What I Bought 3/9/2018

Someone at work is stealing my writing utensils. A pencil Monday, a pen yesterday. It's very annoying. Yes, I considered the possibility I left them somewhere, but I checked everywhere I had been, and they weren't there.

Giant Days #36, by John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Whitney Cogar (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - Just sittin' and thinkin' on a box, nothin' unusual at all. No sirree, she and her friends didn't strangle a classmate and toss her in a trunk as some sort of test, ala Hitchcock's Rope, nope.

Daisy breaks up with Ingrid, during an art exhibition Ingrid was having in the dilapidated warehouse she lives in. The bus drivers that were admiring her work get some performance art to go with it. Daisy then sinks into a depression for two weeks, emerging just in time for the girls to move out for the summer. Unfortunately, Daisy's return home is going to be a little awkward since her grandma found out about Daisy dating Ingrid from a heartbroken Ingrid (and it had to be an extra, final gutpunch for Ingrid to realize Daisy never did tell her grandmother about the two of them). Well, I was wondering how Daisy was going to end up talking about her sexual orientation with her grandma if she and Ingrid were breaking up, since I didn't see Daisy broaching the topic otherwise.

Kudos to Allison and Sarin here, for actually making me feel bad for Ingrid. I haven't really liked her, because she seems exactly the sort of person I would hate and avoid in real life, but that may just be her loud personality. And because Daisy's kept her doubts from Ingrid, preferring to pretend everything is fine, it came as a blindside. The range of emotions Ingrid goes through in a few pages, even just in one page, from stunned, to quietly asking Daisy to leave, to going nuclear at Daisy's platitudes. Still the right move for Daisy; being with Ingrid was making her miserable, but I had been anticipating the break-up almost as gleefully as Susan and Esther, so I didn't expect to feel sympathetic.

Sarin actually inks himself this issue, rather than Liz Fleming acting as inker. I think people looked a little rounder, possibly. Mostly I thought that with Esther, she normally has a bit of a rough edge, especially around her eyes, and it wasn't present. That might have been because it's going into summertime, people are feeling cheerful and upbeat, relaxed. Look, I'm the wrong guy to describe to you the value of inkers. I know it's definitely a thing, I just stink at perceiving it.

Also, I wonder if, having seen her dad and McGraw together, Susan notices disturbing similarities in them. I'm not sure what I expected her father to be like, but that wasn't it.

Atomic Robo: The Spectre of Tomorrow #5, by Brian Clevinger (writer), Scott Wegener (artist), Anthony Clark (colorist), Jeff Powell (letterer/designer) - That's the most peculiar Atomic Robo cover I've ever seen.

Robo tries to elude Helsingard's creatures to destroy the giant computer brain Helsingard has taken control of. Robo is actually the decoy to let his little pink robots reprogramming the computer to eat itself, essentially. Another Helsingard bites the dust. Wonder how many that leaves. Bernard snaps out of his funk long enough to save Foley, steal Helsingard's jump jet, and get the three of them back home. Where Lang and Vik's extortion of Elon Musk has gotten their building permits reinstated! They have a functioning toilet now! Which Robo has probably never seen, because he went back into his basement lab again (also, he doesn't need a bathroom). That is not at all concerning (the returning to the basement part, not the lack of need for a bathroom)!

Not a bad conclusion. Clevinger and Wegener set up a couple of things for future stories, although I have a hard time getting interested in yet another mysterious, quasi-government organization. I can't keep track of all the ones they've introduced in the past. As for the unexpected side effect of Robo's little bots interacting with ALAN, maybe Robo can teach them? Though I recall he said the more of them there were, the more they link up and increase their intelligence. Which seems ominous, given what ALAN was up to when he and Robo first crossed paths.

The art is variable from one panel to the next. I still think the coloring is overwhelming Wegener's linework, and the colors being duller and muddy - at least on paper, maybe it looks better online - doesn't help. It makes things seem murky, or at times like they were hastily drawn. The panels above aren't the worst by any stretch, but the idea of the creature being unable to see Bernard because of how muddy he was amused me. The page of Robo dropping in among the Praetorians and throwing haymakers looks pretty good, but then the next page, the first panel looks like Robo was only partially sketched in and the colors are trying to suggest the rest of him. It's frustrating, because it could, and has, looked better in the past.