What I Bought 1/27/2020

It was weirdly cold yesterday. Yeah, it was January, but for there being no wind to speak of, it felt a lot colder than the low 30 degree temperature it supposedly was. Maybe due to it being cloudy all day. That's your one day late mid-western U.S. weather forecast. In other news, two comics, both wrapping up their current stories.

Steeple #5, by John Allison (writer/artist), Sarah Stern (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - As Jimbo once noted when speaking of the Devil, there is a man who has eaten a lot of meat. I'm pretty sure that South Park episode is over 20 years old now, and I'm depressed.

The Reverend is away trying to find himself, and Mrs. Clovis is gradually concluding Billie might not be terrible. Then Billie offers to vacuum so Mrs. Clovis can have a day off, but the witches that were paid to resurrect the vacuum, really just put a hex on it to make the user doubt their calling. Meaning Billie questions what she's doing in the Church. Maggie is having similar doubts about being a Satanist, so they essentially switch places. Which is probably for the temporary best, since the mermen have decided to attack in force, and Maggie motorcycle was a more effective weapon than whatever Billie would have brought to the party.

And that's where things stand. Billie's in with the orgies and whatnot, Maggie's on the outs with Master Tom (although I wonder if Brian would still be her friend), and may form a reluctant friendship with Reverend Penrose and Mrs. Clovis. If the book ever continues. I like the idea of people feeling like they aren't supposed to be a certain way, or feeling as though what they're doing is getting them nowhere, and trying to be something else. And that it isn't always easy to maintain that change. If it's not something you really want to be, or be doing, it's hard to convince yourself to continue.

The flashback to Maggie's previous life as a protestor of most everything cracked me up. I think she needs to change up the pattern on her signs, though. Don't let it get to where people can predict the cadence, that lets their eyes and ears glaze over.

Infinity 8 #18, by Emmanuel Guibert and Lewis Trondheim (writers), Franck Biancarelli (artist) - Trees with teeth are not something to be approached. Not without a flamethrower. Yes, they're in the vacuum of space, so obviously I meant a space flamethrower.

Leila and Bert find the central console so Bert can talk to the memories of dead people. They quickly get sidetracked because the sentient fungus thing attached part of itself to their ship and is taking over the central console. They flee, they meet the aliens responsible for this whole place. The aliens state they did gather these corpses from across the universe, and construct a device to give them access to those species accumulated knowledge, but it's purely academic. Then they're destroyed while trying to stop the fungus thing. At least they gave Leila and Bert a shuttle first. So, mission complete, time to leave, right? Well, not exactly, because when Leila tried to look up Bert, he noticed there was a coffin with him inside already there. There's still a mystery afoot.

Well, I figured they were going to miss meeting the architects of all this, but that wound up not being the case. Instead, it's that the architects are lying to them. Which isn't surprising, really. If someone found you hoarding dead bodies from all over the place, I doubt you would explain exactly why you were doing so. Especially if there wasn't a compelling need to do so.

It's amazing how much less imposing the Captain of the Infinity 8 looks when he's presented as a small holographic projection, rather than his true form in his giant aquarium chamber thing. He looks kind of silly. I like that the fungus creature's look evolved from where it was last issue. Granted, that look is now more Groot-like, but it has eyes now, a more expressive face. It actually swings its arms as it walks, instead of letting them hang limp beside it as it did before.