We did get a little hail Tuesday night, but not large enough to be damaging. Let's hear it for that. Hip, hip, whew.
That out of the way, move on to a couple of titles in the middle of stories. At least, one of them is, and the other feels like it.
Dooley, Dirck and Cumberland drink some peyote and go wandering in the general direction of where they might find Moreau's creations. Seems like a bad idea to try and hunt monsters while hallucinating your own demons, but I guess the idea is to slay personal demons first, so the mind is clear. That hasn't really seemed like the problem the guys were having up to now; more that they weren't fully aware of what they were facing, but it's the best explanation I've got.
Rosa is very close to feeding on Betty, when Betty acts as host for the banshee-thing Rosa killed at the start of this arc. Terry keeps Betty's face in shadow for those panels, only enormous teeth and tiny golden-yellow eyes visible. The banshee reminds Rosa she's gone astray from punishing the corrupt in favor of being praised.
Again, I feel I'm on a very different page from Seeley and Campbell here. I was under the impression Rosa fed on the corrupt because it was somewhat satisfying, and it kept Dooley from objecting too loudly from serving her, allowing her to keep a close friend. Her problem now, which Moreau's agents seized on, is there's no one in this little town corrupt enough for Rosa to eat. She's starving, weakened, and susceptible because of it. Again, how has this issue been addressed?
Finally, Griffin has agreed to let Moreau experiment on him, which involves injecting him with the blood of the weird little creature Griffin kept caged up under his table. This appears to have expanded Griffin's perceptions, but also possible made him nuts. Or mindless, it's not entirely clear.
It feels like this should end next issue. Griffin's embraced his dreams, Dooley and the boys have faced their demons, and the sheriff seems determined to do so. Moreau's exposed and running low on subordinates with any intelligence, but there could be turns coming I can't see. Mostly, I've kept expecting Dooley and Rosa's differences of opinion to lead this arc, and it hasn't happened. They each are off doing their own thing.
Phillip starts out shooting a conceptual parasite that's feeding on the soul of a President that looks a lot like Trump. Then he goes on vacation. Phillip, I mean. The remainder of the issue moves between three settings. In one, the roboticist Phillip fought in the first issue refuses to build weapons for Phillip's intelligent orangutan boss, because it's his day off.
In the second, a new employee at WORLDE, called The Dream, wanders through the place, with Bratukhin stuffing the panels full of little sight gags and references (like a case with a cowled skeleton labeled, "Remains of Elaborate Wayne, Detail-Oriented Detective of Baroque City") trying to figure out where he's meant to go. His path leads to the Chairman of the Board, a rather imposing woman who seems to cause the info-dump text boxes to go nuts.
Then there's Phillip and his family vacation. His youngest daughter is nervous about starting school, and when one of the boys is mean to her on her first day, Phillip blows up the kid's house and does something to the kid. It looks like the same gun from the beginning of the issue is in the back seat of Phillip's car, and he said it was capable of shattering a soul. On the other hand, the little thing floating in its containment chamber are smiling, and the ones he shot near the President looked more malevolent.
That's where the issue ends. There's no, "to be continued", but it's an odd place for things to cut off. There's the possibility that none of these three scenes are linear, or occurring in the order they appear. That Phillip's family is a combination of the roboticist's work and the Dream. To give Phillip something he wants to protect enough that he won't go against them. Throughout this series, Phillip has ruthlessly torn apart family after family because WORLDE told him to, only to go home to his own happy, allegedly secret, family.
That feels too pat for this book, though. The orangutan told the roboticist he killed his father, the doctor who gave him intelligence, because the doctor refused to change. Most likely, refused to compromise morally the way WORLDE demanded. Oleg works, except on holidays, because he still has one child left, even if it's confined to a talking stuffed bear and is terribly miserable. But he can have access to tools to make its life a little better.
Phillip's just damaged goods, I think. He wants to be this regular dad and husband, but he's been raised to be a weapon from birth. And for all his protests about not wanting to do the horrible things he does, he still does them. When his daughter is sad, it's her mother who tries to comfort her, who tells her to accept her feelings rather than run from them. Phillip goes and does something terrible to a child. Are that kid's parents dead now, leaving him an orphan? Or they left with an essentially breathing corpse, all because he was mean to the wrong kid? Maybe, but Phillip doesn't care. He whistles while he mutilates. Literally, Bratukhin draws him whistling as he walks away from the exploding house. Because that's the way Phillip knows to be. That's what you do to threats.
I'm not sure how The Dream fits in. Part of me thinks he's what Phillip stole from the kid (again, assuming these events are not happening simultaneously.) Which is why it feels like there's more of this to come.
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