What I Bought 1/18/2020

I couldn't find the last issue of Steeple anywhere over the weekend, but I did get the other two books from the last two weeks I was interested in. Even if that did mean grabbing that Black Cat issue with the ugly variant cover. Nothing coming out this week, though.

Black Cat #8, by Jed MacKay (writer), Dike Ruan and Annie Wu (artists), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - I mean, is the Black Widow even in any of the Earth X stuff? I assume she must be, because if she wasn't, why not just come up with a Black Cat Earth X design?

There are two threads. One is a daytime conversation between Felicia and her mother, where Felicia tries to get her to accept a cruise to Germany to get her out of the line of fire of Odessa's forces. Although Miss Hardy feels confident she won't be targeted. The other, more entertaining thread is Felicia bringing along the current Beetle to help her swipe the plans for the Randall Gate in Iron Fist's basement. Which leads to Felicia getting to play with Danny, while the Beetle gets her ass kicked by the little girl that's currently Iron Fist, I guess.

I think this is playing off that Iron Fist: the Living Weapon series Kaare Andrews did in 2014. Or maybe some GN called Immortal Iron Fists that came out two years ago, also by Andrews? Hey, let's just be impressed a writer at Marvel actually bothers to pay attention to what other writers are doing with characters.

Now I think Annie Wu drew the parts with Felicia talking with her mother. Granting I haven't seen her artwork since Fraction's Hawkeye run, but that part of the issue looks more similar to what she did back then than the part with Beetle and Iron Fist.  It works for the talking parts, Wu uses body language well. I wouldn't normally think of Felicia being as nervous as she is here, but it's her mother. Special circumstances. Felicia's on the defensive a lot, backing up or with arms crossed, while her mother is leaning in, or pointing at her, or the one initiating physical contact.

The costumed part of the book, the eyes are bigger, shading is softer, faces are rounder, so I'm guessing that's Ruan's work, which I'm not familiar with at all. I like it, the comedy parts with the little dragon are amusing, Felicia's expressions work, the fight scene is good. I like the tilted panels as it goes back-and-forth between Danny and Felicia throwing attacks at each other. Also, Danny being happy to just fight a thief villain instead of someone out to "absorb his chi or cut off his hands" makes me smile. Even if it does piss Felicia off to be called a villain.

Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage #2, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Denys Cowan (penciler), Bill Sienkiewicz (inker), Chris Sotomayor (colorist), Willie Schubert (letterer) - Alright, time for a Vic Sage/Jonah Hex team-up!

The issue is set in the Hub City of 1886, and follows a Charles Victor Szasz, secretive town blacksmith. He tries to protect the apparently only black family in the town when the husband is framed for a brutal murder, but fails, thanks to a preacher who spurs the townsfolk on and isn't what he appears. Szasz is found by a native woman who talks to a skeleton and throws a faceless mask on him and tells him to go kill the preacher, who is really the "creature of a thousand faces." He hesitates and fails, and the scene shifts to the early 1940s.

OK, guy with no face against creature with a thousand, sure, interesting contrast. Vic's been trying to stop this guy for multiple lifetimes, and I'm guessing next issue will demonstrate he keeps fucking it up in one way or another. Or maybe it's always the same way, He hesitates. I don't recall the O'Neill/Cowan Question being big on killing people, so maybe that's the hang-up. Although 1886 Vic's issue was he'd killed too many innocent people previously.

There's a couple of points I'm not sure the art and the writing are on the same page. Dialogue that seems like it should fit with Vic, being said by one of the guys pursuing him, judging by how much of a beard the speaker had. But most of it is really good. There's a panel of him walking through the desert with the sun shining over his shoulder where, Sienkiewicz goes heavier on the scratchy linework to put Vic's face in shadow, and there's a few circular yellow arcs that overlap his face. You can just barely make out the lines of his eyes and nose. It's a really effective way to show how the light would hide his face from where we're viewing him.

And I like this trio of panels with Vic's eye spilling into the panel of the creature, while the arrow uses that moment to find its target.