What I Bought 7/6/2019 - Part 1

As you might have guessed from the resumption of Sunday Splash Page, I retrieved the remainder of my stuff from my dad's over the weekend. One less thing to take care of off my mind. Otherwise, it was a mostly quiet weekend. Spent the 4th with Alex, per tradition. Helped my dads run errands Saturday before grabbing my stuff. Relaxed the rest of the time.

Magnificent Ms. Marvel Annual #1, by Magdalene Visaggio (writer), Jon Lam (artist), Msassyk (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - I'd recommend dodging, Kamala. It's not just the most important "D" in dodgeball, it's also a good way to avoid dying.

Super Skrull is approached by some Kree guy with a device that can draw the shapeshifting energy out of a person, and if they're strong enough, use it to reshape an entire world. Like make Earth into a replica of the old Skrull homeworld. And Kamala just so happens to have enough of that energy.

Rather than fight her directly, Super-Skrull assumes the "Captain Hero" identity from the end of the original Power Man and Iron Fist (although I think Byrne retconned it to being Super-Skrull, it was just some kid originally), and tries to goad her into a fight by. . . fighting crime in Jersey City? But being kind of brutal about it, supposedly? Kamala ignores it, so he eventually busts in on her fighting a criminal, and tries to kill the criminal to get the fight going, then drops his disguise. The device almost kills them both (accidentally), and Kamala convinces Super-Skrull to stop worrying about revenge and focus on moving his people forward.

Wow, that plan makes absolutely no sense. I get the part about not wanting to attract the Fantastic Four's attention by just showing up in his full glory throwing flame blasts around. But if he wants to goad her in, why try to antagonize by taking a contrary approach to crimefighting? Be the sort of hero she'd want to team-up with, then she'll drop her guard. Also, the news report says people are calling him the "new Punisher", but he's not killing anyone, just punching them a little harder than most heroes do. Not that I wanted him to kill Arcade, Batroc, or the White Rabbit, but the action/reaction don't line up.

Lam's art is loose, a little scratchy, but closer to the look of the previous volume of Ms. Marvel, which is fine. Kamala's a gangly teen with expressive eyes. Lam really sells the impact of Super-Skrull's punches because Kamala's body will go flying and her limbs may be stretched out as the lag behind. Captain Hero is closer to the conventional superhero look, though you'd expect a more Nineties design for such an "extreme" hero. But maybe when Kamala talks about that not being how things are done any more, she's referring back to Golden Age comics, when even Batman and Superman killed people?

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #46, by Ryan North (writer), Derek Charm (artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - Thor does not appear in this issue. Loki does, at the very end, if you care.

Squirrel Girl's plan to defeat the Frost Giants is to find their food supply and cut it off. After some thinking, they realize the Frost Giants are eating whales, and set about freeing the captive beluga whales. This requires assistance from beluga whales that haven't been captured, which requires Ratatoskr to use that one semester of Whale she took in college to communicate. The whales are freed! Hooray! Now we humans are free to hunt them down and kill them again!

Of course, the Frost Giants are still around, now both hungry and angry, so our duo defeat them with the power of political rhetoric. Works for me, because invading Earth really wasn't a great idea for Frost Giants. Afterward, Loki tries to show up and drag Ratatoskr back to Asgard jail, on the grounds that she tricked him once, so she can't be trusted. I think, by that logic, no person should ever trust Loki, and we should all punch him and throw him in Asgard jail. Anyway, Doreen vouches for "Rachel", and Nancy vouches for Doreen, and that's that.

It was a nice tie-in story. I didn't care about War of the Realms, but this works fine as a Squirrel Girl story where she has to stop a random Frost Giant invasion of her native Canada. The main gist of the story is Doreen first trying to get Ratatoskr to not be so chaotic, and be helpful instead. Then realizing Rachel can use her being a trickster god for good. She doesn't have to change who she is entirely, just use her natural talents in a different direction. Doreen is willing to trust her to do that, and it works.

My two favorite bits in this issue are the Frost Giant that was appointed "ship's captain" in his striped blue-and-white shirt and little cap, and Rachel's attempt to speak whale. Both are shown above for your convenience, along with the wonderful line, "Food has backfired somehow!" Clearly that Frost Giant has never eaten anything really spicy or that he's allergic to.

Although Charm draws Rachel as a narwhal (an adorable narwhal with pointy incisors), not a beluga. Granting the two are fairly closely related as whales go, and the horn(tusk?) was integral to Rachel's plan, are North and Charm implying all whales speak the same language? I find that extremely unrealistic. In this story about a girl with squirrel powers teaming up with a trickster squirrel god to fight Frost Giants for the fate of Canada.