Saturday Splash Page #53

 

"Light Show," in Uncanny X-Men #247, by Chris Claremont (writer), Marc Silvestri (penciler), Dan Green (inker), Glynis Oliver (colorist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer)

The Australian era began with the X-Men's deaths. Fall of the Mutants required them to give their lives in a mystical ritual performed by Forge to seal away a trickster god (sadly, not Loki). But Roma undid it, because chaos is necessary, but only after everyone believes the X-Men are dead.

So the team leans into the idea, as Storm figures they can more effectively strike at those who mean harm to mutants if those foes think the X-Men are no longer a factor. That this includes not telling any friends or loved ones the truth is a bit sketchier, but I wouldn't say the plan woks terribly well anyway, so it's mostly academic. As usual, "proactive" superheroics fail.

The Outback era seems to be a polarizing one. I see people who love it, and people who hate it (often, but not exclusively, related to the team letting their loved ones continue to grieve). While there are more lighthearted issues, including one drawn by Rob Liefeld that spoofs DC's Invasion! event, the team seems cursed. While taking command of the Reavers' base in the middle of the Australian desert does limit attacks against their home, their being presumed dead doesn't convey a ton of advantages. They still seem to be performing triage.

Stopping a Brood plot that involves specifically targeting mutants that's already in progress. This is the era when Genosha as a pretty thinly (if at all) veiled apartheid South Africa is introduced, with a mutant underclass treated as test subjects to be experimented on and altered at the will of the homo sapien overclass. The X-Men only get involved because Maddy Pryor takes a job flying someone Genosha wants back, and they go ahead and abduct Maddy to keep her quiet.

The isolation doesn't seem to do good things to the team. Maddy accepts a demon's offer, thinking it's a just dream she's having, which eventually leads to the whole mess where she recovers her infant son, only to try and sacrifice him so Scott and Jean can be portrayed as the "proper" parents or some shit. Havok gets romantically involved with Madelyne, and that whole circumstance does a number on him (Claremont seems to abandon Havok trying to recover Polaris from Malice's grasp.)

With her powers neutralized, Rogue gets assaulted by Genoshan guards used to taking what they please, prompting Carol Danvers' psyche to take control, something it starts doing more regularly. That Storm in particular is not sympathetic to Rogue's situation puts more stress. I feel like it's telling that Rogue and Dazzler's relationship actually seems to improve to one of at least mutual trust, but it isn't like Alison has a lot of options for girl friends at this point.

(It's a running notion that Nightcrawler does horribly as a team leader, but based on the 50 issues after she sends Cyclops packing, there's plenty of evidence Storm sucks at it, too. The Morlocks would no doubt agree, if they hadn't been mostly murdered at the time.) 

Storm gets captured by Nanny and the Orphan-Maker, age regressed and eventually meets, ugh, Gambit. Logan has wandered off during all this to handle personal business, and by the time he comes back, the team is gone, because Psylocke has telepathically coerced them into giving up and retreating through the Siege Perilous. Logan gets shredded by Lady Deathstrike and the Reavers, and it's only Radical Teen Jubilee that manages to save him.

You could look at the whole stretch from 200 up to 255 or so as part of theme on how people react to constant high-levels of stress, with the answer apparently being, "badly". The X-Men are hurt and hounded and just trying to keep themselves together and find someplace safe for a while. So they hide away in the middle of nowhere, cut off all contact with anyone close to them, abandon any pretense of teaching or guiding the next generation of mutants (and I don't think X-Factor was doing much of that by this point, either), in favor of focusing on hitting back. The Australian era X-Men are almost a proto-X-Force, minus the pouches and firearms.

Marc Silvestri remains the primary series artist  up to about the time the team falls apart entirely. His works gets a bit stronger as he goes along, cuts out some of the excess cross-hatching and shading. But he seems able to handle the quieter or lighter moments better. It helps Claremont is occasionally able to go silent and let the art tell the story.

After the team shatters, we're into the Jim Lee era, baby! Psylocke body-swapped into an Asian ninja lady to be an assassin for the Mandarin, plus Jubilee wearing an outfit deliberately reminiscent of Robin's, while Wolverine talks to psychic phantoms of Carol Danvers and Nick Fury (weird Acts of Vengeance tie-in, to be sure)! Rogue running around in the Savage Land in relatively little! Gambit! Er, well, you know, it's a mixed bag.

Random Back Issues #98 - Hawkeye #1

I think the reason I never got around to watching Hawkeye was I didn't want to deal with the possibility of watching a bunch of dipshits in tracksuits saying "bro" constantly. And since Disney+ seems to be cracking down on account sharing, I never will. Because I sure as shit ain't shelling out for it myself.

Anyway, first issue of the Fraction/Aja Hawkeye run. What Clint does when he's not being an Avenger. And he's not being an Avenger because he fell off a building and landed on top of a car, breaking a lot of bones.

But he's out now, and somehow happy to be in New York in August, which he describes as being able to catch a whiff of fresh air beneath 'hot garbage, wet pennies and pee.' I know Clint didn't have a happy childhood, but certainly he must remember places with better smells than that? Whatever, after kicking his wheelchair into traffic, then ditching his taxi in more traffic - if Clint's meant to be extolling the virtues of NYC, he's really just convincing me he's had a lot of concussions - he returns to his apartment to find his neighbors being kicked out because the tracksuit guys tripled their rent.

Clint, having come into some money via some method I don't recall, decides to visit a secret casino and pay everyone's rent. Tracksuit Guy doesn't want their rent, he wants them gone to sell the building. Real estate thing. The Kingpin's involved, it ends up being a whole thing. It's why the Sad Clown Killer guy gets involved.

So Clint gets in a fight, gets thrown through a window. One of the tracksuit guys' dog, appreciating the gift of pizza Clint offered earlier, bites his owners hand when the guy shoots Clint, and gets kicked into traffic. Clint's attempt to alert, divert, something the driver of a car by flicking a coin through the his window with a finger, doesn't work and the dog gets hit. Which explains all the cutaway scenes through the issue of Clint bring the dog to a vet.

While Clint waits, Tracksuit Guy shows up, looking for a fight. Should have brought more than two guys, then. Clint's not that bad a fighter, no matter how inept he ends up looking through most of this series. Clint beats them up, stuffs them in a taxi to the airport with over 12.5 million dollars to buy the building outright, and all the problems are solved!

Or not.

[5th longbox, 95th comic, Hawkeye (vol. 4) #1, by Matt Fraction (writer), David Aja (artist), Matt Hollingsworth (colorist), Chris Eliopoulos (letterer)]

A Downpour to Start Spring

The March solicitations were surprisingly bountiful. Must be a spring thing.

What's new I might buy? Quite a lot of things I'll at least consider. DC has Unstoppable Doom Patrol by Dennis Culver and Chris Burnham. I don't know anything about either of their work, and the book spins out of the events of Lazarus Planet, which is hardly promising, but maybe.

Marvel has three books. One is It's Jeff, a bunch of stories by Kelly Thompson and the Guruhiru art team about Gwenpool and Deadpool's little land shark that were originally published online. I expect to see much adorable biting of jerks in this book. There's also Clobberin' Time, the Steve Skroce mini-series that was originally solicited for last summer. Hopefully it's actually ready to publish this time!

Finally, there's a Hellcat mini-series. On the one hand, it describes a supernatural murder mystery revolving around Pasty's dead mother's home. On the other hand, it's written by Christopher Cantwell, the Iron Man writer who had the bright idea to get Patsy engaged to Tony Stark, which is hardly encouraging.

Moving outside those publishers, Image has the first issue of Phantom Road, a mini-series by Jeff Lemire, Gabriel Walta, and Jordie Bellaire about a couple of people finding an artifact in a car wreck and things getting weird. Sounds like a good concept, but my track record with Lemire has not been good. Lev Gleason - New Friday has Black Sheep, which is going to be 3 oversized comics that, 'captures the traditional ideologies of a classic comic with a story that focuses on family and honor while designed to look like pages of old.' Sounds a bit like Black Jack Demon in that regard, trying to resemble '50 horror comics, except this is a samurai story by the look of it. At $10 an issue, without knowing how oversized it is, I don't know. Dark Horse is releasing a trade of Matt Kindt and Tyler Jenkins' Apache Delivery Service, about two men hunting for stolen gold in the jungles of Vietnam.

I don't know if I'll buy any of those, but I want to at least keep them in mind. Maybe pick them up down the line somewhere.

What am I buying that's ending? A couple of things. March is the final issue of Tiger Division, and the solicit kind of spoils the surprise by stating outright the team has to fight Dr. Doom. Viz Media also has the third and final volume of Crazy Food Truck. I wouldn't have expected it to wrap up so quickly.

What's that leave? Quite a bit at Marvel. Fantastic Four, Mary Jane and Black Cat (still going a month after Dark Web ends), Moon Knight, and maybe Deadpool. I hoped after lat month's solicit, the symbiote plot would be concluded already, but I guess not. Swell.

Immortal Sergeant will be up to issue 3, but it's also now a 9-issue mini-series, instead of 8. Darkwing Duck would also be on issue 3, but I'm having doubts. The solicit describes his girlfriend Morgana as "conniving", and that does not track with how I remember her. Eager to help? Sure. Not the most adept magically? Yes. Conniving? Not so much. She didn't have to be, considering Darkwing turned to a puddle of goo around her.

Grit N Gears would be up to issue 4, but considering issue 1 no-showed this month, and Ice Canyon Monster never did pop back up, I will believe it when I see it. Also, apparently Aftershock's going into bankruptcy, which might explain A Calculated Man never finishing up. Or maybe it's unrelated. Hardly encouraging either way! Fallen and Liquid Kill are supposed to ship their second issues. Fallen suggests the lead detective has to be careful that the other gods don't notice him investigating. Liquid Kill. . .basically repeats the solicit text from issue 1. Helpful.

To wrap up on the manga front, the ninth volume of Precarious Woman Executive is listed from Seven Seas, and the second volume of The Boxer from Ize Press. I haven't actually read the first volume yet, since it only came out a couple of weeks ago, but hopefully I will by the time this comes out.

Bullet Train (2022)

Brad Pitt gets hired to steal a metal suitcase off a bullet train traveling through Japan. The briefcase is in the possession of two hired killers codenamed Tangerine and Lemon, who are supposed to return the briefcase and a drugged-out son to a big Yakuza boss called "The White Death." Does that mean he's made of cocaine, or saturated fats?

There's another guy on the train looking for the person who pushed his son off the roof, as well as that person, plus one other wild card. Shake them all up at 200 kilometers per hour (or however fast bullet trains go) and see what happens.

The movie reminds me of Hotel Artemis, in that it feels like it's trading heavily on a memorable setting and interesting characters, but a bit thin on plot. That's not necessarily a deal-breaker; I liked Hotel Artemis a lot, but it benefits from keeping things relatively short and sweet. It's 94 minutes long, but Bullet Train is 125 minutes. There was a point where most of the characters are dead, and the train itself is almost empty, that I thought the movie must be near the end.

Nope! 50 minutes to go. The movie slows down at that point for a lot of talking about the difference between fate and bad luck, and the fable about how a ladybug's spots carry the world's seven sorrows. Also flashbacks to explain why they're all there. It feels like there must have been a more organic way to convey that this is not some Guy Ritchie-esque series of coincidences. 

I can't decide if the two masked Yakuza guys arguing about opening the case for a couple of minutes is just filler, or if it really does fit the tone of the movie. Considering Lemon keeps comparing people to character from Thomas the Tank Engine, because it was a formative experience in his childhood, or the killer who ends every, single, sentence, with the word "bitch", the whiny goons probably don't stand out.

That said, if this movie is built on style over substance, it is very stylish. The fight scenes are well choreographed and take advantage of the narrow confines and numerous obstructions of the train. It doesn't try to make Brad Pitt into some wildly athletic guy that he isn't at this point, and the way his character fights reflects his questioning whether this life is any good for him. He fights defensively, avoiding, obstructing, mostly using non-lethal weapons. There's a lot of punchy, quippy exchanges, characters arguing with each other or insulting one another. It makes for several funny moments, but that clashes with circumstances of the ending.

Without giving away too much, something happens which I would expect caused the deaths of dozens, if not hundreds, of dead innocent bystanders. Maybe I should have expected something like that, but it caught me off-guard. A lot of people had already died by then, but those were people involved in all this mess. This is a bunch of people just minding our own business. Netflix' description mentions Deadpool, which also has a pretty high body count, several of them treated as jokes ("You're gonna be killed by a Zamboni!").

But those are people involved in the organization that ruined Deadpool's life, who also run guns and drugs, sell humans, experiment on them, etc. They aren't innocent by any stretch. There's the scene on the highway, but I think the movie tries to suggest it's only the bad guys' SUV that wrecks, that everyone else is able to avoid the crash and then abandon their cars. Bullet Train doesn't show a bunch of corpses, so maybe I should assume no one else died, like how I was willing to roll with the notion the Incredible Hulk didn't kill anyone when he destroyed entire towns in the old comics.

But man, my first thought during that scene was, "Wow, that killed a lot of people."

A Do-Si-Do of Dumbasses

Ummm, there is a lot to unpack there.

Outside of three, one-off stories at the start, volume 7 of Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General is focused entirely on the escalating efforts of the mysterious "Organization", which includes the guy the General keeps insisting acts like the Joker.

In this case, the Organization unleashes a horrible stink bomb in a train station, then tells the Villain League, of which RX is a part, where they've placed other bombs, which they have given credit to the Villain League for. Including a police station and a branch office of the Hero League. The villains split up to try and stop the bombs and run into more of the Organization's members. Including a cyborg who is dangerously obsessed with the Joker-like guy.

Nobody covers themselves with glory here. The Organization succeeds in their real plan, but they seem like a bunch of idiots. It's just the Villain League and the Hero League are even bigger idiots. Or really just the Villain League, the heroes are so disorganized they barely even get involved. With how Jin writes most of the cast as a bunch of buffoons or weirdos, the Organization's characters seem to be written as even more obnoxious weirdos to stand out compared to the first two groups.

I mean, just look at that idiot! He tries to do cool poses constantly and that's what he manages! Is that not a character crying out to get beaten to death?!

Or maybe this internecine warfare just isn't very interesting to me. Jin's very good at using his cast for workplace comedy sorts of stories, where the emphasis is on these characters who know each other and, if not like one another, at least tolerate and understand one another. The first chapter, where we meet the General's parents and they get to find out what their daughter's been up to, that was funny. We see where the General gets some of her personality, but also that her subordinates actually like her, even if they don't get her obsession with Brave-Man.

Sunday Splash Page #250

 

"Conversion," Hourman #6, by Tom Peyer (writer), Rags Morales (penciler), David Meikis (inker), John Kalisz and Heroic Age (colorists), Kurt Hathaway (letterer)

Coming out of DC One Million, Tom Peyer and Rags Morales focused on a version of Hourman from the 853rd Century, now sightseeing in the 20th Century. With the notion ostensibly being that the android needed to learn more about not being omnipotent, the creative team made sure to create a lot of different people and aspects for Hourman to play off of and contrast with. They paired him primarily with former Justice League mascot Snapper Carr, for starters, now bumming around writing a memoir in his old home town. Snapper knew all about being human, and all about being around superhumans. He also knew a lot about failure and guilt, and didn't always exercise good judgment in his advice.

Snapper also knew a lot of more or less ordinary people, from his ex-girlfriend Beth, to her cantankerous sheriff of a mother, Aubrey. All of which gave "Ty" a chance to interact with people who weren't superheroes and learn about being human as well. Some of this played as comedy, Ty learning how to order a coffee and finding out he and caffeine don't mix. Some of it is more melodramatic, as Ty and Beth fall for each other, though the creative team blessedly avoid any love triangle with them and Snapper. And sometimes it's more serious, Ty resisting making decisions on his own, or Snapper and Beth dealing with their advice having negative consequences.

Because this is DC, there had to be a legacy aspect, so Hourman also tried to investigate the heroic tradition he was part of, mostly through the original Hourman. I don't know if the notion Rex Tyler tended to get a little nuts or boorish when he was on Miraclo was already going around, or if it started here (I feel like James Robinson nodded towards it at times in Starman), but the android gets glimpses of his ancestor that aren't too flattering.

Snapper also has to try and come to grips with that time the Joker tricked him into betraying the JLA, as well as the fact that at some point, he had space adventures as a guy who could teleport by snapping his fingers. Until he was captured and his hands got cut off. As far as I know, that's something Peyer retconned into Snapper's history, and I'm not sure why. To give him unresolved trauma that explains the fact he looks like shit constantly in this book and avoids contact with his old costumed pals?

The book uses flashbacks, both to the Golden Age and Snapper's Silver Age JLA adventures, and Morales adopts a more simplified style for those parts (although the layouts and number of panels don't change much), while Kalisz' color work tends to simpler, broader schemes. Trying to evoke a different age, even if the flashback reveals things weren't so simple as the legends say.

But there's the legacy of the name he carries, and there's the legacy of his origins: an android. So Amazo, as maybe the earliest example, gets set up as a sort of foil. One frustrated by his own limitations, and envious of the limitations Hourman didn't have originally. He pops up several times, with various designs, including what I thought was a pretty cool one with a skull face. I don't know why Amazo settled on that design, but it looked cool.

As Amazo keeps taking different approaches, it forces Hourman to confront different issues. At one point, he has to deal with the fact he brought Amazo back, and got half his time powers stolen. Another time, Hourman feels he's been supplanted by a more experienced version of himself, and runs off to sulk on an entire star system devoted to celebrating him, before getting forcibly jolted out of his funk by a very harsh psychotherapist. In the story the splash page is from, Amazo is stealing humanity from his victims, rather than power, turning them into automatons instead. Hourman's got to deal with this without Snapper, while Amazo taunts him about being far more human now.

The book ends with a time-traveling field trip for Ty and the supporting cast, with Hourman returning them home, then rushing off to fight Amazo one more time. I have no idea what happened to the character after that, since at some point, the original Hourman's son got cured of some weird time-disease he had and became the Hourman who ran around in Geoff Johns' JSA.

Saturday Splash Page #52

 

"Full Retreat," in Uncanny X-Men #215, by Chris Claremont (writer), Alan Davis (penciler), Dan Green (inker), Glynis Oliver (colorist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer)

Now we're into an era I'm familiar with. It's an odd stretch, with the X-Men contending with a sentient universe at the start, and a trickster god at the end. Those more unusual threats bookend more conventional mutant-hunting robots and other mutants. But variety makes for the spice of life, right?

The 200th issue brought a couple of major changes to the book. First, Xavier got badly injured attending yet another trial for Magneto and had to be whisked into space for advanced medical treatment by his bird princess girlfriend Lilandra. Then, before he left, Chuck asked Magneto to take over running the school.

This was followed up in the next issue by Cyclops losing a duel to Storm (still minus her powers) and being forced to relinquish leadership of the X-Men for the horrors of, gasp, marriage and fatherhood. How awful. Of course, as we covered in Saturday Splash Page #16, ol' Slim Summers couldn't bail on Maddy and Baby Cable to hang out with his school chums fast enough, but it would be a while (blessedly) before he'd befoul the pages of this book again. So that's the oldest of the X-Men gone, the teacher and mentor replaced by a guy who had repeatedly kicked this team's ass.

This could be considered a period of long, downward spiral for the team, as internal and (mostly) external forces dismantle the team. Rachel Summers first tries kill the Beyonder, who then tries to goad her into unleashing the neutron galaxy within the M'Krann Crystal, which would have wiped out the entire universe. After that, she tries to kill Selene (who is, after all, a vampire that's killed thousands to continue her own existence), only to nearly be gutted by Wolverine, under the questionable Logan logic it's better he nearly kill the girl than allow her to become a killer herself.

Rachel staggers off, into Spiral's waiting hands, at the same time Nightcrawler is nearly killed in battle with Nimrod. Wolverine had already nearly been killed by Lady Deathstrike, and then Rachel did a number on him on her way out the door. Then the Mutant Massacre starts, and the X-Men lose three of their number to severe injury.

Part of what I like about this stretch is how well Claremont makes it feel as though the tables are turning against the X-Men. Nimrod is out there, adapting even further with every encounter. No one has any real idea who is behind the Marauders, who take a break from attacking the X-Men to attack Maddy Pryor and abduct Baby Cable. Mystique's branch of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants get themselves declared a federal law enforcement group. The X-Men bucked the odds for a long time, but they couldn't keep it up forever, and they're left scrambling for answers, even as the damage spreads beyond their roster.

The Morlocks are decimated.  Even the Hellfire Club is taking casualties. The Beyonder temporarily kills the entire New Mutant squad and erases their existence so no one, save Shadowcat (thanks to her "bond" with Illyana), even remembers them. They're brought back eventually, but so traumatized Magneto hands them off to Emma Frost to help deal with their psychic trauma. Predictably terrible idea, entrusting children to Emma. Meanwhile, Magneto's taking a spot in the Hellfire Club as part of an alliance. I think that's one of those Claremont subplots that never went anywhere.

Backs against the wall and roster depleted, the X-Men are pretty much whoever the holdovers (Storm, Wolverine, Rogue) can find. Psylocke's there as an instructor for the kids, but has to fend off Sabretooth by herself. Dazzler shows up controlled by Malice, and once she's free, sticks around for lack of anywhere better to go. Malice switches to Polaris, which has Havok looking for X-Men assistance, only to find the mansion abandoned. Longshot. . .just kind of shows up?

I especially like the few issues where Wolverine has to try and lead a team that isn't much of a team while Storm's hunting Forge in attempt to regain what he took from her. Logan had always resisted taking command, but now he had to take being responsible beyond just acting the gruff mentor to one teenage girl at a time. He can't stop to settle scores with Sabretooth, because Longshot doesn't understand the danger they're facing, Rogue and Psylocke are both overconfident, Dazzler doesn't trust Rogue, and Havok doesn't trust himself. Maddy's there too, doing her best to stay alive while not understanding why the Marauders are trying so damn hard to kill her.

John Romita Jr.'s the regular artist at the start of this stretch, although Rick Leonardi, Barry Windsor-Smith, Alan Davis and Jackson Guice, among others, pop in for an issue here and there. By the tail end, primary art responsibility is in the hands of Marc Silvestri. His lines are considerably thinner and lighter than Romita's, and his work is a lot busier as well. It gives the characters more of a harried look. They're on edge, worn down. Of course, Silvestri also tends to have every woman stand like she's wearing high heels, whether she is or not. It's distracting when Dazzler's got her heel four inches in the air for no apparent reason. (I do wonder if there was any connection between Silvestri becoming the new artist at a time when the cast shifted to being over 50% women.)

What I Bought 12/21/2022

All of the local comic store's Marvel books last week showed up damaged. I figured I would just pick up Deadpool this week, but either the replacements hadn't arrived, or they were already sold out, so we've got just one book to look at.

In other news, it is cold as shit today.

Mary Jane and Black Cat: Dark Web #1, by Jed MacKay (writer), Vincenzo Carratu and Michael Dowling (artists), Brian Reber (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - Now is not the time for spirit fingers, Felicia.

So, Dark Web, aka Inferno: The Sequel, is underway, and Spidey has asked Felicia to look after Mary Jane. Felicia finds MJ is pretty capable of protecting herself, as she's got superpowers now. Which she does not want to talk about, thank you. Well sure, why not? After all, Felicia doesn't want to talk about the fact she and Spidey are fooling around, after she told MJ that definitely was not going to happen during the team-up comic I bought back at the beginning of the year.

So? MJ is living with another guy, raising his kids with him, and being a rude asshole to Peter every time I've seen them interact in Amazing Spider-Man. If she doesn't like Felicia fooling around with Peter, she should have held on to him. Anyway, the two of them are pulled abruptly into Limbo by Belasco, who is wearing someone's skin like a tunic or something.

So, MJ's powers. She's wearing something on her wrist, and it shows slot machine symbols, and then she gets powers based somehow on the symbols that come up. Basically the H-Dial, but as a slot machine. I assume for the opportunity to do "jackpot"-themed wordplay. I guess if it gives MacKay and Carratu the chance to get nuts or silly with the powers it could be fun. At one point she gets some sort of pudding control powers, but 1) it looks like green slime, not pudding, and 2) she uses it to propel herself and punch people with it, not very creative.

There's also a back-up story by MacKay and Dowling, where Felicia tells the story of how she stole Dr. Doom's mask and lived to tell the tale. It involves time travel and lots of making out, who could ask for more?

The Vanishing (2018)

Three men arrive at an otherwise uninhabited island for a six-week stint manning the lighthouse in the North Atlantic. Thomas (Peter Mullan) has recently lost his family, James (Gerard Butler) is apparently not bringing in enough to support his family, and Donald (Connor Swindells) seems like he just needed to get away.

Then Donald finds what looks like a dead body, a rowboat, and a locked chest at the bottom of a cliff.

The movie is "inspired" by the true story of 3 lighthouse keepers who disappeared from the Flannan Islands. I have no idea what, if any, basis there would be for this version of the events, but that's fine. I wouldn't have known it was based on anything real if the movie hadn't said so at the start.

It starts slow, establishing the location, that there is no land in sight in any direction. Also some of the duties that are required and what kind of set-up there is. Like how the radio set doesn't work. I really thought the fact the device that makes the light turn leaks mercury was going to be more significant than it was.

It also becomes apparent quickly some of the fault lines between the three men. Donald seems to have gotten hired on James' recommendation, and while Donald is sometimes curious and eager to learn, he's also not much of a self-starter, and kind of a goof at times. Or maybe he's just younger and less mature than the other two. He goes from being very concerned that someone is going to come looking for the dead man and his chest, to seeming totally surprised when. . .someone comes looking for the dead man and his chest.

For the first half of the movie, James seems the most stable. The one who humors Donald's flights of stupidity, or who coaxes James inside when he's yelling drunkenly at shadows. Which is why, when things go south, it's the decline in James' mentality that is the worst sign. Gerard Butler spends at least the last 45 minutes with a thousand yard stare. I'd swear they did something to his eyes, contacts or something digital, to make them look almost cloudy and enhance the effect. He's somewhere far away from the other two.

There are a lot of shots of one character peering through a window at another, or simply watching them from off to one side or slightly behind them. The camera likes to put one of them in perfect focus, but make the other slightly blurry, make you wonder if these three are seeing each other clearly past their own problems. Mullan has this perpetual squint to his face, like he's spent his entire life having salt thrown in his face by the sea. It doesn't make him seem very gentle, and even when he's trying to talk around James or Donald, it doesn't quite work. There's not much comfort to be had in his words. When Donald confides that a girl he liked said she wasn't to talk to him because he's, 'a bastard boy,' Thomas's response is along the lines of, "well then they can't complain if you do turn out to be a bastard." 

Probably not what the boy needed to hear, but that's part of the problem. Each of them is falling apart before they got to the lighthouse, so none of them are capable of holding each other together. It's a decently tense movie, even knowing they all have to "vanish" somehow, because you don't know how or why or in what order.

Alien: Covenant

I watched this for lack of better options while on the road last week. It's, fine? I guess? I didn't find myself caring much about the crew, beyond my disbelief in how completely Amy Seimetz' characters manages to fuck everything up with the mess on the drop ship. Abandon a crew member with a hostile alien, then come back with a shotgun and fail to kill the thing (actually impressed she didn't kill her crew mate by mistake). Let it escape quarantine, then blow up yourself and the ship. The Three Stooges would be impressed with that level of incompetence.

Other than that, I didn't have much of a reaction to it. Didn't find myself caring about the crew. Guess I laughed at the two characters getting killed while fooling around in the shower. Ridley Scott decided even hundreds of years in the future and light years from Earth, horror movie conventions must be upheld, and horny people must die. Also, there were times David and Walter looked so vastly different, even though both are played by Michael Fassbender and supposed to look identical, I wondered how I was supposed to believe anyone would confuse them.

Maybe the issue is simply it's a prequel, and I didn't need to know how the Xenomorphs came to be. The notion some mind deliberately created them might actually make them less interesting to me than if they simply evolved naturally. Going back to the notion I talked about last week with Life, that there will be all kinds of things out there in space we are unprepared to deal with, because they're beyond our frame of reference.

I get that it ties to what the one scientist told David in Prometheus, that humans created androids just to see if they could. Or the big aliens seeding planets to see what comes forth, but not being pleased when the answer was us. Everyone wants to play God, nobody likes their results. David is trying to explore whether he's capable of creation, while also being a bit of a spurned child and/or lover. His creators didn't live up to what he desired, so he will create something even better to destroy them.

That bit where the chest-burster emerges and mimics David spreading his arms, presumably because the android's the first thing it sees was just stupid, though. Trying to be too cute there with something they've pretty well-established is a relentless murder machine. Oh, it stopped to mimic its creator (which it would have no way of recognizing), how adorable! Sure, whatever. 

It's funny though, having seen all the movies set later on, to think the only reason David's plan for Xenomorphs to wipe us out can work is because some humans are complete dumbasses. They see the acid-blood rampaging kill-beasts and think, "There's money to be made here." Otherwise, they'd have just been a bunch of eggs stuck on a single lonely planet on the ass-end of space. I don't think I can give David credit for the level of perception necessary to factor that into his plans.

Also, what does it mean that the colony ship detects another planet that seems perfectly habitable, much closer than the one they're headed for, and it turns out to be a death trap? It feels like there must be some point to how that turned out. Was it supposed to be that people make mistakes because they look for the easy path? That colonizing an entirely new world is going to be too complicated to just decide halfway there to take a detour instead?

Maybe that humans will ignore evidence contrary to what they already want to do. Daniels pointed out that it was strange they somehow never detected this so-inviting planet until now, but the captain overruled her. I assume the reason they didn't detect it until then was the interference from the storms (unless it was supposed to be the result of some alien technology), and that's the sort of thing that could have been determined if they sent a message back to HQ advising someone send a probe or survey crew later. They didn't though, and they weren't prepared for what they encountered.

So Many Evil Swords

Because he's a piece of shit, kid.

Volume 2 of Soul Eater centers on Atsushi Ohkubo's introduction of what, if the anime kept that much the same, will be a major recurring foe, the witch Medusa. Much like the instructor Doctor Stein, Medusa likes to run experiments on living beings. In her case, a child named Chrona, whose weapon actually forms from his blood and likes to abuse him. Maka and Soul run across them in the middle of a massacre and Soul is nearly killed protecting Maka.

Atsushi then reveals that not only has Medusa already been working at the Academy in the guise of its doctor, but the wound Soul received could have side effects down the line. Side effects besides Maka being sad about failing to help Soul. Which is part of the follow-up, Maka trying to find a way to make herself stronger.

There's a dark reflection aspect to Chrona and Ragnarok (the demon sword). Maka and Soul are trying to kill 100 hundred souls for Soul to devour, and then the soul of a witch, so Soul can become a Death Scythe. In that, he can become a scythe literally wielded by Lord Death. They're only meant to take souls on Lord Death's list, though. Chrona and Ragnarok are being used to kill anyone, good or evil, to become a Kishin, which is some immensely powerful demonic soul weapon thing.

In a sense, they're both being used, but Maka and Soul presumably had some choice in joining the Academy, and they're being taught restraint. Chrona is just a test subject to Medusa, someone she will infect with her magic to nudge him on if he isn't being sufficiently aggressive. And so far, it only seems to be Chrona's confused, indecisive personality (Chrona is constantly fretting he doesn't know how to deal with whatever he's facing, be it talking to girls or getting bags under his eyes because Ragnarok won't let him sleep) that's holding him back.

The other major story is Black Star and Tsubaki's attempt to capture the "uncanny sword" Masamune, who just so happens to be Tsubaki's older brother. Atsushi uses this to flesh out both parts of this peculiar team, and add to their backstory. While Maka and Soul both have aggressive personalities that clash at times, Black Star and Tsubaki are polar opposites. He's always shouting how he'll be greater than God, while she tends to nod quietly and follow along.

What Atsushi reveals is that there's some ugly history to Black Star's past, but also that he believes and supports Tsubaki as much as he believes in himself. While she battles against her brother in some spirit plane, Black Star waits, ignoring the attacks of the idiot villagers on himself. It's only when one of them moves to harm Tsubaki he gets fierce. Tsubaki has to finally stand for herself, for what she wants, instead of always defaulting to what she thinks will make others happy. She tried to be a loving sister, but her brother interpreted it as pity because he can only transform to one weapon, while she can become several. Tsubaki has to show him that "kind" doesn't mean "weak".

Atsushi is able to mix and match between action and comedy, mostly during Black Star and Tsubaki's battle against the villager Masamune possesses. Black Star's ego and overconfidence makes him an easy target for grand moves that backfire. Otherwise it's usually one of the other. Maka's father making an ass of himself in front of her, or the whole thing with Death the Kid and Black Star seeking out Excalibur. During the battle against Chrona and Ragnarok, once they use their "soul resonance" Ragnarok is screaming constantly, and Atsushi adds a vertical black panel along the side of each page for just the scream, to indicate it's constant. During Tsubaki's battle with Masamune, Atsushi does away with shadows or shading almost entirely. Their clothes and faces may still show shadows, but their surroundings don't. Like nothing has any form or substance except them.

There's also some gratuitous fan service, naturally. I'm not sure if it's more or less than volume 1, but there's no real reason why Tsubaki would overhear about Soul's injury in the girl's locker room as opposed to somewhere in the hallways or the classroom.

Sunday Splash Page #249

 

"Invisible Elevator," in The Hood #2, by Brian K. Vaughn (writer), Kyle Hotz (penciler), Eric Powell (inker), Brian Haberlin (colorist), Andy Gentile and Dave Sharpe (letterer)

Before Bendis wildly overexposed The Hood by making him the centerpiece villain of much of his Avengers run, Brian K. Vaughn and Kyle Hotz introduced the character in a six-issue MAX imprint mini-series.

They pretty much set the outline for Parker Robbins within the first few pages. He visits his mother in the mental hospital and tells her stories about how he's studying to become a doctor or lawyer, it changes each time. When an orderly mentions the discrepancy, Robbins threatens to knife him. He's got a pregnant girlfriend he's all sweet talk with, who he cheats on regularly with a sex worker (I imagine that, and all the cursing, are why this was a MAX book.) Hotz and Powell are good at making Parker look a little softer or more innocent when he puts on the charm, then shifting to a shit-eating grin or some bad boy glower when he is a bad mood. 

He tries to rob a warehouse with his junkie cousin John, who has a hot tip about a 'major shipment', but all they find is what's left of a demonic summoning. Parker gets his levitating boots and invisibility hood by robbing the corpse of a demon he shoots with a regular handgun. With the way Hotz draws the hood, all we can see of Parker's face most of the time his jaw, or more critically, his mouth. Which is working double shifts getting him into and out of trouble. The hood itself is this immense, baggy-looking thing that drapes over Parker. With the amount of fabric Hotz draws, and how it bunches and folds over Parker, it looks like it would weigh a ton.

Ultimately, Parker's more ambition than brains. He figures with his new abilities they can swipe some blood diamonds being brought in. All he accomplishes is killing a cop (which his cousin takes the rap for), and putting himself in the crosshairs of some major underworld crime figure called "The Golem." For all Parker's hustling and scrambling, he's just barely able to get his cousin exonerated and The Golem off his back, with nothing to show for it, except that he's made a bunch of enemies.

You can do a lot with a villain who thinks he's hotter stuff than he is, or who jumps into things without really understanding what he's getting into, and as portrayed here, Parker's perfect for that. Vaughn writes him as smart enough to see opportunities, but not smart or careful enough to exploit them without fucking up. He's not cut out to be a henchman, like Jack O'Lantern, Constrictor, or Shocker, who all work as muscle for The Golem, but he really shouldn't be able to pull a Zemo and gather a bunch of super-villains under his banner.

It's as cynical a book as you would expect. Parker can't even enjoy the limited success he achieved, since that's also when he learns the cop he shot died. Naturally, said cop was cheating on his wife with his partner, and his wife is an engineer at Stark Industries, who built herself a suit to go after The Hood. Don't think that ever paid off. There's also a scene where she's reading to her husband while he's a coma, and one of the doctors in the hall remarks that stuff they tell people, that folks in comas can hear you, is total crap. Gee, why don't you say it a little louder and see if you can flatline a few people?

Vaughn adds in a few other scenes for, flavor, I guess. The Golem asks if any of his super-goons are mutants, because his daughter is a mutant and who like him to be more diverse in his hiring practices. Parker and his cousin are approached in a bar by a guy recruiting for HYDRA, who they accuse of being responsible for 9/11 as they kick the shit out of him. This follows directly on Parker recognizing Electro in civilian duds across the bar, and commenting that the reason to be a super-villain is that women are all over them. Gotta wonder how true that is, if Electro is hanging out in the same bar as a couple of losers like Parker and John. Probably doesn't help that Hotz' "halfway to Kelley Jones" art style makes Max Dillon look kinda ugly, and the suit he's wearing looks straight outta the '70s.

Saturday Splash Page #51

 

"Fuzzy Elf on a Lightning Bolt," in Uncanny X-Men #147, by Chris Claremont (writer), Dave Cockrum and Josef Rubinstein (artists), Glynis Oliver (colorist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer)

Welcome to Nuclear Winter! Because they're Children of the Atom, right?

Audience: Why not just use "X-Mas Time?"

Because this is going through January and that's not seasonally appropriate! Ahem, the X-Men. What can be said, that hasn't already? This week is really only concerned with the stretch from the start of the "All-New, All-Different" era, up to issue 200. This is, admittedly, an era before my time. I only have scattered issues here and there that I picked up because I'd heard about them second-hand, or I thought the cover looked cool. The fight at Forge's tower against the Dire Wraiths. The issue where Logan and Kurt let Colossus get in a bar fight with the Juggernaut because they're kinda ticked how he broke Kitty's heart. The X-Men trying to rescue Arcade from Dr. Doom.

But it's the stretch that made the legend. Made Chris Claremont and John Byrne huge names. Made the X-Men a big deal in the superhero comic biz for years and years. Oft-imitated, perhaps only occasionally duplicated. I mean, the number of homages to the Days of Future Past cover of Wolverine and Kitty Pryde spotlighted in front of the big wanted poster alone could fill an encyclopedia.

Which makes it a hard, after decades of creative teams following in the footsteps, to see what made it such a hit. The things the creative teams did then, that seemed so vibrant and different, have been done over and over again in the years since.

Marvel's superhero output had always been marked by a certain amount of melodrama. Characters arguing, bickering, being stubborn or neurotic. Pining after a teammate who loved a different teammate. Peter Parker bemoaning his difficulty in paying bills, Sue Storm being frustrated with Reed Richards, Hawkeye pissing off all his teammates on the Avengers (or the Human Torch pranking The Thing). It feels like the Uncanny X-Men creative teams simply ramped it up a bit, but brought a flair and style all their own to it. Claremont's purple prose, Cockrum's unique designs for some of the characters (I don't know if that story about Nightcrawler and, I think Colossus, being Cockrum's ideas for Legion of Superheroes characters that got rejected is true, but it's a nice story).

I think part of it was the sense of real, noticeable changes, big and small. Not simply characters leaving the roster like Sunfire, or even dying like Thunderbird. Wolverine being more than just an irritant like Hawkeye or the Human Torch, but someone his teammates are actively nervous to be around. When Angel rejoins the team, he outright asks Xavier if he thinks having Wolverine around is a good idea, because the guy seems like a threat to everyone. But slowly, more in some characters than others, the opinion turns. Logan gets more under control, lets the others in a bit more.

Cyclops leaves after Jean's death, meets someone else, eventually returns. While he's gone Storm takes over as field leader, grows in confidence, but by the time the team is venturing to Japan for Logan's wedding, she feels she's losing control of her powers. Then she loses them entirely and has to adjust to that. Rogue starts out as an enemy, then joins the team. Kitty starts as a student, then makes it onto the main roster, rather than sticking with the New Mutants. OK, some of the changes are more organic than others, likely owing to Claremont's preferences for certain characters, but it feels like there's a lot up in the air. Anything could happen.

A lot of what makes the book sing is the artists. Like I said, most of the new characters have strong, distinctive costumes or looks that help them stick in the memory even when they're in civilian clothes. And the artists are good at giving everyone their own style. It's not a case of, "Warren's the white guy in a suit and tie with blonde hair, Bobby's the white guy in suit and tie with brown hair. No, no, that's Hank. He's the white guy in suit and tie with brown hair, plus big hands and feet!" Wolverine doesn't dress like Nightcrawler, neither of them dresses like Cyclops. 

A steady stream of good artists, with strong styles, well-suited for stories filled with fighting and emoting. Cockrum, Byrne, and later on, Paul Smith and early John Romita Jr. Barry Windsor-Smith's drawing scattered issues among all that. Each artist has their own style, but, again, the designs are distinctive enough that it remains easy to tell the characters apart.

The team grew over the course of this stretch, probably marked most notably by their periodic run-ins with Magneto. Mags kicked their butts the first time around, and they didn't do much better the next time. But they gradually learn to work together more successfully. Wolverine got slightly less prone to trying to pick a fight with a guy who controls metal. Xavier regained use of his legs during Secret Wars, Cyclops was back on the roster, Shadowcat and Rogue seemed to be fitting in, things were looking good.

Then issue 200 came along and upended a lot of things, and it was a long way downhill for the merry mutants. But we'll look at that next week.

Back to the Start Line Again

Welcome to the beginning of Year 18 at Reporting on Marvels and Legends. What a year, huh? So full of adventure and good times, one could have mistaken it for Heaven on - 

What's that? I'm sorry, I'm being informed there were not really that many adventures or good times.

I did avoid any weather-related mishaps, and the one major vehicular issue at least didn't result in me getting injured. I did have a really shitty time trying to get home from a training back in the summer, but I at least turned that into some writing. That felt healthier and more productive than just posting a profanity-laden tirade, which was my initial plan.

Here on the blog, things were pretty much business as usual. In February, I did a write-up about how my new comic purchases have changed since I started this blog. Then May brought a post about how I dither over when to drop a book. In March, I floated the idea of an alternate version of Cable's birth, where the Juggernaut shows up while Madelyne Pryor's all alone in the X-Mansion. Come April, I had to fend off Pollock's nefarious attempt to ruin my day by having an owl steal my baseball caps. June, I hopped back over to sports talking about the Golden State Warriors winning an NBA title. August through September, I made 4 posts answering a bunch of questions about writing I saw online. October, even if I don't love the book, there are still things I find interesting about West of Sundown. November brought Blogsgiving, all the insanity that comes with it.

I've bought more new comics this year than I have in a while, which meant a decrease in the number of reviews of trade paperbacks and manga, and also fewer visits to the Random Back Issues. 21 over the last year, compared to 26 the year before. The one major change to the blog was the start of Saturday Splash Page, which is like Sunday Splash page, but starting at the end of the alphabet. The former's initial run made it from volume 1 of Young Justice to The Union as of last weekend. Sunday Splash Page kept rolling, moving from volume 1 of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man all the way through Hitman.

At the beginning of the year, I estimated the two would meet up somewhere around Ennis' MAX imprint Punisher run in February of 2026. Of course, I've added many more titles since then, so I'll have to check and see where I stand after the annual culling of the collection in January. Right now, I expect Saturday Splash Page to get somewhere near Supergirl by the end of next year, kicking off a long stretch of "S" titles. Sunday Splash Page might reach the Abnett/Lanning Legion of Super-Heroes books by December.

Of course, once they meet up I have to go back and hit all the titles I added to earlier letters after I'd passed them. I think the Bs already have 2-3 months worth waiting, but such is life.

In theory, the new series meant a return to everyday posting, which hadn't happened since 2015 when I abandoned Saturday because it was just too tricky getting somewhere with wi-fi more than a couple of times a week. Knoxville, TN was surprisingly unaccommodating in that regard.

While I am going to end up with more posts this year than any since then, in practice, Thursday took over as the skip day at least a couple weeks every month. As a plus, I've watched a lot fewer terrible movies that made me deeply regret the life choices that brought me there! I still read and reviewed around 2 dozen books, so that didn't change much.

I also don't anticipate much changing in the year ahead, barring unforeseen catastrophe. I finished one of the very long things I was posting elsewhere, and I'm most of the way through the other one. Maybe I'll get some more diversions done now. Although there are other long things I'm also trying to write, so no promises. I feel like the tpb/manga reviews and Random Back Issues might tick back up, if only because the number of new comics might drop again. The stuff I'm planning to buy is shrinking, and these smaller publishers have erratic shipping schedules. Or maybe that's on Diamond.

I guess we'll see what happens in the next year. Thanks to everyone who reads or leaves comments.

Frustrated Fowl Versus False Futility

When I was reading the most recent issue of West of Sundown, at some point I referred to the banshee as "Death Voice" in my head. I thought that sounded like a pretty good name for a villain.

Obviously there are quite a few super-villains with voice-themed powers. DC even has at least one actual banshee in the Secret Six's Jeanette, plus whatever Silver Banshee is. Marvel has Screaming Mimi (nowadays Songbird), and that Agnar the Screamer guy she used to work with, plus Banshee and Siryn, although they're not typically villains.

But, maybe because I've been rereading Gerber's Howard the Duck recently, I was thinking less in terms of the voice being physically lethal, and more spiritually or intellectually deadly. Maybe someone along the lines of Hate Monger. Except instead of inciting people to violence against those different from them, the person is relentlessly cynical, sarcastic, apathetic. They use their voice to make people feel like trying to do anything would be pointless. Like whatever crime Death Voice is committing is only a tiny symptom of some larger problem which they can't possibly fix.

'Stopping Death Voice from robbing this jewelry store won't do anything to address income inequality, and locking them in prison won't help them get better, so why bother?'

On the one hand, it feels like the sort of villain Captain America defeats with a stirring speech, but I really do like the notion of Howard the Duck running across them and just being really irritated with the whole thing. Here's this crook in about the laziest outfit possible - maybe a grey hoodie that says "Villain" on the front - taking whatever they want because they convince everyone trying to do better is for suckers.

Howard doesn't really want to be mixed up in this, but also hates people trying to manipulate him. He's more than capable of being selfish, but usually tries to do so in a way that doesn't actively harm others, while Death Voice is quite happy to benefit at others' expense.

I don't know if Howard kicks up enough of a ruckus it drowns out Death Voice's power and a crowd of people take D.V. into custody, or if Howard just punches the guy or gal in the face himself.

Life (2017)

This is the movie about the folks on the International Space Station recovering the probe from Mars and finding evidence of, well, life. Life which proves to be highly adaptable and really dangerous. Had to laugh at the part where it's still in a petri dish, and the one biologist is waving his finger above it and commenting its curiosity outweighs its fear. Given the audience has a good idea how this is going to end, I assume we're meant to be thinking, "Right back atcha, buddy."

Also, they named the thing Calvin. How sweet, they think I'm a potential threat to all life on the planet. 

Of course the alien breaks containment, and then it's a scramble to try and kill it before it kills them. Although this is a zero-g environment, all the scrambling around tight corridors and trying to improvise solutions reminded me of Alien. They even have crappy, ineffective flamethower things! The point where the thing is outside the station, trying to climb back in through the thrusters, and they keep trying to use the thrusters to kill it, degrading their orbit, made me think of Deep Blue Sea.

I know the movie lampshades that every cell in the creature is somehow simultaneously a muscle cell, a photoreceptive cell, and a nerve cell, meaning it can be, 'all brain', but I was still unsure the thing could be as smart as it's portrayed.

The thing I thought about most during the film was that I've read somewhere that Jack Kirby thought it was a really bad idea to include that gold plate on the Voyager spacecraft detailing how to find our planet. He figured if an alien species could find us, it probably wouldn't end well for humanity. My feeling is, given how big space really is, if aliens get close enough to our Solar System to encounter Voyager, they're already likely to find us. If they have to wait for it to reach their star system, humanity is probably long extinct before they'll ever get anywhere close to us.

But the notion we really have no idea what we'll be dealing with if we do encounter intelligent life (or even life, period) from another world, and that it can very easily go badly in a hurry, that I can follow. We only have life on our own world to judge by, and we have no idea if our conditions or metabolic cycles or whatever are commonplace or an aberration.

There were a few different ways I thought the end could go. I was still hoping for a relatively happy one, eternal optimist (read: sucker) that I am, but there were at least twice as many ways I could see it ending badly, so I wasn't really surprised. And I'd seen a review of the movie at some point after it came out, so I also wasn't surprised when one of the big-name actors died early. Knowing didn't ruin the movie since it's really a horror flick. Audience goes in primed expecting most of them to die.

What I Bought 12/7/2022

Two comics last week, both Marvel. Two this week, one Marvel. I'm not sure why it seems as though all the non-Marvel comics I want wait until the end of the month to come out. I guess as long as they do come out, that's the important thing, and no certainty lately.

Fantastic Four #2, by Ryan North (writer), Iban Coello (artist), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Great, a Doom flash mob. Are flash mobs still a thing, or is that reference already a decade out of date? What am I talking about, Doom is always at the forefront of popular cultural trends!

Reed and Sue are in a town where apparently every inhabitant is a Doombot with a holographic projection. So the duo have to figure what's going on, especially after the Doombots stop in the middle of attacking them to return to what they were doing before. They soon figure out that the Doombots all appear committed to maintain their disguises when around one particular old woman, and things go from there.

Like last issue, it's a bit of a mystery, Reed and Sue trying to figure out what' the key is behind how the Doombots act and how to deal with it. North opts to handle the issue from Sue's perspective, conveyed through a letter she's writing to She-Hulk about the whole thing. So there's a lot about how Sue sees Reed, and how she sees their relationship. It's fine for that part, although I can't decide if I buy Reed being as bad a liar as he's presented here.

North and Coello also use Reed's powers to somewhat different effect than I've seen before. Reed's able to disguise his face, and most disturbingly, at one point somehow stretches his eyeballs into the ends of his fingers to inspect something in tight quarters. It makes sense he would come up with varied ways to his elasticity, and I always enjoyed when he would do more than just stretch his arms and legs. You know, make himself into a bouncy ball, or turn one hand into a mallet. I can't help wondering why he didn't just stretch the eyes out of the sockets instead.

But the book is still talking around whatever it was that broke the team up and made everyone dislike the FF. Reed refers to pondering if he could have done something different, and Sue cuts him off with it not being his fault. I mean, given his track record, going back to insisting cosmic rays were no problem for his rocketship, there are pretty good odds it is his fault, Sue! And of course, the people they speak to don't directly say what happened, either. They just refer to Reed and Sue not wanting more trouble right now. At least that mystery is supposed to be resolved in two more issues, if solicitations can be believed.

Hey, if you ever wanted to see a Doombot taking a shower, this comic is your chance.

Tiger Division #2, by Emily Kim (writer), Creees Lee (artist), Yen Nitro (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - I hope that's not an invasive magical vine species Lady Bright's conjuring out of that giant playing card.

The team fights the robots. The fight itself is short and rather basic. A few panels of people posing and energy flying out of their hands, nothing real creative or anything like that. During the fight, The General takes a missile to the back. Taegukgi smashes that robot, but damages a load bearing girder and brings the entire building down. They do salvage a memory chip off one of the robots and learn it was built by a Korean conglomerate as part of a project named Kal Duo.

This throws us into another series of flashbacks to Taegukgi's childhood, this time when he makes friends with another kid in the neighborhood by stealing food. The kid's name was Kal Duo, and we see they formed a kid gang of sorts, which ends with Tae leaving his home when his mother figure insists he stop being a hooligan and go back to school.

I like that Kim shows in the flashbacks Kal was clearly the brains and Tae the muscle who doesn't think on his feet well or do well at planning contingencies. It adds some context to the robot fight earlier, when Tae just reacts and smashes the robot (who has already shot the General), but also brings the building down on his team. And at the end of the issue, he's lied to his team about Kal Duo meaning anything to him, and breaks into the conglomerate's office, where he finds his old friend waiting, minus some fingers and with a glowy eye, talking about secret and plans. He does have a snazzy outfit and cane, so that's cool.

I guess someone has to be the focal character in the mini-series, but given the entire cast has so few prior appearances, I wonder if it would have been better to spread the attention around a little more. The other team members have been lucky to get more than two lines of dialogue an issue so far, because everything's about Taegukgi. I did learn in this issue that Lady Bright is a widower, Gun-R II objects to the notion the team can cut loose against these enemies because they're, "just robots", and Luna Snow did some endorsements for the conglomerate at one point, but I'm not sure how much I'm getting about their characters.

Sunday Splash Page #248

 

"Out of the Cauldron, Into the Gunfire," in Hitman Annual #1, by Garth Ennis (writer), Carlos Ezquerra and Steve Pugh (artists), Carla Feeny and Heroic Age (colorists), Willie Schubert (letterer)

I guess in 1997, the theme for DC's Annuals was "Pulp Heroes". Which I'm sure could be taken in a lot of different ways. For Tommy Monaghan and Natt the Hat, Garth Ennis went with a spaghetti Western motif. From the title page to the first three pages of the story, where Tommy and Natt sit in Noonan's Bar and discuss their favorite parts of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Ennis makes no bones about what you're getting here.

For me, this entire issue is like that gif of Captain America saying, 'I understood that reference.' Tommy's hired for a job in a Texas border town, dominated by an uneasy peace between a corrupt white sheriff and a Mexican drug lord. Both sides are prepared to break the truce over a coffin full of dollars somewhere in a cemetery that's being bulldozed up to build a mall, and the drug lord got himself a special hired gun (named Manko, who looks like the guy who played the hunchback in For a Few Dollars More.)

Tommy makes one friend in town, who gets in trouble later for being Tommy's friend. There's the obligatory Leone-style ass-kicking, the inevitable showdown, and the last-second save by a buddy. Of course, all of this is threaded through Hitman's typical style, so Tommy's chucking around grenades to get an edge, and he doesn't really play by the rules for Western showdowns.

Ezquerra, Pugh, and Fenny keep the visual feel of the issue similar to McCrea. There's less shadows and heavy blacks in this story, but they're also in a desert town, mostly during the the daytime, rather than a crappy slum in Gotham. The art doesn't do comedic exaggeration as well as McCrea's, but it's not a story with a lot of comedy in it, so that's fine.

Saturday Splash Page #50

 

"Snakes vs. Apes," in The Union #3, by Paul Grist (writer), Andrea Di Vito (penciler), Le Beau Underwood (inker), Nolan Woodward (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

This mini-series was originally supposed to come out in mid-2020, loosely connected to the Empyre event. You remember, the one where the Coati (the telepathic trees) launched an invasion of Earth, or something? Yeah, I didn't pay it much mind either, and the COVID pandemic threw a giant spanner in the works. So Marvel, in their eternal churn, merely delayed the mini-series to instead loosely tie it to King in Black over the winter of 2020-2021.

Either way, the event is incidental to the story Grist tells, which is about a super-team meant to represent the United Kingdom, with superheroes from each part of the British Isles. Except the hero meant to lead them gets killed in issue 1, leaving Union Jack to try and lead a team of people that all hate the English and certainly don't want to follow the guy wearing England's flag on his chest.

Grist adds in some super-villains (including a talking corgi, so adorably evil), plus a super-villain turned government minister (whose power, appropriately for a stuffed shirt, was to leech the power from other people), a techbro billionaire sponsoring the superhero team, some backstory for a couple of the characters, and a race to steal a MacGuffin stone that will somehow make a person an Emperor.

I think this would have worked better if Grist drew it himself. Di Vito's work makes it look like a fairly standard superhero story, but it doesn't feel like that kind of story. The costumed heroes and villains are largely ineffectual, several steps behind the real bad guy (surprise! it's the billionaire!). Grist's own art, where besides the costume, Jack Staff doesn't look much different from anyone else in his world, would seem to match a story where the heroes can't get past their distaste for each other (or their own egos and incompetence) to actually stop anyone. Some of the character designs are pretty nifty, though.

The team does come together briefly at the end, urged by Britannia's spirit as the representation of a unified Britain, to work as a group rather than everyone trying to act alone. They still don't accomplish much The public doesn't rally behind them, they aren't the ones who eventually secure the MacGuffin. I guess Grist is focusing on small victories. Union Jack feeling he does measure up, The Choir turning away fully from her criminal past, the bureaucrat helping out because Britannia believed in him once upon a time. The team members of Wales, Scotland and Ireland not chucking Union Jack off a bridge. Progress.

What I Bought 12/3/2022 - Part 2

With Twitter's rapid degeneration, I was kind of hoping a couple of people would switch back to posting on their blogs. But they've gone to various other social media sites I'm not interested in dealing with, like Tiktok. Yeesh. I can barely listen to podcasts, I'm not watching short videos of people talking about comics.

West of Sundown #6, by Tim Seeley and Aaron Campbell (writers), Jim Terry (artist), Triona Farrell (colorist), Crank! (letterer) - It's a modern Wild West family. So happily murderous.

The main cast are each trying to settle into Sangre de Moro in their own ways, some more successfully than others. Dirck's taken to being a preacher, and looking quite a bit less nuts, maybe it's that he went clean-shaven. He definitely isn't drawn as the same overwhelming presence in the panels as he was before. I guess he's shifted away from antagonist to ally. Griffin's acting as a doctor/mortician and bitching endlessly about it. Dooley's running the bar for Rosa, and the lot of them are like some neighborhood watch. Because there are still all sorts of supernatural problems lurking about, and some new ones moving in.

The focus is on the shifting relationships between the four, who is enjoying the change in circumstances, who isn't, where the stress points are. Griffin feels that Dirck's left him behind, stranded him in this place in favor of pursuing the word of God. Dirck is either oblivious or unconcerned by this. Dooley's been questioning why he's sticking with Rosa, and Rosa is actually worried about losing him. So much so she's not fed on anyone for a while, because there's no one sufficiently "evil" that Dooley wouldn't object. Dooley, in turn, seems to have rededicated himself to her after a run-in with a banshee (I like the design Terry goes with for her) dredged up some bad memories.

It still amuses me that Rosa's skin color turns more pink when she's injured or ill. I suppose she couldn't get more pale, so it makes a certain sense. Of course, her solution to her food issue is to jump at Dr. Moreau's notion of bringing the railroad through town, as it will bring New York City (and its large numbers of evil people) to her. Not sure Dirck will approve, since he'd rather save their souls, and Dooley doesn't seem ecstatic about it, either.

Nature's Labyrinth #1, by Zac Thompson (writer), Bayleigh Underwood (artist), Warina Sahadewa (colorist), Rus Wooton (letterer) - If I had to walk through a jungle that looked that dense, I'd fall to my knees, too.

Eight people accepted a cruise, which is actually a trap to throw them on a strange island and see if they can find their way through an immense labyrinth without dying. I thought the labyrinth would just be a jungle filled with traps and armed soldiers, but it's an actual giant structure, in the jungle. And each person is wearing some kind of rig with cameras on it, but also a bunch of mechanized blades that will dismember anyone who tries to remove it. I figured it would just blow them up, like Suicide Squad, but I guess that might kill too many at once.

We get to see all eight on pages 2 and 3, complete with their names and the odd titles each of them are given. We don't get much time with most of them, so Underwood has to try and tell us what they can from that page and how each of them pose or smile. It's not much to go on, but the reader can at least make some initial guesses about what they're like. Whether those will turn out to be accurate is another matter.

The issue mostly focuses on J. Roe (titled "The Shield"), and to a lesser extent Nasir Sarafin ("The Terror"), who end up alongside each other when they wake up on the island. Roe is not what she pretends to be, and doesn't do a great job disguising it. Thompson writes them as someone trying for no-nonsense, but coming off more mechanical. She comes up with a few facts about herself when she's alone, and when she introduces herself to Nasir, rattles them off in succession. Including that she loves kayaking, which doesn't seem like something to mention during an introduction in a death maze. There's other little touches, like how she smashes the phone included with the camera rig while Nasir and another guy argue pointlessly.

The actions make sense for the reveal at the end of the issue, but if she's trying to remain inconspicuous, she's not doing a great job. Moot point from our perspective, since by the end of the issue, the people running this thing know about her. But it's an interesting approach, for how it tells us something about Roe.