meaning Betty.

My theory is the alderman was someone converted to energy and beamed to L.A. after his death, but the process is still in early stages, which is why his organs are all mixed up. All this talk of beaming pictures, it's the only way I can figure you transport at guy that distance in that span of time.

Paul Smith bailed for some reason or the other, thus Loston Wallace as penciler (and that's also probably why there was a 2-month delay). Wallace has a style that's roughly similar enough to Smith's that there's not a huge shift in how the characters look. He definitely makes the Spirit into a granite-jawed type at times. Maybe that's appropriate for the character, though he always seemed a little too sly for that Captain America look to me. It's not a complaint, just an observation. Wallace doesn't seem as creative with the layouts as Smith, but he's very good at expressions and body language. I didn't get a real sense of speed when Cliff was flying, though, which is a little disappointing. It's a clean style, very pretty, but Wallace uses it well to sell the humorous bits.

I really wonder about Cliff leaving the Spirit in a plane with no landing gear. The way he casually flies in the other direction, offering only, 'Take it easy, you're practically down already!', could be read as Cliff really not caring whether the Spirit survives or not. I know the Spirit said a page earlier that death doesn't work for him like it does for other people, but he said that while fighting a guy on the wing of a plane, while Cliff was busy with another plane, so I don't see how Cliff could have heard it. Cliff's a hothead, but he's not usually callous, especially towards someone helping him.