What I Bought 11/2/2020 - Part 1

Typing this Wednesday afternoon, so I don't yet know if I need to be deeply depressed that we somehow reelected Trump, or mildly depressed that we didn't, but he didn't suffer such a crushing defeat that he had a stroke and died. Anyway, comics.

Broken Gargoyles #2 and 3, by Bob Salley (writer), Stan Yak (artist, issue 3, pencils and inks issue 2), Mike Lilly (roughs and layouts issue 3), Robert Nugent (colorist), Justin Birch (letterer) -  Maybe ask him where you can get one of those Darth Vader helmets for yourself.

So Prescott was supposed to be stealing the weapons to sell to Russians who are, I think, trying to reinstate the czar. The joke being the Russians would pay for the weapons with money made by drilling for oil in America, which America then buys. Except the Russian threatens to blow up all the oil if they don't leave, minus the money. 

Yeah, that didn't work out for him so well. Not that it matters, since Prescott was apparently never going to give him the weapon anyway. Does no one believe in a honest deal any longer?

They escape with the money and the weapon, but the Russians who were supposed to retrieve the weapon chase them down about the same time the FBI (with Manco in tow) show up and the whole thing goes nuts. In theory. In practice, it's not a very chaotic fight. Salley and Yak keep breaking it up with flashbacks to the Great War, explaining why Manco and Prescott's backstory, and why they look like they do. Yak uses a more simplified style, while Nugent goes to a grainy, antiquated film reel look for those segments. 

They don't really apply it to the sound effects, though, which makes them look out of place. I guess that could be the point, but I don't think so. I mean, the sound of gunshots is kind of an intrinsic part of their terrible battlefield experience, correct? It's not like Manco is remembering some idyllic, pastoral scene from his happy childhood, which was tragically ruined by gun violence. He was in the middle of a war where at least one side built some kind of contraption where they attached spider legs to a person(?) and put a bell around his neck to send across the No Man's Land and see if the bell bumped against anything. That pretty horrific, so bullets aren't really out of place there.

Long story short, Prescott's still on the loose with the weapon, and Manco runs across some lady marshal, and I thought this was listed as a 3-issue mini-series, but clearly it isn't because this resolved jack and shit. 

I'm not sure what's even supposed to be happening. Germany has sent delegates to New York to sue for peace, but the war is supposed to be over. Prescott is supposedly heading east, so I don't know if he's fixing to get involved in this somehow, or if he has other objectives. They make a big deal about this weapon, but it seems like some kind of mech you can fit on a truck, and they have helicarriers in this world, so that doesn't seem terribly impressive. I kinda doubt the U.S. only had the one of these mechs. And Prescott, so far at least, is going around trying to rally people to his banner. He's picked up a couple of people on the way, but one of them was an old war buddy he felt deserved better, and the other was a prisoner who just happened to get caught in the middle of all this crap. So I'm not certain there's a plan anywhere in this.