What I Bought 5/31/2016 - Part 3

The last of this round of reviews. It was not a very busy three week stretch. Oh well, quality not quantity, right?

Patsy Walker, aka Hellcat #6, by Kate Leth (writer), Natasha Allegri (artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - Warning! Hercules does not actually appear in this comic! It is still pretty good, though, and you should buy it, because I saw someone mention that it isn't selling well.

Patsy is hard at work getting her temp agency going, but Jen, Tom, and Ian feel she needs a day off, and drag her to Coney Island. Where they run into Arcade, revisiting his first attempt at Murderworld. and look, I know Marvel is going continuity-optional these days, but Arcade did not start out 'trying to make games more fun.' He found out he had a knack for killing, and wanted to do it with style. Respect the Claremont, damnit! Kids can handle that. They watch Bambi, they understand death's cold embrace!

OK, fine, sorry. Ian, Jen, and Patsy have to win some games to save Tom's life, which they do. Then Jessica Jones approaches Patsy to let her know Hedy hired her, and what Jess has already learned. Is it a secret that Patsy is Hellcat again? I thought that was common knowledge. She wrote a book, she went on tour for said book. I know this happened. Argh.

My complaints about continuity aside, this was an entirely enjoyable issue. I'm always up for Arcade, and Patsy calmly beating him at the strength tester and explaining it with, 'I do Krav Maga, dude. I'm, like, really fit.' cracked me up. Also her difficulties in mastering arcade fighting games. It's sad how being good at punching in real-life doesn't translate.

Natasha Allegri handles all the art chores this month, and while her style is different from Williams, it works pretty well. There are some spots where I think she didn't ink the figures, but just put the colors directly over her pencil work, and those look rushed and kind of messy in contrast to the rest of the issue, but the rest is good. I like Jen's "powering down" panel, probably because I'm a bit into anime and it reminds me of that. And the panel of her throwing the ball of Arcade's face and into the skeeball hole. Reminded me of Super Dodgeball on the NES. I did think most of the characters' casual outfits seemed young for them, but I'm not clued into what early 20-somethings wear these days. Although Jen and Patsy (and by extension, Tom) should be older than that, surely?

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #8, by Ryan North (writer), Erica Henderson (artist), Andy Hirsch (1918 sequence artist), Chris Schweizer (trading card artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - Too many artists! What is this, some way behind schedule DC event book?

Doreen enters the awful world of online dating after finding out Tomas is seeing someone else. At the insistence of her friends, I add, because that is the sign they are terrible friends. So they're actually Manhunters, impersonating Doreen's friends, because this is an Invasion! tie-in. Or was that Millennium? The one that had the Suicide Squad issue where Slipknot got his arm blown off like a chump? That one. Millennium, yeah. She is saved from a particularly awful date with some douchebro by the arrival of the Mole Man. Also, she and her Avengers team fought some giant tree lobster at the beginning of the issue. I just want to say, the alt-text joke for that page is wrong. Hawkeye will never stop trying to solve life's problems with TNT arrows because TNT arrows are an appropriate solution for a solid 75% of life's problems. Explosions fix everything. Also, I would imagine an arthropod would have weak spots in its joints, since the exoskeleton has to be able to bend there, and an arrow should totally work.

But I guess we wouldn't want everyone to see the animatronic wires and cables inside the obviously fake giant tree lobster, I mean, dismembering confused bugs would be too violent for this book. How does my spell-check not recognize animatronic?

I'm feeling cranky today, obviously. I have no idea why. Anyway, the dating sequences were funny, though her dates seem to be skewing old. Fancy Dan has to be like 50. C'mon Marvel, don't perpetuate the Hollywood standard of the dude getting to continue to date young ladies as he ages. There has to be some villain roughly Doreen's age. Current Loki? Maybe a particular version of Kang ("I came to this era because it was the time of the highest success in internet dating, 3%, and Kang will conquer Internet dating!")? Not the Hood, never the Hood (the way Henderson draws Wiccan, every time I see him, I initially think it's the Hood). North completely nailed Boomerang's particular brand of self-justification that Spencer gave him in Superior Foes, although I guess Boomerang would need to be narrating this and frame it as part of some great plan of his to get into the police station to really capture the effect.

That panel of Doreen reacting to Brad's "superheroes don't exist" statement was great. The pause, and the "What.", I thought we were about to see the angriest Squirrel Girl we've ever seen. And then she gets indignant on Howard and Galactus' behalf, so considerate. If the Sentinel can feel heartbreak over rejection, can it feel bad over hating and fearing mutants?

Anyway, the Mole Man has arrived, thank goodness. Punching super-villains is much better than dating, obviously.