Sunday Splash Page #229

 

"Lurkers," in Hawkeye (vol. 1) #3, by Mark Gruenwald (writer/artist), Eliot Brown (assistant artist), Christie Scheele (colorist), Joe Rosen (letterer)

Minus the occasional solo spotlight issue, Hawkeye was an ensemble character for the first 20 years of his existence. I almost typed "team player", but given his role as team irritant, that wouldn't be entirely accurate. In 1984, he got a 4-issue mini-series, written and drawn by Mark Gruenwald.

At this point, Hawkeye's not part of the Avengers, instead acting as Head of Security for Cross Technological Enterprises. Things are going pretty good until a certain blonde ex-SHIELD agent shows up following rumors that Cross is working on a sort of mind control weapon. In less than an issue, Clint loses his job, his home, and his girlfriend, the latter making sure to twist the knife on the way out. With nothing better to do, and too much pride to go crawling back to the Avengers, Hawkeye teams up with Mockingbird to help uncover the truth of what's going on and runs into a string of third-tier villains.

The mini-series sets up a lot of things that have carried through for Hawkeye over the last 35 years. The relationship between Clint and Bobbi (which also continues Clint's tradition of dating women involved in espionage work). Crossfire becoming an arch-foe to Hawkeye (he targeted Hawkeye for his villainous scheme because he consider Clint the weakest, most vulnerable known crimefighter, which ouch.) Although of all the villains Hawkeye faces, I liked Silencer the best. Sound-deadening outfit, with kind of a Dominic Fortune look to it. Professional, not annoyingly chatty. Sadly, this was apparently the only appearance of that version of the character, and they re-used the name a few years later for someone in Strikeforce Morituri. 

Clint losing his hearing is established here, as he defeats the mind control weapon by jamming one of his sonic arrowheads in his mouth and setting it off. The sky-cycle Hawkeye would use for a lot of years, I think at least until Bendis killed him in Avengers Disassembled, is introduced as something one of Cross' engineers made for him. Clint's tendency to take setbacks poorly and slip into a funk, something certain writers took to exasperating lengths later on.

Prior to reading this, I had no idea Gruenwald drew any comics, since I really only knew him as the guy who wrote Captain America for most of my childhood. His style seems similar to a Bob Hall or some of the other Avengers artists of the time. Brett Breeding is inker/embellisher on the first two issues, before it switches to Brown for issue 3 and Danny Bulanadi for the final issue. The issues with Breeding as inker look the best; more fluid and subtly expressive than Brown, less heavy-handed with the shading than Bulanadi.

Gruenwald seems to really like pages with one panel that stretches top to bottom at either the right or left edge. Uses them mostly as establishing shots, either introducing characters or the setting for a scene, but some of them don't work with the overall layout as well as others.

Saturday Splash Page #31

 

"Business Casual Action Squad," in WildC.A.T.S. (volume 2) #17, by Joe Casey (writer), Sean Phillips (artist), Dan Brown (colorist), Richard Stsarkings and Saida Temofonte (letterers)

I bought the trades of the late 90s - early 2000s 2nd volume of WildCATS because I'd heard it lead into a lot of what Joe Casey did with volume 3 and I wanted to read that. So now you know what to expect for next week's Saturday Splash Page.

The series starts from the point that the whole big, galaxy and century-spanning war, of which the team was fighting a single front, had actually been over for a very long time. So, what now? Lord Emp, the little guy who ran the team, decides he ought to clean up a few of his messes and step aside, then leaves the Halo Corporation in the hands of the battle android Spartan, now listed as Jack Marlowe. So a machine built to fight has to decide how to run a company, and do so in a way it will materially improve the world.

Most of his attempts at that don't kick in until WildCATS 3.0, as he's largely preoccupied here with cleaning up old business. Grifter alternates between hanging around, questioning what Spartan's doing, and sleeping with women who remind him of Zealot, who he thinks is dead. She's not, and is in fact trying to clean up her old business, by wiping out the entire warrior religion/cult thing she established when she first came to Earth. Maul, who apparently grows smarter if he emaciates himself (inverse of using his powers to grow in size at the cost of intelligence), is busy trying to find a way to remove the Daemonite genetics from Voodoo as a way to be her white knight. Rather than just, you know, hanging out with her. Or bothering to ask her if she wants to be "cured." The alien symbiotic thing that bonded with a cosmonaut to form Void pops up, minus the cosmonaut.

(Other than one flashback issue early on when Scott Lobdell and Casey are co-writing the book, Warblade never appears. I don't know enough about the character to hazard a guess as to why Casey didn't include him. Grifter makes reference in the issue to a Soho art studio, so maybe Warblade was the most well-adjusted and went back to his own life as soon as possible.)

Grifter, Zealot and Maul are hung up on their pasts in various ways. Unable to accept things have changed, or that there's anything new to work towards. Voodoo seemed to content to just ignore her past. At least half of Void decided they were done and moved on. Whereas Spartan seems to almost resent every time he's forced to get involved in old business. It gives the impression that once Emp gave him a task, he programmed it into himself and anything that forces a deviation is a hindrance to be dealt with as soon as possible.

That's oversimplifying, of course. Spartan does take some things personally, but Phillips tends to draw his as this stoic, distant figure. He glowers occasionally, but never seems pleased by anything. Grifter spends most of his time looking like a scruffy drunk, sneering and shouting. But it's scruffy looking book in general, drenched in shadows. Especially when those two are in it. The sections focused on Maul and Voodoo are usually brighter, until the descendant of some guy Emp fought decades ago called Slaughterhouse Smith shows up. Then it's a lot of dark hospital rooms.

Casey adds a couple of characters to the cast as he's shuffling others out. Agent Wax, who has a telepathy/hypnosis thing going, and works for the U.S. government investigating superhuman stuff, and Noir, who is kind of a hacker/arms dealer. Guy who thinks he's the smartest person in the room, and who loves to mess with Grifter by implying all his aggression is repressed homosexual tendencies. He's a really annoying character, so the shocking yet inevitable betrayal and subsequent comeuppance are very satisfying.

He also brings in a cyborg named Maxine Manchester that was apparently a pre-existing character, and well, I'm not sure about his use of her. Grifter brings her along because they more or less run into each other on separate business and he figures it'll keep the destruction down. She hangs around being loud, but does try to help with Smith (granted, because she's bored and wants to fight rather than anything altruistic) and gets badly damaged. Spartan and Grifter basically shrug and say, "She deserved it."

I mean that literally. Grifter refers to her as a 'stupid bitch,' while she laying there smoking and Spartan agrees she, 'paid the price for her impatience.' Noir shuts down her sentience and turns her into a killbot for his aforementioned betrayal, and they still don't really care.

Maybe she tried to kill the team in the past and I should feel as bad for her as if something awful happened to Sabretooth or the Joker. Which is to say, not at all. All I have to go off is what's in this volume, which is some weird cyborg cult tried to kill her for having too many organic parts, and then the stuff I detailed above. None of which seems to merit the callous response, especially as there is no pushback whatsoever in the narrative against it. Are we meant to agree with it, or see it as evidence of how fucked up Grifter is and how inhuman Spartan is that they basically don't care?

It reminds me of Stacy X in Casey's Uncanny X-Men run where I can't tell if he wants me to take Stacy's side when Angel/Iceman/Wolverine start giving her shit (which I generally do), or if he expects me to agree with the more established characters who I think are acting like judgemental dicks.

I'm not really inclined to give Casey the benefit of the doubt considering the treatment of most female characters in this run. The descendant (who shoots fire from his eyes) goes around brutally murdering a bunch of women who have the last name "Marlowe" before he actually manages to find "Jack", and due to her having a Halo credit card in Jack's name, he goes after Voodoo. Who he paralyzes, cuts off her legs and cuts her vocal cords. She gets better as part of accepting her Daemonite heritage, but not after Maul can feel guilty, Grifter can want revenge, and Spartan can do the bare minimum of glowery emoting. 

There's Void, who loses half of herself, then is nearly destroyed in yet another phase of Noir's plan, only for the symbiote to be absorbed by Spartan, giving him the teleportation powers and a shiny silver suit look he carries through the next volume. But I don't know if she even qualified as a character by that point. Minus the cosmonaut, she didn't demonstrate much personality in her brief time on page. Other than she either knew French, or could learn it instantly from Noir saying a couple of sentences.

It all seems to come to the point that Spartan, while still seemingly just following an order, is evolving into something new and his past life is to be left by the wayside, no longer relevant. We'll look at how the evolution goes next week.

Random Back Issues #90 - Secret Avengers #13

Spider-Woman's making the only correct response. Other than breaking his face, which she'll do later.

A guy named Snapper, who was MODOK's assistant, and replaced the top of his skull with a glass dome, is trying to summon some Lovecraftian horror from a dimension called Tlon to put an end to all bullies. Maria Hill's going to be the centerpiece of the sacrifice. I would hold out for a better sacrifice.

Snapper knows Hill's team - Nick Fury, Hawkeye, MODOK, Phil Coulson, and the Fury, yes the one from the Captain Britain comics - is on the way to rescue her and Spider-Woman, currently in a cell and stuck talking to some crazy incel poet. But that's all part of Snapper's plan. He's banking on MODOK being in love with Maria Hill, which, I'm not sure who would be getting the short end of the stick in that hypothetical relationship. The attack begins, complete with an "Explosion-O-Meter", which a caption box informs us Ales Kot stole from Hot Shots: Part Deux!

The same page of Deadpool on a Hawkeye-themed VW bus (not as cool as the Kra-Van, but not bad) informs us we're seeing something Seth Rogen and James Franco already did in The Interview, and whatever it is Kot is trying to do with this bit, he's officially trying too hard. I don't even know what it is was in The Interview that we're seeing here. A guy singing about fireworks while grenades explode around him? Anyway, I can't remember how exactly Deadpool got mixed up in this. I think he and Hawkeye ran into each other on some AIM thing and Wade keeps wanting to team up. I'd take him over the losers Clint's running with in this book.

The Avengers seem to be doing well, I mean, the Explosion-O-Meter is up to 79, although they're getting credit for Deadpool's work. Also, MODOK is yelling about death to 'semiocapitalism' and how he is conflicted while machine-gunning a lot of people. If Snapper was counting on the children the Fury produced with some other-dimensional mess to help, that's not working out. Nick Fury and Coulson find Spider-Woman rescued herself. But Snapper injects Hill with some essence of Tlon to try and convince the Avengers to turn MODOK over to him in a trade.

Except then Snapper has his goons shoot MODOK with the same thing and the gateway starts to open. But this is all probably part of the Avengers' plan?

[9th longbox, 100th comic. Secret Avengers (vol. 3) #13, by Ales Kot (writer), Michael Walsh (artist), Matthew Wilson (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer)]

A Most Remarkable Creature - Jonathan Meiburg

Carcaras are a group of falcons found throughout South and Central America. They're odd, especially for a bird of prey, in that most species like to hang out in groups, and their diet is extremely broad. They're also very curious and some species, such as the striated carcaras who live on the Falkland Islands, seem very interested in humans, even after humans attempted to wipe them out (for preying on sheep), as humans do.

Meiburg ranges widely in the book, starting on the Falklands with the carcaras (or "Johnny rooks"), moving to discussion of the evolution of carcaras, why they're so different from other falcons like the peregrines which also inhabit the Falklands. Evolution means also talking about Darwin, who encountered the Johnny rooks during his voyage on the Beagle, and was fascinated by their behavior, but Meiburg discusses William Henry Hudson even more. 

Hudson grew up in the pampas of Argentina, where he was more likely to see the chimango caracaras, but they interested him as well. I read and reviewed his novel Green Mansions on here in late 2018, but he wrote several books about both birds and his childhood after he'd moved to England. Sounds like I would have enjoyed his non-fiction more. 

I think Meiburg's trying to draw a connection between Hudson's connection to nature and fond memories of his home to the intelligence of the caracaras and how they're a product of that same home. More specifically, its lengthy isolation from the Northern Hemisphere. It's what I think keeps the lengthy section of his trip up the Rewa River from feeling out of place. He does encounter some red-throated caracaras, but that's only a small part of the story. It's more closely related to the places Hudson tried to evoke in Green Mansions, of finding places yet untouched by humans.

One of the things Meiburg brings up is, despite being related to falcons, caracaras act in many ways similar to ravens and crows, which were absent in the Southern Hemisphere. Wide diet, intelligent, curious, recognize the potential in humans to provide food. He spends some time discussing Johnny rooks brought to England that were taught to solve puzzles, how they're capable of learning simply by watching other caracaras solve them. It's interesting, the way different animals fill different niches. Up north, corvids took on that role. In South America, it was caracaras. For the striated, at least in part of necessity. On an island, you can't necessarily be too picky about what you eat.

'The ones that make it to adulthood have mastered the art of finding a meal anywhere they can, and since the larder varies from island to island and season to season, successful Johnny rooks have to maintain an open mind and an ecumenical diet. They catch tiny fish in the shallows at low tide, or fill their bellies with seal shit, and some become seasonally nocturnal to hunt petrels that return to their burrows at night.'

A Slow Cooling Off in October

New things in the solicitations I found interesting is pretty small, and none of it feels like a definite buy. Let's run it down.

There's Ghost Planet, a 40-page one-shot out of Scout Comics, by Jeffrey Burandt and Sean van Dorman which is about a family of space explorers trying to get off a planet where their loved ones are back from the dead and trying to kill them. If it's a mystery about what's going on, I might be more interested, but the solicit describes it as a, 'classic sci-fi tale with a body horror twist.' I'm not really a body horror guy. Image has the tpb of New Masters, by Shobo and Shof Coker, about a bunch of kids in West Africa who find an ancient artifact and have to deal with the struggle that emerges over it.

Source Point has the first issue of A Guardian (or A. Guardian, it looks like there's a period after the "A"), by Eastin DeVerna and Kay Baird about the sentinel of some ancient tomb and what they'll have to do when a war erupts. I haven't had a lot of luck with things published by Source Point, though. Finally there's the first volume of No Longer Allowed in Another World out of Seven Seas (though not until December). It's one of those isekai mangas, where the protagonist finds themselves in a fantasy world. Those things are insanely popular these days, and . But Hiroshi Noda and Takahiro Wakamatsu's protag is some depressed writer from the 1940s who just wants to find a place to die. Get in line.

There's a few resolicited items in there. Blood Moon put the second through fourth issues of Ice Canyon Monster back up. I might buy the second issue, but the other two would have to wait, assuming any of them actually show up. Marvel did relist the first issue of Ann Nocenti's X-Men Legends story, so that's nice.

Actually might not be an awful month for Marvel, since there's the last issue of Iron Cat, plus a Moon Knight Annual, the Moon Knight ongoing, She-Hulk, and Damage Control. Although it remains to be seen if I like Damage Control, and She-Hulk is on thin ice. Issue 6 is really gonna have to hook me, but that's 6 books potentially.

Beyond that, fourth issues of Blink, Above Snakes, and Agent of Worlde. Although the last of those says it's the fourth of four issues, while I am sure the previous couple of issues said this was a 5-issue mini-series. The solicitation text doesn't really read like you'd expect for a conclusion, either. There's also the third issues of She Bites and Locust: Ballad of Man, and it turns out Sgt. Rock vs. the Army of Undead is a 6-issue mini-series, not a one-shot.

Even with things slowing down, there's a good shot that 2022 will already be my biggest year in new comic purchases since at least 2015 by the end of October. I'm not sure if I'm doing any better at picking things I ultimately enjoy, though.

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

So after the whole Milla Jovovich Resident Evil movies wrapped up, they apparently decided to try a version that more closely hewed to the plots of the actual games. In this case, they crammed the first two Resident Evil games into the same movie. So we have the local special cop team with Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine investigating the creepy mansion out in the woods, while at the same time, rookie cop Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield are trapped inside the police station, trying to find a way out of town. There's some stuff in the RE2 parts I don't recognize, mostly about an orphanage, but maybe it got added when they did those remastered versions of the games a few years back.

The two plots don't really coexist so much as awkwardly run parallel to each other. In theory, the connective tissue would be Claire and Chris. Claire ran away some time ago while Chris stayed and became a cop. They haven't seen each other in years, so things are awkward, but I guess they still care. But the movie splits them up so quickly after their reunion, and Claire spends most of the time insisting she's found proof Umbrella was up to something, that the connection isn't really forged. Claire ends up spending a lot more time with Leon (who gets portrayed as not just a rookie, but a complete chickenshit dumbass), while Chris is running around a spooky mansion with Jill.

Chris was partially raised by the lead scientist, and so he trusts the guy, but again, we see so little of their interactions that (none when they're both adults) Birkin's taunts about Chris thinking he was really part of the family come out of left field. He did?

The movie does that bit where it lingers on things that are meant to be Easter eggs, but in a way that feels especially pointless. Claire is handed a set of keys, each with an end shaped like one of the suits of a deck of cards. The camera makes sure we have time to note that. But she only uses one of the keys and then they never come up again. At least pretend there's a purpose!

They do a lot with flickering lights. You'd think the infected produced some sort of field that messes with electrical systems. The police chief gets attacked by an infected dog in the station garage. Chris has a whole fight against a bunch of infected where we see it through the flashes of his gunfire or his lighter. It at least plays into a sense of frenzied chaos during the fight. 

Also, the infected are very polite. They will lean right over your shoulder and wait until you notice them to try and eat you. Doesn't really make sense, considering how insistent they are about getting to people, but what the hell.

What I Bought 7/20/2022 - Part 2

Lots of things changing at work. Our support staff left, which makes things almost eerily quiet, and while I actually did a fair amount of the stuff she was supposed to be doing myself, the things she did do are things I do not want to mess with and am not sure who is handling them until we get a replacement. Whenever that happens.

A Calculated Man #2, by Paul Tobin (writer), Alberto Alburquerque (artist), Mark Englert (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - All the world resents a happy couple.

Jack meets with Omaha and Elene, Jack's new contact from the Marshals' office. They discuss how Jack got into Witness Protection, and then Tobin addresses the question I had after the first issue. How does Jack avoid discussing all this killing he's doing if he's incapable of lying? The answer is, he refuses the answer the question, framing it as an invasion of privacy, which no one enjoys, including Elene. I'm not sure how long that's a viable strategy.

Jack later meets Vera, the lady he's been chatting with online, and their dates go well. Although Vera still believes Jack is making up the stuff about being a former mob accountant now killing his old bosses. And it's while killing the future heir of the Pinafore family he makes his mistake. Which is catching a glass of wine as it falls off the table, leaving behind fingerprints. During a hit he's performing in a busy restaurant in the middle of the day. The cop runs the prints and finds they're under security clearance. She knows Omaha and calls him to see if he can help, and now Omaha knows Jack's been a busy boy.

I expected it to be less of an obvious mistake. Like, I thought it was when he killed a guy during his bathroom break earlier in the issue and casually pushed the door open with his hand. I guess there would be no way to know those were the fingerprints of the killer.

It'll be interesting to see how Omaha handles this, or Elene if it falls to her. Omaha and Jack act like old pals. They sit beside each other in diner booth, offering to buy drinks for each other and busting one another's chops. Elene sits across from them both and Alburquerque sets up panels so that Elene is in opposition to Jack and Omaha. We're looking over her shoulder and seeing bother guys chatting and joking, or we're looking over their shoulders and Elene is visible between them, like a wall.

To Elene, Jack is a former criminal she is supposed to manage. To Omaha, Jack's a pal. When Jack declines to answer Elene's questions, rather than finding this suspicious or backing her up, Omaha just laughs about how he and Jack have had a lot of these conversations. Since I expect Omaha to confront Jack alone first, I'm curious to see if he starts from the point that this must be a mistake, or if he's pissed Jack's been deceiving him.

Sunday Splash Page #228

 

"Harley Home Makeover", in Harley Quinn (vol. 2) #4, by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Stephane Roux (artist), Paul Mounts (colorist), John J. Hill (letterer)

It took over a decade, two Crises, a Countdown and a Flashpoint leading to a New 52, but Harley got herself a second chance at an ongoing series. Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti worked as the writing team, with Chad Hardin (who I'd first encountered as an artist on some of those Bloodrayne comics I bought years earlier) initially as the primary artist, though the book had frequent other artists because DC seemed to take a page from how Marvel handled Deadpool and started shipping a crapload of Harley Quinn mini-series, one-shots, annuals and whatnot on top of this book. Sometimes Hardin would draw those instead, or this title would double-ship, so there had to be guest artists.

Through the first 2 years of the New 52, Harley had been mostly an unambiguous villain, commtiting such crimes as distributing handheld gaming systems packed with explosives through Gotham, then setting them off, killing dozens or hundreds. Conner and Palmiotti backed the hell away from all that as fast as they could, setting the character more firmly in a morally grey, anti-hero space. Harley would still commit violent acts, but typically in self-defense or against people who could be said to deserve it (if not quite to the extent she dished out.)

It also, at least for the 17 issues I bought before dropping the book, felt like Conner and Palmiotti couldn't decide what they wanted Harley to be doing, as they kept introducing new settings or jobs, then seemingly dropping them to move to the next idea almost right off. She inherits a building in Coney Island, which gives her the difficulty of being a landlord and potential plotlines involving her tenants. But they also had Harley join a roller derby team, then almost immediately abandon that in favor of a roller derby-themed underground fight club, which also sometimes working as a psychiatrist at a nursing home. By the time I dropped the book, she'd even started a gang of Harleys, for reasons that escape me.

There was strong streak of absurdist, referential humor. Harley frees a bunch of animals from a testing lab, but all their waste is stinking up the joint. So one of her tenants builds a giant catapult and the first launch hits DC's offices with dog shit. She keeps a stuffed, half-burned beaver around that she hallucinates talking to her. Harley faces a string of hitmen trying to collect a huge bounty, and finds out she put the bounty on herself in her sleep. She teams up with an old Cold War cyborg super-spy (who made it into her animated series) she met at the nursing home. 

Hardin's work was a little stiff early on, but as time went by, he loosened up his linework. With the comic (sometimes darkly comic, but still comic) tone of the book, being willing to exaggerate his art better fit the book. I didn't laugh out loud much while reading it - Conner and Palmiotti's sense of humor doesn't quite work for me somehow - but there were parts here and there that worked. Mostly, I wanted the book to just settle on a status quo and run with it for more than two issues. Pick a few supporting cast members to really focus on rather than just constantly throwing more, more, more at the wall.

Saturday Splash Page #30

 

"Genuflect Before Exposition," in Winter Men Winter Special, by Bret Lewis (writer), John Paul Leon (writer/artist), Melissa Edwards (colorist), John Workman (letterer)

Pretty sure Winter Men was supposed to be more than 5 issues originally, but for one reason or another, it started hitting delays after issue 3. About six months between that and issue 4, then another five months to get to issue five. Then almost two-and-a-half years for this, conclusion, of sorts.

Issue 5 ended with what could have seemed like a big victory. Kalenov, Nikki, Nina, Drost, all working together to expose corruption and bringing down a bunch of ex-KGB guys. Everyone celebrates, Kalenov has himself a good time with the Mayor's secretary, Drost celebrates having a wife and couple of dogs for pets.

Winter Men Winter Special starts from the premise all victories are temporary. Someone is attacking them, trying to wipe out witnesses and anyone working against them. Someone strong enough to throw a car through a fifth story window. And it's somehow connected to the little girl that went missing back at the start. Kalenov finds that he will never get what he claims to want, and may not even be able to keep what he has. He has a brief time with his wife, but she leaves him again. He ruins things with the Mayor's secretary by being an abusive asshole, which also burns the bridges between he and some of his friends. 

The final confrontation against the one behind everything is not his to have, contrary to what you might expect from the page above. Even then, Kalenov can't get himself off the board. He's the one left over. The Hammer makes a comment that chess is beloved in Russia because no move is ideologically impure. So Kalenov can take whatever approach he likes, but he's still in the game, whether he wants to be or not. No final victories that bring everything to a halt, no true endings. The survivors go on, and there are always more battles to face.

Visually, the Hammer does feel a lot like Dr. Manhattan, although Edwards reverses the color scheme somewhat. Though he seemingly glows as a result of his power, the Hammer himself is often as much or more shadow than light. It's everything around him that is overwhelmed by the energy he gives off, reduced to a blue background or black outline. What everyone else desired or strives towards get overwritten by what he's trying to accomplish. But only temporarily, as it turns out. Powerful as he is, he can't win forever, either.

What I Bought 7/20/2022 - Part 1

So I did do better on Wednesday. Not great, two books from this week, plus one book from last week, but better. So let's start with two fifth issues. One book is nearing an end, the other may be nearing the end of my patience.

She-Hulk #5, by Rainbow Rowell (writer), Luca Maresca (artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - It's definitely a picture of She-Hulk sitting and looking at the reader.

The person shouting for Jack is some very large, very strong guy. Strong enough to toss She-Hulk around, or take a punch from her. A lady rushes up to end the fight and claims the man is just confused and helps him leave. She-Hulk thinks this is all suspicious, but Jack mostly dismisses it. Rowell hasn't given any indication her version of She-Hulk is going to be 4th wall aware, so this is probably just experience talking.

She and Jack have a quiet, slightly awkward dinner where Jack expresses plans to return to a mansion he owns in Connecticut and live there. Quietly writing poetry and avoiding being discovered by anybody like Tony Stark. Jen still hasn't told him that his corpse shuffled up to Avengers Mansion and blew up Scott Lang. Just get on with it, it's not like either of them is dead these days. Although Lang is written as such a complete moron he might as well be. The one Ant-Man we had who wasn't either a creep or a walking mental breakdown and now he's an imbecile everyone in the Marvel Universe dislikes. Thanks, Paul Rudd!

I have to agree with others I've seen who feel this She-Hulk book feels more like a Jack of Hearts book. I think Rowell is trying to use the contrasts between Jen and Jack to illustrate her notion of what She-Hulk is as a character. How Jennifer is trying to get her life on track, but has set that aside to try and help Jack instead. How he's so hung up on that time he absorbed her gamma radiation he's afraid to help her up when she trips, while she doesn't seem to think much of it. That she wanted to get answers from that lady, but Jack wants to let it drop. Although the likelihood he was mentally conditioned somehow by the person who was experimenting on him - probably the lady - means that may not really reflect him.

The problem is, the book is still moving really slowly. Again, I think Rowell is trying to not rush through what is a pretty significant change for Jack. A guy who went into space for years because he didn't feel it was safe for him to be around people is now seemingly normal (mostly.) And he doesn't know how, but he doesn't want it to end. It's a lot to process. But again, it makes this feel like a book where the title character is almost a supporting character.

Slumber #5, by Tyler Burton Smith (writer), Vanessa Cardinali (artist), Simon Robins (colorist), Steve Wands (letterer) - A lady realizing there's a big mess to clean up.

Valkira's inside Ed, but allowed herself to be tied up, and goads Stetson and Finch into entering Ed's dreams. Also, Valkira can sense Stetson's thoughts, which makes Stetson's extremely half-baked plan even more questionable. Once inside the hotel that represents Ed's dream, Finch quickly gets caught up fighting off lots of Eds while Stetson chases Valkira. meanwhile, Jiang is going to have to kill and/or eat the SWAT team that just busted in, with Finch's partner at the lead. At least, we can hope that's what he's going to do.

Smith's continuing to tease out what happened to Stetson's daughter, and how she ended up in this job. He's also revealing more about what Valkira's up to. Stetson seems certain the goal is to exit through the red door, entering the waking world as a real being (as opposed to puppeting someone's sleeping body), with full control of her powers. Valkira says in the first panel this wasn't what she's supposed to be, but 'she' made her this way. I think we're meant to assume "she" is Stetson, but I'm guessing taking over Stetson's daughter backfired somehow.

I think Valkira just wants to feel what people actually do. We see her imitate humans when she controls one. Dancing in a club or feeding pigeons, but she says she doesn't feel anything. Cardinali draws Valkira as not making contact with anyone, except when she's switching bodies. Even the killing we always see after it's done, so we don't know what she experiences during that. It's a hollow existence, just going through the motions.

I guess the comparison would be to Stetson, who doesn't seem able to connect with anyone, either. She's on her own wavelength, and doesn't get that other people don't follow it. She expects Finch to recognize her signal without telling him what it is. I don't know if she's been inside other people's dreams so much she just thinks in dream logic now or what. The way Cardinali draws Stetson's face in that upper left panel is very similar to how she draws the "Ed masks" Stetson and Finch wear inside Ed's dream to move undetected. The fact she makes an expression like that naturally, about bringing a flamethrower inside her friend's mind, is a little disturbing.

What I Bought 7/16/2022

Well, only two books out of the five that came out last week, but maybe I'll do a little better with the five books that came out this week. The store in the next town over that had been coming through on the smaller publishers, really isn't these days. They have stuff published by Scout and Vault, but never the books I actually want.

Moon Knight #13, by Jed MacKay (writer), Federico Sabbatini (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Does Moon Knight still have enough cash for silver spiked gauntlets for his vampire punching?

Moonie is waging war against the vampires that turned Reese. The vampires, in turn, call Taskmaster for information on Moon Knight. Which he provides, along with the advice to not mess with Moon Knight, because the guy does not care how much damage he takes so long as he destroys you. So he declines to kill Moon Knight for money, and even warns Moon Knight about the threat.

Meanwhile, it turns out Reese sort of saved Soldier's life by turning him into a vampire. Which is half the reason the dip running the vamp pyramid scheme is cheesed, because he wants to be the only one making vamps. So he hires two characters and I have no clue who the fuck these people are supposed to be. Best I can tell, MacKay and Sabbatini created them, which is fine. If the idea is Tutor is hitting Moon Knight with people he's never met, better to use brand-new characters than try to argue, "No, Moon Knight never fought Zaran the Weapons Master or Razorfist."

Problem is, having their introduction be full-page splash of the two of them just standing there is. . .kind of underwhelming. Like the reveal of their identities is supposed to be a big deal. But if these are new characters, why are we gonna be impressed? Wouldn't it be better to save the reveal for when they're actually confronting Moon Knight? You know, they get the drop on him, maybe kick him through a wall. He's picking himself up asking what name they want in the obituary or something more violent and ta-da! We get a panel of them looking menacing for their introduction! Come on, people, this is elementary shit here!

Above Snakes #1, by Sean Lewis (writer), Hayden Sherman (artist), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letterer) - Why are both his ring fingers, and only his ring fingers, curled? Is it like a Ditko fingers thing? Sherman fingers? 

Dirt is the guy on the cover, after the Above Snakes gang who killed his wife, Dorothea. There's a yellow vulture that hangs around him called Speck, who alternates between encouraging and criticizing Dirt reaches a town with a whorehouse run by a member of the gang, and the man is killed. Dirt and Speck continue on their way.

Lewis establishes that there are so many people roaming the West looking for revenge that they have their own bars where they hang out and discuss their progress. It almost feels like a joke, commentary on how many Westerns are about someone out for revenge, but I'm not sure it's meant for a laugh. Probably supposed to tsk at it. We get a brief intro to one, Annie, who proclaims she and Dirt are the only ones in the bar who are actually determined enough to complete their revenge.

Sherman colors Dirt as almost magenta or purple at the start of the issue, then shifts to a blue coloring for him during the fight at the whorehouse, then something intermediate at the end of the issue. It could just be related to the time of day or light levels. The beginning of the book is in the middle of an extremely sunny day, while the fight is in nighttime and the end of the issue is early morning. But it could be that something's been building in Dirt, a pressure, and the opportunity to vent it on people he thinks deserve it released it. But only temporarily, which is why the ruddy shading is already coming back by the end of the issue. The release didn't last long, because the underlying problem is still there. I'll need more than one issue to confirm or deny that hypothesis.

There's also only 4 panels where you can actually see Dirt's eyes. He glares at Speck when the bird points out he didn't share water with some people he met. Scowls as he heads to the whorehouse, and one close-up after he almost gets shot and we see the bullet holes in the wall over his shoulder. And one panel in profile of him staring wearily in the distance. The rest of the time the view is either too distant, at the wrong angle, or his eyes are narrow slits. A Clint Eastwood glare taken to the extreme. Does it make him blind to anything else?

Wrath of Man

IMDb says this based on the movie Le Convoyeur, which I haven't seen, so I don't know how similar the two are. Jason Statham takes a job with an armored car company. He doesn't seem like anything special until Post Malone (I'm serious, Post Malone is the leader of the thieves) tries to rob a truck he's in. At which point he kills the entire crew, mostly with one-shot kills between the eyes. Well, then.

Roughly an hour in, after Statham thwarts another attempted heist by simply showing his face, the movie goes into a flashback for about 30 minutes. Really, two flashbacks. The first is why Statham is doing this. Surprise! He wants revenge for a dead loved one. The second reveals who the guys he's looking for actually are, and how they got into robbing armored cars.

An aside, but I didn't realize armored car robberies were still so common. Nice to know there are still people out there stealing real physical money, instead of using a computer to steal a digital image of a sad monkey someone says is worth $300,000 or some shit.

The flashbacks establish two things: One, while Statham's character is not a nice man, he is an "honorable" criminal, to the extent some guy from the FBI (played by Andy Garcia, who is on screen for maybe 45 seconds total) will help him. Two, the crew of thieves have their own issues, mostly revolving around one member (Scott Eastwood) who won't stick to the plans.

That latter point naturally comes to a head in the big heist that kicks off once the flashbacks are over. The movie does actually get some tension out of the whole thing. Not just that we know at some point Statham is gonna go apeshit on these guys. 

Throughout the movie, we see that the company encourages its employees not to risk their lives. This is, after all, other peoples' money. I'm dubious the company would actually tell them that, but we'll roll with it. The movie does nod to the notion all these people have some sort of past that's why they work for an armored car company, getting shot at for someone else's cash. Some of them are more well-adjusted than others, some of them are posing aggro dipshits (like Josh Hartnett's character, man this is a weird cast) but there's a strong streak of gallows humor that runs through the operation. So when things go bad, the audience wonders what some of the employees are going to do. Will they run, will they try to fight back? If one of their co-workers is held at gunpoint, will they surrender or do they not give a shit about that guy?

The ending is, not exactly satisfactory. Maybe because Statham has gone this far to get this particular guy, but the actual revenge doesn't seem like enough. It could be argued that having gone through all this, playing a role, searching, everything, he's just tired and ready for closure. But I really expected him to be more brutal about it.

What I Bought 7/8/2022 - Part 4

So we wrap up with two issues of the same title. Scout's publishing schedule is weird lately. First issue of this shipped in March, then issues 2-4 came out in six weeks from early June to last week. But at least the books do come out.

Broken Eye #2 and 3, by Martin and Xavier Etxeberria (writers), Inaki Arenas (artist) - Whatever he ate to produce that cloud is more dangerous than the gun he's holding.

The judge receives one of his assistant's hands in the mail, but is not convinced to back off. That's fine, the arms dealer was more interested in the assistant's book of the judge's schedule, which mentions regular meetings with a "Queen Victoria". Which turns out to be Seamus' friend Victoria, who is a dominatrix. Delporte sends the two IRA guys to her place of business and they slit her throat. Felipe finds Seamus, who ended up not bringing the severed hand he found to the cops because he rightly concluded the cops are assholes, and Seamus freaks out at seeing Victoria's body (see the panel below.) 

Was I surprised the immigrant single mother who is a sex worker was brutally murdered? Reader, I was not. Also, I feel the "AAiEEE!" makes the whole thing kind of comical when it's not supposed to be. A panel of silent shock probably would have worked better, but I'm wondering if the story wouldn't be better served with an artist more like Sean Phillips anyway. Not something I typically say, but this seems like it's a grubby, street-level, backstabbing crime story, and I'm not sure the art isn't too clean for that.

Also, the third issue picks up where the second ends, and Seamus tries to keep Felipe out of the room, even though Felipe came to him asking to help his mother, with hands already covered in blood. I think it's a little late to worry about that. Seamus does use his sight on Victoria's whip and gets a glimpse of the judge, so after talking with the cops, and Eleanor (who both works in child services and is the niece of the arms dealer Delporte), Seamus tosses the hand into bushes near a pier belonging to Delporte, then lies to the judge about where he saw it. Except then the 2 IRA guys show up and just shoot the judge. But not Seamus because I'm pretty sure the guy who got out of prison is his father. Or at least knows Seamus via his deceased murder.

When I lay it all out like that, it starts to sound like a soap opera and maybe Arenas' art is well-suited for this after all. The coloring and the shading aren't really as dark as you'd expect, the linework is very clean. For the subject matter, it does feel like the kind dramatized yet sanitized approach I'd expect from a soap opera.

I will confess to not understanding the moves characters are making. Delporte gives the agenda log to the IRA guys, who decide to visit Victoria. Presumably to get leverage on the judge. Then they kill her. Why? Because she didn't talk? That just puts more potential heat on them if anyone saw. 

Then, while Delporte is calling a cop he's old army buddies with to sell out the IRA guys for trying to buy weapons for him, the IRA guys go and kill the judge. Delporte was going to use this to get the cop to make the judge back off, and mentions he knows something the judge wants kept secret. Meaning the thing with Victoria, I'm sure. If you have that information, why bother selling out the IRA guys by alerting the cops? For that matter, why are you telling a cop you have information you can blackmail a judge with? Isn't that a crime? Just let the judge know you have the info.

And why are the IRA guys killing the judge? Brandon, the one that got out of prison, doesn't like Delporte, but there's no indication he realizes they're being double-crossed. A dead judge, shot in his own office, in the middle of the day, in front of a witness, is a much bigger mess than a judge quietly pressured to drop a case.

I sure hope issue 4 makes some sense of this.

Sunday Splash Page #227

 

"Admitting It's the First Step. Murder is the Second," in Harley Quinn (vol. 1) #2, by Karl Kesel (writer), Terry Dodson (penciler), Rachel Dodson (inker), Alex Sinclair (colorist), Ken Lopez (letterer)

Having been a big hit in Batman: The Animated Series, Harley Quinn migrated into the Batbooks and after a half-dozen or so years, got her own ongoing series, running for 38 issues.

Whether because it didn't seem like a great idea for Harley to play second fiddle in her own book, or because they didn't want the protagonist of said book doing the kind of stuff Harley would get up to with the Joker, Karl Kesel breaks Quinn off from the clown to find her own path. Which isn't to say she's good. After a one-issue stint playing #2 to Two-Face, Harley decides to start her own gang. 

She's terrible at it. Every time they add a fifth henchperson, they die. In more than one of those situations, Harley sets the guy up to be killed or at least left behind. None of her heists succeed as Harley is more concerned with her personal obsessions. To the extent she kills her most loyal henchman because he's interfering in her matchmaking between a couple of private investigators trying to capture her. It would be easy to argue she learned well from the Joker, but Kesel goes into her past enough to let the reader see Harley's always been willing to do whatever she deemed necessary to get what she wanted. Working with the Joker just convinced her to stop masking it.

The Dodsons draw the majority of the first 19 issues, and it's pretty standard work for them. Clean linework, easy to follow action, expressive faces, the usual full-figured women. In issue 1, Ivy tries disguising herself as Harley to kill the Joker and Harley remarks she wouldn't dress like that if she had Ivy's figure. It's hard to really see much of a difference in them.

The first year ends with Harley and Ivy taking off for Metropolis. There's a stint of Harley manipulating Bizarro, only for that to get out of hand. Harley ends up in Hell for a while before getting out through some method I don't remember, but the Martian Manhunter got dragged into the mess. Craig Rousseau is drawing the book by then, his style is more animated, closer to Bruce Timm than Dodson. He draws a few pieces in the earlier issues where he's deliberately aping the Timmverse style, meant as a representation of how Harley sees all this.

The last year or so of the book is by A.J. Lieberman and Mike Huddleston, and involves Harley back in Gotham, tangled up in a whole thing with some girl that everybody wants. I think it revolved around what Harley was going to do, look out for #1 or look out for the girl stuck relying on her, as well as what being around someone like Harley for an extended period of time would do to someone. I picked up parts of it in back issues years ago - those issues are oddly pricey - but it didn't stick in the collection.

Next week, Harley gets another chance to headline her own book.

Saturday Splash Page #29

 "The Conclusion That Wasn't," in Winter Men #3, by Brett Lewis (writer), John Paul Leon (artist), Dave Stewart (colorist), Jared K. Fletcher (letterer)

Kris Kalenov is a Russian police officer, although he could just as easily be any burnout American cop you see in the movies. Drinks to much, scruffy, disrespectful and sloppy in his work, crumbling marriage. You know the drill. He gets handed the case of an abducted child, and this leads down a rabbit hole to a world he not so much left behind as was forcibly ejected from.

Lewis has Kalenov follow the trail as it roams through Russia, New York City, back to Russia, using it as a way to bring him into contact with old friends from his earlier days and fleshing out both the world they're in now and how they got to that point. Drost was a soldier and remained a soldier. Kalenov became a cop, Nikki up there became a local gangster, Nina works as a bodyguard. All of them still in the life in one way or another.

Leon doesn't illustrate any of it as glamorous. The only dramatic shots are the propaganda footage of "The Hammer", Soviet Superman (or maybe Soviet Captain Atom is more accurate.)  Kalenov's old exosuit is a clunky looking thing, like a 19th century diving suit or that thing Sigourney Weaver used in Aliens. Everything is about utility, or at least pretending to be useful. All these characters are part of competing attempts by different agencies to be the one who appears to be protecting Mother Russia. Are any of them actually protecting it? Well, Kalenov and Nikki keep ending up in a local McDonald's and Nikki's distributing Pepsi and in a turf war with a guy distributing Coca-Cola, so probably not. They're what's left over after the dog-and-pony shows shuts down.

The cities are grey, the stores half-stocked. It's a long winter. Apartments are crowded and messy, even the offices of the men of power look like the communal living space of a bunch of college kids. Crap all over the place. Things are either falling apart, or already fell apart and are slowly settling into new configurations.

Lewis repeatedly reminds us (as in the page above) this is a Russian story, not an American one. As Alan Rickman once said, John Wayne does not walk off into the sunset with Grace Kelly. No tidy happy ending. Kalenov does not get to neatly close the case and become the poet he claims he was meant to be. He does not manage to salvage his marriage. In fact, as far as Winter Men goes, the actual conclusion would have to wait three years.

What I Bought 7/8/2022 - Part 3

Lately, it seems like every week I get to Thursday and feel the week should be over. But there's always Friday to get through. That's probably not good. Today we have two fourth issues. One is the conclusion to a mini-series, the other is an ongoing series that is way behind schedule.

She-Hulk #4, by Rainbow Rowell (writer), Luca Maresca (artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Ben looks like he's taking this more seriously than Jen.

We get a little glimpse of Jen's fight club thing with Titania until the Thing shows up, still seeking legal advice on the ticket for not having Lockjaw on a leash. We'll see if we get any more scenes with the fight club before the book ends. 

Ben's also sent a few friends Jen's way as clients, which is a problem since her boss wants no superhuman clients. So she'll see them on the sly. She talks with Reed Richards long enough to confirm being around Jack of Hearts hasn't messed with her gamma levels (without mentioning Jack's alive again.) After that, she and Jack get back to trying to piece together what happened to him. Jack at least remembers one thing from his escape that leads them a different part of New York. Then they drink bubble tea and discuss power, lack thereof, having two faces, until someone with heavy footsteps shows up looking for Jack.

So, a lot of talking, but not much plot advancement. That seems like a familiar comment. Rowell seems to be trying to help the audience care about Jack by emphasizing the contrast between he and Jen. Becoming She-Hulk ultimately hasn't disrupted Jen's life too terribly, at least from her perspective. She likes the power, the confidence. Maresca doesn't draw Jen in her un-Hulked form as a diminutive, shy person, but she does draw her clothes as loose enough that you can see Jen dresses to be ready to shift if needed. It's something Jen's used to and has learned to plan for. 

Jack had a relatively normal life, apparently studying poetry in college, and his powers wrecked all that. He spent, as he puts it, his 20s flying through space because he was afraid of vaporizing his friends. For him, the novelty of his powers wore off long ago. They've left him isolated, with almost no one he feels can trust or call friend. The opportunity to leave that behind is tempting, even if he's smart enough to know someone siphoning off his power is dangerous. The t-shirt with the big heart looks silly on him, but Jack isn't uncomfortable wearing it.

Maresca's artwork is similar enough to Antonio's there's no real whiplash. Maresca's line is maybe a bit rougher, there's more of sketch quality to it, but I'm also wondering if Maresca was a replacement artist and this was on a rush schedule. Renzi's color work helps maintain a consistent feel, too. I especially like the bleakly grey color scheme for the law office. It's almost like one of those cartoons where the technicolor character finds themselves in an older, black-and-white cartoon world. All these super-characters in what's supposed to be a serious legal profession.

Step by Bloody Step #4, by Si Spurrier (writer), Matias Bergara (artist), Matheus Lopes (color artist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - Ended up with the variant cover because the place I bought from didn't have the Bergara cover.

The giant is destroyed save for one gauntlet. The girl, however, can't get to him. That would be a step backward, and the world won't allow it. The father they befriended in issue 1 brings that gauntlet to her, and she continues on the path, finally reaching a tree growing from what's left of some column. Just like where the story started. There's a circular disc with instructions, but the lock is broken. She has to go back, but she can't, or can she?

Well, not alone, but the gauntlet can cleave through the force in her way, and also sends her back in time? Was not expecting that. So she walks until she's back to the fortress, to before the battle, when she was about to accept the champagne, and recombines with her earlier self. Instead of having a fun time at the party, she drags the prince off to the garden and uses a bit of her blood to get the plant growing and pulls a Poison Ivy on him. Then she saves the kid used as a decoy to lure out the giant, and then the giant saves them both and lets the goblins or whatever breach the walls of the fortress, take everything, and send the people within out naked into the wilderness.

After that, and a farewell to the family, all that's left is to finish the journey. Back to the tree, this time with the giant intact. Turn the lock, and the roles are reversed. The giant becomes the infant, the girl becomes the giant. Which someone causes the tree to bloom for a brief moment before the petals disperse. And the giant walks away, carrying the baby.

So there are things I don't entirely understand. Why they do this, what the purpose of the tree is. But I wonder if either the giant or the child know either, only that they have to do it. Presumably this has been going on for a while, not the girl's first time as the one being guided, but she didn't show any signs of remembering or understanding. So it stands to reason all the giant knew was that the girl had been the giant once, been protector on this journey, and then the roles reversed. So it isn't likely they could really explain it to us, either, even if Spurrier was doing expository dialogue here.

I like the layout where the girl springs her trap on the prince. Four tall, narrow panels descending across the page, focused on her, but panning slowly so that while the prince is focused on her in panel 3, he's missing that she's let her blood contact the plants in panel 4. Then the bottom of the page is a shot of a couple of rockets or flares signaling the battle's beginning, but we can just see leaves starting to break through the glass of the greenhouse. It's a nice bit for how things are happening relative to each other.

That and all the panels of her pushing her way back to the giant. All those short widescreen panels, done where it looks like the force is trying to tear her apart. Like she's walking into a firestorm.

What I Bought 7/8/2022 - Part 2

So, when was one of you going to tell me DC is planning to have a Sgt. Rock vs. zombies one-shot, written by Bruce friggin' Campbell, out in September? The one month I can't find DC's solicits anywhere and figure it doesn't matter, they drop that bombshell.

Anyway, here's two third issues.

Distorted #3, by Salvatore Vivenzio (writer), Gabriele Falzone (artist), Francesco Canneva (color assistant) - Gangs of children are running rampant! It's about time.

The issue starts with most of the sequence the previous issue ended with: Mason the cannibal killing that lady and her kid and eating the kid. Not sure why we needed to see that a second time, but this time we get a full-page spread of Mason sitting there, chomping on some part of the kid. Yay? I assume that was supposed to be the final page of the previous issue, which instead ended by reprinting the final page of the first issue. 

In other news, the folks trying to track down people with powers are starting to cross paths. Brennar the teleporter gets to some gamer guy in Seoul before Tom the telepath, but when Brennar tries to approach a kid with a Jamie Madrox power, he gets stomped. Tom has more luck. And in developments I barely care about, James and the weed connection guy - oh, they actually used his name in one panel, it's Murphy. Murphy the weed dealer - are trying to improve the control of their powers. Then James decides he wants to do a hold up and leave this podunk town. Possibly not in that order. Well at least he's (planning) to do something.

The weird printing errors are bugging me. James doesn't particularly interest me. I would like to have some idea what the person Brennar is working for is actually doing with these kids. He paid the guy in Seoul, who set the money aside. Do they get to come home, or did Brennar just trick him? What's Tom getting out of his arrangement that helps him? Because using his powers doesn't seem to do him much good. There's been little progress on that front, however.

West of Sundown #3, by Tim Seeley and Aaron Campbell (writers), Jim Terry (artist), Triona Farrell (colorist), Crank! (letterer) - I bought a copy with the cover of young Frankenstein all bundled up in his coat and dark glasses. Same reason as with Iron Cat: It was cheaper.

Dooley ain't dead, but the stiched-together man I suspect is Miss der Abend's grandfather and Kid Frankenstein are on the attack. Seeing as it's daylight out, she's at a bit of a disadvantage. More of one, since whatever passes for that guy's blood has silver in it. Doesn't it have to be blessed silver to make a difference, or does that just make it doubly effective? Either way, Dooley rides to the rescue, after hesitating to kill Kid Frankenstein, because he's still a kid.

With her room (and the soil she collected) no longer safe, there's no choice but to head back to the ranch. She's hurting (which Farrell shows with splotches of pink on der Abend's otherwise very white skin. Looks like someone hastily applied sunscreen, but in reverse), so that's where they gotta go. They might even have a stroke of luck because the religious weirdo living out there has come to town with his followers, asking about the ones who came to visit the night before.

I'm not sure exactly what's going on there. Mr. Manor, the former saloon owner, seems to have lost his wife (or sister) to the cult, but the way she doesn't even look his direction in the one panel we see, suggests maybe there's some mind control. The followers have no issue with attacking and killing the townsfolk when they tell the "reverend" to pound sand. Which makes me wonder if Dooley, having been bitten, is going to prove susceptible.

I doubt it, because I think Seeley and Campbell want Dooley in a clear mind so he has to make a choice. How devoted is he to his mistress? How far is he willing to keep going for her? And how far does her loyalty extend to him, especially if he keeps letting her enemies survive (or just fucking up and missing a point-blank shot at a guy the size of a horse)? Mister Manor opined that a lot of people who don't want to make choices, look for someone to tell them to do what they wanted to do anyway.

Did Dooley always want to kill people, or to largely not care about them? Given how eager he was to get out of the Civil War, I'm guessing no on the former, and maybe no on the latter. If so, then he's got to be wondering what he's doing helping a vampire kill people, even if he justifies it by them being bad people.

Project A

Alex stayed over last Friday, and while we didn't get much Crimson Skies in because he kept having motion sickness problems, we did finally watch Jackie Chan versus pirates!

Except, there's hardly any pirates for the first hour of the movie. Dragon (Jackie) is part of a coast guard that hasn't had much success even finding the pirates to try and stop them, and when their ships get blown up, the British colonel in charge of the colony dissolves their unit and incorporates them into the police. Dragon already annoyed both the captain in charge of the police with his insolence, and the captain's nephew who is put in charge of training them, so it's a tough sledding. Enough so Dragon gets fed up and quits when he's ordered to apologize to a businessman who's consorting with criminals. After kicking the criminal over a second-story balcony.

After that, he gets roped into helping an old friend of his (Sammo Hung) to recover some stolen rifles. Dragon thinks they're doing a good deed, but his friend just plans to sell them to the pirates. That causes some problems, but does eventually get them on course to actually fighting pirates.

The plot seems to meander up to then, or maybe it was just hard to hear what was going on. The sound on the DVD is set ridiculously low. I normally have my TV set around 20-25 to watch anything, but even at 50 I couldn't always tell what people were saying. There's a not even half-developed romantic sub-subplot between Dragon and a young lady that I think is there mostly as an attempt to inject extra comedy. The two of them trying to escape, and Dragon having to do all sorts of stuff to help her because she's such a delicate flower.

I don't think it was necessary, because Jackie and Sammo do such a good job on the comedy themselves. There's a whole running gag on the pirate's island about characters not recognizing each other and asking for passwords.

I am disappointed to report Jackie Chan does not fight any pirates on a ship. Which is a real missed opportunity. The amount of shit he could have done, swinging around on ropes or scrambling up masts? That said, the action sequences in this are excellent, even if Alex and I were once again left wondering how the hell Jackie Chan is still alive. He falls from a clock tower, through 2 cloth overhangs and then it looks like he breaks his neck hitting the ground. And he just, gets up.

That was the culmination of a lengthy fight/chase scene that involved Jackie and Sammo fighting a bunch of guys and each other across town, Jackie escaping the police captain's handcuffs and stealing his bicycle. Which leads into a bicycle chase through a series of narrow alleys where Jackie's grabbing random poles to use as lances. Or leaping off the bike over a ladder. Or planting his legs against the walls while gripping the handlebars and swinging the front tire into a guy's face. Then he escapes the captain's custody again, and ends up fighting inside the clocktower among all the gears and moving parts. Heck, the fight that culminates in Dragon leaving the police is guys seemingly just getting wrecked. Kicked down stairs, over railings to crash on the floor, pinned to the ceiling with hat racks.

So there were definitely things I would have liked more of in the movie, but what we got was pretty cool.

What I Bought 7/8/2022 - Part 1

Let's get to some comics from June! Yeah! We've got eight comics to discuss over the next week+ and they made it so easy to pair them up. Like today, we're looking at a couple of first issues of five-issue mini-series.

Agent of W.O.R.L.D.E. #1, by Deniz Camp (writer), Filya Bratukhin (artist), Jason Wordie (color artist), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letterer) - I'm surprised he didn't shoot any of the robots in the green bubble with the eyeballs. Seems a logical target.

Philip works for W.O.R.L.D.E., and an agency that is supposed to only operate in wartime and capture or destroy 'destructive elements' (that's the D.E.). Except their motto is, 'it's always wartime,' so yeah. After keeping a different organization from getting their hands on a 25th Century super-genius (by killing them and the super-genius), he gets sent to Russia to deal with some Cold War scientist who's built himself a robot army/family. The issue is resolved, but Philip is obviously getting tired of doing this. Small wonder, since he has himself a secret family.

It's a matter of when Camp decides to have Philip try to make a clean break from the W.O.R.L.D.E. He's already established a rival agent that Philip will no doubt have to fight at some point, a Brit named Kilgore Kincaid who stole stuff from a weird pocket dimension, after killing the rest of his team. He's the one who embraces what he's asked to do without reservation, while Philip questions and feels bad about it, but ultimately still does it. As Kilgore notes, does that make them any different to the people they kill?

The art is very detailed. The designs of the robots, showing the rivets and different joints, but also the remains of the town that sat around the old Russian "science city". Bratukhin uses lots of little dots to shade or give things a sense of depth and texture. It works, but it's a little distracting that everyone has these dots scattered over their faces like an unfinished connect-the-dots. 

Also, I wonder if it's a style that necessarily matches the book. I don't think Camp is going for an absurdist take so much as just wanting to emphasize how weird the stuff Philip deals with is, but he does have Philip use a jetpack powered by, 'atmospheric emotional energy known as orgone.' So it's not entirely serious, either, so would the book benefit from a less detailed, more cartoonish style? I'll see how I feel after the next issue.

Iron Cat #1, by Jed MacKay (writer), Pere Perez (artist), Frank D'Armata (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - I actually went with the Ron Lim variant because I could get a copy for a buck cheaper. I'm not paying $5 for a comic if I can avoid it.

Felicia's attempt to steal a diamond she's been after for a long time is interrupted. First, by Tony Stark calling to yell at her about stealing back the Iron Cat armor she used to threaten Odessa. Then by the person who actually stole the armor, who is trying to kill her. And it's a real problem, because Tony Stark can't help tinkering with things, so the armor is much more dangerous and better-armed than it was originally. 

Felicia's attempts to stay alive as she's chased across Manhattan are intercut with flashbacks to a previous attempt to steal the same diamond, when she and her then-girlfriend Tamara were both still apprenticing with the Black Fox. Perez uses a different shading style on those parts, and D'Armata goes with a softer coloring style. Not sepia-toned, but the contrasts are faded, lines are softer. It's a fond reminiscence, basically. 

Anyway, with the Fox still locked inside the Gilded Saint's vault, three guesses who's inside the armor? So Felicia's going to need some help, and since Tony Stark upgraded the suit because he has no better coping mechanism for his alcoholism, guess who's going to help. Although MacKay again seems to be shelving her bad luck abilities, because Felicia notes all she has going for her is a lot of rope and moxie. Which at least continues a trend from his second Black Cat volume, of Felicia not using the quantum probability doohickus when it's a personal matter. This does seem like a time to break that rule, and Felicia's a thief, she should love breaking rules.

I feel like it's been a while since I bought something Pere Perez drew. I was thinking the Stephanie Brown Batgirl, but it looks like it was when I bought the first two issues of the Rogue and Gambit mini-series 3+ years ago. Perez' work seems to have shifted to something closer to Sean Chen's now, especially in some of the postures characters take while moving. The faces are still more fluid and expressive than Chen's, less teeth-gritting, but it feels like Perez has continued to pare down his style. Less busy, but also maybe less exaggerated.