What I Bought 11/16/2018 - Part 1

There was a new volume of Yotsuba! that came out a couple of weeks ago that caught me completely by surprise. Must have missed it entirely in the solicits, and Amazon's new set-up for recommendations is crap, so I hardly ever use it now. I'll have to buy it eventually, along with like 10 other things on my list.

Kind of getting to these books late, but oh well. There was other stuff to post about last week.

Domino #8, by Gail Simone (writer), David Baldeon (artist), Jesus Arbutov (colorist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - Morbius is just pissed Domino is even paler than he is.

They let Morbius out of the box, he tells them what the vampires want him for. To spread the disease he had before he became a vampire, which will let them kill all humans. Which seems not smart for vampires to do, but OK, vampires are dumb as hell, sure. They have to kill the vampire king in that region - not Dracula - and they do that. A vampire hunter guy shows up at the end, Domino clocks him so Morbius can leave, and that's that.

There's a chance there'll be carryover from this into the next story, since the same lady that sent them after Morbius is sending them after Longshot, but right now, this felt rather abrupt. That vampire hunter guy made a big deal at the end of the last issue about calling in all the other vamp hunters, but none of them showed up before this ended. Morbius' characterization seems all over the place, although given Domino keeps having internal monologues about the different ways she keeps thinking of him, I assume that's deliberate. That she keeps trying to pigeonhole him for some reason, and it keeps falling apart as he reveals other facets of his personality. Which could be related to how other people perceive based on one side of her.

Or it's a compare/contrast with how people in the Marvel U. approach mutants. Some mutants are bad, so they're all bad, we need to kill them. Morbius' blood could potentially be weaponized by the other vampires to wipe out the human race, so maybe they should just kill him?

Baldeon and Arbutov seem to be having fun with this issue though. The title page done with the characters in poses from some old horror movie film. Domino doing a dramatic tilt of her head to expose her neck. The page where she's actually bitten, with the entirely black background, and the two panels bordered in red of her falling through a void. It's pretty theatrical. And there's a couple of panels where Arbutov uses the shadows to really make the red of Morbius' collar and wings pop. He's also not outlining them with black, which makes the transition sharper somehow.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #38, by Ryan North (writer), Derek Charm (artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - What's it matter, Tony? You couldn't hit the broad side of barn, let alone a Squirrel Girl.

Having concluded the dead Squirrel Girl was a Skrull, and that none of their supporting cast are Skrulls, Doreen and Nancy visit Stark to enlist his help. Tony agrees to figure out which other Avengers can be trusted, but forgets the code word which puts everyone on edge. Doreen and Nancy confront him, he tries to play it off, but blows his cover again. So in comes the Stark security system.

I question Tony Stark's assertion that Ghost Rider has never ridden a single ghost. I know I've seen a Ghost Rider on the remains of an elephant before. Maybe Tony meant specifically Robbie Reyes, which OK, fair. I feel as though there would be a lot of public outcry if an Avenger was using the souls of people's loved ones as transportation, you know? The Ghost Triceratops is pretty sweet. Shield seems to have too many spines, though.

I also dispute Doreen's assertion that Tony is too incompetent to build an armor that's EM field messes with his memory. He built an armor that went sentient, fell in love with him, and went fucking berserk. Tony Stark is an incompetent dope. And he's definitely the person who would have "World's Handsomest CEO" for a coffee mug. Can't quite picture him with that antiquated desk lamp, unless he thought it added a touch of homey charm to his sterile office space.

Rest assured, this blog will never stop being one where we give Tony Stark shit about whatever random crap we feel like.

I don't like how Charm draws Tippy. He might be trying to make her look less like an actual squirrel, and more expressive, but she just looks weird. Too sleek, too rounded in the skull. Maybe it was just that panel where she was in a snit because she couldn't tag along to confront Skrull Tony. A squirrel with a vaguely offended expression is not something I'm accustomed to.