Spent a long Saturday with Alex at one of his gigs. But the weather was nice, and I was probably overdue to get my ass in gear and actually do something over a weekend. For today, we have two third issues, one of them a conclusion.
All the stories wrap up. The shapeshifting rock star performs a song at the funeral of his friend and partner, before retiring to an empty bathroom to stare in the mirror. As he has through the previous two issues, Gabboto draws the musician changing appearance in each panel, but here he gradually grows taller and more humanlike as he goes along. I'm guessing that by the end, he's back to how he looked in the good old days, but maybe he's just mirroring his deceased pal?
In the story of the species that wanders through space, the individual who decided to set out alone is gradually turning the world they landed to a green one full of life. The rest of his people have remained in the little copse of trees they arrived in, going through their death/rebirth cycle. So he's the one who's "found" what they sought for however long, by creating it himself. The others either don't realize it, or don't care. There's something interesting there, that notion that many of us are looking for something unique and expecting it to just land in front of us, rather than trying to create it. Or we think it couldn't be that simple, so we don't recognize it when we see it.
Alexander and his sister Lily go to war, and she wins, tearing his suit apart and exposing him as a frail little person. That's fine, but I wonder what she's going to do now? Great, you (eventually) stopped your warmongering brother. That ending feels the most perfunctory, the big man is actually small, and Gabotto's art doesn't really seem suited for a power armor fight.
As for the dead astronaut himself, apparently he wasn't supposed to leave the examination room, so the aliens are chasing him around. His face gets torn off, but he's still alive and leaps back into space. Not where I expected that to go, but OK. Overall a mixed bag. I think all three stories had issues where their part was stronger than others. The Star's was probably issue 2, the one about the colonizing aliens, I think either this issue or the first.
Three years earlier, we watch Even Steven face off against Bloodblade, and shrug off a knife in the back to win. The FBI sent two agents to try to learn more about Even Steven, but one of them is Fosca, who was Impossible Jones' woman on the inside for her heist gone wrong, and the one Jones was questioning about that last issue. Unfortunately, Fosca's made a connection with Bloodblade, now Saint of Knives, and Jones is put on the run. Out the window, in fact. Neither dies, a couple more heroes show up, and Saint of Knives ends up with knives in his chest. Meanwhile, her friend Jimmy's adapting to his power when he gets attacked by Homewrecker. I started laughing typing that name. Still better than "Polecat", though.
I don't know if Saint of Blades has some specific knife ability, or it's just telekinesis and knives are a handy focal point, but I like the variety of uses we see. Not just him making the knives track Jones as she tries to dodge, but he can levitate as long as he's holding onto a knife, and he pulls a door off its hinges by drawing the knives back to himself. Although it seems like the knives would just pull out of the door, but whatever.
Along those same lines, Jones continuing to figure out new things she can do on the fly. The spreading of the suit into wings, forming a third arm. Polecat's nervous question of whether she'll get rid of it by having it fall off, along with her own comment that she's gotta try and get rid of the right one, made me laugh. We see heroes struggle to adjust to their new powers, but it's usually in trying to find their limits, or in learning control and making mistakes. Tobey Maguire's first attempt at web-swinging, where he just crashed into the side of a building, for example. Here, she alternates between reveling in what she can do, but also being confused and disturbed by it. And all of it makes sense, considering she still doesn't understand where this power came from.
It's a little hard to believe she was a successful thief prior to this, considering how much she wings everything. She tries to make peace with the Saint of Blades by wrapping up Polecat, and when that fails to impress him or Captain Lightning, she turns around and saves the heroes from the Saint of Blades. Then decides she might as well speak to the press and play along with the hero thing in two panels.
Charitably, it shows an ability to adapt on her part. To figure out the advantages and angles quickly. As she notes, heroes don't get shot at by cops (maybe in her fictional universe, let's ask Spider-Man about that), and people tell them all sorts of useful stuff. I am curious what sort of resolution we're going to get in the fourth issue. Is she going to figure out if Fosca was the one responsible for her current state, is anyone going to figure out who she really is? I'm not expecting everything to get answered or settled, because I think Kesel and Hahn are trying to turn this into something that has legs, but I think something has to get some closure.
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