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?