What I Bought 6/23/2018 - Part 1

There wasn't a single comic I wanted that came out last week. I did, however, find all the comics I was still looking for from the week before on a weekend jaunt. So let's look at those instead.

Copperhead #19, by Scott Godlewski (writer/artist), Jay Faerber (writer), Ron Riley (colorist), Thomas Mauer (letterer) - The cover and the final page of the issue mirror each other effectively.

The thing unearthed in the last issue looks like a glowing blue rock. It glows the same color as some antennae on the back of the native species heads. Except the antennae are actually parasites, and the native species are suddenly being very aggressive in approaching the town. Hickory's bosses are excited and pushy, but the artificial humans have a plan of their own, involving some group they belong to, indicated by a tattoo. The sheriff and the Mayor are trying to figure out what Hickory is up to, and Clara is trying to reconnect with Zeke, who is struggling to process that Clara isn't his birth mother, that she killed his mother.

A lot of plates spinning, which, since this is supposedly the last arc, makes a certain amount of sense. If there's going to be any resolution or payoff, it has to happen now. Be interesting to see if Faerber and Godlewski can pull it off, or if they're even planning to do that.

Scott Godlewski, who was artist for the first 10 issues, is back. There's a marked increase in the consistency of characters' sizes and proportions. Budroxificus looks suitably large, even when he isn't drawn to be intimidating. Sheriff Bronson is working with him, and Mister Hickory thinks he's got Boo wrapped around his finger, so neither is intimidated by him, and he isn't drawn in a way that suggests they are. No towering over them imposingly. But he still fills panels, because he's a big Cypabaran (which I just now realize is rearranging "capybara" and that's what he's based on).

Stellar #1, by Joseph Keatinge (writer), Bret Blevins (artist), Rus Wooten (letterer) - That's one way to kill a giant space monster. If only the pilot had buckled his safety belt first. . .

The series, so far, is taking place on a single world devastated in some major war that spread across the galaxy. Civilization hasn't collapsed entirely, but things are in flux, and a lot of people are struggling. The main character, named Stellar, was a super-soldier designed to win the war, and opted to go a different way at some point. Which put her in conflict with others like her. Or she's still in conflict with them. Time may also be unraveling, things are jumping around, so that I'm not always sure how we got from Point A to Point B. Or Stellar is hallucinating on that last page.

Blevins brings an interesting visual approach. It's the ruins of all those 1950s sci-fi pulp covers. The spaceship spaceships, the remains of giant robots and big statues like I remember from the covers of some version of Asimov's Foundation books. It takes something that the reader has some past visual reference for, and shows it as dead, maybe to give a scope of the destruction, or the level of fall from the heights they once were. Blevins is doing the color work as well, and in the flashback sequences, everything is dominated by yellows and oranges, vivid colors. In almost every one of those panels and pages, people are being vaporized, incinerated, or are being presented with the threat of those fates.

The rest of the book is done in cool, blunted shades. Even when it's showing some alien arthropods devouring the remains of some dead giant, the viscera is dull reddish-purple. Stellar wears a monk's robe and hood, concealing the old outfit she still wears underneath. Her face is more lined around the eyes - almost like Blevins made certain some of his initial sketch lines would show through as strain or sleeplessness - and she's paler. On the last page, when it looks as though the battle is starting up again, the oranges and yellows haven't returned, which is why I suspect it's a hallucination, or echo of the actual battle, long finished.

I don't entirely know what is going on, or where Keatinge and Blevins plan to go with it, but I'm intrigued.