A Low Bar to Clear

Better for who, exactly?

Limbo starts as a private eye noir story, albeit one in an unusual, even seedier version of New Orleans where fishmen come wandering in from the swamp for a drink or fight. Clay, an amnesiac p.i., is hired by the beautiful singer at a nightclub to protect her from her employer, evil crime boss The Thumb. This, of course, turns out to be more complicated than Clay expects, even allowing for The Thumb being a masked wrestler. The Thumb has powerful forces on call, and not in the typical '80s movie style of thick-necked vaguely Soviet looking goons. And surprise, the beautiful singer is more than she seems, too. 

And so the story shifts a bit. Clay's case, his amnesia, his very state of being in this strange city are all variables in a maze, or a test. Clay's really caught between two deities doing what deities do best: Fucking around with mortals to settle arguments.

Why can't they just scream and throw household items at each other like unhappy married couples do? I guess the better way to think of it would be scientists getting monkeys hooked on cigarettes. Or the experiment my ornithology professor told us about from the '50s. Where the biologists, have determined a turkey's crop can indeed break down walnuts, decided to see if it could break down razor blades. Science!

Compared to that, putting a man in a position to possibly be eaten by a giant alligator is fairly tame.

 

So then Limbo shifts into a story about whether people can change, or if they're doomed to repeat the same actions, the same responses over and over. Is who a person is determined from the moment they're born, or is it the culmination of everything they've experienced up to a particular moment? That kind of stuff. As far as an experiment goes, it's rather flawed by the fact all sides (because there are more players than just the two deities) are cheating to sway things to their desired result.

That there do end up being more forces that get involved than expected is rather a nice touch. And those forces do so for their own reasons, although those reasons probably boil down to "protecting my turf". But they define that in different ways, and they take different approaches. Manipulation and illumination.

On the first read, I wasn't too impressed. I wasn't sure what it was going to be going in, and I'm rarely a huge fan of stories about people getting jerked around by immense, sentient forces. Maybe if you give me the story where the person jerked around decides to hunt that deity down and make their existence hell. The second time through, just taking the story for what it was, I liked it better. 

Dan Watters (writer) and Caspar Wjingaard (artist), who are credited as co-creators, lean into a particular '80s aesthetic that I sort of remember, but don't have any particular affection for. The kind of Miami Vice jackets and color schemes. Clay is usually, when he's in the city, anyway, colored a sort of soft neon blue with white hair. His landlord/caretaker Sandy is a bright green from head-to-toe. His client a deep red, The Thumb mostly purple. Other, ordinary, people are colored more normally. I do enjoy the color work, though. Clay makes his way into the club for the big confrontation, fighting his way through the henchmen. All the panels are drawn from the same perspective: behind him, head hidden under a hooded jacket, and the surroundings get steadily darker, mirroring his descent.

Clay's battle with the teleshaman takes him through a world of TV I recognize, but that's probably as much from when I watched VH1's "I Love the Eighties" as my own memories. Like, I remember daytime talk show stuff like Donahue and Geraldo, but it doesn't mean anything to me. I'm to this day not sure what Max Headroom was supposed to be about. Or hiding a listening device in a He-Man toy. I had He-Man toys when I was a kid - got a lot of mileage out of that Castle Greyskull with my Spider-Man and Ninja Turtles figures - but it's not something I have nostalgia for, you know? So at times it's an experience of, "Oh, I think that's a reference. . .OK," and move on. So if the particular era Wjingard and Watters chose is meant for some greater spiritual meaning in the story, I'm whiffing on it.

Sunday Splash Page #168

 

"Up From the Sewers," in Doom Patrol (vol. 3) #10, by John Arcudi (writer), Tan Eng Huat (artist), Dave Stewart (colorist), Bob Lappan (letterer)

Arcudi and Tan Eng Huat explore a bit into the "superheroes as commodities" notion with this run, as your typical CEO type is trying to create his own superhero team he can merchandise. It's not really working out, she approaches Robotman to license the Doom Patrol name for merchandise and even a TV show. Sure, a TV show about the Doom Patrol is ludicrous - that would never happen, obviously - but it's fiction so we'll roll with it. Cliff agrees because he can use the cash, and reluctantly sticks around to help the kids. Huat doesn't draw them with the stereotypical superhero physiques or faces. For the most part, I'd say they look fairly normal, in that they look weird in the way regular people can look weird. They hardly ever wear uniforms or costumes, the closest probably being Ted (the redhead up above) and most of the crime they fight they sort of stumble into.

So while the team is tangled up in a mess about ancient Chinese artifacts, or a demon trapped on Earth trying to gather souls to empower himself, Jost is trying to turn a profit while polls tell him people want the original Doom Patrol members back. Who are, as mentioned, dead. Arcudi does get a good "Negative Man" gag out of the cast of characters he's made, though.

Or when the team walks away, he simply gets a new team of pre-existing characters (Elongated Man, Metamorpho, the good Doctor Light, and Beast Boy.) There's even an issue where Jost argues with a TV executive and a fanboy writer about what they can do to make the TV show more popular, with the writer being outraged at how out of character they are proposing to make people.

There's also a lot about what Cliff really is, at this point. He's been dead multiple times now. Rebuilt endlessly. His "brain" isn't even an actual flesh-and-blood organ any longer. You'd think after all the weird crap he's been through that might not be so daunting, but Cliff mostly just seems tired of it all. Then the Cliff we see for the first 7-8 issues isn't the Cliff we see for the rest of the series, and that raises its own questions. Huat also gives the Cliff from later on a less streamlined, more clunky, more, well robotic appearance to reflect the difference. Later Issues Robotman can't be nearly as expressive with his face as Early Issues Robotman.

Being part of a team doesn't seem to do any of them any good. Fever at one point decides the best thing for her to do is nothing. Freak flat out hates her power and would love to be rid of it. Fast Forward tries to improve his power, push it further, and about drives himself insane. Ends up on medication to cope with it. Kid Slick's the only one that seems to avoid all that, and it's his getting hospitalized by Fever that prompts her to embrace apathy as a lifestyle. You can't make someone be a superhero. They either want to be, or they don't.

The series ended at 22 issues in Fall 2003. I think it's one of those series often overlooked, but well-loved by the people who find it. A year later, we got the John Byrne Doom Patrol, spinning out of a storyline I think he and Claremont did together in JLA, which did in fact bring back a lot of the original team.

Random Back Issues #61 - Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane #19

It was difficult for Flash to make his friends understand that trying to meet Spider-Man by causing lots of grease fires was a good plan, actually.

We last looked at this series 14 months ago, in the Before Times. When thoughts of working from home didn't even exist in my mind. At that point, MJ and Harry were both deemed the biggest flirts in school. Now, the two of them are dating. Like drawn to like.

This issue is mostly about Flash, though, who is sleeping a lot in school and during practice, and hearing about it from his girlfriend Liz constantly. No one knows what's happening, but while on a date with Harry, Mary Jane happens to spy Flash in the kitchen. His dad lost his job, and his new job doesn't pay a well, so Flash is helping support the family. He doesn't want Harry or Liz to know, because they'll either give him a lot of grief, or Harry will just give him a lot of money. Self-sufficiency is nice, but Flash admits that if he does well in football and keeps his grades up he could get a full ride to college. So maybe he should accept help that allows for that.

 

Spidey shows up at MJ's door as she gets home, hoping to talk, but she asks if they can wait until tomorrow. He agrees and swings back off into the night. The next day, MJ goes against Flash's wishes and tells Harry and Liz anyway. Harry laughs and offers money, Liz complains a lot about Flash not telling her (while making some hilarious facial expressions.) Swell friends. Still, when she insists they all need to help Flash somehow, those two listen.

MJ meets Spidey for a rooftop chat. He's dating Firestar (completely forgot about that) and she wants them to reveal their secret identities to each other. He's hesitant because there's another girl he's still hung up on and not sure about. If he shows Firestar who he is, that's a serious step, and he doesn't want to take that if he's still thinking about this other girl. Sensible enough, I suppose. MJ says it's a sign of how good a person he is this worries him, and that he should trust himself to make the right choice. 

 

When she gets home, she finds Liz and Harry waiting, who have come up with a way to help Flash. Harry bought him a pillow that'll help him sleep better, designed by a 'rocket scientist or something.' Liz got him a coffee pot with an alarm clock, so he'll have a 'fresh dose of piping hot caffeine waiting' in the morning. She also tells Flash she's gonna yell at him, but not today. Mary Jane was going to get Peter Parker to tutor Flash, but realized that was a bad idea. Flash agrees. Yeah, Peter's got better things to do than help a guy who makes his life miserable. Like saving lots of ungrateful dickhead New Yorkers from the Vulture or something.

The issue ends with Flash thanking Harry, and Felicia Hardy (who previously made Liz very insecure about her relationship with Flash) apparently setting her sights on the Osborn heir. There's only one issue left, so I'm pretty sure most of these plotlines did not get resolved.

 

Also, there's a Mini-Marvels back-up where the Hulk tries to follow everyone's advice when he takes Betty on a date. But Thunderbolt Ross sends a robot to spy on them and a fight breaks out. Lots of references to not trying any "funny stuff" and Bill Cosby which, yeah.

[10th longbox, 119th comic. Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane #19, by Sean McKeever (writer), David Hahn (artist), Christina Strain (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer). Mini-Marvels "Hulk Date", by Chris Giarrusso (writer/artist)]

Operation Petticoat

Cary Grant's a World War 2 sub commander, except his sub was damaged in a bombing raid before ever going on a mission. With the base in danger from the Japanese advance, he gets permission to at least try and get it to another safe base, if he can even get it running. And he'll have to make do with whatever crew he has left or can scrounge up. Which is how he gets a lieutenant (Tony Curtis) with no actual experience in submarines or anything related to serving at sea. Curtis is a hell of a scrounger though, or perhaps black marketeer would be a better word.

As they travel in a clanking, listing, occasionally leaking submarine, things grow more complicated. Not so much due to the Japanese, though. Curtis goes ashore on one island to see what he can "acquire" and returns with a half-dozen nurses, who obviously cannot be left behind in the face of the advancing enemy. Except submarines aren't equipped to be co-ed in the 1940s, so this causes many problems. Mostly owing to having a sub full of guys, or the chief engineer being freaked out by women hanging their underwear to dry in the engine room (that's bad luck, Captain!). There's also one nurse who is klutzy as hell. Hits collision alarms by accident, causes some kind of foul-up right when they were about to torpedo a loaded tanker, causing them to hit a truck instead. All of which drives Grant up the wall. In his typical wryly sarcastic Cary Grant way, of course. No pulling his hair for this fella.

Eh, with the quality of American torpedoes in the first half of the war, they probably wouldn't have sunk the tanker anyway.

The last little bit of the movie, they end up taking on a bunch of pregnant ladies Curtis promised to transport to safety in return for something. I forget what. They also needed to paint the sub for some reason, and with only red and white paint, and not enough of either individually, they mix them and the sub becomes pink. Cue much grousing about humiliation among members of the crew.

I guess because it's supposed to be a comedy, the movie skirts the edges of the war. The sub is retreating already, and in no fit condition to fight anyway, so there isn't much time wasted on avoiding depth charges or air attacks. It's mostly Grant growing increasingly frustrated with all the unexpected passengers, and with Curtis treating the war like a minor inconvenience on his attempts to climb the social ladder. Definitely not a film I'd call a career highlight for either actor.

A Slowdown At Summer's End

August has a couple of new things on offer, but with a few mini-series having ended or things going on hiatus, it feels like a little quieter month.

Marvel has two of the new things of interest. One is Al Ewing and Javier Rodriguez teaming up on a Defenders mini-series. Can't say it looks like my favorite lineup - the Surfer's in there, and I've never found him terribly important, and no Nighthawk, Hellcat, or Valkyrie and I'd take any one of them, not trying to be greedy - but it's worth a look. 

The other is a Darkhawk mini-series, by Kyle Higgins and Juanan Ramirez, who did the third and final section of that Darkhawk one-shot I bought last month. This is almost certainly playing off Powell sending the amulet back through time with all his memories and experiences, and handing it to a new kid. I don't know. That was actually my least favorite of the three parts, but I might at least try it.

Beyond that, there's still Black Cat, Runaways, Moon Knight if the first issue didn't dissuade me. Sure wish I'd seen Way of X #5's solicit before reading issue 2. Would have lessened the shock a bit.

Outside of Marvel, what have we got. A few old reliables. You Promised Me Darkness wraps up its first arc, and Freak Snow concludes. Midnight Western Theatre and Locust will both be available. Locust is now listed as an 8-issue mini-series. Seems like it takes an issue or two with the smaller publishers before they say how long something is going to be if it's a limited series. I also read somewhere that Chaos Agent, the other mini-series Scout was going to publish I was interested in from two months ago, may not be coming out after all. Bummer.

That's it as far as stuff I'd been buying. As for new possibilities, Mark Russell and Ben Tiesma are publishing a series called Deadbox through Vault, about a possessed DVD machine (not a player, but one of those little kiosks you can rent DVDs from) that I'm guessing is going to let characters buy DVDs about their own lives. And Dark Horse has a trade of Phillip Selvy and Drew Zucker's mini-series The House, about some American GIs who shelter in a big mansion during the Battle of the Bulge, and spooky things happen.

That sounds potentially cool, but it also sounds like how that horrible, horrible movie Ghosts of War started. Cause for trepidation, that, but it won't actually be out until October, so there's time to decide.

Black '47

A solider (James Frecheville) in the King's Army returns home to Ireland during the potato famine years. He's not pleased with what he sees. The starvation, families being kicked out of their homes by English lords so they can save on taxes, a legal system that doesn't represent the Irish. The film spends a fair amount of time on that. How you could get some soup if you renounced the Catholic Church and accepted the Church of England. The people starving outside the lord's estate while the grain gets shipped to England. How the layer or servility and politeness the Irish carry is wafer-thin, and there's a lot of anger an resentment.

The United States clearly learned a lot from them.

When the last of his family dies because of this cruelty, he decides to go John Wick on some people's asses. The man who kicked his mother out of her home, the judge who ordered his brother hanged, the bailiff and so on.

That can't be tolerated, the Irish getting the notion they should be treated as people with rights, so the British send a snot-nosed Captain after him, and bring in a former commanding officer (Hugo Weaving) to help track Feeney. Of course, the longer things go, the more he sees, the less Weaving wants to help kill a man who served him and the Crown loyally (until he deserted, but I don't blame him for that. Why die for Britain in Afghanistan?) and came home to all this. Even the Captain seems slightly uncomfortable with what he sees. Not enough to do anything other than his duty, but you know, he looks sad a couple of times. That counts for something.

All the daytime scenes are washed out or colored dully. The sky's always cloudy or shrouded in fog. it makes everything look cold, or maybe dreamlike. Like this is a nightmare world these people are drifting through, just suffering all around. People dying slowly.

Unfortunately, the washed out color scheme means the white subtitles they use whenever Fenney or the Irish speak in Gaelic are really fucking difficult to read. I wasn't planning to need to read when I turned this film, and that added complication was an especially unpleasant surprise.

What I Bought 5/19/2021 - Part 2

Another day, another pair of comic reviews.

Way of X #2, by Si Spurrier (writer), Bob Quinn (artist), Java Tartaglia (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer), Tom Muller (designer) - This comic does not live up to the cover's promise of fun multiple swashbuckling Nightcrawlers.

Legion goes inside Kurt's head and finds something that's been messing with him. In return, Kurt now owes him a favor. So he grabs Dr. Nemesis (in the middle of chatting up Fabian Cortez) and Pixie and they find Legion's disembodied brain in the grasp of these anti-mutant Orchis guys. Legion's brain, with all its many personalities, is being used to model ways to destroy Krakoa from within. Kurt and Pixie deal with the thing causing the problem, but Legion's about to blow, so Kurt shoots his brain.

Legion gets a nice new body in Krakoa and hops inside, then rebuffs Magneto's offer to join in some bullshit project, and Xavier's attempt to, I don't know, half-ass reconcile, and decides to hang out with Kurt. Which is sort of promising.

Oh, and the last page bombshell as to the identity of the "Patchwork Man", who is the thing Kurt suspects Orchis introduced into Krakoa to tear it apart is. . . Onslaught.

Sigh. I should have expected this, right? First Donny Cates with all the symbiote bullshit. Miles Morales is having his own Clone Saga. Heroes Reborn. Onslaught is the next logical step, like Dewey Cox going from cocaine to uppers and downers. You know, setting aside that Onslaught originally caused Heroes Reborn. Once again, as someone who lived through this stuff, I'm befuddled these folks want to revisit the nightmare. 

I'm actually curious to see where this goes, even if Dr. Nemesis' sneering contempt for almost everything is going to get old in a hurry (incidentally, Spurrier's using Elsa Bloodstone the same way in Black Knight.) But if the road goes through Onslaught. . . sounds like the point where you jump out of the car and hope you don't land in a pile of broken beer bottles.

I like Tartaglia's coloring in the more unusual moments. Like the sickly greenish-yellow he gives the panels in Kurt's mind. It gives that sense of strange lighting you see in storms, which makes sense given the state Legion finds Kurt's mind, but also hints at the infection inside, throwing Kurt off his game. And the panel when Kurt shoots Legion's brain. Tartaglia sets it as a red outline against a black backdrop. It's a stark change from every other panel up to that point, and helps draw attention to Kurt actively (mercy) killing someone, which is apparently a big deal for him.

 

I was gonna post that panel, but Spurrier and Quinn did another mass vomiting panel and I have decided I will post those for every issue I buy that has one. Ta-da!

You Promised Me Darkness #2, by Damian Connelly (writer/artist), Anabella Mazzaferri (letterer) - Seems excessive, but can't say that crazy Satanist isn't trying to keep from spreading COVID.

Sebastian and Yuko are brought to where Sage and their people stay by a talking cat named Nuria who coughs up hairballs that transport you places. Meanwhile, the Anti-Everything's right-hand lady is rounding up some helpful lunatics of her own to track down Sebastian and Yuko. One thing I'm unclear on is whether he knows he needs them specifically, or if he's just hunting them because he knows they have powers and he wants them.

Sebastian doesn't want to stay, but maybe Sage mentioning that while Sebastian did start the fire that burned down his house, he did not kill his father will get him to stay. And in Korea, someone found PSY as he's just starting to figure out his super-awesome hit song that will turn everyone into mindless zombies. While aware of it, I'd never actually listened to "Gangam Style" before, so I looked it up on Youtube last week and. . . 

Look, every friend has given me shit about at least one band or artist I listen to, so maybe my taste is crap. Even so, that song is freaking terrible. I couldn't make it past the first 80 seconds before I had to stop and erase it from my viewing history, lest it contaminate the suggested videos.

That aside, Sage is still narrating. The verbal tics are less annoying here, with less backstory to relate. Gives Sage fewer opportunities to wander off-track. It still happens - Sage at one point explains they still aren't back yet because it stopped raining and they decided to go buy groceries - but even just cutting back on it helps.

 

Connelly also evens out the amount of white versus black in the artwork, so there's fewer panels where I'm struggling to figure out what I'm seeing based on a couple of little bits of white among huge amounts of shadows. There's actually enough there to have contrast to play with negative space. Now I'm pretty sure Sebastian just has light streaks in his oddly long hair. And when he actually wants to go with a panel that's overwhelmingly dark, it has a little more oomph. There's one where the Anti-Everything steals this other person's mind reading power and it's this dark thing of a guy's barely outlined face screaming and there's odd-shaped white blobs and circles everywhere, like he's being torn apart.

Sunday Splash Page #167

 

"Just Don't Pick At It And You'll Be Fine," in Domino: Hotshots #1, by Gail Simone (writer), David Baldeon (artist), Jim Charalampidis (colorist), Clayton Cowles (letterer)

So Marvel canceled Domino after 10 issues, then, as Marvel usually does, immediately released this five-issue mini-series. I guess they left an entire month between the two, which is more restraint than I'd normally give them credit for.

Something Celestial-related falls from the sky and everybody wants it. Domino's group gets hired by the Black Widow, Silver Fox, and Atlas Bear (the young Wakandan woman who told them Longshot was going to destroy the world) independently to find it. Domino isn't sure she can trust any of them, or count on any of them to follow her orders, regardless what they say.

There's a lot of running around, back-and-forth, attempted double-crosses. Tony Stark gets involved as a competing interest, even sends Deadpool after them. Deadpool then teams up with them, and Stark later decides to help them as well. It all turns into one of those "resist the godlike power" trials. It feels like Domino has to go through a crisis of confidence at least twice, maybe three times. Thinking about it, what I can figure for Simone's less confident version of Domino is that she trusts her power to protect her, so she's comfortable winging it solo. But she can't be certain that protection will extend to her friends and allies, which means she can't just wing it. She has to work against her natural impulses, and that's makes her uncertain. Best theory I've got.

Baldeon's artwork continues to be enjoyable. Not as many people looking psychotic as in the ongoing, but in the circumstances, characters are more likely to be desperate or confused that crazy. Charalampidis' coloring is bright without being overdone during the daylight scenes, and keeps the nighttime scenes from being murky or hard to follow.

All that said, the most enjoyment I got out of the series was theorizing everybody is fighting over essentially Celestial poop.

What I Bought 5/19/2021 - Part 1

I almost found every comic I went looking for this week. The only one I missed was Runaways, which was not the one I expected to whiff on. But it all fell out rather neatly because we can look at two third issues today, and two second issues on Monday.

Black Knight #3, by Si Spurrier (writer), Sergio Davila (penciler), Sean Parsons (inker), Arif Prianto and Chris Sotomayor (colorists), Cory Petit (letterer) - How will Thor escape from his prison within the Ebony Blade? What's that? You say he can create portals with Mjolnir? Never mind then.

Dane, Jacks, and Elsa go hunting for the Ebony Chalice and end up in some mystical wasteland where they encounter Mordred and his sidekick. Elsa's having a lot of fun trying to kill the sidekick while Dane and Mordred take swings futilely at each other. The two of them are interrupted by the land itself creating phantoms that tell them what they want to hear. Mordred shakes of Faux-Arthur's love first, and so Elsa splats Dane's head with her shotgun so Mordred can't swipe the sword while he's confused. Dane regenerates, extremely angry, and Mordred bails. Meanwhile, Merlin's old raven shows Jacks what happened with Sir Percy fought a younger Thor, and then leads her to the Chalice. Which Dane is going to drink from, which Mordred is very excited about.

Given my nature to suspect cutesy surprise reveals and double-crosses, I'm half-expecting the raven to be behind all this. Bitter that it was cast aside into this place by Merlin because 'a wizard's familiar smacks excessive of the pagan ways.' Probably not, although the notion of the raven wielding the sword, the shield, the dagger, etc. is amusing. I'm also wondering if Dane gaining understanding would make him incapable of wielding the Ebony Blade. Mordred figures Dane can't let himself be happy because he won't be able to use the sword, so he at least wants to understand. If he understands, whatever he's going to understand, does that cut him off at the knees?

 

Prianto and Sotomayor go for brighter colors in the flashback to Thor's run-in with Percy than in the rest of the book. Granted, that part is apparently under bright sunlight, but there's also an element that things started out well, that Camelot was a bright and honorable place once, but now it was all leading to a dark and dreary end, full of fog and ruin like the place Dane, Elsa, and Jacks spend the issue. The blade drew out Percy's worst habits and he became something awful. If Dane keeps on, he'll end up the same way presumably.

White Lily #3, by Preston Poulter (writer), Jake Bilbao (penciler), Kumar (inker), Alonso Espinoza (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - I'm honestly guessing on everything past Bilbao, because the credits on the inside cover haven't changed from the first issue's.

Back in action, Lilya gets shot down and has to bail out into Stalingrad. She manages to lure a Nazi chasing her into someone else's grenade trap, and spends the night with a grieving mother who eats bread made of sawdust and has left her deceased son frozen outside. I guess digging through frozen soil would be difficult. Making it back to base, she's ready for more, while Katya and Alexi worry. Alexi worries so much he sort of proposes, and they end up as wingmen. Alexi's old wingman, the captain of the squadron, ends up flying with Katya. And the issue more or less ends after another mission when a downed Naiz pilot is brought in asking the meet the flier who shot him down. He doesn't believe it was a woman, and he's less happy it was a Jewish woman. Well tough shit, Fritz, count yourself lucky they left you alive long enough to satisfy your curiosity.

I'm surprised Poulter didn't spend more time on Lilya making it back to base. The woman who shelters her for the night says she doesn't know how Lilya will get across the Volga to her squadron, and we never find out. The story just cuts to the airfield and Katya being overjoyed when Lilya shows up in the back of a truck. Maybe it wasn't that interesting and Lilya made it uneventfully, but it seems odd to have a character specifically wonder about that and then just gloss over it entirely.

So, with Lovalle Davis' passing, Jake Bilbao, who has been drawing the covers thus far, steps in as interior artist as well. He joins the ranks of Harley Quinn artist Chad Hardin as someone whose work I originally encountered in the Bloodrayne comics I was buying the first few years this blog existed. Unexpected encounter, to be sure. His lines are a bit softer than Davis', characters' faces are rounder. Lilya's hair looks like it got styled a bit more. The inking and shading on faces is cut back a lot, especially for the women. I guess they look prettier. Depends on your aesthetic preferences. 

 

Though there aren't as many in this issue, the flipping of the page on its side for the air combat scenes continues. So was that always something Poulter wanted for the more widescreen effect, or was it Davis' idea and Bilbao is trying to maintain consistency?

Cold Skin

A young man (David Oakes) accepts a year-long position as weather observer on an island somewhere south of Australia. His predecessor died of typhus, according to the extremely ragged looking man named Gruner (Ray Stevenson) that mans the lighthouse. Gruner appears to be the only other inhabitant, until the second night, when it turns out their a race of amphibious humans that live off-shore. 

They quickly destroy his cabin, or rather, he destroys it in his dumbass attempts to fend them off. I really can't see how he thought the firebreak consisting of every book he brought was worthwhile. It's a one night solution, and you've got 362 more nights to go! The fact he has coffee, tobacco, gin, and lots of bullets convince Gruner to allow him haven within the lighthouse, gussied up like a siege tower. Where he finds Gruner has one of the fish-people (Aura Garrido) living there, as his pet. Or slave. Or sex toy.

I guess this movie was for dudes who watched Shape of Water and said, "where's equal opportunity for the men who want sex with fish? Lady fish, obviously."

Anyway, things progress unsteadily from there. Friend (as Gruner calls the young man) makes halting attempts to understand the fish-lady. Even gives her a name. He considers ways to escape, but also ways to finish off the frequent attacks once and for all. Gruner seemingly doesn't want anything to change. There's a whole thing how both of them are running from things they don't want to deal with. Gruner the loss of someone, Friend from World War 1. Except he wound up in his own war, with only a crazy man by his side. There's even a scene the day after a big attack where the two of them wander amongst the dead and dying in a charred, torn up landscape.

Stevenson plays Gruner as unhinged, but ultimately kind of pitiful. He's fine with this life so long as he thinks he has everything under control. It makes him feel like God, he decides who is safe or not, who lives or dies. If someone starts to go against his will, he tries to shout them down, and if that fails, he sort of falls apart. Kind of a classic abuser, although I think he really is falling to pieces, rather than it being a ploy for sympathy.

Friend is torn between recognizing that meeting a new form of intelligent life is extraordinary, and he should be trying to understand them, and being terrified he's going to die and trying to kill them. And we never see enough of their culture to really understand their perspective. They don't seem to get that if you bust down the door of someone's house and tear it apart looking for them, they may stab you when you get close. So what's that mean about how they live under the sea?

I did wonder why Friend didn't just take his supplies and go further inland. It's unclear how big the island is, but there are clearly hills visible in the background. They're getting timber for Gruner's defense from someplace. Get away from shore and let them attack Gruner every night.

The expansive shots of the ocean and the shoreline are beautiful, especially as the weather changes across months. The use of the lighthouse to temporarily spotlight the fish-people is a nice touch. There's some very moody music at times, usually in the quieter moments, that I really enjoyed, but can't describe well. It just captured the isolation somehow.

It's A Society, I Guess

I wonder what the endgame is for the whole "Krakoa" set-up in the X-Books. Long-term, I'm sure it all falls apart somehow and mutantkind ends up fragmented, with a certain group of mutants living in a big house in New York State calling themselves X-Men.

But more in terms of what the creative teams are thinking now about where they're sending things. Maybe that's all Jonathan Hickman's ball, but I assume the other writers are at least being consulted, or bringing some ideas to the table.

Krakoa is described by most of the mutants living there as the wonderful place. Mutant utopia. Much better than all those limited human societies in every way they tell us repeatedly.  I don't mean just by the citizens who live there, ignorant of the secret kill squad with absolute authority to do seemingly whatever they want. I mean even the folks (like ol' Chuck Xavier) who are hip-deep in the ethically questionable shit are convinced they're doing so much better while they simply emulate the worst habits of human societies.

The cronyism (how many mutants who died horribly are still waiting for a chance while Pixie gets moved to the front of the queue after encouraging a bigot to blow her head off with a shotgun on a dare). The convenient loopholes ("we said kill no human, but these intelligent beings don't count as human, so murder the shit out of them"). The hypocrisy (Maddy Pryor's a clone so she can't be resurrected, but so are the Cuckoos and they're all running around. Or hell, the fact Maddy has her own entirely unique and distinct memories not shared by Jean Grey should move her beyond simply a clone). Or the bloodthirstiness (why does a depowered mutant have to be killed in ritual combat in front of a crowd to be reborn with their powers?) It's unclear what sort of educational system they have, beyond having the kids work on combo moves (cool, but maybe of limited practicality).

I assume the writers are intending to highlight the faults of the braintrust running Krakoa. The limits of their thinking. They've mostly agreed to not go with the Magneto/Apocalypse approach of wiping out or subjugating all humans. Closer to Xavier's idea of coexistence. But it's always felt like Xavier intended that as mutants living in a combined society with everyone else on Earth (more like Morrison's conception.) Most of the laws and social mores would already be in place, but tweaked and expanded to be more open and accepting to mutants and their perspectives.

They're still doing that to an extent, since Krakoa's leader communicate with other nations' leader, engage in trade and p.r. battles and so on. They seem quite good at capitalism. But having established their own nation, rather than melding into existing ones, they have to put everything together themselves. They don't seem to have any idea how to do that. They've overcome death (or managed a workaround at least), which is very cool. They've mostly ceased the infighting between different philosophies that's marked most of the X-Men's history. Beyond that, I'm not sure what they're doing.

I don't know if that's on the writers, that they can't conceive of a truly new society or way of doing things. Or it's meant to be on the characters. They've been struggling just to stay alive so long they never thought this far ahead. And dying doesn't matter now, so why worry about it? Like the college kid on their own for the first time who decides if no one's going to make them go to class, they're gonna sleep in as much as they want. Also, they're going to eat a ton of Twinkies all the time because they can do that now. 

No, that wasn't my college experience. Well, some variation of the Twinkies thing was at different times, but not the sleeping in thing.

The know they don't want to do education like humans, but haven't devised an alternative, and it's not clear anyone is actually working on one. There were already systems and models to work off before, so there was no need to devise their own. But if they've dismissed those other systems as inferior human crap, then what's left? Krakoan leadership: *collective shrug and shake of the head*

Nightcrawler's supposedly trying to devise some sort of belief system, or maybe morality in a society that sees death (or dying, or killing) as no big deal, but a) he's seemingly working alone, which rather limits perspective, and b) he's not making any headway.

But if the end goal for this whole Krakoa status quo is for everything to collapse because the leaders did such a lousy job building a functioning society, is that really a great look for your ostensible heroes? Hey, you finally created a place where mutants could feel secure and meet humans on equal terms, with equal protection, but it was a mess of a place predicated on suffering, and pain, and bending your own rules whenever it suited you. 

I suppose it could be laid as commentary on the characters. That this is not the sort of role they were created for, and they're poorly suited for it. That, having created this safe nation, they needed to step aside for other mutants with gifts better suited for creating a fair and just society. The issues in stretching certain characters beyond tolerances or sell-by dates. I don't expect that to be the case.

More likely Krakoa is eventually destroyed in some big event thing by external forces. That way the writers can shuffle the X-Men back to more familiar waters, without having to necessarily paint them as big fat failures. The society would have come together if they'd just had a little more time. Darn that Symbiote-Encrusted Thanos-Blood infused AIM Thor!

The Planets - Dava Sobel

Sobel's approach is to devote a chapter to the major bodies of the solar system, moving from the Sun outward. Each chapter takes a different tack, related either to a particular characteristic of the world, or some spiritual or mythological importance humans have placed on it. 

The Jupiter chapter describes events with many references to astrology and what relation Jupiter's position was believed to have to a particular person or particular day relevant to our study of the planet. Mars' chapter is related through the story of a meteorite found in Antarctica that was originally part of Mars, and appears to have fossilized remains similar to very early bacteria. Mercury's speaks to the mythological Mercury, his traits and specialties, and how the planet reflects them.

Most curiously, the chapter on Uranus and Neptune together is mostly presented as a letter (that I'm assuming is fictional) between Caroline Herschel, sister and assistant to William Herschel, to Maria Mitchell, an American astronomer who discovered a comet in the mid-1800s. It talks all about the disputes over what they'd call Uranus (and similar disputes that were emerging about Neptune), and how they were discovered, and how they were confirmed, and how the discrepancies in Uranus' orbit prompted the search for Neptune through mathematics. As history lesson dressed in a top hat and fancy spectacles. Clever enough I guess, but it felt a little too cutesy for me.

So some chapters are more effective than others. I'm not really reading a book on the planets for astrology or mythology, so that's less interesting to me than just seeing if I can learn something new about the planets themselves, or the story of how they, or their moons, or some other unique characteristic, were discovered. None of the chapters are terribly long, though, so if one didn't catch your fancy, it's a quick jaunt to the next.

'Shriveled and ridiculed, Pluto was altogether stripped of its reason for being after Voyager 2 passed Neptune in 1989. The need for a ninth planet vanished in the realization that Neptune and Uranus balanced each other's orbital anomalies. The calculations that had led Lowell to the prediction of Planet X apparently held no more water than his Martian canals.'

What I Bought 5/14/2021

Did anybody else notice that hour or so late last week where all the Blogger sites were being blocked as containing malware? That was concerning, I hadn't saved last year's posts yet. I really don't know what approach I'll take the day Google decides to just throw Blogger in the trash. At some point they'll decide, "this ain't making us any money," and poof, into the aether it goes.

Anyway, to "celebrate" having to return to working in the office, one book from last week. I tried the other store in town, and they didn't have the last issue of The Union, either. Said the sales tanked after issue 3, which doesn't exactly surprise me.

Black Cat #6, by Jed MacKay (writer), Michael Dowling (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - Like Scrooge McDuck, Felicia Hardy oversells how comfortable gold coins are.

The Gilded Saint accepts the Fox' offer. It now owns Manhattan, and Fox and Felicia are immortal and youthful. Felicia is outraged at the double-cross, but tearing the Fox' throat out doesn't work and he escapes. After lying to Spider-Man (who shows up for 3 panels, sorry if you were expecting more based on the solicitation), she tells her guys to get lost and goes to bargain with Odessa Drake. This would seem dicey, given all the stealing and threatening her with borrowed Iron Man armor, but when Felicia and the Fox got immortality, it was taken away from Odessa and her Guild. So that's a good reason for everyone to play nice. So Felicia gets magically "booped" into the Saint's vault.

This feels like it's moving slow. Maybe that's just Dowling's art, which isn't particularly dynamic or exciting. It's fairly realistic, but when he's mostly just drawing people standing around talking, that's not all that eye-catching. Not doing a lot to make that a more interesting prospect, either, in terms of layouts or whatnot. I guess I could mention the fact that during their time chatting, Odessa is repeatedly the one leaning into Felicia's space or trying to touch her.

Still, this issue is a conversation between Felicia and Fox, which feels drawn out. A pair of conversations between her and Spider-Man/Bruno and Dr. Korpse that are quick and to the point. And the thing with Odessa, which is the last 8 pages. That one, I think does deserve the pages it gets, because of the fact they've been adversaries until recently, so that has to be addressed before they can work together.

Sunday Splash Page #166

 

"Wrong Marvel Movie, Domino," in Domino (vol. 3) #4, by Gail Simone (writer), David Baldeon (artist), Jesus Aburtov (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer)

The issue before this had a full-page splash of Domino basically drooling over Shang-Chi. I'd have used it if I went with the "Domino in a bikini" splash page two weeks ago. Should try for equal opportunity objectification, right?

So Domino got her first shot at an honest-to-goodness ongoing series in spring of 2018, roughly coinciding with the character's big screen debut in Deadpool 2 (the series started in April, the movie was released in May in the U.S.) Gail Simone wrote the book, no stranger to the world of Cable-adjacent characters (see Sunday Splash Pages #5 and #132). 

Where the two earlier mini-series focused on Domino's past, either her questions about it or ours - I assume someone was asking about if she'd been married - Simone gave her a small mercenary team to lead, consisting of Deadpool supporting cast member Outlaw, and old Serpent Society and Captain America love interest Diamondback. Diamondback being a sort of well-to-do upper crust type didn't seem to track with any previous characterization, but oh well. That way they could get hired for jobs and encounter complications, ala Simone's Secret Six, or Birds of Prey. It's a reliable storytelling approach.

Which isn't to say Simone didn't some use of the character's backstory. The first arc was Domino being menaced by two other subjects from the same program that Pruett and Stelfreeze established as having experimented on her in their mini-series. Simone took a love/hate approach for Domino and her luck power. That she sort of blindly trusted it would keep her alive, but it might leave her bruised and bleeding for the privilege. She also made Domino a little more, I want to say spastic? Not so much a cool, composed mercenary. Maybe that's meant to be a result of knowing your power could save your life in the most embarrassing way possible.

David Baldeon was the series artist for most of the run, although he drew very little of the last two issues, where Domino's hired to kill Longshot to save the world. He has a fluid enough line to draw a Domino that looks exhausted, messy, and confused in bunny slippers and an X-Force commemorative t-shirt, but can also thicken them to make characters look extremely intense or psychotic. Which comes up fairly often in this series.

The series got canceled after 10 issues and one Annual, although there was immediately a five-issue mini-series, which we'll get to next week. My biggest issue with this series was stories seemed to just end abruptly, with major points relegated to offhand comments. The first story raises a question of someone on Domino's team being a traitor, and that's explained and brushed off in one panel. The characters would be in dire situations, where it seemed like someone was going to do a heroic sacrifice, then they were simply OK. A repeated, "Is that it?" reaction.

Random Back Issues #60 - Katana #2

Katana's smack talk is still a work in progress.

I think Ann Nocenti's Katana series is the only other New 52 title I still have besides Dial H. Oh wait, no, I bought the tpb of that Giffen and Didio OMAC series a few years back. Nevermind. Anyway, Katana! I haven't read it in a few years at least, so trying to remember what the heck is going on's a treat. There's a bunch of clans based around what weapons they favor, and Katana's after the Sword Clan, who she holds responsible for her husband's death. She tangled with a guy named Coil, who uses a sword like whip in the first issue, but he's got a lot of reinforcements, and it ends with her refusing an offer to join and everyone scattering.

Katana catches up to one of them, the guy up above, who doesn't want to fight her. Instead, he'd rather parley, even agrees to help her infiltrate his family and bring them down. Which involves her attending a social function in disguise as his date. First though, she visits a woman with tattoos over all of her body, Shun the Untouchable. If I remember right, the tattoos can tell you important stuff, but it costs money for a peek and Tatsu's out of cash, so all she gets is a glimpse of a dragon on the foot and a riddle or proverb.

 

While she's trying to make a plan, she gets harassed by your typical drunk-ass bum martial arts master, who throws candy at her, calls her a twit, then kicks her butt when she fights him. He tells her she's got to learn how to disguise herself. He also explains the riddle that if one is past and two is present, then third is the future. Meaning what Tatsu saw is a glimpse of a future?

The big party has a bunch of ladies with double-ended swords putting on a demonstration. Their boss Sickle steps out and asks if anyone wants to accept a challenge, so Katana jumps in and fights the lot of them. She wins, but her sword acts on its own near the end. And since Sickle is her dead husband's brother and someone else who tried to win her heart, he knows who's under the mask. When he tells her to join up or he'll blow her secret identity, she agrees. The better to get close to her enemy.

 

But that'll have to wait because as she exits the party she's accosted by Steve Trevor, who wants to recruit her for that other Justice League. The one that had Vibe in it. Maybe Hawkman? I can't remember. I more surprised that she apologizes for putting her sword to his throat when he introduces himself. Maybe he was the League's public liaison, but I can't picture him being a well-known figure. 

And meanwhile, Killer Croc of all people has taken an interest in her, because her sword was said to have killed the last dragon, and I think Croc wants to level up. From what was sometime interpreted as a dragon, to the real thing.

[6th longbox, 90th comic. Katana #2, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Alex Sanchez (penciler), Claude St. Aubin (inker), Matt Yackey (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer)]

Return to House on Haunted Hill

A sequel to the 1999 movie with Geoffrey Rush and Chris Kattan, which I enjoy more than any reasonable person probably should. The connection is that one of the two survivors of that film, Ali Larter's character, dies early in this film, and her sister gets dragged into the mess. There's some ancient Satanic idol suspected to be within the place, and there's an archaeology professor and one of his former students turned into a relic-hunting merc after it.

I think the people who made this one worried that too many of the victims in the earlier film were too likeable. So you've got the relic hunter and his team of gun-toting goons, and one of the professor's Ph.D. students was sleeping with him to funnel information to the relic hunter. The sister (who runs a magazine that's probably a lot like Maxim) and one of her photographers (who was just trying to be helpful) are caught in the middle.

There's not a lot of open conflict between the sides, because one side usually has enough guns to just order the other around. So the film quickly dives in to everyone splitting up and getting steadily picked off during what's basically a fetch-it quest. Find Object A, return to Point B, reveal Exit C. 

It's a bit more gruesome about the deaths than its predecessor, more shock value and Raimiesque gore. One guy gets drawn and quartered by angry ghosts. Another gets thrown in a furnace by terrible CGI charred corpses and burned to ash. Another has a fridge dropped on their head. Instead of amorphous shadows, or only being able to see the ghosts through camera monitors and not with the naked eye, the ghosts are perfectly visible whenever they feel like it. Most of them have oddly elongated faces or features that are stretched out. The idol is in the depths of the hospital, in an area that is somehow almost organic. Like that part of the building is flesh-and-blood now. Why? No idea.

It's weird, because occasionally the movie will do something relatively subtle. The sister tries to slip away while everyone is arguing, and the one female merc, blurry in the background of the shot, ducks behind a column and follows her until she eventually cuts her off. The movie doesn't see the need to draw attention to it, which is the first and last time I can say that.

What I Bought 5/8/2021 - Part 2

Of the four comics I went looking for last weekend, I didn't expect the last issue of The Union to be the one I couldn't find. So instead of two fifth issues to look at, we've only got one.

Iron Fist: Heart of the Dragon #5, by Larry Hama (writer), David Wachter (artist), Neeraj Menon (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - She's aimed that kick a little high, hasn't she? Or is Sue Richards riding on Danny's shoulders?

Nobody's very happy Okoye killed one of the dragons, but apparently it was so she can absorb its energy and team-up with Danny to save the day. Somehow. I guess if she's got it the evil Hierophant guy can't get it. Can't decide what that guy reminds me of. Demon King Piccolo crossed with the Lich King from Adventure Time? Eh, probably not. The Mother of Mercy's expositing is interrupted by him and Brenda, or Yama Dragonsbane. Who still has not bothered to actually fight Danny Rand. 

It is funny to watch Luke Cage basically no-sell everyone's offense in this mini-series. Super-strong, bulletproof guy is not impressed by all this kick-flippy ninjitsu stuff. Brenda goes charging to unleash some sword attack and surprise! The blade breaks on his skin and he punches her in the head.

Fooh lures the bad guys into chasing him back to Rand Tower, and blows up his gate, trying to close all the gates that way. Maybe it works, maybe it didn't, but the remaining heroes are going to have to fight the big, angry, presumably evil dragon that's been sitting on that tower in the cursed city for the previous four issues.

The farther into this mini-series we get, the more of it that seems pointless. Like, what was the need for the Immortal Weapons to run around trying to protect their dragons and cities? Apparently it was better for Okoye to kill the dragons and absorb their power herself to keep it from Hierophant. Did they have to do all this so the proper person to assume that "honor" would reveal themselves? Because it feels like nobody has done anything of any use in this story. Move the Heavenly Cities? Doesn't help. Hide the dragons? Doesn't help. Smash a bunch of undead ninjas? Doesn't help.

 

I guess Hama could be going for a "heroism is ultimately futile", or "easy solutions are no solutions at all" sort of ending, although I kind of doubt it. But it really feels like Danny might as well have stayed home and gotten a few more hours sleep.

Dead Again in Tombstone

Apparently this is a sequel to an earlier movie where Danny Trejo plays Guerrero, a man who died, went to Hell, and agreed to send other people to Hell if the Devil would let him out. I'm unclear if he was already dead in the first one, or that was how it ended.

He actually spends very little time in Tombstone, instead returning to his childhood home of Silver River, where he's immediately confronted by some Confederate putz who wants a mysterious "bone box" Guerrero's brother said their father hid. Guerrero has no idea where it is, but this doesn't stop the Confederate from blowing up his horse, or ultimately stabbing his mother, or threatening his estranged daughter. It turns into a whole thing about looking for some satanic relic with the power to raise the dead, and Guerrero's got to decide whether he's going to stand and do the right thing or not.

The biggest problem is that the Confederate, named Jackson Boomer of all things, only survives because Guerrero's an idiot. There are multiple occasions where Guerrero or someone else has a gun on Jackson, or he's standing out in the open in front of someone who has a gun, and they simply. . . don't shoot him. They shoot other people instead. Guerrero does this repeatedly, and I'm sitting there wondering why he's not cutting the head off the snake. The rest of the Johnny Rebs have about three brain cells among them, kill Boomer and they're easy pickings. Even when he gets shot, he seems to recover from that rather easily, so who cares if they shoot him a bunch?

Plus, the Rebs love to tie a string around something so that it triggers an explosion when pulled. Guerrero falls for this twice. The second time when he should really be more concerned about finding Boomer than picking up his childhood toy horse.

Oh well, low expectations not exceeded once again.

What I Bought 5/8/2021 - Part 1

Our governor, in his endless brilliance, announced out of the blue last week all state employees will return to the office on the 17th. No remote work options will be considered. This after six weeks of our bosses telling us maybe we'd be in the office by July, and that they're working on remote work options. Never mind a lot of people still won't be fully vaccinated. Tomorrow is 2 weeks since the second shot for me, and I got the first shot the second day I was eligible. To say nothing of all the people in this state who won't get vaccinated at all. But sure, business as usual.

Anyway, here's a couple of first issues.

Jenny Zero #1, by Dave Dwonch (writer/letterer), Brockton McKinney (writer), Magenta King (artist), Megan Huang (color artist) - That kaiju's gonna be lucky if it didn't step on a used needle.

Jenny was part of Japan's giant monster fighting agency, the daughter of the biggest (literally) hero, and she got discharged for currently unspecified reasons. She moved to California, has a publicist/hotel manager that looks after her, and spends her time drinking and taking all kinds of drugs. The giant monsters are moving beyond Japan's borders, so her uncle asks her to fight one headed her way. She's not happy, but does it (while drunk), and while in the process of being carried away by a giant remora, is shot and manifests the same "growing giant-sized" powers her dad apparently had.

I guess the idea is everyone always compared her to her dad, and minus his super-powers, she didn't measure up. That got old, so she decided to stop trying? Either living for herself as much as possible, or trying to rebel as obviously as possible. Her uncle, who King draws about as square-chinned and lantern-jawed as possible, says she's bringing shame to her family. Which, you know, always a good approach to take when asking for a favor.

Seriously, if you flipped the guy upside-down I'm pretty sure you could build scale-models of famous landmarks out of toothpicks and spit on the underside of his face. Overall, King's artwork varies as the situation requires. It seems to get looser, more blacks during the battle at the end, while it's busier, with thinner lines in the first half of the book where there's a lot of talking. Jenny looks ragged, sweaty and tired. Her clothes don't look like they fit terribly well. She's not taking care of herself and her friend's efforts are mostly for naught (boy, do I know what that's like), and the art reflect it.

 

I did raise an eyebrow at the notion that if left to our own devices, the U.S. will simply bomb the monster and cause a lot of collateral damage. Not that it's an inaccurate reading, I'm just not sure having a giant person fight the monster will be all that much less destructive. I'm seen a lot of animes. Fights between giant things break stuff.

You Promised Me Darkness #1, by Damian Connelly (writer/artist), Anabella Mazzaferri (letterer) - Not the cover I ended up with, but it's nice and foreboding.

The issue is narrated by someone called Sage. They're over a hundred, and one of the people who gained powers when Halley's Comet flew past in 1910. There's a lot in there, and Sage's thoughts seem a little scattered, but the most critical part seems to be there's a cataclysm coming in two weeks, and involves a pair of siblings. A boy who creates fire, and a girl who pulls you into your nightmares. 

I thought that's what alcohol was for. 

There's a son of a satanist who can steal other powers closing in on them, and he, plus the song "Gangam Style", are going to somehow destroy everything. Or maybe it's a coincidence that song debuts on the important day (July 15, 2012). Connelly draws PSY so that he reminds me of Kim Jong-Un. Maybe it's just the hair? 

Like I said, Sage doesn't seem an entirely reliable narrator. They've got people looking for the siblings, Son of a Satanist Preacher Man has a bunch of zombified lawyers after them, there's a giant Doberman in the city. I am unclear on whether Sage means it's large for a Doberman, or large like it's the size of a house. I guess if it was the latter it wouldn't be so difficult to find, but it apparently can talk, so maybe it can turn invisible, too.

 

I wonder if Connelly is going to stick with Sage as narrator, or switch between characters. I can only hope for the latter, because Sage is kind of annoying. They don't have the Bendis stammering tic, but there's a lot of random "Yikes!", or "Oops!" in there. Example: 'I don't know why sometimes I make promises I'm not sure I can keep, Yikes!' Sage is probably a good character to use for exposition in the sense they've been around a while and know a lot. Their thought process means they can jump from topic to topic without it seeming like the author is trying to info-dump. It's like talking to a grandparent where one story about the old days segues into the next and then the next.

The art is all black-and-white, and I'd say the black dominates. In some panels it works, where faces stand out sharply. The panel of the mushroom cloud, where it's in white, against a black backdrop and mostly black city? That works pretty well. In others, I can hardly tell what I'm supposed to be looking at. The first panel where we see Sage, they're on a balcony at the bottom of the page, and it's hard to tell it's supposed to be a person and not just a sculpture like the ones on either side of Sage. I can't figure out what's going on with Sebastian's (fire boy) hair at all. Is it long, is it standing up, is it constantly windblown? Does he have a white streak like Rogue, or is that smoke wafting from his head because he's always a little on fire?

Of the two books, You Promised Me Darkness is the one that intrigues more, but it's also the one that's more likely to put me off stylistically.

Sunday Splash Page #165

 

"Glass Confetti Didn't Catch On," in Domino (vol. 2) #1, by Joe Pruett (writer), Brian Stelfreeze (writer/artist/colorist), John Costanza (letterer)

Six years after the first Domino mini-series, Joe Pruett and Brian Stelfreeze took a shot at it. They take more of an action movie approach compared to Raab/Perrin's "doomed romance" melodrama. Pruett and Stelfreeze shift back-and-forth between Domino dodging bullets, and people doing exposition dumps. In the first issue, it goes from her acquiring a biological weapon, to her contact accepting the weapon and sending her to meet a hacker who has some information she wants, to Domino having to avoid death at the hands of an attack helicopter (in a sequence where she wore a wig, but didn't do anything to disguise her black eye patch or startlingly white skin). It's not a bad approach.

They also mostly divorce it from the Marvel Universe. No Donald Pierce or Lady Deathstrike, no Gyrich. No Puck. Well, they can't all be good decisions. Cable shows up in one panel when Domino calls for help and tells her to basically piss off. She calls Siryn, but she's identified as "Theresa", and there's no discussion of how they know each other. Not really any discussion about mutants or X-Force or anything.

The story is similar in that it delves into Domino's past, but Pruett and Stelfreeze have her searching for her mother. Which puts her up against both some cruel experimental branch of the US military, and a group of crazy ninja monks calling themselves the Armajesuits. Stelfreeze gives them the hooded, flowing robe look, then adds in very sharply outlined masks for a little extra flair. The story serves as an origin for her powers, and gives her both a brother and a mother. Neither of whom I think we've ever seen again. The mother, just like Domino's now-deceased ex-husband from the first mini-series, can perceive the future. Interesting how someone with powers that could cause unlikely events would gravitate to people with that skillset.

Stelfreeze's art is very sharp and hard-edged. Uses a lot of thin lines to starkly outline jaws or cheekbones to make people look fierce or stubborn. Or really set someone's eyes out from their face to make them look fanatical. Also goes with a lot of broad panels stacked one on top of the other during the action sequences. Usually with thick black gutters between them. It feels like it's going for a widescreen movie approach, and his art has enough flow to it the reader can follow the course of the action easily.

They write Domino as a bit more lackadasical than Raab did. Although it doesn't seem like she's necessarily relying on her power to save her, so much as she's just that confident in her abilities. And she does come off as much more capable here than in that prior story. There's rarely a point where she seems over-matched or at a complete loss. This story ends on a what could be an upbeat note for Domino, but probably a down note overall. I guess that depends on what you think her mother did after the last panel.

Next week, Marvel attempts to capitalize on the character's popularity after Deadpool 2 by handing her an ongoing series. Spoiler alert: It doesn't work.

Random Back Issues #59 - The Spectre #15

At least when he's passed out in his own vomit he's not condemning his friends' souls to Hell.

The last time we looked at an issue of John Ostrander's Spectre run, it was a fill-in artist issue about a scientist that created life but didn't respect it. This time, we've got that good Tom Mandrake stuff goin'.

Jim Corrigan, and by extension the Spectre, aren't doing too well. A good friend of his died a few issues earlier while the Spectre was tangled up fighting a demon. Jim, being a man from the 1920s and 1930s, deals with his grief like you'd expect: He lashes out. Problem being, he's attached to God's Spirit of Vengeance, so the blast radius is pretty wide.

The issue begins with the Spectre in the Sinai, debating whether to just destroy the planet since humanity is such a bunch of assholes. I identify with that mood. The Phantom Stranger pops up to tell him that wouldn't be allowed. Spectre's not even sure if he'll do it, but if he does, who's gonna stop him?

 

The Stranger sets off to gather a team of magical forces to help him out. Inza Nelson's rocking the Dr. Fate helm, and she's game. The only other thing she had planned was to maybe use its power to clean up a neighborhood or reupholster her couch, so why not? After that, it's on to a drunkard, a demon, a sorceress, and a woman who does not die. 

 

Constantine is, as seen up top, unavailable. Although Inza offers to flush his system, and the Stranger basically says, "fuck that guy." Oh well, good thing he wasn't part of whatever ridiculous plan you had. Jason Blood's a little put out nobody ever shows up asking for his help, but to be fair, Jason Blood's kind of a pill. Etrigan is at least cheerful, and curious to see if he's stronger than the Spectre.

I said Etrigan was cheerful, not that he was intelligent.

That's as far as that plotline gets this month. The rest of the issue follows the Spectre, who ventures on to Cairo. A major Palestinian leader is there as part of peace talks, and the Israeli super-powered security group Ostrander and Yale introduced in Suicide Squad, the Hayoth, are there too. But not to kill him. While Saad had committed attacks against Israel, including some that took the lives of their leader Colonel Hacohen's family, he's pushing for peace now, enough extremists on both sides hate him. Better to protect him, and spare more innocent blood.

Well, a certain chalk-white spook in a green cloak has other plans for someone with innocent blood on his hands. The mage Ramban senses his approach, but the Golem's attempt to smash the Spectre gets him scattered over the landscape. Ramban's a little tougher, because his magic draws on the same power that fuels the Spectre. He tries reasoning with the Spectre, that killing Saad will result in more death, but the Spectre brushes that off. He'll just kill those murderers, and anyone else who kills in response to their murders. Brilliant. DC's Spirit of Vengeance may have needed to pass a literacy test, but clearly wasn't imbued with common sense. God must have created that on the 9th Day. 

 

Though Corrigan can't blast Ramban directly, he can pummel him with large stones. The last member of Hayoth, the assassin Judith, tries getting Dr. Saad to safety (after fighting his security detail), but when she reaches her team's room, Hacohen shoots her. His rage at Saad - plus a certain black diamond - has brought him under Eclipso's control. He pulls the trigger, but the bullet halts in mid-air, and turns into the Spectre. Neat trick. Eclipso calls him "usurper", since he was God's fiery hand first, and they have a brief skirmish before Eclipso bails. Spectre's ready to get back to handing out vengeance, but Ramban explains his life force is now linked with Saad. Will the Spectre take an innocent life to kill this man?

Considering he killed every single person in the civil war-torn country of Vlatava, minus the rival leaders, literally two issues earlier, because he deemed everyone a murderer? Seems like a risky gamble, especially if you're a person who was part of a covert government strike force. Really doubt Ramban's hands are clean, you know? But the Spectre leaves, though his opinion of humanity hasn't improved. And now Eclipso's got plans to take advantage of his unbalanced state. . .

There's a couple more issues to go in this story, and then there's some understandable fallout. Suffice to say, the Phantom Stranger's plan to attack the Spectre is a bust, but a different group has a little more success reaching Corrigan.

[10th longbox, 15th comic. The Spectre (vol. 3) #15, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Carla Feeny  and Digital Chameleon (colorists), Todd Klein (letterer)]

Chaplin (1992)

I'm not sure I've ever watched a Charlie Chaplin film (although I want to see The Great Dictator at some point), but I was curious to watch this. Robert Downey Jr., before Tony Stark, Ally McBeal, the rehab stint, all that jazz.

The movie presents Chaplin's life as him, via him discussing his autobiography in the 1960s with either his ghost writer or his publisher (Anthony Hopkins). Which allows the way the narratives told to offer insight into Chaplin, via what he focuses on, what he doesn't. He ignores his father entirely, and we never see the man. Hopkins notes at one point that Chaplin only devoted five sentences to his second wife, the mother of two of his children. This is while the movie is showing them working together on-set and constantly demonstrating affection for one another. 

And that's kind of how it goes. The things that mean the most to him, he keeps hidden. Either he can't find the words, or he doesn't want to share them. So he glosses over it, or makes something up, such as when he describes how he settled on "The Tramp" as a character, how the costume just called to him, and in the middle of this dramatic retelling, with Downey doing all this exaggerated gestures, Hopkins cuts in with "poppycock," and we see the real deal.

Downey plays it that way, too. When Chaplin is around people - fans, cameras, whatever - he assumes this energetic persona. The smiles, the waves, the greetings. A jovial guy. But the minute they turn away, he drops it almost instantly, and he spends a lot of time with this almost blank look. Like he's just waiting for his cue to start acting again. There's a lot of shots of him alone. Alone in a studio, on a street, in his house. Even in crowd sequences, there's often space between him and most other people, like when he visits a pub in England after WWI. The comedian who wonders if people actually like him is apparently a recurring thing, along with the comedian who wants to make films that speak on societal issues.

There's a couple of places where they apply the old style of slapstick film-making to the movie. Such as when they do a Keystone Kops bit when the police are trying to seize the film Chaplin and his studio are working on, because his first wife (played by Milla Jovovich, was not expecting her name in the credits) has listed in as an asset in their divorce. 

For that matter, the whole sequence where he first plays The Tramp was highly entertaining just for how it shows them making films. Basically, that the director (played by Dan Aykroyd, hell of a cast on this movie) shouts out instructions (like "Domino fall") and they react instantly. I guess it's just improv, but I'm used to that as people just talking, not physical comedy like pratfalls and chases.

So there were some funny bits, some sad bits, Chaplin's an interesting figure, and J. Edgar Hoover's in there, being his usual, hateable fascist self.