The regional library had their annual used book sale last weekend. I'd been meaning to go for years, but something always came up. Picked up 8 books, two CDs and a movie for 10 bucks, so expect resumption of book reviews in the near future.
This issue is basically Rock fighting Hitler (who is all hopped up on those revitalization drugs) in the bunker while Easy Co. calls in another saturation bombing. It's a seesaw battle with Hitler using weapons and misdirection, but Rock basically just powering through all of it. Kind of like a pro wrestling match that way. Hitler tries a bayonet, a pistol, a syringe full of those drugs, hitting Rock with a locker, gassing him.
Risso and Rossi illustrate the fight to good effect. Bent noses or bones protruding from broken wrists. They emphasize the difference in the characters' eyes. Rock with larger white ovals and dark pupils, while Hitler gets smaller, almost bird-like yellow eyes with pupils like dots. I like that in the panel I picked, Rossi even shows the outline of Hitler's messed-up mustache by where the blood is and isn't. It's a nice bit of detail.
Rock survives the bombing, but the Army would like him to deal with similar problems now, and that's pretty much the end of the comic. Feels a bit like Campbell's referencing that bit from the '90s Suicide Squad book that said Rock handled missions to that island with dinosaurs and whatnot. Could just be a coincidence. I'm still curious why Campbell started with the internal narration boxes in the last two issues, after not using them in the first half of the mini-series. They did have the effect of making Rock feel more familiar.
Rock keeps up a sort of steady string of one-liners during the fight, which I'm less into. If the fight is meant to be a grim, difficult struggle, the dialogue cuts against that. But it's a story about fist-fighting a Hitler doped up on drugs to bring the dead back to life, so that's probably not the effect Campbell's going for anyway.
Nicholas Scratch and the Salem Seven show up to. . .mildly annoy the Four by spinning them around? Well, it turns out they've somehow reversed the "handedness" of the team's molecules, making them incompatible with life in their own universe. Their bodies could try to break down food, but the enzymes can't bond properly to do so. Slow death by starvation.
They get into the Dark Dimension and Reed does something to push his powers to the point where he can reverse the process. Spin everyone around in four dimensions so they're molecules are aligned properly. Something like that. They go home, Reed has Johnny burn some gunk off Ben because he fell in a pool of water and they don't want to carry any Dark Dimension bacteria over here, but completely ignores the puddle of water from where Ben landed. *sad trombone*
Of course, one of the locals of the Dark Dimension tried to chase them and its arm got lopped off when the portal closed. Sue just picked it up with a force bubble and tossed it in a dumpster. What if there are invasive bacteria in it? I guess they probably aren't photosynthetic if they live inside a creature, so they'll have the same "can't eat" problem the FF were going to. But it seems like something to be more careful with than that.
North seems to really like writing Reed Richards. Maybe something about the opportunity for creative solutions that comes with writing a genius. But at least in this issue, it feels like it reduces the rest of the team to Reed's supporting cast, which I'm not sure is the way to go. Certainly at some point Sue needs to get some spotlight,
Fiorelli kept the look of the book reasonably close to Coello's, although I see more 2000s Ron Garney is his work than I did in Coello's. Especially in some of the hatching and shading. Anyway, I assume Fiorelli got across what North was looking for with the thing Reed did with his body to do the rotating.
He does draw Ben Grimm with closer to a normal human's proportions, however. Seeing the Thing with a body that tapers towards the waist is kinda weird. Plus he gave him a neck. The Thing is not supposed to have a neck! It was in the style guide and everything!
No comments:
Post a Comment