The Price of Valor - David A. Smith

My dad said the definitive biography of Audie Murphy was written in the early '80s, and has been out of print since the mid-'80s, so we're rolling with this more recent one. It's not a deep dive into Murphy's life - To Hell and Back was 100 pages longer - more a tour of Murphy's life. We learn a bit more about his childhood, the poverty, the abandonment by his father, Murphy's aptitude for shooting.

It's enlightening to compare the chapters on Murphy's military service with what Murphy himself described (although Smith quotes frequently from Murphy's memoir.) For example, while Murphy described becoming friends with a nurse during one of his stints in a rear hospital from malaria, he left out a nurse he actually proposed to while he was in the hospital dealing with gangrene from taking a ricochet in the hip (Murphy barely spends a page on his time in the hospital). Smith, of course, highlights which acts earned Murphy various awards, although he points out how uncomfortable Murphy always was about those and why that might be.

I'm not sure I buy the idea Murphy knew his actions were not done from some conscious decision to act despite the risks, but rather out of blind anger (Smith draws a comparison to something Aristotle said about courage). I do agree Murphy felt he simply did his duty as thousands of other soldiers did and was just lucky.

The longest stretch of the book is Murphy's post-war life. Smith covers Murphy's acting career, especially his inability or unwillingness to pretend to be someone he isn't, but also about Murphy dealing (or avoiding dealing) with his war experiences. If Murphy ever sought any sort of professional help for dealing with the nightmares that made him prefer sleeping with lights on, or the, paranoia maybe, that made him always have a loaded gun, there's no evidence of it here.

Murphy, if never exactly admitting his personal struggles, did discuss how the military helps un-train or retrain the dogs they used, but doesn't do the same for men. He's also quoted as admitting it was difficult for him to care about things, and he's always be looking for something new to engage with, only to quickly lose interest after the initial rush. He has temper issues, but seems patient with children and other veterans and takes seriously the notion of being a role model (he refuses to do any endorsements for alcohol or tobacco.)

The book probably serves best as a starting line for someone who wants to learn more about Audie Murphy, as there's a lot it only briefly references that a person might want to delve deeper into.

'In the future Murphy preferred to deflect attention from himself and deny that he was courageous - let alone a hero - partly because of his natural humility, but also because he understood that his courage was not something he consciously chose to do: it was nothing more than a natural reaction that did not seem overly praiseworthy to him and never would.'

What I Bought 1/25/2023

I wasn't sure if the store in town would have both the books I wanted last week, but I lucked out. Even had the cover I preferred for one of them. I don't think that was the high point of last week - I got in a good run on Sunday with no major issues, and the feared Snowmaggedon turned out to be another dud - but it was at least in the running. Things are kind of at a low flow right now. Nothing terrible, but not much groovy either.

Sgt. Rock vs. the Army of the Dead #5, by Bruce Campbell (writer), Eduardo Risso (artist), Kristian Rossi (colorist), Rob Leigh (letterer) - That is quite the neck he's rocking there. Probably bust his tie if he swallows.

Having discovered Hitler's bunker at the end of last issue, Rock and Easy Company. . . withdrew to their Command Center? I guess you want to plan and outfit a mission like this appropriately, but this is the third time they've had a sit-down to make plans. Where's the urgency, especially considering they blew up the factory that was producing the re-gens? Doesn't this offer more time for the Nazis to dig in and prepare?

It does at least match Allied doctrinaire for the war, at least. Slow to move unless there's a shitload of airpower or artillery backing them up.

Anyway, Easy parachutes back in, and Campbell starts giving Rock internal monologue for the first time. Odd shift this late in proceedings, but it feels more like the character I'm accustomed to. The bunker gets bombed, but there are still plenty of re-gens, so Easy has to fight in. The sniper takes out Hitler's doctor while Rock, Jackie and Bulldozer confront a amped up Hitler and Eva Braun (who Jackie gives a shotgun blast to the gut.) Rock's fighting Hitler, and tells the rest of the guys to call in another bombing run and then get out.

I don't really follow that decision. Hitler's demonstrating he's pretty tough, but he's not bulletproof, and the few re-gens acting as bodyguards were in the process of being killed. Why do it this way? Rock's got at least one grenade, cram it it down Hitler's mouth and call it a day. Just kinda odd plot arc there.

Risso gets the chance to draw some more gore and severed limbs with the fighting here. There's also one panel where Eva pounces on Jackie and her outline is entirely filled in with black, except for her underwear, which are white. Not sure about the point of that, either. But there's also a panel of a green outline of a doorway, with the re-gens dark outlines in it, and the black space on either side of the door is filled with their laughter, colored red. That was a nice panel.

Darkwing Duck #1, by Amanda Deibert (writer), Carlo Lauro (artist), Jeff Eckleberry (letterer) - I went with the Mirka Andolfo cover. The blur effect of the cape on the right side of the cover seems unnecessary, but it's a nice image anyway.

So nostalgia won out for at least one month. St. Canard's dedicating a statue to Darkwing, but as everyone goes to take a picture of the unveiling with their cell phones, Megavolt somehow takes control of them and sets them after Darkwing. He escapes, pursues Megavolt, the jet crashes, Gosalyn tries to lure in Megavolt by using a lot of electricity pretending to be a band singing about Darkwing. Darkwing gets electrocuted saving her, but this overloads the city's power system and frees everyone from Megavolt's control.

It sort of recaptures the feel of the cartoon. It's a done-in-one, Darkwing's got a big ego that is punctured by certain circumstances (the first person to talk about how Darkwing helped the city is Herb Muddlefoot, who spends 2 hours on Darkwing helping him find a tupperware shipment he left under his bed). Gosalyn tries to help, there are some bad puns. Lauro's art is a little inconsistent but mostly on model, although he seems to struggle keeping eyes lined up. There's a couple where Launchpad in particular appears to be looking two different directions simultaneously. He's very good at giving the characters - especially Darkwing - expressive body language. He doesn't do the huge eyes or limbs stretching to comical degree approach, but they do visibly react to things in decently wide range.

No one actually captures Megavolt, though. He tries to electrocute the kids, Darkwing rushes to help them, gets fried, everyone is free of the mind control and Megavolt. . .just isn't there? No one even comments on if he got away or someone caught him. The issue ends with Darkwing reaserting to Gosalyn she can't have a cellphone, the mayor thanking Darkwing for saving the city again and him restating to the people preparing to take photos that every side is his good side. That ending isn't that out of place, bringing things back around to his ego and the dedication ceremony, but the villain of the week seems to have slipped through the cracks.

Sunday Splash Page #255

 

"She's Nutty for Him," in I 💓 Marvel Romance #1, by Fabian Nicieza (writer), Paco Medina (penciler), Juan Vlasco (inker), A. Street (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

Believe me, I feel as dirty and foul for using an emoji as you think I should, but the title really does include a heart as opposed to the word "heart". This was one of a series of these Marvel released in 2006, this one with the subtitle "Masked Intentions". It's the only one I own, and I bought it up a couple of years ago out of curiosity.

There's two stories, each somewhat related to New Warriors. The other story, by Nicieza and Mike Norton, marks the end of Justice and Firestar's relationship, which had been going since the first year of the original New Warriors volume. Vance figures out Angelica's not as keen on getting married as he is (although he phrases it stupidly, declaring that he's being "the woman" because he's having to pick the invitations, the flowers, and her dress). They agree to put the wedding off, and I don't think they ever pick things up again.

As for this story, set some time after GLA: Misassembled, it establishes Squirrel Girl has a crush on Speedball, which gets referenced a few more times, like in the Deadpool/Great Lakes Initiative Summer Spectacular. Here, though, Doreen's on the Great Lakes X-Men, and Speedball's doing a public appearance in Madison, Wisconsin for the New Warriors reality show, so she goes to meet him. Her attempt to save him from an old foe doesn't go so well. Not because she fails, but the guy's only carrying paintball guns and so the cops feel she went overboard. Still, Speedball tracks her down, reveals he read all the fanmail she sent (and his manager alerted the FBI), and gives her a kiss.

It's bittersweet reading this with the knowledge the trainwreck of Civil War is only a few months away. I doubt this was ever going to go anywhere, but any chance got smothered with the damage Millar did. Speedball gets turned into Penance, and writers spend years digging him out of that hole. Minus his stint in Avengers Academy, Speedball never has gotten to the big-time, while Squirrel Girl had a decently long run as a solo star, which included being on an Avengers team. Admittedly, an Avengers team with Red Hulk, run by Sunspot with AIM funds, but an Avengers squad all the same.

Saturday Splash Page #57

 

"Eleventh Commandment," in Unbelievable Gwenpool #20, by Christopher Hastings (writer), Gurihiru (artists), Clayton Cowles (letterer)

Gwenpool wasn't the first Marvel costumed character to be presented as a huge fan of superheroes. That feature was part of Kamala Khan's backstory, for one, and there was the "Spectacular Spider-Kid" from the '80s Amazing Spider-Man comics (although he turned angry in the '90s, because of course he did.)

Gwen Poole was, however, the first Marvel character I can think of who fell into the universe from a stand-in for our universe. Where all the heroes only exist in comics, movies, posters and whatnot. Which means, at least at first, Gwen's superpowers consistent of being a fangirl. She knows everyone's names, powers, and abilities. More important, she's genre-savvy enough to know the only way to survive is to make yourself important enough The Powers That Be won't kill you off (or won't let you stay dead.)

So she finds a woman who makes costumes, gets one in pink - because there's a lot of pink fabric available, though not enough for pants - and starts taking gun-for-hire jobs. This is how she's presented in her earliest appearances, in the Zdarsky/Quinones Howard the Duck series. Although viewed from Howard's perspective, Gwen just seems insane. In her own book, we see Gwen treating it as a game, or a vivid dream. These are fictional characters to her, which means none of it is real, so nothing she does really matters. It's OK to shoot nameless henchmen, or steal a terrible virus for AIM.

What Chris Hastings does is play up the difference between Gwen's expectations and the reality of them. Gwen thinks she's the star, so when MODOK appears, insisting she work for him, Gwen laughs it off. It's MODOK, she's not scared of him. So he disintegrates her new hacker friend Cecil. She's not able to simply instantly learn combat skills. The heroes, like Miles Morales Spider-Man, don't find her willingness to kill people charming. The friends she makes working for MODOK, most of whom are new characters, plus Batroc, get mad when she tries to do the right thing and costs them their jobs.

The final six months of so of the book are Gwen struggling with how to continue existing. Even as she starts to learn how to manipulate being in comics, by stepping outside the panels or dumping villains into the gutters, she may be running out of time. And if the choice is between becoming a villain and staying important, or trying to stick it out as a hero and fading to obscurity, what's she gonna pick?

Hastings fills the book with a lot of humor, whether it's Gwen drawing dollar signs on her eyepieces when she sees how much a job pays, or how other characters react to her unusual behavior. But you also have Gwen's desperate struggles to make herself more relevant by beating Dr. Doom, or trying to help Cecil get some sort of a physical body. Batroc gets written as a honorable rogue who grudgingly acts as a mentor to this crazy girl and the rest of her cast.

The Gurihiru art team does make Gwen look a little young for someone meant to be at least out of high school, if not in her early 20s, but their style is great for the humor parts and the violence parts. Especially when Gwen is still operating under the thought that nothing really matters. It's (mostly) bloodless violence, nobody's getting hurt! Except that guy that HYDRA guy she pushed in the furnace. But whatever, he didn't have a name, and he works for HYDRA!

The book ended in early 2018. In 2019, Gwenpool got a mini-series about trying to remain relevant, which ended with her being retconned into a mutant and shipped to Krakoa, where nobody ever does anything with her. Beats being brutally murdered on-panel (or off-panel) by some hack going for a cheap pop, I guess.

What I Bought 1/19/2023

Only found one of last week's four books at the store in town. I was hoping for two, thought they'd have Immortal Sergeant since it's from Image, but that's how it goes. Today, will Deadpool survive (on my pull list?)

Deadpool #3, by Alyssa Wong (writer), Martin Coccolo (artist), Neeraj Menon (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - Wow, Wade sprang for an extra set of swords for the symbiote. They must be pals now!

Valentine has actually tried to help Deadpool with his symbiote problem, but to see if the sedative is working, they need a "field test." So it's off to the zoo! Wait, what? Supposedly, the variety of circumstances will let Valentine establish a baseline for the symbiote, so they can develop a better drug. Also, Valentine thinks Wade is cute, which befuddles him, so Coccolo draws the montage of their zoo adventure with the word "cute" in various fonts hovering around Wade, when it isn't a giant stone block crushing him (metaphorically).

Wade keeps calling the symbiote Renesmee, which I had to look up. It's a Twilight reference, boooooooo. I was quite content knowing almost nothing about those books, and now I know a little less nothing than before! Boooooooooooooo!

Deadpool and the symbiote may be coming to an understanding, although the fact it's encouraging him to kiss Valentine concerns me. Fortunately, Doc Ock and Harrower show up with a bunch of mutated zoo animals, so there's no smooching while the symbiote looks on like a creepy voyeur. Also, Lady Deathstrike got a second chance to join the Atelier, but she has to kill Octavius and Deadpool by herself. Yeah, good luck with that. I wouldn't give Deathstrike a 10% shot one-on-one against Ock.

I liked this issue more than the previous two. Something about the more mundane aspect of Deadpool going to a zoo with someone was appealing. Wong tried to throw a lot at us in the first two issues, but she slowed down a bit here to dig into it. Let Wade actually interact with Valentine, so we can get some sense of this character he's so immediately infatuated with. That way, if this turns out horribly, their inevitable betrayal has some kick. If it somehow doesn't turn out horribly, then great! We like Valentine and are happy they and Wade are together.

So, I guess, the answer to the question at the start of the post is, yes, Deadpool survives for another month.

Bird Brain: An Exploration of Avian Intelligence - Nathan Emery

As the subtitle says, it's a book at intelligence of birds. The different forms of intelligence, the ways researchers have tried to assess whether birds possess it, the ways their brains work.

Emery tends to spend a couple of pages at a time within a chapter on different aspects, or on those tests. Chapter 2, for example, is on navigation, which is a broad topic, and can be handled by different species in different ways. Emery might spend a few pages on long-distance migrations, discussing the different methods birds use, and what adaptations they've developed for the purpose.

I knew that birds could sense magnetic fields and navigate by those, although there's apparently competing theories about how they do so. I didn't know that some birds can apparently navigate by stars, although it seems to be based on which stars are visible, rather than using Polaris. If they see stars associated with the Southern Hemisphere (or perhaps just a more southerly latitude), they fly north, and vice versa.

From there, however, Emery might move to discussing the role of memory in getting food. Whether that's a hummingbird keeping track of which flowers it visited recently, so that it doesn't come back before there's more nectar, or what clues birds use to remember where they cached food and studies that were done to determine this. Then he might segue into the role the hippocampus plays in this.

The book is written in a general manner, though. Emery doesn't go into long table of figures or statistical analyses. He tends more towards quick summaries, which figures or diagrams to illustrate the point. Usually one page has text and the facing page has the visuals of what's being discussed, or just a nice picture of birds of a landscape the birds he's discussing inhabit. There is a listing of studies referenced, along with options for further reading (both of which include papers Emery was part of ) at the end, so if the reader found the curiosity piqued by a particular part, they could track down something more in-depth.

'In a classic study, two populations of blackcaps migrated in different directions; one northern European population flew southwest to winter initially in southern Spain, before moving on to equatorial Africa, whereas the other eastern European population migrated southeast toward Turkey and eventually East Africa. When birds from each population were allowed to breed, their offspring contained genes from both populations and flew due south between the migratory routes of their parents.'

What I Bought 1/11/2023 - Part 2

Our state legislature actually devoted time two weeks ago to discussing passing a dress code for women in the Senate. No bare arms or some such shit. Are the guys the imbeciles I share this state with so far gone a woman's bare arm sends them into an uncontrollable orgasmic tizzy? If so, I would encourage all women legislators to go bare-armed and maybe these guys will all have strokes and die.

It'd be a nice state if 40% of the people that live here. . .didn't.

Tiger Division #3, by Emily Kim (writer), Creees Lee and Craig Yeung (artists), Yen Nitro (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - The others are just happy to actually get some visibility.

This is mostly about how Tae got his powers. He and his pal Min decided to have their gang steal something from a military lab. Alarms went off, Tae got shackled to a table and blasted with the damaged gizmo. Turns out the gizmo was powered by a gem Loki stashed in what became Korea way back when, and somehow or the other, Tae got super-powers rather than being atomized or turned into a skink, either of which seems more likely for something Loki would bother to steal.

Min thinks Tae died in the explosion, and had to fake his own death with the military blamed him (I mean, the theft was partially his idea) only to figure out the truth later. The gem is the one his robots stole in issue 1, as he's going to use it to steal Tae's powers for himself. Most of the team are back at the base, having hacked into the security feed, by Lady Bright followed Tae, so presumably she'll get off her flying card and save his butt.

So Tae went through this experience, nearly died, thought his best friend died, and decided to become a hero. I assume the whys and hows will be covered next issue (still think it's a mistake focusing the entire mini-series on one character). Mae-Jin believed his best friend died (and took it hard, as the panel above shows), faked his own death to avoid prison or death, and doubled down. He'd be better at being a criminal. Use a family as a corporate figurehead to keep himself hidden, rather than take part in shakedowns. Rather than steal money from the government, be a corporation and the government will just give you money. Tae thinks his friend is wrong. Mae-Jin thinks Tae is either putting up a front or just too naive.

In the flashbacks, Kim has been writing Tae as not really focused on the details. He's bad at lying, takes the straightforward approach. He's not exactly short-sighted, but he seems like someone who went to crime because it would keep him fed. Mae-Jin seems to be the one hammering out the details, really making the decisions and the plans. So I wonder if the end of this is going to be Tae managing to out-think his old friend when it really matters. Do something unexpected or creative, rather than simply charging straight ahead.

Eden Log (2007)

A guy wakes up in a muddy pool with pants and nothing else, including his memories. He finds a set of revolving doors and an auto-playing greeting about caring for the plant and eventually rising to the surface. He finds a man odds strung up who tells him to leave, and a opaque cube that carries him higher. Security goons roam about, along with weird things that may have been human.

I would have enjoyed playing this as a video game. I probably have played variations of it. But that's how it feels structured. The main character finding upgrades as they go along. An actual shirt, some sort of light-rig. Sneaking around to avoid the security goons, who speak in such a way they provide vague hints of what's happening, only to get caught by some weirdo in a hazmat suit that spouts a lot of vague exposition. The increasing number and strength of the weird monsters. He gradually figures out more about himself, although we don't learn his name until the very end, but he also suffers strange seizures where he's dimly aware of turning feral.

Oh yeah, at one point he escapes into an elevator with a random lady he meets, and suffers another of the seizures. He gets flashes that are the two of them passionately making out, except we see the flashes of the reality, which is that it's not actually consensual. Yeesh.

That aside, it could have been a fun interactive experience. As a movie, it's awkward that he keeps conveniently finding these recordings that provide just a little information about what was going on. But with him not knowing anything, and the movie refusing to introduce many characters that could provide answers through normal conversation, we're stuck with the equivalent of those diaries and audio recordings people leave lying around in the FallOut games.

The whole thing is shot with a very limited color range, too. Black, white, grey. Outside of the security goons having red lenses, that's it. Like all the life has been sucked out down there, although it doesn't improve as he climbs higher. The main character starts out covered in mud, but even after he cleans his face, he still has this metallic grey pallor.

What I Bought 1/11/2023 - Part 1

Sometimes I think of starting a blog on Tumblr. Mostly as a fallback for when Blogger goes belly up. Each time I look over there, I see people complaining about pornbots, and how people won't reblog their posts (you want me to post your stuff on my blog?), and it all just seems like an insane hassle.

Mary Jane and Black Cat - Dark Web #2, by Jed MacKay (writer), Vicenzo Carratu (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - That look says they can't believe I'm buying this mini-series.

Belasco wants Felicia and MJ to recover his Soulsword, taken from him long ago by whoever put him in charge of Limbo originally. It's locked in a place called the Screaming Tower, which looks like a bunch of monochrome L-shaped Tetris blocks with eyeballs on them. There are a lot of people after the sword, but Belasco figures since Earth girls always upend things in Limbo, he's got the inside track.

Our stars go in, MacKay foreshadows something about MJ's jackpot dial, they run from a bunch of screaming loonies, and are saved from a nasty fall to their death by S'ym. That's it as far as plot progress. A third of the issue was Belasco doing exposition. Felicia is still stressing over needing to confess she's dating Peter, which I still don't see the issue over. Mary Jane is still being vague about the bracelet thing and how it works, which seems like a much bigger issue to me, since it could directly endanger Felicia's life.

I wonder if the reason Mary Jane is getting skulls in her "pulls" is because of Felicia's bad luck abilities. MacKay seriously dialed back the use of those after his first volume of Black Cat, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't still be available. And now certainly seems like a dangerous enough time to need every edge she can get.

Moon Knight #19, by Jed MacKay (writer), Federico Sabbatini (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - That guy is some kind of nautical captain, but my first thought was Moon Knight was getting his ass kicked by a doorman.

There are two threads in this issue. In one, Moon Knight and Hunter's Moon head below the city - that's right, another weird place beneath New York City! - where a guy called "Commodore Donny Planet" is acting as overseer of a Moloid slave labor camp. Khonshu's fists hand down a beating, but Planet doesn't know who hired him. What's more, Hunter's Moon explains a couple of things. While Khonshu can traditionally resurrect his fists (as he did for Dr. Badr when the vamps broke his neck), the person loses a little of themselves each time, until they're a, 'feral psychotic.'

Except now, with Khonshu trapped, he claims Badr's comeback was the last time. No more resurrections. Which sounds like bullshit designed to corner Marc into freeing him, but could simply be Mackay wanting Marc to deal with his reckless tendency.

Or the source of them, because the other thread is an old merc buddy of his, now a psychiatrist, interviewing Zodiac. Zodiac is, as I figured an edgelord putz, who claims super-villainy and psychopathy are true American cultural imports, and that Carnage is a better super-villain than Dr. Doom. Granted that Doom doesn't think of himself as a super-villain, but Carnage is as much one as a rabid bear, give me a break.

The more critical point is that Zodiac doesn't believe in guilt, and he doesn't think the doctor does, either. Zodiac watched Moon Knight, and the things he's done weigh him down in a way they don't weigh Dr. Plesko down. Which would seem to imply Marc's lack of self-preservation is a martyr complex, or that he should suffer to pay for that stuff. But that's not going to get him anywhere, except maybe dead. Although I'm not sure Marc would actually care if he could be killed once and for all.

One thing I'm curious about in the look is the sort of glow/blur effect Rosenberg uses around Hunter's Moon and Moon Knight. At times it's as though the Moon is still shining on them even underground, but other times it seems to emanate from them. And there's this smear of white that surrounds their eyes as well, but it also showed up around Zodiac's eyes a few times. Mostly when he's going on about villainy and how Doom is overrated, not when he's discussing how he killed his own guilt. 

Is the glow/shine/whatever representing the characters' devotion to their respective causes? A light that shines out from within when the Fists of Khonshu do his work in protecting night travelers, or when Zodiac espouses his belief in super-villainy as an art form?

Sunday Splash Page #254

 

"Hospitality," in Huntress: Cry for Blood #3, by Greg Rucka (writer), Rick Burchett (artist), Tatjana Wood and Jamison (color artists), Clem Robins (letterer)

Someone's killing members of Gotham's major crime families, and leaving crossbow bolts in their bodies. So suspicion falls on Huntress, and she has to clear her name, with a little help from a certain "no-face" guy. Along the way, she learns a few unhappy facts about her past.

This came out in 2000, not too long after No Man's Land, but I didn't pick it up until spring of 2012. At that point, what I knew about Helena Bertinelli was essentially, she used a crossbow, she used lethal force sometimes, and Batman didn't like her because of that second thing, because only Batman's prepubescent son is allowed to get away with killing criminals.

Rucka and Burchett dive into her backstory more heavily, the ways in which her origin is tied up in crime, and the way her approach is informed by the people who taught her. The flashbacks chart her progress from a traumatized, terrified little girl staring with wide eyes, to a determined, angry (traumatized) young woman, looking out at the world through a scowl.

I don't know if the idea Helena was a guest at the dinner party Batman breaks up in Batman: Year One was something previously established, or something Rucka decided to add here. I guess it's a way for Batman to act as an inspiration, but it feels like too cute of a coincidence.

Inspiration or not, Helena got her combat training from a father/son pair of Mafia assassins, the notion of trusting the police to settle wrongs done against you and yours is laughable, and you answer blood with blood. Even if Helena perhaps reaches a point where she won't kill, that doesn't mean she's opposed to someone else doing the killing.

Which rather effectively blows apart the burgeoning relationship Rucka starts to establish between her and Vic Sage halfway through this story. Rucka's Sage is in a very different place than he was when Denny O'Neil and Denys Cowan left him. He's regained some of that inner peace, to where he's resumed trying to help others by investigating, digging for facts and truth, rather than just going around busting heads. Burchett often draws him with a largely unlined face. There's no anger or tension bubbling under the surface, but more often an amused smile. He's enjoying himself, and maybe trying to help Helena find something similar. It doesn't ultimately work out for them (not counting the Justice League Unlimited cartoon), but Helena gets to join the Birds of Prey later on, so she made a few connections eventually.

I'm generally neutral on Rucka's work, and my interest in Bat-family stuff is limited, but this mini-series has kept it's spot in my collection for over a decade so far, and I don't see it going away any time soon.

And with that, we're through the Hs! That means, between Sunday and Saturday Splash Page, we've covered 13 letters, so only half the alphabet to go! (Plus all the stuff I've added to the earlier letters since I finished them.)

Saturday Splash Page #56

 

"Kitty's New Dragon," in Uncanny X-Men and New Teen Titans #1, by Chris Claremont (writer), Walt Simonson (penciler), Terry Austin (inker), Glynis Wein (colorist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer)

Back in the '80s, Marvel and DC got on well enough to do these kinds of crossover one-shots. I don't know where this one ranks compared to, Batman/Hulk drawn by Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, or either of the Spider-Man/Superman books, but it's the only one I've got. And hell, we got Walt Simonson drawing this thing, that's no small potatoes.

Darkseid sets about bringing back the Dark Phoenix as part of a plan to turn Earth into a second Apokolips, as a way to give him a leg up in his war against New Genesis. His plan involves gathering psychic resonances of the Phoenix, from different people and places she knew. Which drags the X-Men in. The Titans get involved because Raven has a premonition, and when Beat Boy tries to re-create what she saw, Starfire recognizes Phoenix and freaks out. Which sets the Titans after the X-Men since Phoenix was one of them, but only gets them caught by the Parademons who think they're the X-Men.

If it feels like the Titans are somewhat secondary to this, Claremont throws in Deathstroke as a hired gun for Darkseid to get some sort of Titans connection in there (although I do like the notion the Tamaraneans were one of the species aware of the Phoenix wiping out an entire star system). So we get some brief - and I mean like two panels at a time - skirmishes between Deathstroke and Wolverine. Nowadays that would get it's own 6-issue mini-series, at minimum.

At this time, though, fans had to settle for each character getting the drop on the other once, and each being able to avoid the other's attack, once. Deathstroke does beat the X-Men (with the help of some Parademons), but in the last big fight, gets KO'ed by Cyclops of all people. Not even by one of Cyclops' bank shot optic blat tricks. Just zaps him while Deathstroke's busy trying to hit Wolverine.

Among all the normal emoting and fighting you'd expect from something Chris Claremont wrote, he does give Simonson plenty of opportunities to go big. Lots of big splashes of characters standing before the Source Wall, or giant angry birds of fire.

Claremont's Darkseid has some of the over-the-top aspect of Darkseid, but he probably gets too involved in the actual fighting. Watching Cyborg, Wonder Girl and Colossus try to wrestle Darkseid to the ground just seems off somehow. Even with Simonson's art, Darkseid seems lesser when he's grappling with superheroes than when he's scheming and gesturing dramatically. But we're decades past the point of writers turning him into something to be punched.

To be fair, Darkseid's ultimately defeated because the thing he resurrected is a being of evil and malevolence that realizes it used to be so much more, and turns its darkness on the one responsible. And Simonson draws it as Dark Phoenix, having tried to merge with Cyclops to save herself, only to be overwhelmed by his emotions, firing herself at Darkseid through Cyke's optic blasts.

Claremont does follow the notion only children are able to perceive Darkseid for what he truly is, although I'm not sure if he and Simonson interpret it the way Kirby intended. Shadowcat's the only X-Man who wakes up when their memories are being tapped, and Simonson draws what she sees as this close-up of Darkseid's face, shadowed and outlined by a grin and red eyes. And Kitty freaks and phases right through the floor trying to get away. So that part was pretty effective.

What I Bought 1/4/2023

Now that I'm finished looking back at 2022, I have a few weeks' worth of 2023's books saved up. Enough to go through next week, at least. Starting with the stuff from the first week of the month, we're looking at the somewhat delayed conclusion to a mini-series, and the third issue of Fantastic Four.

A Calculated Man #4, by Paul Tobin (writer), Alberto Alburqurque (artist), Mark Englert (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - I would say Jack contains multitudes, but he would probably chastise me for not being more precise.

Jack confesses to Vera, and she's into it. Great. Then he finishes wiping out the Keys, although he manages to improve his odds by bribing a bunch of the goons into leaving, then bribing the die hards with more money if they kill each other.

If they were smart, they wouldn't be henchmen for a crime family, would they? Everyone knows what happens to the rank-and-file. Jack wipes them out, Marshal Omaha retires, and then, while going through some of Jack's old papers, finds a journal from when he was 7 revealing this whole thing has been part of a plan. Getting hired as a mob accountant, going into witness protection, having the "misfortune" to be spotted on the street and even the bit about saying he can't lie. All a big plan.

That sound is my suspension of disbelief breaking into a million pieces like I threw a fragile china cup off the top of the Empire State Building.

I cannot buy that this one person, in a world of otherwise average folks as Tobin has presented them, can psychohistory his entire life out that perfectly. Even when he throws in the supposed variable of a romantic partner, which he admits to himself (or his turtle, who he has no reason to lie to) that he can't predict, it all still works out the way he planned.

Nothing caught him off-balance, or went contrary to his predictions. Nobody got a lucky ricochet. No one happened to run a red light and T-bone his car while he was just going to get ingredients to make lasagna for Vera. He didn't sneeze, or slip in a puddle of dog vomit that wasn't in the alley the last time he walked through there.

Sigh. Something positive to wrap up, then. Alburquerque consistently draws it so that Jack sets his pet turtle at his level when he's doing something. If Jack's cooking, Fibonacci is on the counter watching. When he eats dinner, Fibonacci gets his own little plate of strawberries, at his own table setting. It's cute.

Fantastic Four #3, by Ryan North (writer), Iban Coello (artist), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Does Syfy still make shitty movies? Firenado, or no, Napalmnado, stretch the truth a little.

Johnny stops a tornado with the power of something he remembered Reed talking about one time, but then he's got to get to work. At a big box store. How is he paying for an apartment in NYC working at a big box store? Anyway, he's sporting terrible facial hair and the alias "Jonathan Fairweather". Ben would die laughing if he heard that. Actually, Sue might, too.

Anyway, the store has lots of problems that don't pass safety regulations, but the workers can't risk making a fuss. Johnny tries to intimidate the guy in charge, but fire's not much of a deterrent when the guy knows you won't burn him. What Johnny needs, is the power of labor activism!

So, North's Johnny Storm is not an idiot exactly. The bad guy leverages the fact Johnny's a good person who doesn't want to actually burn people, and has more than good enough control to not do it. But Johnny's also flashy, impulsive and not particularly subtle. When he does the big reveal to his coworkers, they admit they all knew, in part because Jon Fairweather can't stop talking about how great the Human Torch is.

Coello draws him always making big gestures. Very active with his hands, giving customers a wink and the finger guns when he's working. Laughing way too loud when he says something dumb. Like I said, this Johnny's not so great at subtle, but he knows enough to lean into his strengths and let other people do the sneaky bits. And the terrible facial hair really does make him look older than I would expect Johnny to look, so I guess it's not the worst disguise.

2022 Comics in Review - Part 5

As always, these lists are only based on things I bought this year, and where specified, that includes things that weren't published in 2022, but that's when I bought them. Which is most of what I buy in tpbs or manga, anyway.

Favorite Ongoing Series (min. 6 issues):

1. Moon Knight

2. West of Sundown

3. Slumber

There weren't exactly a lot of options, the only other one being She-Hulk, which I dropped. I repeatedly questioned whether I was going to keep buying West of Sundown, which is why it comes in 2nd, even if Moon Knight can feel like a very slight read in individual issues. I'm not sure if the six issues of Slumber are all there's going to be (in which case it's a mini-series), or if it'll continue later (ongoing series, obviously). Since issue 6 ended with several unresolved threads, I opted to put it here.

Favorite Mini-Series (at least 50% shipped in 2022):

1. Grrl Scouts: Stone Ghost

2. The Rush

3. Blink

This was a tough category, with a lot of options, even with me questioning whether certain books qualify, like Slumber or She Bites. I mean, a mini-series about Sgt. Rock killing Nazi zombies couldn't crack the Top 3! As much as I liked Kaiju Score: Steal from Gods, it didn't have a chance. Ditto The Thing. Step By Bloody Step was one that did get serious consideration, mostly because it's such a good-looking book.

It had to be these 3, though. Christopher Sebela created such an unnerving setting, which Hayden Sherman and Nick Filardi drew so well, making it even more disorienting. The creatures and the peculiar mythology in The Rush were both so memorable. And nothing else I bought looked remotely like Grrl Scouts. Mahfood just drew all sorts of strange stuff, but held it together with a solid story. I was looking forward to the next issue of that book as soon as the last one ended.

Favorite One-Shot:

1. Mary Jane and the Black Cat

2. Impossible Jones - Naughty or Nice

3. Moon Knight Annual

The only other option would have been that Street Fighter comic, and I just didn't like it enough. As for the finalists, as enjoyable as Moon Knight fighting justifiably aggrieved werewolves is, it can't beat out sneaky lady thieves reluctantly doing good things. The Hood ending up devoured because he once again is not nearly as smart as he thinks, is both a perfect end for a character that got too much of a push, and gives Mary Jane and Black Cat the edge.

Favorite Trade Paperback/Graphic Novel (anything I bought in 2022):

1. Mister Invincible - Local Hero, by Pascal Jousselin

2. Carbon & Silicon by Mathieu Bablet

3. Thor and the Warriors Four, by Alex Zalben and Gurihiru

It was the kind of year where there were a lot of things I liked (and plenty I didn't), but few I was wildly enthusiastic about. This feels like a bit of a weird trio. Mister Invincible's a mostly lighthearted book exploring what an artist can do with a comic page. A lot of one page gags. Thor and the Warriors Four is the last of the all-ages Power Pack mini-series Marvel did in the 2000s, which seems like it should be lighthearted, considering the Powers team-up briefly with the Pet Avengers and Thor is turned into a baby. But it's also a story where Loki uses Julie Power's desperation to save their dying grandmother to seize control of Asgard. Both books are drawn in a simplified, open and expressive style, with bright colors.

Then you've got Carbon and Silicon, about a pair of artificial humans trying to survive as the world around them burns down multiple times across the centuries. The people in it are lumpy, awkward, sickly, often dying without pride or dignity as their bodies fail and society crumbles.

In summary, Calvin's brain is a land of contrasts.

Favorite Manga (anything purchased in 2022):

1. Ryuko vol. 2, by Eldo Yoshimizu

2. Steel Fist Riku vol. 2, by Jyutaroh Nishino

3. Akira Toriyama's Manga Theater, by Akira Toriyama (duh)

Cross Game volume 8 probably deserved more consideration than I gave it, but I kind of forgot it since it's sitting on the table waiting to be the next manga/tpb review, rather than in the box with all the others I bought in 2022. But I'll stick with this grouping. The Toriyama book is a collection of a lot of earlier work that didn't last terribly long for one reason or another (often because the readers hated it). It's interesting to see him growing as an artist, and the stories often focus more on comedy, which Toriyama's good at. It's just he's also real good at drawing fights.

The first volume of Steel Fist Riku found a good balance between quick stories designed to highlight both comedy and action, and longer threads that revealed more about the main characters. The second volume of Ryuko just got completely bonkers, between the shootouts in the upper levels of skyscrapers over who would control an ancient army, the freakin' CIA getting involved, people getting a motorcycle wheel in the face. All of it with Yoshimizu playing up contrast on these pages seemingly dripping with ink. Like with Grrl Scouts, nothing I bought looked like Ryuko, either.

Favorite Writer:

1. Mathieu Bablet

2. Si Spurrier

3. Jed MacKay

I bought enough stuff MacKay wrote, it seemed like he needed to be on here somewhere, but Spurrier had both The Rush and Step By Bloody Step to his credit, so that got him the #2 spot. As for Bablet, well, his art style is not one I would normally describe as my preference, but I love Carbon and Silicon, so his writing must have really done the trick for me.

Favorite Artist (min. 110 pages drawn this year):

1. Jim Mahfood

2. Matias Bergara

3. Hayden Sherman

Maybe it's not fair to restrict this to this year when I didn't do the same for the writers, but it felt like it would be more pronounced for certain artists to be judged on manga or back issues I bought they did that might span years of their careers, versus other people being judged entirely on one mini-series from this year. *shrugs* My blog, my arbitrary rules.

Anyway, Sherman came in behind Bergara because some of his pages were from Above Snakes, which didn't require him to be quite as creative with layouts, and so don't show off his skills nearly as much. Mahfood came in first because while most of his work is an extremely simplified style, it doesn't cost him on expression, and he can get detailed when he needs to.

And with that, we're done with 2022. Tomorrow, we're looking at some books from 2023, but now, I need to start organizing all this stuff into my larger collection.

2022 Comics in Review - Part 4

Last year six artists drew 110 pages or more of the comics I bought, which was up from 5 in 2020, but well short of the 12 of 2019. 2022 didn't make it all the way up the 2019's level, but it did end up with 8 artists at that level.

Jorge Corona and Pere Perez just made it, with 110 pages each. Five of the artists were within 12 pages of each other, starting with Jim Terry at 143, then up through Jim Mahfood (146), Vanessa Carindali (147), Hayden Sherman (154), and Matias Bergara (155). Sherman's the only one whose pages are spread across more than one title (Above Snakes and Blink).

However, the leader for 2022 is Alessandro Cappuccio, with 180 pages on Moon Knight!

She-Hulk #1-6: After the book that was about Jennifer Walters dealing with the trauma of nearly being killed by Thanos, plus years of whatever Jason Aaron was doing with the character, Rainbow Rowell took the approach of synthesizing stuff from the earlier, more popular She-Hulk runs. Jennifer back working with some of the law firm cast from Dan Slott's run, living in an apartment the Wasp wasn't using. Roge Antonio was the artist initially, but after issues got delayed several months, Luca Maresca took over, although Rico Renzi's color work helped the book maintain a similar feel.

High Point: The best scene was when Jen calls Patsy Walker in issue 3, which confirms they're still friends, but also that Jen thinks Patsy dating Tony Stark is a bad idea. Smart woman, that Jennifer Walters.

I'm also generally cool with Jack of Hearts - not a fave, but certainly not someone I dislike - so Rowell bringing him back from the dead was A-OK by me. The "fight club" thing with She-Hulk and Titania had some possibilities.

Low Point: The pace is worse than glacial, and Rowell put so much focus on the mystery of why Jack was back and where his powers went, She-Hulk felt like a supporting character in what was ostensibly her book. Which really didn't do her actual supporting cast any favors. Mallory Book is suddenly entirely opposed to superhuman clients, and then an explanation is abruptly tossed out in like two pages in issue 6, with no real build.

But the awful pacing is mostly why I gave up.

Slumber #1-6: People are committing murders in their sleep and evidence points to a "dream eater" named Stetson being involved. When a cop named Finch tries to investigate, he wakes up having committed a murder. Tyler Burton Smith was the writer, with Vanessa Cardinali and Simon Robins are the art team.

High Point: I like the weird stuff Cardinali draws in the dreams, even if I think the book could have made more use of the peculiar rules and logic of dreams than it did in terms of layouts.

The "sin eater" aspect Smith sets up with Stetson's work. She removes people's nightmares by entering their dreams and killing the source, so that the client forgets. But Stetson doesn't forget, because now she's seen and encountered it as well, so the nightmare lives on in her mind. And that, plus the issues she won't deal with, and the lack of sleep, means it starts to bleed over into her waking life.

Low Point: It ends on several cliffhangers, and while I want to think it's going to come back at some point in the future, the mini-series also feels like a pitch for a Netflix show. Something about the limited nature of how they use the dream setting, and that Stetson's response to most things is a very simplistic, shoot and/or stab it with conventional weaponry.

Step by Bloody Step #1-4: The Coda team of Si Spurrier and Matias Bergara get back together for a 4-issue mini-series about an armored giant escorting a young girl across the world. The girl is not allowed to go back, or really to interact with anyone at all, which produces friction as she continues to age.

High Point: Bergara's art is fantastic again. His style is exaggerated, but able to do violence or grief, or quieter moments of sorrow equally well. Which is good, since there's no dialogue we can read in the entire mini-series, his art has to carry all the storytelling load.

My favorite issue is still the first, as it shifts back-and-forth between the giant's silent trek across these gorgeous landscapes, and brutal fight scenes as it defends the child from giant wolves or whatever other threats might appear. I compared it to an episode of Samurai Jack at the time, and I stick by it.

The fate of that general or prince or whatever he was in issue 4 was much appreciated.

Low Point: Nothing comes to mind, really. There were times I wouldn't have minded a little expository dialogue, but it's easy enough to follow what's happening. Especially once you've gotten to the end and a few things are explained.

Street Fighter Masters - Chun-Li #1: It was a one-shot about Chun-Li thinking she's put her quest to bring Bison to just behind her with his death, and realizing she might still have some unresolved anger issues. It was OK for a concept, although I was hoping for more fighting, and writer/artist Ryan Kinnaird's tendency to make every woman look like they're wearing heavy eyeliner and emphasize their butts got distracting.

Tales from the Dead Astronaut #3: The final issue of Jonathan Thompson and Jorge Luis Gabotto's short-story anthology book. The astronaut escapes the aliens that gave him flesh back, but he reverts to a skeleton and resumes drifting in space.

The Thing #3-6: Walter Mosley, Tom Reilly and Jordie Bellaire have Ben Grimm keeping getting dragged into brutal fights, with a highly intelligent kid and a mysterious and beautiful woman in his corner, though their allegiances are in question.

High Point: Reilly draws some great fight scenes, and Bellaire always shifts the color scheme to a solid red-orange for the most brutal panels, to really make the violence seem a little rougher. It blots out all the background details, reducing things to just Ben Grimm and whoever he's fighting.

That Mosley writes Ben as perceptive enough to know something bigger is going on here, even if he doesn't know what. But also that he writes Ben in a situation where his unwillingness to ever give up could actually be a flaw.

Low Point: That said, I don't know about the idea Ben's got anger issues that had, at the start of the mini-series, tanked his relationship with Alicia. I guess I can see the argument, Ben does get angry sometimes, but I don't know that I see him as having a problem with anger. Or maybe I just think he's justified in being angry.

Tiger Division #1, 2: A mini-series about a group of Korean super-heroes that showed up in a Black Cat Annual a couple of years back. I think I would have preferred the creative team (Emily Kim and Creees Lee) divide the focus more evenly between the characters, rather than just focusing on the backstory for the team's Superman character.

West Moon Chronicle #1: A guy returns home, trying to convince his dad to sell his house, but it turns out he's being played by a fox demon of some sort, and there's a bunch of other spirit stuff going on in the woods. The second issue's out, so hopefully I'll see it soon and have a few more answers.

West of Sundown #1-7: An Irish immigrant stuck fighting for the Confederates finds a woman who buried herself alive, and becomes her assistant. When the Frankenstein monster and a partner of his burn down their home in New York, they have to return to where she was born to save her life, and find a lot of creepy crap already having taken up home there.

High Point: That one panel of that decaying, possessed horse in issue 4. Man, that thing was hideous, but in a good way. It's supposed to be disturbing even to this cast, and it was. Well done, Jim Terry.

While I haven't loved the plots, I do love the friendship between Rosa and Dooley. Tim Seeley and Aaron Campbell write it as this complex mix of desires and hang-ups. Rosa is the one with all the power outwardly, but Dooley's companionship means so much to her that she will go without food because there's no one he would consider it acceptable for her to drink from. And Dooley cares about her, but can't shake the feeling he's being party to something awful sometimes. It feels like a real relationship, in that each of them is making compromises and gets frustrated about it, but they decide it's ultimately worth it. Or they have so far.

Low Point: I can't shake the feeling I'm supposed to understand the rules about Rosa's abilities or the properties of where she was born better than I do. Like Seeley and Campbell are operating by a particular concept of a vampire, but it's not one I'm familiar with.

Wolverine - Patch #1, 2: Like Ben Reilly: Spider-Man, another mini-series by an older writer (Larry Hama) set in a distinct period (the Patch/Madripoor set-up), although as Paul O'Brien noted, Hama's the Wolverine writer who ditched Madripoor about as fast as he could when he took over the book. End of the day, I didn't care enough to stick around. I liked the full-page splash of Wolverine falling out of a plane Andrea De Vito drew in issue 1, though.

X-Men Legends #3, 4: Speaking of books from older writers set in distinct times, here's Ann Nocenti picking up Longshot sometime after her first mini-series, but before he joins the X-Men. Mojo throws he, Kitty Pryde and Wolverine into a war movie, which Spiral subverts to express her own vision. Then the X-Men get mindwiped so there's no question of why they didn't recognize Longshot when he met them again. Mojo's a good stand-in for any number of obnoxious shitheads in our current world, but I don't totally follow what Nocenti's doing with Spiral talking about her plots "spiraling" in on themselves.

OK, that's all the comics, so tomorrow is where we compare them to each other based on my entirely arbitrary rankings and declare things the best of the year.

2022 Comics in Review - Part 3

The increase in the number of new comics was a little out of the ordinary, but one trend that wasn't was my buying from more publishers. In 2009, when I had 144 new comics, there were seven different publishers (and the year before, when there were also 144 new comics, it was only three publishers). In 2022, I ended up with comics from 13 different publishers, but half of those were at less than 5% of the total (Blood Moon, Source Point, Udon, Mad Cave, Dark Horse, Red 5, Oni Press.) Aftershock was just barely over 5% at 7 out of 139. So I don't know that it's the pie being split more equitably so much as it is more groups getting a tiny slice.

The end result is, even with Marvel being at its lowest share of the total of any year except 2020, it still added up to more than the next three publishers - Scout, Image, Vault - put together. 54 comics versus a combined 51 (21, 17, 13, respectively.) Although if a couple of comics had come out in December like they were supposed to, Scout would have set the new record for best total for a non-Marvel/DC publisher. 23 would have edged out Boom's 22 in 2018.

Locust - The Ballad of Men #1-4: The second half of Massimo Rosi and Alex Nieto's post-apocalyptic story about a man named Max trying to find a safe place. The book takes the same approach the previous mini-series did, splitting time between showing Max and Stella traveling together, and Max trying to catch up to the lunatic cult leader Ford to rescue Stella.

High Point: The switching between past and present does help to explain why Max is so intent of finding Stella, and Rosi uses it to introduce new elements in the present, before flashing back to show who they were in the past. The ending is sad, but Rosi and Nieto put in the work to where it feels earned.

Ford is an easily despicable villain. The kind of delusional that can easily excuse any terrible act he commits. On the rare occasions something goes against him, he can say it's because he sinned, but it's still others who have to be punished. Definitely someone to enjoy seeing killed.

Low Point: The coloring is still too murky, to the point it's not always easy to tell what's happening.

Lunar Room #2, 3: A werewolf somehow prevented from changing that teams up with a half-assed mage who promises to fix that. I thought Danny Lore was actually doing a good job fleshing out the characters, showing different sides of them in different ways, but I didn't really care about the plot, and couldn't shake the feeling this was going to be one of those stories with no one to really root for.

Mary Jane and Black Cat #1: OK, this is the one-shot by Jed MacKay and C.F. Villa where the Hood uses a still-recovering Peter Parker to force Felicia to find and recover his magic cloak. MJ happened to be in the hospital room when Parker Robbins showed up, so Felicia claims MJ as part of her crew to get her out. It's a very fun one-off that lets both character play to their strengths. Although I still call bullshit on MJ beating up the Shocker with a baseball bat. His suit absorbs concussive force, MacKay!

Mary Jane and Black Cat - Dark Web #1: This, however, is the first issue of a mini-series tying into Dark Web. Also by Jed MacKay, but with Vicenzo Carratu as artist. Felicia and MJ get sucked into Limbo by Belasco, who wants them to recover his Soulsword (spoiler for issue 2!) Also, Mary Jane has some slot machine-themed H-Dial for some reason.

Moon Knight #7-18: OK, another Jed MacKay book. man, all his stuff is squeezed into one stretch. Rachelle Rosenberg was the colorist all year, with Alessandro Cappuccio as penciler for 9 issues, and Federico Sabbatini for the other three. Moon Knight had to contend with Zodiac trying to tear away everything he's built in an attempt to bring out the killer. Then there was a problem with Marc keeping Steven and Jake stuffed away in his mind, and a vampire pyramid scheme dipshit.

High Point: Issue 8, where Marc's in prison due to some other event I ignored, so Hunter's Moon has to deal with the somehow returned Stained Glass Scarlet and turns it into a battle of stories, I liked that. Issues 14 and 15, which start with an argument between Marc, Steven and Jake while Moonie's getting his ass kicked, and turns to Steven and Jake reminding Marc how they bring something to the table that he needs. It was a nice demonstration of how each part of their system can work together, if Marc will let them.

Low Point: The vampire group plotline was interesting in theory, but Moon Knight ultimately dealt with them so easily, it felt like a lot of build-up for not much payoff. The point could be that with him being stronger with all parts of the system clicking, he could do the prep work to make it an easy win, but I still had a reaction of, "is that it?"

Moon Knight Annual #1: MacKay, Sabbatini and Rosenberg with a story where Werewolf by Night kidnaps Moonie and Marlene's daughter as part of a ritual to try and destroy the lycanthropic curse once and for all. Because the curse is Khonshu's fault. I would have figured it for Artemis, she's a moon god too, right? Suffice it to say, the curse is not broken.

Nature's Labyrinth #1, 2: A bunch of apparently awful people signed on for a cruise that's immediately become a "Most Dangerous Game" situation on a very strange island. Except the prey may be more dangerous to each other than the Jungle Jim looking jackass gunning for them. The main character appears to be an undercover CIA agent, but their cover's blown.

Rush #3-6: The last four issues of Si Spurrier, Nathan Gooden, Addison Duke and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou's story about a woman trying to find out what happened to her son when he traveled to a remote spot in the Yukon seeking gold. Much weird shit happens.

High Point: Gooden and Duke create some freaking terrifying monsters. The bit at the end of issue 3 with the enormous elk the cries gold. Especially when it freaks out after Nettie bluntly tells it she doesn't want the gold. But my favorite is still the Pinkerton agent with the vortex for a face, The Pale. That's just a really cool design, even before you add in him riding around on a giant spider.

I also like the imagery of the gold literally getting under men's skin, and the way Spurrier writes it so they get gold, then spend it all celebrating, then go back looking for more. Caught in the cycle until it kills them. Just a bit more literally here than in most places.

Low Point: Nothing really.

Sgt. Rock vs. the Army of the Dead #1-4: The Nazis decide to reanimate the corpses of dead Nazis to make them fight against the Allies. Sgt. Rock and Easy Co are tasked to destroy the facilities and the doctor behind the project. Much undead Nazi killin' commences. Bruce Campbell and Eduardo Risso know what the people want.

High Point: The start of issue 2, where the regens are partying in a bar and start shooting each other so the beer pours out through holes in their guts. Campbell showing them still laughing and having a good time, with Risso drawing them with these wide, almost rictus grins on their faces, makes them creepier than if they were just mindless berserk monsters.

Low Point: It was good they got most of the exposition out of the way in the first issue, but it still made for a pretty slow beginning. And the plot is thin enough, the dialogue sparse enough, the book feels stretched at six issues. So far, it could be probably one issue shorter comfortably.

She Bites #1-3: Elsie's a vampire that happens to look like a little girl, so she hires a "babysitter" who can purchase cigs, booze, and take her to the mall without there being a lot of questions. She ends up with Brenda, who plans to use the money to travel to Scotland and throw herself off a cliff.

High Point: The way writer Hedwig Hale and artist Alberto Hernandez R. use Elsie and Brenda visiting the same convenience store (separately) to tell us about each character. Not just what they buy, or even why either of them are there. The way they walk through the place, the way others react to them, and they to those others.

Also, a profane little child who happens to be a vampire is just kind of funny to me. Although my favorite dialogue is from issue 2, once they get to the mall.

Elsie - What kind of maniac drives a Vespa in Pennsylvania?

Brenda: The poor kind who was tired of homeless dudes masturbating next to her on the bus.

Elsie: That's disgusting. I can't believe you took the bus.

Hey, I just reread it before I typed this and it still made me laugh, so it's gotta be gold! (Although I thought the British, and Europeans in general, were more appreciative of public transportation than us auto-loving Americans.)

Low Point: Granted that Elsie went to extremes to prompt the reaction, I'm not sure Brenda's epiphany on the value of life, including her own, wasn't a little too neat. But if there's ever any more of this, we'll see if it sticks in the face of adversity.

Just one-quarter more to go. Tomorrow's got one ongoing I dropped, another I keep considering dropping, and a few mini-series I liked a lot.

2022 Comics in Review - Part 2

I bought 139 new comics in 2022, which is way up from 107 in 2021. In fact, it's the most new comics I've bought in a year since 2009, when I bought 144. That year Marvel was at 104 books (~72%), DC at 26 (~18%), and all other publishers totaled 14 comics (9.72%), which was a new high up til then. This go-round, Marvel's at 54 comics, which is exactly what it managed in 2021 (it's also pretty close to its totals in 2018 & 2019). In 2022, that's only 38.85%, versus the 50.47% it was in 2021. 

DC picked up a bit of ground, going from 3 comics (2.8%) to 9 (6.47%), but most of it went to the other publishers. From 51 (46.73%) comics to 76 (54.68%), which blows the previous high - 2019's 61 comics - out of the water, although in terms of percentage it's not up to 2020. But that was such a weird year, hard to compare.

Distorted #1-3: Salvatore Vivenzio and Gabriele Falzone's story was different parties seeking out people who were developing powers. There were several interesting characters, but the story seemed focused on this telekinetic teenager who was mostly moping around trying to decide what to do, which was incredibly boring, so I dropped the book. Plus, there were a couple of times where they seemed to reprint pages from the previous issue, and I couldn't tell if that was a foul-up or a deliberate choice, but it was distracting.

Fantastic Four #1, 2: So far, Ryan North and Iban Coello's run on the FF has seen the team split up into smaller units, each dealing with some odd doing. I was fond of Ben and Alicia dealing with the mystery of the town from the 1950s stuck in a time loop, more than Reed and Sue finding a town of Doombots. The former allowed for a bit more humor, but they were both enjoyable.

Grrl Scouts: Stone Ghost #2-6: Jim Mahfood's first Grrl Scouts mini-series in five years barely features the main characters from the previous three mini-series, and it takes place in an almost surreal alien world where people can dive inside others' dreams, and robots can emerge from a person's head.

High Point: As much as I loved the surreal imagery and how Mahfood seemed to change the color scheme or presentation with every scene switch, I think he's smart to ground the story through Dio's search for her boyfriend's ashes. It provides a nice throughline amid all the stuff about butterflies and evil teeth. Dio continues to press forward and always for the same reason, no matter what she runs across.

Also, I loved the "Macho Tailfin" back-up stories, especially the over-the-top '90s pastiche in issue 5. Macho screaming "FREAK THIS, FUCK-FACE!!" while ripping "Baron Razor Shrapnel Strike" in half, then pulling out a huge gun and a smoke machine to attack the henchmen cracked me up for some reason. Look, I never said my sense of humor wasn't twisted.

Low Point: Mostly I worry how long we'll have to wait to get another mini-series. I really want to see Dio meet Daphne, Gwen and Rita. Also, I wonder how different Mahfood's art will look by then.

Ice Canyon Monster #1: I gave this a whirl in February because a shaman raising some ancient monster to defend his home from environmental degradation sounded worth a read. Unfortunately, none of the other 6 issues ever came out. They were even resolicited for October, and still nothing. I'll always have that panel of the monster that reminded of Earthworm Jim's Bob, the Killer Goldfish.

Impossible Jones #3, 4: The second half of Karl Kesel and David Hahn's introductory mini-series about a thief caught in a super-science experiment who gains weird powers. Jones is still focused on trying to figure out who locked her in that experiment, but she doesn't really get an answer here, and her boyfriend goes missing with an unusual piece they stole. I like how Kesel hints at backstory and history for these new characters without getting bogged down by it, and I like a lot of Hahn's designs for the characters.

Impossible Jones - Naughty or Nice: I mean, I just reviewed this last week. Impossible Jones misses out on the chance to steal some original puppets from a beloved Christmas movie to deal with a bomb threat, then gets stuck with Even Steven while he has an existential crisis over how to fairly repay an anonymous gift.

Iron Cat #1-5: Black Cat got canceled, so Jed MacKay's taken the approach of writing various mini-series involving her. Like this one, where her ex-girlfriend teams up with one of Tony Stark's ex-girlfriends (now an AI) to try to kill Felicia. Except, of course, things get out of hand, and loyalties have to shift.

High Point: The parts that are Felicia and Tamara interacting. Both the knock down, drag out fights, and the parts where they're arguing about what plan they can use to outmaneuver Sunset Bain, while running for their lives from dozens of Iron Man armors. It was fun to see how easily they slid back into old habits, even when Tamara was still furious with Felicia.

Low Point: The Iron Man parts. I haven't been reading his book, so I didn't really care about the 49th iteration of someone hijacking Stark's legacy of building weapons of mass destruction to destroy his legacy of. . .I'm sure he built some non-lethal technologies that didn't develop sentience or otherwise try to kill all humans.

Pere Perez' version of the Iron Cat armors didn't look quite as impressive as C.F. Villa's did, either. Less sleek, less dangerous. I think making the cat ears smaller and cuter didn't help, and the claws went from some pink plasma thing to actual claws, which is just not as cool.

Iron Fist #1-3: Six months after Larry Hama's extremely disappointing mini-series which took the Iron Fist from Danny Rand for the, what, 17th time? Alyssa Wong handed the chi of Shou-Lao the Undying over to a character called Swordmaster, for some reason. At the time I dropped the book, it had still not been explained why, if the mystical shards of his sword that were embedded in his hands were not only painful, but interfering with his ability to use the Iron Fist, he didn't just remove them. Especially since he was supposed to be trying to put the sword back together. If he needs the connection to find the remaining pieces, leave one in, but why a dozen?

Jenny Zero II #1-4: The second Jenny Zero mini-series, still written by Dave Dwonch and Broxton McKinney, with Magenta King as artist, has Jenny trying to embrace her father's legacy and become the next Mega Commander One-type, who defends Earth against kaijus. Except just as it looks like she defeated a revived and improved version of the monster that killed her father, she suffers some major losses.

High Point: A fight against a chain restaurant mascot come to life is always worth the price of admission, so let's hear it for issue #2! The color work during Jenny's flashback in issue 3 to what caused her to quit originally was excellent. And I don't know whether King continued to evolve as an artist between the first mini-series and this one, or if the shift to a smoother, less ragged line was a deliberate choice, but it made for an interesting shift in how the book looked.

Low Point: After they went to the trouble of establishing the (evil) Director had a set of triplets who could manipulate a person's memories and emotions, I was sure that was going to come into play. Especially as Jenny seemed to avoid public relations snafus and fell into bed with that annoying Alpha guy. But it never really went anywhere, and the Alpha guy easily defeated the triplets by simply killing one of them. Kind of a letdown.

Kaiju Score - Steal from Gods #1-4: James Patrick and Rem Broo came back for another Kaiju Score story, this time with the safecracker from the first mini-series leading her own crew to try and steal a bunch of gold from the inside of some super-kaijus stomach, while it's being heavily guarded by the Russians. Go big or go home, right?

High Point: I enjoy how Patrick gets into the logistics of these kinds of things, but without it being boring exposition. Although the fact they're stealing heavily guarded gold from inside a monster's stomach helps. And he's very good at playing with expectations. Setting things up so you figure something is sure to happen, but it may not happen the way the audience thinks.

Also, the three-panel sequence in issue 4 where Michelle is pistol whipping a guy to death, pauses to catch her breath, then resumes pistol whipping him was an enjoyable bit. I strongly identify with having enough anger it takes a while to really get it all out.

Low Point: The end was bittersweet, but appropriate for the characters. Michelle figured out she was changing, but the others were going where she was, so that was that. Part on good terms, hope it stays that way.

Lead City #1-4: A former soldier enters a free-for-all tournament of death in some western town to pay for his wife's medical treatment. That's pretty much it. The former soldier doesn't seem like much of a killer, but he's gonna have to kill at least one if he wants to stay alive.

High Point: Eric Borden and Kyle Brummond gave enough of the characters distinct approaches to fighting to make for some interesting match-ups. The Jiao Long Ru Ken fight against Major Walker was probably the best of them, with the classic speed vs. power contrast.

Low Point: With only four issues, and the first of those spent getting the Cooper family to the town, there's not really much time to flesh any of the other fighters out beyond the bare bones. A couple of them get a little more than that, but it makes it difficult to really care. Could be the point I suppose, we don't know any of them, so the option is to pull for Cooper. All of them are unknowns from his perspective, and dangerous. So maybe it works from that approach, but violence without some sort of context for it is weightless.

Two days, and half the comics down. Tomorrow we'll get into the back half of the alphabet (eventually). There's one big ongoing series, then a lot of one-shots and books I only bought a couple issues from.