What I Bought 12/6/2018 - Part 2

Does it feel like a lot of board games for kids lately are about bodily secretions? I saw one about popping pimples, and another about dog poop. I guess either one would be better than Mouse Trap. Could hardly ever get the dang Rube Goldberg trap to function properly. We have two mini-series to look at today. One is wrapping up, and the other is just starting. The cycle of life.

Smooth Criminals #1, by Kurt Lustgarten and Kirsten Smith (writers), Leisha Riddel (artist), Brittany Peer (colorist), Ed Dukeshire (letterer) - How difficult is it to apply those dot things she has under her eyes? Also, necklaces seem like a bad accessory for a cat burglar.

Brenda works in a computer science lab for a loser of a boss who makes her clean up some disused storage space. Where she finds a cryo-tube with Mia Corsair, cat burglar, inside. Mia bails, but Brenda hacks a bunch of stuff to guide her to where Brenda is so they can talk. Ultimately they agree to work together to steal some diamonds, but the government (or guys in black suits and sunglasses, anyway) know Mia's loose. And Brenda's shitbag boss pinned it all on her. That's not a bad bit of set-up for a first issue, certainly by today's standards.

Could you actually have done all the crap Brenda did - messing with street lights and fire stations and ATMs - in 1999? Were there enough cameras around all over the place to be able to track a lady running as fast as Mia that easily back then, especially given the resolution of security cameras then? I know the Nineties were the time of movies like The Net and Hackers or whatever, where computers were Magic. But I was also under the assumption those movies were written by people who did not understand the Internet or computers any better than I do. Which is to say, not at all.

I like the art. I can't assess the accuracy of the fashions, but I can never do that. Lot of motion lines getting used for emphasis, but that's OK. They aren't distracting, just something I noticed. I like the contrast between Brenda's awkwardness in most situations, and her almost maniacal grin whenever she can start messing with computers. I'm surprised she's as calm teasing a lady she thawed out of a weird tube as she is in the restaurant, but maybe she's riding the adrenaline high after maneuvering Mia where she wanted her. Riddel used more small panels for the conversation in Brenda's room, compared to earlier in the issue. Seems to play up how small her room is, and how tightly the two are now crammed together. They're making a partnership but, whether they wanted to or not, they're going to be in this together.

Stellar #6, by Joseph Keatinge (writer), Bret Blevins (artist), Rus Wooton (letterer) - She looks pretty mad. I think not enough of you bought this series and she's coming to destroy your illegally torrented fan-translated manga scans.

Stellar resumes trying to kill Zenith, but is halted by the old, other universe version of her, who married Zenith. Even after he eventually explained everything about how he and Stellar try to kill each other, and they're from other universes. She tells him to show Stellar he still has the gateway machine. He does, then tries to kill Stellar. That doesn't exactly work out for him, and she ends up back where she started the series. Or maybe not, since he said he destroyed that place. Maybe his machine went to still another alternate universe. Or he was lying, just to be a dick.

You know, there was that whole thing in the first issue about time behaving oddly, and they never came back to that. Little disappointed by that. I would say the series is about the futility of not letting go of the past, but I'm not sure about that. Stellar seemed like she was at least considering letting it drop, then Zenith took his best shot, and it backfired. He could never accept that she had her reasons for wanting him dead, and just letting it drop. If she hit him, he had to hit her back, only more. Which only seemed to convince her she still needed to kill him.

But was she right? He said he'd abandoned building killer robots, wasn't trying to conquer or destroy this world. The question is whether we're supposed to believe him. I mean, he has a robot in his home, but maybe it isn't a killer robot. If so, and if he could have just trusted his wife's sales pitch to Stellar, then let her go home, he might have been home free to enjoy his life. Or Stellar could have given up looking for him decades ago and just had a life of her own. But neither of them would quit, although things seem to have worked out better for her than for him. Unless his healing abilities are really impressive.

Zenith certainly seemed sorry or perhaps ashamed in the panels where his wife is trying to convince Stellar to let it go, but once it's just to the two of them in the garage, he's back to that maniacal grin. I could almost see it as him believing that she just would not leave it, and so he had to try just to preserve what he'd built, but he was enjoying it too much. He was monologuing and shit-talking and everything. If it was really just about protecting what he had, he'd have done it quickly and been finished. So he really couldn't change, although that raises the question of why the two of them can't? The criminal Stellar caught in the first issue and brought to that little sanctuary was still there at the end, and seemed a somewhat changed being. Is it something intrinsic to Stellar and Zenith being able to live as long as they did? Decades feel like only weeks or months, and they could have dropped it given a couple of centuries? Seems unlikely.