I'm typing this on Friday afternoon, waiting to see if we're going to get a visit from the Tornado and Hail Fairy. Thus far, it's just been a bit of rain, but there's five hours on the tornado watch to go.
This is a collection of a bunch of short strips that were on Marvel Infinite first, and have been collected in this handy issue. Outside of characters occasionally shouting "Jeff!" when he does something exasperating, the strips are silent. Mostly Jeff roaming about, having fun doing things like sledding or getting stuck in the washing machine. Although Thompson seems to have designated Kate Bishop as Jeff's caretaker instead of Gwenpool or Deadpool. Man, Kate Bishop can't look after a pet.
The Gurihiru art team depict Jeff as something like a very toothy, oddly-shaped cat. Focused more on him being cute than kind of strange or frightening. A few of the strips play with Jeff being a shark. Jeff jumps in the pool in one strip and causes a panic when people see the fin. So when he decides to join some surfers in the ocean in a subsequent strip, he devises a way to put people at ease. Another one involves him getting a stomachache and the vet performing an X-ray on his stomach.
Anyway, it's extremely inessential fluff, but it's also extremely cute and lighthearted inessential fluff, and I enjoy that from time-to-time.
Ben's having lunch with Bruce Banner and Reed (although Reed's got his neck stretched out looking at some gizmo), when a guy in what looks like mish-mash of Iron Man and Doom's armor shows up and dumps them through a gateway to some other world. Where they find a bunch of little aliens being menaced by a giant monster with a lot of teeth. Which is the sort of thing Skroce draws well, based on his Godzilla comic work. Lot of detail into the lamprey like mouth and the skin like spiny plates. The way the fingers are depicted make them look like a hydra, almost.
The monster is just one of many, the leader of which has captured the little guys' defender, their own Sorcerer Supreme. Hulk ignores Ben's attempt at a plan and just smashes the leader and grabs the sorcerer, but right as they're ready to leave, the army of monsters shows up. So they stay to fight, rather than abandon the aliens. Which leads to a double-page splash of Ben and Hulk clobberin' and smashing a bunch of weird monsters. More lamprey-looking things, vaguely crocodile-shaped things. Lots of teeth, lots of purple blood and big yellow eyes.
After the fight's over, a Celestial shows up, looking a bit more textured than usual. I mean, they normally have elaborate designs, but the Celestials also usually have smooth exteriors, whereas Skroce gives them more of a ridged or organic look. Either way, it declares them anomalies, and sends them home.
Skroce adds some humor in with the monster-punching. Hulk calls Ben "road lips" and "crack-face", which I don't think I've ever seen before. Ben makes a few cracks back at Hulk, although the one about Hulk's forehead, where he compares him to Timothee Chalamet, seemed forced. Maybe that's just because I had no idea who that was, but it's hard to see Ben making that reference. There's also a gag about Johnny taunting Ben for having a lot fewer followers on Twitter than Johnny does, and Ben brushing it off as Johnny using bots to inflate his total.
I'm guessing the mysterious armored figure will be the recurring antagonist, although the only hint here would be the fact they dumped Ben elsewhere so easily and we don't know their purpose. But that's fine. It was a good comic full of monster-punching.
2 comments:
I can't wait for some genius to turn Jeff all gritty in some pointless crossover. Perhaps make him eat some kids or something.
If it happens, smart money is on Benjamin Percy, given his recent output.
I was gonna say Donny Cates, but he'd turn Jeff into a new Herald of Galactus, or the Beyonder or something bizarre.
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