The weather's actually been quite nice this week. A pleasant change. I was even able to keep my air conditioning off for a couple of days. I found both books I wanted that came out this week. If it weren't for work, and, you know, the general state of the world, things would be sunshine and unicorns.
Dirt goes on a date with Annie, the lady who last issue proclaimed that they were the only two of the vengeance-seekers that had the guts to actually take vengeance. I guess everyone needs a holiday, so they have a talk and some drinks on a grassy hill overlooking a town. A talk about who they've killed, or will kill, and why. Sherman uses a lot of purples and blues, cooler colors for that part. Dirt and Annie are glaring from beneath hats. It's all sort of mellow and playful.
Wouldn't you know it, the guy Annie wants to kill happens to be exiting a place at the bottom of the hill. She chases him into a stable, Sherman shifting to a more natural color scheme. No heightened blues or reds, just a lot of dark shadows and dull browns as Annie learns her father tried to sell her to buy drugs from the guy who killed him. She gets him down, and finds she can't pull the trigger. So Dirt does it. Which suits Speck the vulture just fine, but apparently is a mood-killer for Dirt and Annie.
So Annie's vengeance wasn't so clean cut, surprise surprise. Though a drug dealer's claims that he provided a service killing the man is a bit much. But is that why Annie didn't finish it herself, or is that saying you'll kill someone is easy, but actually doing it is hard?
Assuming that's true, of course. It is easy to say you'll take a life, but the mechanics of the act aren't all that complicated, in that human bodies will fail pretty easily if damaged in certain ways. It's willfully doing causing that damage which is supposed to be the catch. Doesn't appear to be bothering Dirt much. He didn't even have any personal grudge against this particular guy, and he blew the guy's brains out without flinching.
Tamara dives right into the yacht party, where it turns out all the guests are heavily-armed LMDs planted by Stark. Good plan, except that Madame Menace is in Tony's systems and easily turns the LMDs against him. As Tony observes, now his ex is trying to kill him with super-science.
I would ask when Tony dated Sunset Bain, but I don't actually care. I'm reading this for Felicia's relationship drama, not the ongoing disaster that is Tony Stark.
In more hilarious news, Felicia's guys, Bruno and Dr. Korpse, infiltrated Stark's place as janitors and hijacked his plant to build Felicia another suit, this one in traditional Iron Man colors. I gotta be honest, red-and-gold Iron Man armor with cart ears looks kind of dumb. Tamara clearly got the good armor in the break-up, and proves it by still kicking Felicia's ass. I guess most of Felicia's experience was piloting the thing remotely, she's not used to actually dealing with the g-forces. Also, she's probably not fighting to kill, only to stall long enough for Stark to handle the LMDs.
Plans within plans. The back-and-forth between Felicia and Tamara, knowing each other and being able to anticipate one another is kind of lovely. And Perez does a nice job with the two pages of armored fighting, having Felicia's maneuvers lead from one panel to the next. Then Tamara slams her through a wall and the page fragments into a bunch of small panels of them fighting up close.
Unfortunately, Tamara decides that rather than accept defeat, she's going to let Madame Menace off the leash entirely. And the AI immediately declares she's going to make every Stark reactor on the planet go critical. Gee, who could have guessed a grief-stricken person teaming up with a megalomaniacal AI would have dire consequences? That's how you do a story about the dangers of vengeance.
I'm joking. Somewhat. I don't know for sure that's the point Lewis is trying to make in his book, after all.
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