What I Bought 8/1/2018 - Part 1

Kind of mad at myself for not making a joke in Wednesday's post about how the outfit Jack was wearing on Rann looked like he stole it from Captain Obvious. Oh well, missed opportunities. Here's a couple of books from last month.

Multiple Man #2, by Matt Rosenberg (writer), Andy McDonald (artist), Tamra Bonvillain (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - Thumbs up? Damnit Jamie, this is what happens when you don't come to practice!

Time-traveling Jamie returns to the future with all those weird, hybrid Jamies. A future ruled by a tyrannical Jamie Madrox, which is a concept I find difficult to take seriously, but OK. The Jamies meet a young boy, who takes them to the resistance. Which is that boy, Layla Miller, her and Jamie's son, and the hybrid Madroxes before they were hybrid Madroxes. Oh, and Forge's head in what looks like a walking trash compactor. Jamie is trying to explain some plan he wants to implement involving more time travel, but I don't think Forge followed it any better than I did. So they try taking to the streets, and that goes badly. Madrox Hulk is not like regular Hulk.

I dunno, beyond the idea Jamie's going to solve a problem created by a time traveling duplicate with more time-traveling duplicates, I'm not really sure about this. This Jamie doesn't seem to have his stuff together even as much as Jamie Prime did when I stopped reading X-Factor, and that is a low bar to clear. I would expect Jamie to have plenty of ideas on how to approach dealing with Despot Jamie, but not be able to decide on one. This Jamie seems able to pick a path, but lacks any sort of resolve to follow-through on it. He starts his time-travel thing with Forge, then decides to go challenge the Madrox army with the hybrid Jamies, and as soon as one dies, orders a full retreat. I guess he's a duplicate Jamie that lacks any resolve or confidence. I'm not sure if that's deliberate yet or not.

Despot Jamie doesn't seem to have invested much in housing or infrastructure in the future, but he has turned the skies a perpetual, entirely evenly-distributed shade of red. Impressive, if perhaps a poor allocation of the state budget. That giant statue of himself sitting on a throne of skulls is hard to take seriously, too. Maybe if he wasn't wearing the same outfit as the goober Jamie the book is following. Or maybe it's the sloppy hair and the thoughtful look. If he's supposed to look thoughtful. he could be chewing gum. Which would be a very silly Jamie thing to do, but not really on-point for a world conquering mass-murderer.

I read a comment that Rosenberg seems like he wanted to use Peter David's idea of the dupes representing different aspects of Jamie's personality, but didn't want to have to acknowledge any of the character growth PAD put Jamie through in the course of that. Thus, a duplicate split off from a duplicate that's been split off from Jamie since before any of that happened. The book is funny in spots, but I'm certain it's supposed to be. Jamie Madrox destroys world trying to save himself, then makes things worse trying to fix it does seem like a bit of a farce. Hell, it isn't the worst mini-series I've bought from Marvel this summer. Not yet, still three issues to go.

Empowered and Sistah Spooky's High School Hell #5, by Adam Warren (writer), Carla Speed McNeil (artist/letterer), Jenn Manley Lee (colorist) - Huh, "Frank Cho" is actually the name of an art studio consisting of four evil teenage girls. Who knew?

We're into the Lightning Round now, as Spooky and Emp run through a series of attacks by different groups of Spooky's old tormentors. Spooky is not feeling good at repeatedly outmaneuvering these jerks, because she's feeling bad about all the cruel things she used to say about Emp, how she took out her anger over old cruelties on someone who hadn't done anything to her. Or she got an offer to seel Emp out to resurrect her girlfriend and she's feeling worse and worse about agreeing. That would have happened off-panel, and I doubt that's what's going on, but this is a Hell dimension. They are going to try and get her to do something horrible by offering her something she badly wants.

Anyway, with all the scrubs failing, the top boss Ashley and her right-hand lackey lure all the others into the gym, then kill them so that it will be just the two of them sharing the power against our heroes, rather than dividing it between dozens of people. I expect Ashlee (the right-hand lady) to betray Ashley (the Queen Bee) and make a stab at glory. I also expect it'll fail, but it seems appropriate. Spooky's a convenient target they can agree on, but none of these girls actually like each other, either. Given the power disparity, that might be the only chance Spooky and Emp have.

Still an impressive variety of different attempts by the Blonde Horde. Ashlee 2 with the "piercing gaze" was clever, and I would have expect the "trapped in a locker" move to work. Who the heck remembers their high school locker combination? I'm pretty sure I forgot mine five minutes after each school year was over. I especially like the visual of the Infernal Service Provider. The hideous suit, the charred skull, the flames. I was working on a Ghost Rider sketch a couple weeks ago, and now I wish I'd gone with a charred skull look instead of a white skull with flames. (Although that would be an awful lot of black in the picture, given the Rider's normal taste in clothes.)

One more issue to go, which might actually come out this month. Hopefully. All these delays on these mini-series are starting to get on my nerves.