What I Bought 9/27/2019 - Part 1

I have officially lived where I do long enough one person at the post office recognizes my face and remembers my name. A true milestone. In other news, we were apparently so bored or loopy at work this week we somehow got on the topic of cartwheels and before you knew it, four of us were testing whether or not we could still do them. The answer is "yes", albeit not particularly graceful ones. Here's two comics from September, a story winding down and another reaching the midpoint.

Sera and the Royal Stars #3, by Jon Tsuei (writer), Audrey Mok (artist), Raul Angulo (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - That would be a hell of a thing to run into while out rock climbing.

Our three heroes take a little ride down the river, but get attacked by more of those lizard guys, this time with dragon back-up. Aldebaran's still a little worn out from the plant growth display last issue, so they try hiding in a cave. One which is enchanted and full of little flying creatures that abduct Sera and drag her to a place where she sees a lot of family members who tell her they are all disappointed in her. Hey, the holidays are rough on everybody. She makes it through, I think, with a little help from her brother's actual ghost, and catches up with her allies and someone else.

It's nice that, when seemingly confronted by the ghost of her mother who is being critical of her, Sera doesn't immediately collapse or start issuing denials. She does that stuff eventually, once her siblings join in, but her immediate response is to angrily point out her mother abandoned them for a quest just like this, so she doesn't get to judge. It's not the usual reaction you see in a story like this, but given how Sera had to be forced to do this quest, and she clearly has issues about her mother being gone because of it, it seems like the right reaction.

I really like how Audrey Mok draws clothes, or maybe it's the actual clothes. All the robes and sashes and capes, and cloaks, but the characters never look too cluttered or busy. Every group kind of has their own distinct look. The lines are light and everything flows nicely. The word that keeps coming to mind is "elegant". Everyone is very stylish, and Antares definitely has a sort of grace to her movements when she leaps onto the cliff and starts fighting.

Infinity 8 #15, by Lewis Trondheim and Davy Mourier (writers), Lorenzo de Felici (artist) - Yes, I know that's the same cover I posted last issue. This is the one Previews had online when I went looking for that's issue's cover then. It still isn't an effective way to halt a zombie charge.

Ann and the group of mercs that are helping her splash into the hanger of Mister Led, the big fish guy from the previous storyarc. And there's Ron and his Symbolic Guerillas trying to make an escape as well! Ann commandeers the the craft, and gets a little trigger happy, killing Led and both of his pilots when she enters the cockpit. She can fly the thing herself, but the transformation's accelerating. They reach the center of the anomaly and find, I dunno, some space rifts that giant corpses come floating out of? And the corpses attack them? Maybe. They blow 'em up regardless and Ann's able to talk with the people who created this place, but the transformation takes hold entirely before she can relay what she's learned, and she just blows the alien vessel up instead.

Oh well, three more tries to go.

This one's story didn't seem to hold together quite as well as the previous one. There was some stuff about Ann being very straight-laced and formal, real follow the rules type. She veers off that, but because she's been infected by the zombie bite and its gradually changing her mental state. You'd expect it to be she has to be a little more loose in how she handles things because of circumstances. And it sort of seems like that was where things were going last issue, but this issue makes it seem like, no, she's just rapidly turning into a ravaging undead. And I'm still not sure if those giant corpses were attacking, or it was simply the ship had to blast its way through to reach the center of the anomaly.

It looked very pretty though. de Felici makes the corpses this sort of green and black combination that outlines the bones so that they have the appearance of glowing. Where they emerge from the spatial folds, there's these translucent triangles around their limbs or chest. Like pieces of cellophane or the material 3-D glasses are made of that's been left out in the sun and faded. It's really odd, and I don't know that I would think of that as representing falling out of a spatial fold if the story didn't tell me that's what is happening, but it's still a very cool visual.