What I Bought 3/7/2018 - Part 1

They build vending machines now to recognize if your selection didn't actually drop. When it senses that, it makes the little coil spin again, and then you can get two bags of Skittles for the price of one. It's a nice bonus that happens every once in a while. Some days at work, I take what I can get.

Tick 2017 #3, by Cullen Bunn and JimmyZ (writers), Duane Redhead (artist) - Welcome to the X-Men, Tick and Arthur, hope you brought enough pie for everyone.

Spotted Fever saves Arthur from the clowns and ninjas, and smacks some sense back into the Tick. She takes them to La Chambre Rouge where they find the newest batch of prospective heroes being twisted by Dr. Daedalus. Their attempt to escape runs them smack into an army of ninjas and clowns.

I feel this was a play on Larry Hama's Wolverine run, when Logan finds the Weapon X facility they staged a lot of his and the other victims' memories at. Mostly it was the scene when Tick wanders into a room he swears is Arthur's living room (although Arthur doesn't see it). I don't know if that's what Bunn and JimmyZ are going for, but given the Tick originally played a lot with spoofing Miller's Daredevil, it wouldn't surprise me. They've given the Tick a backstory of a nefarious doctor trying to turn him into a weapon, plus a lost love he didn't remember, plus speaking French all of the sudden. OK, that last one isn't a perfect comp to Logan's connections to Japan, but you get my point.

Redhead's artwork fits the story. It's still, at this point, a fairly straightforward superhero story, and Redhead has a clean, straightforward style. He can make the evil Doctor look sinister when he needs to, and the Tick is very expressive, and it seems like all the information that is supposed to be on the page is there, presented clearly. I would like a better look at the designs on those other heroes that showed up, especially The Gesture. I feel like his costume ought to evoke the era his moves supposedly come from, but the little bit we see of it doesn't suggest that.

I'm not sure if I'm planning to stick with the book going forward, though. Still not convinced we really needed the Tick's origin, assuming this doesn't wind up being some sort of fakeout or a false memory. Also, they write the Tick as very stream of consciousness. Was he always like that? Maybe it's all the buried memories. I guess we'll see.

Empowered and Sistah Spooky's High School Hell #3, by Adam Warren (writer), Carla Speed McNeil (artist/letterer), Jenn Manley Lee (colorist) - I'm glad my high school bathroom experiences were not like that.

After surviving a sing-off against in the music room, Spooky and Emp wind up in the ladies' room, where Emp finds herself stuck in a stall that is filled rapidly by her own tears, and Spooky's being torn apart by cutting words from another girl as it cracks her reflection. But Emp has dealt with enough cruel taunts that she's able to bust out and kill both their tormentors. That's six more down, total.

Last issue, I wondered why no one was trying to backstab the Queen Bee, Ashley. I guess it's because she's more powerful than the others, with her Absolute Solipsism Field, and they're just terrified of her. It's seeming more and more likely she expects our heroes to kill all the others so she gets all of Spooky's power, and it might be interesting if that didn't go as planned. I can't shake that feeling Spooky's going to be offered a chance to rescue Hannah if she'll just betray Emp, and I'm not sure how that's going to play out.

The other part that's come up again is how for the most part, these girls are stuck in the same patterns they had in high school. They haven't changed their tactics, and think their targets haven't either. Spooky was nervous about singing, but the shit the girls hurled her way only irritated her. The insults Olivia whispered to Emp might have worked when the series started, but she's come far enough to know it's not true and not surrender. Brooke's insults didn't start to have the maximum impact until she attacked who Spooky is now, as opposed to how she looked back then. Attacking her survivor's guilt, her regrets, that seemed to take Spooky's will to fight.

McNeil and Lee did a heck of a job on that bit with Spooky trapped in front of the mirror. The way the cracks show in her reflection as these red voids, and then appear as cuts on the real her. The way the red that saturates those panels contrasts the blue that's threatening to drown Emp. Hannah's image appearing in the mirror, but mostly not showing the red hue, even though it's supposed to be part of Spooky's torment. The panels that have Spooky in them keep moving in closer as her situation goes downhill, even as Emp's move back as she takes control of hers. And the number of panels per page goes up a little near the end of it. Not a lot, from five to seven over the course five pages, but it works. Time is running out, the tension goes up. Surprise, Carla Speed McNeil is good at this drawing thing.