What I Bought 6/12/2019

I successfully moved into my new place Friday. Mostly. When we went to get the last of my stuff from what's left of the old place, we found someone had broken in through the kitchen ceiling. Near as I can tell, all they took was the Nintendo 64, since I didn't have room to take it along two weeks ago. I did pack the controllers, cables, and memory cards, but they got the console and the games. Ah well, I got 22 years out of it.

About half of my books, 95% of my comics, and all my games and movies are still at my dad's, along with my bicycle. May be a few weeks before I can get those, so Sunday Splash Page is still on hiatus, contrary to yesterday's entry (one Batgirl trade happened to be in the 5% that randomly got loaded).

But I went back and added scans to all the reviews from the last couple weeks!

Anyway, here's the only book I was after that came out last week, and the last time I checked, there isn't anything I'm interested in coming out this week. Bummer.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #45, by Ryan North (writer), Derek Charm (artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - Just tell them you're full of worms and diseases. Sort of worked for Bilbo, right?

Doreen is unhappy with how Ratatoskr handled things in that town, and when she learns the squirrel is really only interested in causing chaos, because she believes the Earth is already doomed, Doreen calls off the team-up. Doreen tromps off into the snow (and we get two pages of her leaning against a tree reading a Robert Frost poem, which felt random). Rachel mind controls some frost giants until she has a personal epiphany that Squirrel Girl was right about her. Then she mind controls one of the frost giants into taking her to find Doreen, so they can team up again. Which they do. They reach the Frost Giant stronghold, do not succeed in finding any useful intel, but Doreen thinks she has a plan, except they get attacked by Frost Giants. Because they're in a Frost Giant stronghold.

My best guess is Doreen wants Rachel to imitate a Frost Giant to sow discord among them and get them fighting, the way her attempt to be "Rachel" didn't exactly go over well with the locals in the last town. Could be, probably am, entirely wrong about that.

I like that the meanest thing Doreen can think of to say to someone is that her life would be better off if she'd never met them. There are a lot of people I would say that to, but for her, that is a damning statement. So that was funny, and so was the Frost Giants not wanting to talk about anything but frost. It's an easy gag, but it's still funny. Especially when they argue over what type of frost is the best and man, rime frost doesn't even count, Daisy what the hell are you thinking, bringing that mess in here?

The visual of Rachel turning her eyes into binoculars was a little disturbing at first. But then I figured it was the kind of thing Plastic Man would do, and it was helping her to see at long distances, so it's fine. The thing she did with her ears a couple pages later was just bizarre, though. Like I said, the bit with Doreen reading/listening to a Robert Frost poem seemed like an unnecessarily roundabout way to get to her saying, 'And miles to go before I sleep,' but Charm and Renzi draw a pleasant couple of pages of Doreen using her tail as a cushion as she leans against a tree and feeds acorns to a doe.

As far as unnecessary tie-ins to an event I'm not reading go, this one isn't bad. It still works perfectly well as a Squirrel Girl story, which is the most important thing.