Lockjaw Makes Talking Tough

I've been re-reading the John Byrne/Ron Wilson 1980s Thing series, as a bit of a precursor to its Saturday Splash Page entry in a couple of months. In issue 3, Crystal and Lockjaw come looking for Ben, because Quicksilver is determined to expose he and Crystal's daughter to the Terrigen Mists, even though there's no telling what that'll do to a half-mutant/half-Inhuman child.

Crystal's opposed, but Inhuman society, among its other fucked-up policies, puts full control of that decision in the hands of the father. Even when the mother's a member of the royal family, and the dad's just some jackass that married into the society.

Ben and Lockjaw both step in, but what ultimately convinces Pietro to stop is when Lockjaw speaks, revealing that he's not just some mutated dog, but that his form is what the Mists did to him.

What I remembered recently was, in his first issue on X-Factor, Peter David had a scene where Jamie Madrox tries to talk with Lockjaw, because he heard from Ben Grimm about Lockjaw being able to talk. Pietro laughs and explains that was just Karnak and Gorgon using a microphone to have fun with Grimm, by making him think he found a kindred soul.

That's a weird way to reverse that. I get Byrne retconned Lockjaw in the first place, and Marvel certainly seems to prefer Lockjaw just be a mutated dog. But in-story, that's not the time where you play that sort of practical joke. A child's life is potentially on the line, and given Crystal's power, if Luna dies because of this, there's a decent chance a volcano erupts right under Attilian and kills everyone.

Doylist explanation #1: Peter David decided the Inhumans had enough dodgy shit in their society, with the Alpha Primitives and all, so dog-man was a step too far.

Doylist explanation #2: Peter David was just being kind of a petty dick. Not a stretch for the guy who put Rocket Raccoon in his Captain Marvel run as a throw rug, or who dismissed an appearance by Hulk and Doc Samson in Amazing Spider-Man (first part reviewed here) that did not appear to contradict his run in any way as a "dream".

Watsonian approach #1, Pietro's lying his ass off because that whole circumstance was him being wildly wrong and he doesn't want to cop to it. Karnak and Gorgon did it to trick Pietro, not Ben, as a last-ditch move to make him stop. Obviously Pietro isn't going to admit he endangered his only daughter's life because he couldn't bear the thought of her being "merely" human. Even if he likes to pretend he doesn't care what others think of him, it would probably help if his new teammates aren't all looking at him like something they'd scrape off their shoes.

Watsonian approach #2: Lockjaw can talk, but as Thing surmised in the first story, it hurts. He's sure as hell not going to spare any words for a dick like Pietro (who he's likely only too happy to get far away from everyone he cares about). Or simply to prove that he can to a slack-jawed gawker like Madrox.

Of course, as the kicker, Pietro would forcibly expose Luna to the Terrigen Mists years later. She survived, so I guess he had that going for her, but he lied baldly to cover his ass and wound up with his daughter hating his guts and his now ex-wife married to Ronan the Accuser and seemingly fairly happy. Ha, ha.

One False Move (1992)

Billy Bob Thornton plays a coked-out killer who, as that description would suggest, kills a bunch of people with his partner (Michael Beach) and his girlfriend (Cynda Williams) and steals their cocaine. The girlfriend is from a little town in Arkansas, where Bill Paxton plays the sheriff as an extremely goofy, yet gung-ho cracker.

The movie switches back and forth between Paxton and two L.A. cops hanging out in town, waiting to see if the killers show up, and the killers making their way cross-country. Surprisingly, the city cops get along pretty well with the country-boy sheriff, while the killer trio are all tension. Paxton's star-struck and trying to impress them, to his wife's increasing concern.

All the locals keep alluding to Paxton having "known" Williams' character before she left town, in ways that imply he has other reasons to want to handle this himself, beyond machismo. The movie tries to build that up throughout, so credit for that.

The killers aren't doing nearly as well. Beach has plans to sell the coke and return to Chicago, while Billy Bob seems to want to inhale it all himself. They argue and threaten each other, and when he's losing, Billy Bob takes it out on his girlfriend, who eventually reads the room and bails for her hometown and her son. The drug selling plans don't work anyway, and eventually everything converges.

I like that Beach plays Pluto as very calm and collected, as the guy who has an actual plan, but it doesn't work any better than any of Billy Bob's ideas do. You expect it from the latter, because he's a twitchy, coked-up nut who gets violent with little provocation. But Pluto's plan fails because he misreads the guys he wants to sell to, and because leaving behind a bunch of bodies was a stupid idea, no matter how quietly he killed them.

There's an extended stretch of essentially that, set to a harmonica. Shots jumping from one character to the next. These two guys in a car. Paxton peering out from behind curtains, waiting to see their car. The L.A. cops closing in, via their own lead. As attempts to build tension go, it's no patch of the build to the final gunfight in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Maybe I just found the harmonica too irritating and wanted it to stop.

What I Bought 5/26/2023

I tried to watch the 2011 Three Musketeers movie last week. The one where there are airships, and I think Orlando Bloom plays Lord Buckingham and declares Louis the XIV's outfit "retro"? Just complete trash, and you've seen some of the stuff I've watched. Every time I un-muted it, I instantly regretted the decision.

Will I regret buying these two comics? Let's find out.

Unstoppable Doom Patrol #3, by Dennis Culver (writer), Chris Burnham (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Pat Brosseau (letterer) - Guy, Kyle, you could just use your ring to grab the car for you.

Robotman and Negative Man are transporting some guy whose metagene caused him to bond with a Starro in an unusual way. The kind of way that makes him call himself "Starbro". The Green Lanterns want to haul him in, so the Doom duo has to outfox them. Because nobody is willing to listen. That's pretty much it, minus something at the end about some guy named Mr. Droo received Brain's robot gorilla skull and being happy about it.

Lot of stuff in this issue we have to take on faith. Negative Man can scramble the Lanterns' rings so they can't track them. How? Don't know, not explained. Starbro can somehow hack the rings to send a fake distress message. How? Don't know, not explained. Starro's have mind control properties, but a ring's technological. The Negative Spirit can be kept at bay with a big green energy bubble, but goes right through the glowing energy field around them. What's the difference? No clue. Has Culver earned that much credit, that I just shrug and say, "Sure, makes sense?" I don't know.

That said, I did enjoy the gag where Robotman detours through Smallville, thinking the Lanterns won't cause a ruckus in Superman's hometown, only to forget he's dealing with Guy Gardner, who could not give less of a shit.

Burnham's art works better on unconventional characters. Robotman and Negative Man look fine, but Guy's face is just off-putting. Too much hatching on his lips or around the cheekbones. Falls into the uncanny valley, like I'm looking at a Howdy-Doody puppet of Guy Gardner. Maybe that's the point, since the Lanterns are the antagonists here, unwilling to see past Starro to the Starbro underneath. They dehumanize Starbro, reduce him to a potential threat, and in the process dehumanize themselves. Except it's not really an issue in Burnham's portrayal of Kyle, so maybe masks are Burnham's friend.

Hellcat #3, by Christopher Cantwell (writer), Alex Lins (artist), RJ Diaz (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - Patsy again testing whether cats can land on their feet in a void.

Patsy dies of gunshots, then returns from the dead and beats up the cops. Hedy won't take her to this lighthouse, so she goes herself and finds Sleepwalker and a pretty pathetic Blackheart fighting. Spalding was trying to build some gate for Mephisto, or for himself, before he died. Daimon's involved, while still insisting Patsy's the big deal. He also says she got herself out of Hell once before, and the editor's note references Thunderbolts Annual 2000. Hawkeye got Patsy out of Hell, at Daimon's insistence. I own the damn comic, Cantwell, I know what happened in the story, don't try to snow me.

Of course, maybe Daimon's just lying, like he lied to Hawkeye. He approached Spalding (such a terrible name) at some point during the gate construction. He keeps saying Patsy's the one with the power, but the flashback to her teen years show her attempt to take the fall for writing other peoples' papers was undone by her mother. Too focused on maintaining the squeaky-clean image of Patsy in those comics she wrote. Which suggests Patsy's always been at the mercy of others' whims, but they keep telling her it's her fault things happen.

That feels like giving Cantwell too much credit.

There's also discord between Sleepwalker and Rick Sheridan, because Sleepy's been keeping Rick out of the loop on the "investigation", because of Rick's feelings for Patsy. There's a photograph that Spalding took that features prominently there, although the way Lins draws Patsy in the photo, versus how she appeared in the panel earlier in the comic is somewhat different. Besides the weird aura and the marks on her body. The robe's a fair bit more open in the photo. Don't know if that's supposed to be a reveal of her true motives and desires, or just more "sexualization = darkness" stuff.

Sunday Splash Page #272

 

"The British Riddler," in Jack Staff (vol. 2) #3, by Paul Grist (writer/artist), Phil Elliot (colorist)

The original, black-and-white volume of Jack Staff ran 12 issues across 2000-2003. Then he took the concept to Image, or they approached him about publishing it, and boom! New #1 and away we go.

Grist started with a story about Jack's last adventure before his 20-year absence, which also served to hint at something larger, a war between two forces, "Red" and "Green". We don't know what's at stake, or what either side represents, besides themselves. I'm not sure we ever see someone specifically allied with the Red. Maybe the shadow that helps out Becky Burdock, Vampire Reporter.

That thread never really gets anywhere within this volume, though we might have seen parts of it in Weird World of Jack Staff. What it does accomplish is to alter the view of Helen Morgan. In the first volume, Helen seems like the all-knowing puppet master. Jerking around and manipulating people with a mysterious smile on her face. She keeps her cards close to the vest, even with the people she ostensibly works with.

What this volume reveals is that Helen herself is a puppet on the strings of the same Ragman-looking being that was using Jack before he retired. That it swept her up in a moment of desperation and now she can't get free, not until she accomplishes something very difficult.

In that sense, not unlike the Eternal Champion who appears midway through the series. A warrior condemned to fight on behalf of "the Cosmic" until it deems that he's done enough to redeem himself. Allowing the jailer to have total control on when the sentence is up works as poorly for the jailed as you'd expect.

Between those two, Jack's WW2 antagonist Kaptain Krieg, and with all the forces circling Becky, a real theme seems to be people at the mercy of greater forces. Becky's the only one who might, again, based on Weird World of Jack Staff, have managed to slip the noose, but it seemed so easy how she rejected what seemed to be fate that it's hard to believe she did more than get a reprieve. Krieg's attempt to take control of his existence succeeds in killing him, but not the thing using him. Helen and the Champion seemingly can't die, or don't stay dead if they do, so even that exit's denied them.

Makes the book kind of depressing when I think of it that way.

Grist's figurework is much the same as it was in the first volume, and you can see elements of his design sense in the page layouts some times, but he shifts his approach a bit to account for being in color. Less emphasizing negative space, more taking advantage of the color work to create theme or mood. Elliot (and later Erik Larsen a few times) use vivid swirls for the scenes with the Druid or when the Eternal Champion falls through space. Or Helen Morgan's dreams, shaded in green.

The second volume ran for 20 issues over about 6 years, going through long stretches of absence. A year between #13 and #14 (though there were a couple of oversized Specials in the gap), 8 months between #19 and #20.

Saturday Splash Page #74

 

"Cue the Entrance Music," in Thunderbolts (vol. 1) #1, by Kurt Busiek (writer), Mark Bagley (penciler), Vince Russell (inker), Joe Rosas (colorist), Comicraft's Dave n' Oscar (letterer)

A group of heroes who show up in New York in the wake of Onslaught, when the heroes the public relies on are presumed dead, but are really just trapped in a world under the control of Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee. Which might be worse than death. The Thunderbolts weren't the first team to step into the void - Iron Fist dusted off the Heroes for Hire first - but these characters were all new, unknown quantities to everyone else.

Of course, by the end of the first issue we find out they're the Masters of Evil in disguise, led by Baron Zemo pretending to be Citizen V. I know there's debate about whether it was good to give that away right off, or if Busiek would have been better served keeping the team and their motives a mystery until Zemo was actually ready to make his move.

I don't think that would have worked. Either you have to abandon thought balloons or any other internal narration for the characters until the big reveal, or they have to think entirely in vague remarks that can do no more than hint at secrets. Like, "I know this is just part of the boss' plan, but I'm really starting to enjoy this hero stuff!" No direct references to their villainous pasts or codenames, everything oblique. How long can you keep that up before it gets irritating?

That's a hypothetical. The reality was the mystery of what Zemo thought to gain with the deception, and the other characters finding life on the other side of the line to be a chance. Screaming Mimi and the Beetle, now Songbird and Mach-1, figured out they liked getting cheered and especially not getting thrown in jail. Atlas (formerly the bad guy Power Man or Goliath) was content taking orders, but he fell for the team's liaison with the city, Dallas Riordan, so that was its own problem. Moonstone (now Meteorite) didn't care about being a hero. As usual, Karla Sofen was just sure that Zemo was screwing up her plan and that she could do better. That seems to be her whole thing, always eager to backseat drive other people's plans, but never any of her own. 

Techno (formerly the Fixer) was the only one who didn't seem affected, content to take the pleasures of the hero worship while he could, but always following Zemo, and he got killed.

To complicate matters, Busiek and Bagley added Jolt, an entirely new character whose design I thought won a fan contest, but maybe that was Charcoal, who popped up around the end of Year 2 of the book. Jolt, like the Kamala Khan Ms. Marvel, was a bit of a superhero geek, albeit one abducted amid the chaos of Onslaught's attack on New York and then experimented on by Arnim Zola. Jolt made a real splash for herself, to where Zemo had to let her stay, even though she was intent on really being a hero and wasn't aware of his plan.

I don't know if Bagley came up with the designs for the Thunderbolts' costumes. That's not something I've ever really considered a strong point of his, but I quite like some of their looks (Songbird's in particular - and many of them have stuck to varying degrees. Even when Techno's gone back to being Fixer in stuff like Cable/Deadpool, he kept the red/black spandex with the "techpack" look.

Year 1 of the book ended with the T'Bolts' deception exposed, but the rest of the team (minus Techno, now in a synthetic body) having wrecked Zemo's plan. So the book enters a "fugitive" arc, where the remainder of the group hangs together primarily out of lack for any better options. The general consensus among heroes and law enforcement is to bring them in, for questioning about Zemo if nothing else.

Busiek and Bagley are pretty effective at making the team feel like it's coming apart at the seams. Minus Zemo, who turned out to be a decent tactician, if generally lack in tact, it turns out no one else on the team is any good at being a leader. Meteorite only knows how to manipulate and look out for number, not inspire or bring people together. Atlas follows orders rather than gives them. Jolt's inspiring, but she's also a kid (and Meteorite is trying to twist her into a weapon throughout.) Songbird's getting increasingly violent and the Beetle's led groups before - Sinister Syndicate represent! - but those same teams routinely get their asses kicked by just Spider-Man, so the resume's not great. Plus, his armor's falling apart and it was built by Techno, so he can't repair it.

Bagley's selling the emotion, the sullen glares, the emotional explosions, the increasingly battered look of Mach-1's armor. And he had plenty of experience with illustrating fights between groups from New Warriors, so there was no issue there. Some of that is probably scripting, the writer knowing how to describe the fight so that the artist knows where two separate skirmishes need to be in relation to one another for when (or if) they overlap. The artist still has to present it cleanly, and Bagley's always been good at that kind of thing.

While Zemo and Fixer look on from a secret lair, and interject occasionally to be vindictive assholes, the T'Bolts are flailing. They get humiliated for half an issue by the Great Lakes Avengers, simply because the GLA understand the basic concept of teamwork. Meteorite tries to have them take on a new Masters of Evil, led by Crimson Cowl, as a statement, and they get trounced. Nothing's really going right, depending on how you feel about Jolt increasingly following Meteorite's commands to be more ruthless and give vent to her anger.

And into the void steps Hawkeye, which is a move I particularly love. Busiek had a one-off issue in the first year where the Black Widow relates a story to Songbird and Mach-1 of the Kooky Quartet having to prove they could be trusted as the Avengers. The implication is she knows who the T'Bolts really are, but she's willing to see if they prove themselves. So here comes a member of the Kooky Quartet, one who always has something to prove and believes in redemption, promising he can get their crimes waived if they just let him lead.

Busiek wrote the book through issue 33, and things were looking up for the team. But what goes up, must come down.

Random Back Issues #105 - Uncanny X-Men #237

It's the introduction to Genosha, aka, Apartheid for Mutants, oh boy. Maddie Pryor accepted a job trying to help a mutant escape Genosha, but they were both captured because Genosha doesn't want anyone to know how they achieved their utopia (slave labor). Not out of fear of sanctions, heavens no, but because someone might steal their idea.

That is the more realistic response, for all I'd like to see the Avengers show up and just beat everyone's asses. The New Warriors might have done that, but we're still a couple years too early for them. Or X-Force, for that matter.

Wolverine and Rogue went to investigate, they got caught and powers neutralized, which produced two pieces of bad news. One, with his healing shut down, Logan's dying of blood poisoning from all the Admantium. Two, Rogue was assaulted by some of the magistrates and retreated into her own mind from the trauma. There she's being tormented by the specters of all the people she's grabbed bits of memory from. So Carol Danvers, stronger than the others because it's basically all of her, is running the show. Turns out she and Logan worked together at some point. Of course they did.

While the magistrates are chasing an aircraft Logan and Carol hotwired, those two are sneaking around Genosha itself. Well, Carol's not really sneaking so much as trying to draw as much attention as possible for Logan to swipe keycards. At least it keeps him from trying to stab people.

The Genegineer's son - friend of the girl Maddie was trying to help - chose the same bar to get drunk and pick a fight in. Which makes Carol and Logan's work easier, but when the magistrates decide to throw the kid on the "mutant train" to teach him a lesson about how Magistrate Lives Matter, our super-spies decide to hitch a ride. They find the kid and try use him as a way to get deeper into the facility where mutants are experimented on. Logan's fading fast, but he really wants to bring the country to its knees.

Elsewhere, the Genegineer's talking with Jenny, his son's friend. Her father abused his position to switch her positive gene-scan with another girl, who died as a result. So Jenny owes it to that dead girl and their country to be altered against her will into a mindless slave, you see. Fortunately, the bullshit is interrupted because the medical staff are about to start messing with Maddy, including trying to probe her mind with a telepath, despite her warnings to stay out.

It's about this time the rest of the X-Men arrive. After easily dispatching some magistrates, Psylocke is floored by a psychic shockwave of rage she describes as 'like being cast into the molten heart of a star.' Back in the lab, the Genegineer finds everyone other than Maddy (still strapped to the table) brutally murdered. Well, that's not ominous. . .

{12th longbox, 45th comic. Uncanny X-Men #237, by Chris Claremont (writer), Rick Leonardi (penciler), Terry Austin (inker), Glynis Oliver (colorist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer)}

Phantom (2013)

It's a Russian submarine movie, with Ed Harris as the epileptic captain with lots of regrets! All right!

For his last patrol, he's assigned his first sub, now a obsolete piece of crap the Soviets will subsequently gut and sell to China. He's also got a crew with a lot of sailors he doesn't know, and some hinky guys who brought technical equipment on board and keep overruling him. The leader of that bunch, Bruni, is played by David Duchovny with a smirking, dead-eyed confidence that makes you just want to punch him in the face. 

The equipment is designed to record the prop noises of other ships and then project them to fool American sonar. Sounds nifty, but the captain knows they'd never put that kind of equipment on a boat he captained. Especially not a piece of junk like this boat.

It's kind of Crimson Tide but with the Soviets. Bruni and his hardliners with a plan to actually "win" a nuclear war, versus the captain and his men, who find the whole idea horrifying. Lots of standoffs with people all pointing guns (always a risky proposition in a tight metal tube underwater), demanding things at gunpoint, people being herded into different sections of the ship.

Harris plays the captain as weary and almost disconnected at times. He's haunted by memories of past mistakes and hard decisions, while caught in a situation he knew stank from the very beginning. He leans against bulkheads or consoles for support, his shoulders are perpetually slumped, his dress jacket is left unbuttoned and hangs off him.

At the same time, he remarks to the ship's Party Officer that a captain without a boat is called 'a drunk". He's ready to retire, but also frightened of what that will leave him. He disappointed his father, and he's worried he's done the same to his daughter. Too afraid to actually ask her.

Summer Standstill

August solicits really not looking great. The most interesting thing is Dark Horse and IDW both got booted from the Premiere Publishers section at the top of the website (now the exclusive realm of Marvel, Image, Boom and Dynamite), down amongst the little guys.

There wasn't anything new coming out I might get. The closest was a mini-series called The Plot Holes by Sean Gordon Murphy, who's been doing those alternate timeline Batman stories recently (White Knight or something like that), about a team of fictional characters who jump into other stories to keep the plot from being destroyed. The main character is a fictional writer character who I assume will prove his worth via familiarity with genre conventions. All that time on TVTropes wasn't a waste!

It's published by Massive, which I think might just be Whatnot (which published Liquid Kill) under a new name. It has the 8 different covers I expect from their books, and the next publisher down was Massive-Whatnot. Who knows with this stuff?

The only thing I was already buying that's ending is Fallen, which might actually end since it shipped two issues this month. On the same day, which was a little odd, but Red 5's always been weird with publishing schedules.

DC's still running that Knight Terrors event from last month, but also starting up all the regular books again, so Unstoppable Doom Patrol will be back. Except now it's a 7-issue mini-series instead of six. Did it get a really positive sales response? That additional issue is offset by Grit N Gears, which was solicited for issue 5 of a-now 6-issue mini, instead of 7. And the first issue did actually come out this month, so issue 5 may see the light of day (though I suspect in September, not August)

The other 3 single issues were from Marvel: Moon Knight, Fantastic Four, and Captain Marvel: Dark Tempest. Being Marvel, there's at least three mini-events going on simultaneously, between starting up Fall of X, starting up this "Contest of Chaos" thing with Annuals for different titles. Two of which are Moon Knight and FF, but I don't care about the Agatha Harkness vs. Scarlet Witch magic-off, so skipping those. Then there's Death of the Venomverse, which is one of those five-week, one-month things. Didn't they introduce the Venomverse a month ago? And they're already killing it? I mean, I'm fine with wiping out Venom, all symbiotes can fuck right off, but Marvel seemingly thinks people like him, so it's kinda weird, even for their typical ham-handed idiocy.

I guess I could add that Viz Media solicited volume 11 of Zom 100, but I'm still not past volume 2, so that's largely academic. Jeez, if I'm going to be down to six comics, I might do something drastic and stupid, like start buying Battle Chasers (which solicited another issue. 3 months in a row, holy shit!) More likely, there's going to be a sharp uptick in Random Back Issues and manga/tpb reviews as summer rolls on.

Beyond the Wall - Edward Abbey

We looked at Abbey's Desert Solitaire about three years ago. This is another collection of essays, originally published elsewhere, but those versions were out of print and prohibitively expensive for the people Abbey wanted to read his work, so he put this out.

Most of the chapters are Abbey trying to describe the appeal of the desert to him, through describing various trips he's spent in it. Not quite a travelogue, as this seems as much about what he felt or thought as it is discussing what's there.

"A Walk in the Desert Hills," details Abbey being dropped off by two friends somewhere in Arizona and hiking alone across over 100 miles to a little town called Bagdad. He talks about the heat, and how different it is in the shade when there's wind, but also how he's never worn these jungle boots on a hike like this and the weight of his supplies is making his feet squish out and crush his pinky toes. "Days and Nights in Old Pariah" is about his attempts to find his way to a long abandoned town, back before the Glen Canyon Dam was built that inundated the entire region.

That particular dam comes up a couple of other times, as Abbey clearly hates what it's done to the Colorado River and the surrounding regions. It's not any use ecologically because the water level fluctuates too much. Either the plants are high and (too) dry, or they're drowned, so no good to wildlife. It's silted and stagnant, and ruins the rafting and buries history and all so people can try to force a place inhospitable to large amounts of people to be otherwise.

There's definitely a certain crankiness to his writing, though he would point out he doesn't dislike all people, only his enemies. He's just indifferent to the majority of humans and would prefer space between him and them. Hence the appeal of the desert. I hew more towards prairies, but I know the feeling.

Which is part of why I like his writing. The descriptions of seeing for miles and there being no one around. Of coming across a dilapidated cabin with a functional windmill to pump water and nosing around. The part about veering off track several miles into the hills to look for a tinaja that he hopes has water in it, that part doesn't appeal, but it makes for a good reminder how difficult a habitat deserts can be, how narrow the margins are to survive.

'Except for the thin track of the road, switchbacking down into the wash a thousand feet below our lookout point, and from there climbing up the other side and disappearing over a huge red blister on the earth's surface, we could see no sign of human life. Nor any sign of any kind of life, except for a few acid-green cottonwoods in the canyon below. In the silence and the heat and the glare we gazed upon a seared wasteland, a sinister and savage desolation. And found it infinitely fascinating.'

Fight for Your Life! Or Don't.

Context doesn't really help.

Yoshizawa Hitomu is just some office drone. Few defined goals, less motivation. While daydreaming about how he might be able to get out of work without getting in trouble or anyone getting hurt, he's swept away to a mysterious arena. The creators of all the various "spacetimes" have each gathered their most useless inhabitant to compete in a tournament to decide who is the most useless in all creation. Hence the title, Weakest Contestant of all Space and Time. His first opponent is one of those little pixellated spaceships from the old arcade games like Defender.

Yeah, that didn't go well. Neither do any of his subsequent matches, resulting in he and four others being put together for a final battle royale to determine who is the most useless of them all. Yoshizawa does have one skill: he's good at mapping out possibilities, probably from all that time spent daydreaming. KRSG, who's responsible for the art, represents this with a bunch of small circular panels against a dark background. They usually take the reader's eyes diagonally across the page, but can also meander, probably representing Yoshizawa's unfocused thought processes. 

But, Yoshizawa finds a lever that opens the bottom of the arena, allowing the five of them to escape. The two characters running the event, both apparently former gods, one with a blindfold and some sort of glowing circle hovering in front of his face, pivot neatly. New game! All the previous contestants must now hunt those five! And outside the arena, death will be permanent!

The rest of Volume 1 is Yoshizawa finding the other 4 contestants, and them fending off the initial attacks of the other poor suckers dumped in this. The slime absorbs some of Yoshizwa's blood that got on it and this somehow causes it to change form into a naked blue slime girl (see the top panel.) Weird enough, but the slime is now the spitting image of a girl Yoshizawa was smitten with in his younger days, so it's pretty creepy when he gives it the girl's name (Sayaka).

Yoshizawa's kind of a hard character to follow as the protagonist. Masato Hisa doesn't write Yoshizawa as a terrible person; when he and the slime (prior to her transformation) are confronted by a knife-wielding cartoon pig with no conception of pain or death, Yoshizawa tries to throw the slime to safety. He tries to keep K, a cleaning bot reprogrammed to act like a warbot, from fighting a tank, even though he could just run and let K get destroyed. He doesn't want to fight in part because the other fighters were brought here against their will to suffer and die like him.

But the constant second-guessing, the tendency to give up at the first bit of difficulty paint him as quite pathetic. I mean, if he wasn't he wouldn't be in this tournament. And Hisa makes it work. The former god with the blindfold has some larger plan, and as long as Yoshizawa keeps sparing the people trying to kill him, those people have more time to reflect upon the injustice of what's happening to them.

No bones are made about the fact the gods are dicks. The cartoon pig - Oinky - is defeated when Yoshizawa decides to enjoy a last cig before death and the cartoon has no resistance to the smoke and rolls off a cliff in a panic. Back in the arena, his god (who KRSG draws as Abe Lincoln crossed with Liberace) talks about how happy he is Oinky earned a lot of "useless" points with that move and tells him he has to keep playing and making them laugh. When Oinky asks what's the point, he gets his face ripped off.

Quite what Yoshizawa's going to be able to do about all this, I have no idea, but Blindfold Guy clearly wanted him in the tournament for a reason.

Sunday Splash Page #271

 

"Candid Camera," in Jack Staff (vol. 1) #6, by Paul Grist

Jack Staff! Britain's Greatest Hero, for a certain definition of "hero." Jack always seems to be where someone needs him to be, if not always where someone (including himself) wants him to be. He doesn't often win, but he always tries, even if it costs him. That's a hero, I suppose.

The original Jack Staff adventures, done in black and white, which seems to suit Grist. He really uses the negative space, outlining the setting or the shape of a character or object by the solid shadows around it. The scene with Jack and the Spider in the thief's lair being a prime example as Jack spends pages in what looks like a void, with only narrow traces of light in a web pattern as a guide. Very dramatic, very atmospheric.

I've remarked at different times in the past that it may be Jack's name as the title, but it isn't always his book. I would have sworn Grist said something to that effect in the foreword of the collected edition, but no. Maybe it was at the start of the second volume. Either way, Grist spends as much time on other characters as he does on John Smith, builder, aka Jack Staff. Becky Burdock, Girl Reporter, then later Beck Burdock, Vampire Reporter in particular, as Grist seems to be steadily building her up for something that sort of paid off in Weird World of Jack Staff.

I'm not actually a huge fan of Becky. When she's not bugging Jack Staff to save her, she's yelling at him for getting her mixed up in something, when it was usually her investigative reporter snooping that got her involved in everything to begin with. When he's not around, she yells at him for not showing up to save her. Like he's got no life beyond bailing her out.

There's also Q, the group that investigates weird crimes, of which there are plenty in Castletown. Helen Morgan seems to be the focus, the one who always knows more of what's going on than everyone else, the one content to play mind games (literally) to get the results she deems necessary.

Beyond them, Grist introduces a father-son vampire-hunting team, a dimwitted cop named "Maveryck", an "escapologist" from the Victorian Era, and The Druid, who keeps trying to communicate with us about matters of dire import. Grist takes advantage of the medium as a way to avoid giving up too much information, which was a nifty touch.

It's also kind of the nature of the game with this book. He drops a lot of hints about Jack. He was definitely around in World War II. He claims he saw the escapologist, Charlie Raven, perform live. He has energy powers he only rarely uses, though the particulars of "why", like most things related to him, are left unknown. It's all a big mystery, and only a few are ever answered.

Saturday Splash Page #73

 

"It's May, Tick," in Tick New Series #1, by Benito Cereno (writer), Les McClaine (artist)

I hunted this down in back issues a couple of years ago, because I remembered it getting some positive reviews when it was running 15 years ago. Jeezus, 15 years ago?

It ran 8 issues, which seems to be pretty good for a Tick book, over 15 months. Most issues are done-in-ones, although it feels like Cereno and McClaine were building to something involving either Chairface getting out of prison, or a shadowy, mysterious figure with plans. For example, in the first issue, the shadowy figure butts in on Chairface and a bunch of other criminals sharing near-triumphs to explain he's left a bomb among the gifts the superheroes are exchanging at their Christmas party, and that's he's just visiting the prison.

That plotline never went anywhere. Oh well.

There was a two-parter where Tick and Golden Age Tick get time-swapped, which I mostly remember for Tick describing the 1940s as the "Age of Dinosaurs", while Golden Age Tick responds to a question from Arthur about who's President with, "the guy dressed like Mr. Peanut?" Is that a sick burn on FDR, or a compliment on his classy accoutrements? Also, there's a five-panel gag of Arthur, thinking Tick's been disintegrated, just brokenly moaning "OOOOOOOOOO" while the other characters continue talking in the background.

The done-in-ones are funny, though. In issue 4, Tick sneaks out during game night in a flood to get involved in a massive battle between all the sea-themed characters, who are desperate to seize this moment to be relevant for once. Issue 3 results in a trip to the sewers, where they face the myriad horrors lurking beneath The City. The last issue focuses on Tick taking a pet-sitting job for all the superheroes' pets, who of course also have superpowers, but need his help to defeat their greatest foe. I will leave it a mystery for you to seek out the comic and learn yourself.

There's a good mix to the humor. Sight gags, clever one-liners, general silliness. McClaine can capture the goofiness of the characters easy enough, their dopey expressions or reactions. But on those rare occasions something needs to look more heroic or epic (like the big sea battle), he can swing that too. You can figure out who most of the characters being homaged are, but these versions still get their own distinct look.

What I Bought 5/17/2023

I'm on the road most of next week. Hopefully that'll be a fun escape, but who can tell. My track record when I go north is that the weather goes to shit. Currently, things look promising besides the temps climbing towards 90 again.

Meanwhile, here's an extra-sized (and extra-pricey), "we hit a round number" Marvel comic.

Fantastic Four #7 (also #700), by Ryan North (writer), Iban Coello (artist), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - It looks like Alex Ross went with the cast of heroes from Secret Wars in the background there.

The FF escape the incompetence of Maria Hill, though Hill later tells Nick Fury she let them escape. Sure you did, Most Incompetent SHIELD Agent Ever. The family reaches their new temporary home, Ben's Aunt Petunia's old house in the woods.

Petunia mentions the home may be haunted, although Reed insists there's no such thing as ghosts. So naturally, they're visited by a ghost that night. Come the morning, they find it difficult to think of words. Just a few at first, but increasing in frequency. They're forgetting the alphabet, in that they know there are supposed to be 26 letters, but they can't recall all of them. North and Coello present this with the group singing the Alphabet Song over and over again while Reed tries to figure out what's wrong. In most of the panels, the team looks relaxed as they sing, even as the letters decrease. It's only after a repetition that there's a pause where they realize they've lost most letters, or that Alicia can't recall her own name. By the time the ghost returns, they only know three letters: D, O, and M.

I cackled at the idea that Doom engineered some sort of nanite that can steal or block letters from people's minds, but left the letters to spell his name. With no ability to communicate verbally, the FF get trounced, especially since Doom's in a mood. He is deeply offended by Richards' clumsy time travel thingy, which has deprived Doom of a year of his goddaughter. So he's come to gloat, right before he travels back in time to fix things.

Except he can't fix things. He tries to turn the tide, but Reed triggers the doohickey anyway. Tries to attack Reed, one of the others does it. Tries to abduct Valeria, Reed stops that and the device still goes off. Goes further back to try and alter other events, this somehow makes things worse. On and on, until Doom concludes that his future selves have somehow already optimized their timeline. Things can't get any better for him at this precise moment than they are.

Doom takes that as well as you'd expect (to be fair, if you told me this current life was as good as it gets, I'd be unhappy too), and concludes he has to stop himself from even trying. So he does, and his past self has to withdraw. North overdoes it on the retreat speech, Doom insisting he's leaving because the FF are already so ruined there's no need to do more.

It's another of those points where North tilts too far into the tone he used in Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, exaggerating Doom's ego to a comedic extent, in a story that doesn't fit that. This story is Doom revealing his affection for Valeria, in his own manner, and how that twists around his disdain for Reed and his perception of himself. The blind spots he possesses, the outcomes he considers intolerable, how that limits him. There's no indication Doom tries simply going back before the battle to warn Reed of the impending attack and to not use the machine. Explanations are for lesser men, and Doom need not justify his actions to anyone. The retreat monologue undercuts it by almost reaching parody level.

The Skull (1965)

Christopher Maitland (Peter Cushing) is an archaeologist who specializes in writing about occult and supernatural subjects, what brought humans to believe in these things. He's got a contact, a sleazy guy named Marco, who brings him stuff, and Maitland typically doesn't ask how Marco got them.

Now Marco's brought him a book that tells the life of the Marquis de Sade, and the next night, he's back with the purported skull of the Marquis. I can't see why an archaeologist with an specialization in occult needs the skull of a sadist, but whatever. Maitland balks at the price, and when he describes the situation to his friend (Christopher Lee), learns the skull was stolen from him. But his friend doesn't want it back, and advises Maitland to leave it be.

Maitland does not leave it be, and things go downhill for everyone from there. Except the skull, I guess.

Most of the killings are off-screen. We see the aftermath, at a distance, but that's about it. They seem fairly tame given the Marquis' reputation for delighting in causing pain, but maybe it's business before pleasure. The movie seems more focused on mood. Confusion and paranoia. Camera shots from behind the skull's face, looking out through its eyes. Maitland growing secretive, lying to his wife and slipping away to buy the skull, or just sit and stare at it through the glass walls of the case.

There's a dream sequence halfway through that I couldn't parse the meaning of. A couple of silent cops, a huge empty courtroom with a judge who silently makes Maitland play Russian Roulette, a hallway filling with gas and walls that close in. It's an interesting sequence, but it fits oddly among the floating skulls and crashing windows, curtains billowing ominously.

The ending felt too long, like they had reached a perfectly good stopping point, where Maitland resists the skull's compulsion and instead slams the knife through its eye socket. But it's like they decided, no, that's too neat, it wouldn't end that easily. Maybe they're right; I've never read the story the movie's based on, but Cushing seemed to sell it as such a struggle to resist the first time that it felt like a triumph. Only for the movie to flip it on its head and have everything turn out horribly in the next five minutes anyway.

Spin the Romance Roulette

With Hellcat's engagement to Iron Man apparently in the dustbin where it belongs, and Tigra deciding to date Moon Knight, it's time for the game called, "Romantic Apocalypse"! As in, which character's taste in guys is worse?

Let's break it down:

Patsy Walker married her high school sweetheart, Buzz, who later went to work for the Brand Corporation. They drifted apart, he got the Squadron Supreme to attack the Avengers, let himself be experimented on by Roxxon, and started picking fights with all sorts of heroes, including Patsy.

Then she married Damion Hellstrom, which went fine, until it didn't. By him driving her mad until she killed herself (although Cantwell's version of Damion is trying to re-frame that to absolve himself and man, that better not stick.) He tricked Hawkeye into bringing her out of Hell, as part of some scheme to overthrow Mephisto, and has periodically fucked with her life since then.

Most recently, she got engaged to conceited asshole, interdimensional warden, and weapons designer Tony Stark. I don't know what ended things between them, other than it seemed to involve Hellstrom, but whatever the cause, bullet dodged. Then there's the dead guy in her current mini-series, who she'd been dating for a month. He'll probably turn out to be a dream demon or something.

Tigra's husband was a cop who formed a vigilante group of other cops called the Brethren of the Blue Fist. He was later killed by his "brethren" for not being willing to go further with their illegal actions. 

Steve Englehart had her ping-ponging between Hank Pym and Wonder Man for a while, when she wasn't just generally written as reacting positively to anything with a dick*. Hank was in the midst of trying to convince himself he didn't want to be a superhero any longer, and despondent enough that Tigra telling him she wanted to focus on herself and just be friends seemed to be the last straw on his deciding to commit suicide. Meanwhile, Wonder Man beats an Ultron by himself and becomes the most arrogant person on a team that had Tony Stark and Clint Barton. At least the ego trip seemed to keep things from going beyond playful flirting there.

Tigra did end up with Pym for a while in the late 2000s-early 2010s. I'm not counting the Skrull who impersonated Pym, because as far as she was concerned, he was Hank Pym. Which, given Hank's erratic history and questionable decision-making, is still not great. Plus, you know, the whole domestic abuse thing with the Wasp.

Speaking of, "erratic history and questionable decision-making", now she's going to try dating Marc Spector. (Until I see evidence to the contrary, I'm assuming the relationship is solely between she and Marc, and doesn't involve Steven or Jake.) Marc tends to react to all stressful situations with violence. Often extreme violence. And he's apparently self-loathing and deeply envious of the other two fellows in the system for being more likeable and balanced than he is. He doesn't get to see his own daughter except when she's kidnapped by vengeful werewolves, because Marlene thinks he's that dangerous to be around. Which is more self-loathing fuel for the extreme violence fire.

So, on the one side, loser super-villain for hire, the manipulative son of a devil, and a guy who describes himself as a "futurist" and expects people not to laugh. On the other, bent cop, scientist with inferiority complex that feeds into mental breakdowns, and mercenary/priest with wild swings in mood and reversions to extreme violence.

It feels like Patsy picks the worse guys in terms of their capacity for harming others (although Pym creating Ultron makes it close), but Greer picks the worse guys in terms of the red flags they're throwing up as potential romantic partners. I mean, Pym and Spector are poster boys for people who need to focus on finding some sort of equilibrium within themselves, before trying to create one with another person.

Still, though, Tony Stark. That's pretty poor judgment. I mean, Pym and Spector have both, at different times, tried to address their issues. It never sticks, because of the cyclical nature of the storytelling, but the effort is there. Stark just seems to get more arrogant, but somehow it's not gonna backfire.

I gotta go with Patsy.

* I read a quote from Englehart discussing his giving Greer's old "Cat" costume to Patsy and he dismissed The Cat series as "pandering" and "not very well done". So of course when he wrote a book with Tigra, he had the cat lady perpetually horny for the first 15 issues of his run. Which certainly seems like pandering, albeit to a different audience.

The Parsifal Mosaic - Robert Ludlum

I remember reading The Road to Gandolfo years ago and the copy touting it as being by the author of The Parsifal Mosaic. I mentioned that sounded like a cool book, and my dad's response was essentially, "Not really."

But when have I ever listened to him? So, we've operative Michael Havelock. He's left the intelligence business after he found Jenna Karas, a woman he'd been working with for some time and preparing to make a life with, was actually working for the Soviets. He had to set up her elimination and watching her die, surprise! fucked with his emotional state.

So he's drifting, and in the early going, Ludlum does a good job of helping us grasp Havelock's sense that something's going on around him that he can't perceive. Havelock eventually, purely by chance, spies Jenna is a train station in Rome. She runs, and he pursues, certain now that he's been tricked, but with no idea why. As he's hunting her, American intelligence agencies are hunting him, because he's threatened to leak evidence of illicit crap they pulled all across Europe if they don't fess up to the shit they pulled on him and Jenna. Except they have no idea what he's talking about.

There's several phases to the book, each more or less a puzzle to be unraveled. Or each is a small portion of a larger puzzle. And in that, too, Ludlum's pretty good at presenting the different angles the various groups are taking. What information they have, what they don't, how that colors their perceptions and decisions. The way that their efforts to keep things hidden from enemies can easily hamstring them as well.

Unfortunately, it does result in a lot scenes of men in hidden conference rooms, arguing back and forth while making statements of doom. "My God, if that information gets out - " "I know, our standing in the world will be destroyed forever." That kind of thing. Most of the time the scenes can breeze along, if for no other reason than you want to see if this is the time they finally pull everything together. (It usually isn't.)

One thing that doesn't work so well is that there are really two manhunts going on. The search for the mole in the government, the one who tried to eliminate Michael and Jenna permanently, and the mysterious Parsifal, who everyone, including the mole, is looking for because of the terrible evidence he has. But Michael is also concerned about his mentor, the Secretary of State, who has abandoned Michael when he needs him most.

(I had a hunch about the Secretary of State, just from the way Ludlum wrote Michael's perception of him. I was partially right, but probably wrong in the largest respects.)

With all that, Parsifal tends to fall into the background, almost an afterthought. The more pressing issue seems to be the mole, who's also hunting him, and whose identity we learn partway through. I think so we can see their thoughts and know they're just as desperate to find Parsifal. It creates the effect of making the mole the bigger deal, but they're only truly dangerous if they get their hands on what Parsifal has.

That might be because the mole is a bigger deal to Michael. The mole's the one who he feels really fucked his life up. So finding Parsifal is almost a way to draw out the mole so he can get them. And Ludlum writes Michael as sort of an emotional wreck. Not sleeping well, almost hysterical at times, grimly determined at others. Havelock is probably superhuman in terms of how far he gets considering the number of times he's knocked unconscious or shot, but it isn't readily apparent in how fights are written. Ludlum keeps those short and sweet. Havelock finds an opportunity, seizes it, fight's over. If the Bourne Identity fights were like this, the camera wouldn't have time to even starting shaking, let alone make anyone nauseous.

'It did not set him free. Instead, it bound him to another truth, an obligation of his profession. Those who betrayed the living and brokered death had to die. No matter who, no matter. . .Michael Havelock had made the decision, and it was irrevocable. He had set the last phase of the trap himself, for the death of the woman who briefly had given him more happiness than any other person on earth. His love was a killer; to permit her to live would mean the killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands.'

Avengers Are on Another Membership Drive

$3.6 million is less than what Stark spends on satellites to erase his secret identity from people's minds, but sure, stiff the kid.

Avengers Power Pack: Assemble, takes a similar approach to Iron Man Power Pack. Or maybe it's the other away around since this was published first. Point being, the first two issues are largely their own, done-in-one adventures that hint at being tied to something larger.

The first involves the Power kids helping Captain America against Taskmaster, the latter written as a mouthy jerk who ridicules the kids for their costumes. This while he's rocking the Udon Studios "casual Friday" look. After getting beaten up by children, he gets beaten up by World War II veterans, for dressing so sloppy. Pull your dang drawers, Taskmaster!

OK, only part of that is true, and Taskmaster got away, but Captain America is reminded not to dismiss people as being capable just because they're young or old. Then Jack suckers his siblings into looking for an Iron Man armor swiped using the passcodes Taskmaster got, in the hopes of getting a reward from Tony Stark. Instead, they run up against AIM. The malevolent beekeepers are ready for the kids, but they're able to get by (with a little help from Iron Man).

The second half is where Sumerak's story comes together, as the entire family visits New York and the kids' attempt to help Spider-Man against some familiar looking metal suits turns in to watching the Avengers get defeated by Kang, who has used what AIM stole for him to build improved weapons. You'd think he could be more stealthy, but oh well. Sumerak takes a similar approach to Kang as Busiek, in having the guy insist he's honorable by not using time travel as a crutch to win, and by not attacking children.

Of course, once the kids attack him, all bets are off and he chucks them into a dystopic future ruled by him. You'd think Kang would keep things a littler cleaner. The child Power Pack team-up with their older versions. Gurihiru don't change the looks much. The costumes are the same, except everybody gets a belt with their logo. Except Jack, who has other issues. Although Kid Jack is more horrified by the fact his older self gets along with the future version of Katie. Likewise, Katie finds out she grows up to like boys.

Either way, the two Power Packs team-up to rescue the Avengers in the future, to have their help sending the kids back to their time to stop Kang there. As one does. The whole mini-series might be worth it just for Kang being hurled back to his time by a little girl in pigtails. That's a hit to the pride he'll need time to shrug off.

Sunday Splash Page #270

 

"Blood Runs Deep", in Isabellae volume 2, by Raule (writer), Gabor (artist), Montana Kane (letterer)

This was 6-volume book when released in Europe, but Dark Horse collected it in two larger volumes. Isabellae is the daughter of a samurai and a Druidic witch. When the story begins, she's searching for her younger sister, as they've been separated since the death of their parents. Isabellae takes after her father, a practitioner of the sword who earns a living that way, while Siuko's gifts run more towards their mother. Isabellae sometimes sees both her parents' ghosts, but Siuko sees only her mother, as she's banished her father from her thoughts.

The first half of the book is about Isabellae's pursuit of her sister. Along the way, seemingly against her will, she collects a band of friends. Masshiroi, pretty boy archer/thief. Jinku, a kid who decides the way of a pacifist monk is not for him. Yori, an ape they find on a ship full of the undead when the chase moves from Japan to China. Qiang's a widowed outlaw looking for either an exciting death or a new purpose.

The second half jumps ahead, with Isabellae and her gang having reached Ireland. this is apparently part of some grand destiny meant for the sisters, of which Siuko was aware and Isabellae was not. John Lackland's trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to put Ireland under his control, so it seems obvious the destiny is to help the various tribes and clans work together to oust the English.

As it turns out, "destiny" might be short for, "other people's notions on how to use you," as the Druids', and the girls' mother's, plans to liberate Ireland are someone different from what the leaders of the clans think, to say nothing of Isabellae's opinion. This leads to, on a larger scale, the question of what one is willing to accept for freedom, as well as how one defines that term. Who are you willing to ally with to win, if the alternative may mean subjugation for another 800 years? Can you call it freedom if those allies end up replacing the old overlords?

For Isabellae and Siuko, it's a question of what really matters to them. Each of them have been driven by their parents' desires up to this point. Siuko, by their mother's plans for them to save Ireland. Isabellae, first by the need to protect her family as her father did before he was called away to war, later by her promise to Siuko to carry out their mother's dream. But Isabellae is determined to do that on her terms, even as others insist it happen the way they plan. And when things start to go badly, both she and Siuko reach for who really matters to them.

While the first half had the occasional strange element - the ship of undead, an angel held prisoner in a starving village, Siuko's bodyguard, who's essentially a golem - the second half goes all in on the mythological or supernatural. Creatures of ancient Irish mythology emerge to attack essentially everyone. The angels show up with their own plans for the island, ghost armies come crawling out of the ground like we're in Lord of the Rings.

Gabor's artwork is very pretty, and none of the disparate elements look out of place. The violence is lovingly rendered in panels shaded entirely in red, or unearthly eldritch light. Characters leap and twist and fight with perfect grace. They get battered and bruised, thrown to the ground and pummeled until it seems like their bodies should burst, but they get back up. Raule is perfectly fine keeping talking to a minimum during those scenes, saving it for brief panels where characters react or make plans before the next round, then letting Gabor go back to work. Basically, if you like reading fight scenes in comics, you do worse than Isabellae.

But once the story starts leaning into monsters, the art might be too clean. The mythological creatures look very detailed and seem like they should appear terrifying, but the effect doesn't come off. The leader, Bres, looks more or less like a handsome guy. Long dark hair framing his face, thin nose, etc. He just happens to have a bunch of tentacles draped over his shoulders like an elaborate feather boa, which he uses to smack, rip or toss the hell out of anyone who challenges him.

I think the terror is meant to be in how casually he wreaks havoc. One of the clan kings challenges him, and in the next panel, Bres steps on him. Not even a large panel; a small one in the middle of the page. Splat, so much for that guy, who's next? A single swipe is enough to cleave a man in half, lengthwise. But we've seen Isabellae cut men's limbs off with a single swing of her sword when she was a child, trying to protect her sister. People get dismembered or maimed so readily in this story by plain old mortals, a demigod or whatever doing the same isn't that impressive.

I think the book's stronger when it stays focused on the family unit. Isabellae and Siuko in this awkward situation of having little in common, but seeming to tolerate each other because the way they've drawn meaning in their lives demands it. Isabellae arguing with her father's ghost. The little band she assembled around herself and how she struggles with the feeling of responsibility that conveys. Once it turns into a possibility of ridding Ireland of the English, in exchange for angels possibly bringing on a localized apocalypse, the scope gets a little too large, and the family stuff sort of struggles to push into the forefront through the fighting. Points for going big, though.

And with that, we kiss the "I"'s good-bye!

Saturday Splash Page #72

 

"My City JEERS," in The Tick #4, by Ben Edlund (writer/artist), Max Banks (inker), Polio (letterer)

Like many a person my age, I first encountered The Tick via the '90s cartoon show, which I dearly loved. I had no notion of him originally being a comic book character. I have a vague memory of seeing an original trade paperback collection of Ben Edlund's first Tick arc, the "Night of a Million Zillion Ninjas" in a Waldenbooks when I was a kid (and Waldenbooks was still a thing), but being confused by my brief flip through. At the time, I didn't know about Frank Miller's Daredevil, so the references and in-jokes about the proliferation of ninjas, the ninja girl named "Oedipus", were lost on me.

Edlund's Tick is more, "feral" is the word that comes to mind, than the one in the cartoon. There's still the burning desire to be a superhero, and the childlike glee when he gets to fight an actual supervillain (even if the Red Scare is a fake). He still decides "SPOON" is his battle cry, he still tears up Arthur's apartment trying to find all the secret crimefighting gear.

But he's a bit more aggressive, looming menacingly over a random bum that questions him, threatening the the Jimmy Olsen parody during his brief stint impersonating the crossword puzzle writer at The City's great metropolitan newspaper. When Oedipus is injured by a ninja attack, Tick goes to their theme park lair and tears the entire place down in a mixture of guilt and blind anger. He seems to seriously consider killing Oedipus' old guy ninja mentor when the guy dismisses her as "expendable."

A few issues later, Tick and Arthur are road-tripping to New York City and Tick's made enthusiastic friends with amoeba-sized aliens living in a meteorite that like condiment packets. Edlund's art is able to manage the difference easily enough. The Tick's a big character, so having him fill a panel and appear to be looking down at the reader can make him intimidating. Especially when the costume is heavily inked to appear dark. It's not even hard to make his huge, cheerful grin unsettling or even menacing.

And then, the art goes easy on the inks, lightening his appearance. He's backed off from the audience, more in the middle-ground, or he's looking up instead of down. The smile is back to being childlike, he's cheerful in the face of danger. He's sharing cheese doodles and "machine urine" for breakfast with a ninja-hating samurai who baked his katana inside a French loaf to try and beat airport security (the samurai was threatening to feast on a ninja's entrails just pages earlier, so Tick's not the only one with wild swings.)

The book more closely resembles what most people would associate with the Tick after the ninja storyline is over. Chairface tries to carve his name into the Moon, the road trip involves a superhero-hating, chainsaw-wielding maniac, and a town dominated by a monolith that bestows intelligence in megalomania in equal parts. New York is loaded with superheroes, to the extent they have to book appointments to have battles on particular streets. They encounter the "other" Tick, aka Barry, who not only surrenders his name when he's defeated, Tick gets his mansion and all his crimefighting gear. Except Barry hangs around as a deranged naked guy trying to murder Tick and Arthur.

There were a lot of subsequent series and mini-series about Tick or his supporting cast, most of which were worked on by people other than Ben Edlund. I didn't follow through on my initial plan to try them all after Karma Tornado didn't really set my world on fire, but I did eventually pick up one of them, which we'll get to next week.

Random Back Issues #104 - Daredevil #267

We looked at an issue from just before this one 2 years ago. At that point, Kingpin's plan to use Typhoid Mary had pretty effectively burned Matt's life to the ground. Now, Daredevil's going to finish the job himself.

But first he's gotta go to confession. He finds his mother telling a group of kids about how God forgives everyone, even Lucifer, which one of the kids says makes God stupid. Matt's confession is an awkward thing, as he mentions his using violence to achieve his ends, his infidelity, his desire to kill his enemies. The priest is a barely defined void on the other side of the screen, eyes just dark holes, but he tells Matt he's being too hard on himself, that he needs to control the murder urges, and that God forgives.

Matt storms out, insisting he can't control himself, nor be forgiven. Well. Never mind, then.

DD protects Lance, the son of Bullet, who recently beat hell out of Daredevil as part of Typhoid's plan, from some bullies. He comes home with him, intending to kill Bullet. But an apartment filled with boxes of food and supplies meant to sustain Lance after the nuclear war he's sure is coming is so depressing it weakens Matt's resolve. He tries focusing on the details, or "the inches", to avoid the big picture. The big picture means confronting all the fucking up he did, the ruin his life's become. The ruin this kid's life is. Better to focus on how Lance uses bubble gum to fix gun mounts.

Bullet shows up by smashing through the front door. He and Daredevil fight a bit, Matt unable to unravel the contradictions of him wanting revenge on this hired killer, who also loves his son in some strange, stunted fashion. Lance fires a gun to get them to stop, Bullet apologizes (sort of) for beating Daredevil up, but it was 'just business.' DD shrugs it off, because Bullet is ultimately just that, a bullet. The one to be angry with is the one responsible for sending the bullet his way. So, time to go after Typhoid or Kingpin, right?

Wrong. Matt buys a train ticket out of the city, again trying to focus on just what he hears and smells around him, rather than what he's doing (running away) and why he's doing it (because he fucked up.) They pass a small plane crash in a field, and Matt, without thinking, jumps off the train to help. Romita Jr. used that same wide-legged posture earlier in the comic, when Matt leapt from the church steeple. Significance of leaping into new danger, maybe?

The guy he drags out is insistent on running back into the fire to retrieve bags of junk food and radio equipment. Well, I suppose nose candy is a type of junk food. Since Matt's blind, the guy figures he didn't see the cocaine that spilled from the bag, and why not offer him a job on his farm, to be neighborly? Sure, what's the worst that could happen?

{3rd longbox, 77th comic. Daredevil #267, by Ann Nocenti (writer), John Romita Jr. (penciler), Al Williamson (inker), Gregory Wright (colorist), Joe Rosen (letterer)

What I Bought 5/6/2023

Monday may have been a bust, but last Friday was a lot of fun. It didn't rain, so I went to the zoo, then to a couple of bookstores. If I ever get through the book I'm currently reading (I hope to be 80% done by the time you read this), I'll have a few more ready. Switch back to non-fiction for a bit.

Moon Knight #23, by Jed MacKay (writer), Alessandro Cappuccio (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - So I thought the chains were from Venom escaping, but apparently the new kid just runs around with chains wrapped around his arms like a discount Ghost Rider.

Alchemax would like to experiment on the Venom symbiote, and possibly Eddie Brock's kid, who has it. Eddie told Dylan he could trust Moon Knight, because Moon Knight knows what it's like for people to think you're nuts and unrealiable. Um, Eddie used to routinely threaten to eat Spider-Man's liver. He's nuts, period. I hate this revisionist shit about Venom now that they made Brock some sort of god-thing. "Oh, he was just misunderstood and suffering from great pressures, boohoo." It's like all those apologist Vegeta fans got jobs writing Marvel comics.

Deep breath. Marc agrees to help, warns the mercs to leave (while knowing they won't because that would mean they won't get paid) and lets them follow him into the Midnight Mission. Then he and Dylan kick their asses, because Eel, Thermite, Blitz and Tangle are losers. And yes, the chains around the forearms are apparently part of DylanVenom's look. I don't know why. Cappuccio gives him the prehensile tongue Venom's had since Erik Larsen drew him, but draws it as so thick it basically fills his mouth. Which just looks weird. The tongue also wraps around his own neck a lot of times, like it's an ascot or something.

Afterward, Marc notes that with the symbiote, Venom should have been able to handle them alone. Dylan agrees, and notes there's some weird sonic frequencies blanketing the city that are messing them up, which Marc intuits are probably related to the guy controlling people with sound he's after. So Dylan helps track it to the source, and they find Mr. Sarnak has sealed himself in a panic room and called the police to come arrest him. Because that's safer than letting Moon Knight get his hands on him. Fair, but leaves Moonie back at square one.

I actually like that. Moon Knight is seen as unstable and dangerous, even by super-villains. Eel was vocally uneasy about fighting him, which is where it's an advantage. Where it's a disadvantage is when the guy you're after is so scared of you being arrested is preferable and since New York is apparently still non-vigilante friendly (depending on whose book you're reading), Marc probably can't walk in a precinct and demand to talk to the guy.