Lately, last week especially, I feel like I'm about to snap at work and say something I shouldn't. Just on edge all the time. I've been at this job much longer than any other position, so maybe I'm getting antsy, or maybe it's the workload or all the associated bullshit.
Here's two second issues from last month.
Doom Patrol save a boy named worm, and his worm, named Velvet, from giant metahuman-hunting robots. Of course, Worm is Peacemaker's spy, and sends Velvet out to snoop across a double-page splash tour of the ventilation ducts.
Effective way to show the mental states of most of the characters. Robotman, for example, is using a radio to try and contact Danny the Street, who may not be a street any longer? That, combined with another couple of scenes in the issue, paint Cliff as maybe the one character trying to maintain some connection to their past. Rita seems happy with Flex Mentallo, The Chief is too busy being a bossy asshole to bother, Negative Man meditates outside his body. Not sure the significance of that.
Velvet discovers Mento's hanging out in a giant tank (container, not the military vehicle), which freaks Peacemaker out for reasons I'm not familiar enough with DC continuity to parse. Worm decides he likes it there and refuses to destroy the tank, which is when we learn the team's known he was a mole all along. They've jammed to signal for the head bomb, but they can't keep it up. So Worm lets Robotman throw him way up in the air so his death won't harm anyone, and the day is saved! Except for Worm getting his head exploded, but we just met him this issue, so it's not like the death has any emotional heft. Also, Velvet's the actual infiltraitor.
When Peacemaker talked about having a spy last issue, I assumed that meant someone on the team was working for him and the mystery would be who. Maybe Flex Mentallo, maybe Danny the Spy Satellite. Too obvious? There's always Niles Caulder, who Culver shows resents being sidelined by The Chief and keeps trying to claw back power. Via Krakoa-style data pages, no less. I can't get away from that shit even in comics published by other companies.
Along those lines, when did Peacemaker get smart enough to be running the Suicide Squad? He's a brick-brained, propaganda junkie kill-machine. Peacemaker is the guy a mastermind uses, not the mastermind himself. It's like Marvel putting Nuke in charge of the Thunderbolts.
It makes Doom Patrol's job easier, though. Good triumphs when evil is dumb.
Ben visits Krakoa to discuss shared challenges among mutants and cosmically irradiated peoples, and gets a lot of static from some folks because he was a white cis man before being a rock monster. Fortunately, Reed gave Ben an earpiece to feed him meaningless platitudes and avoid litigation. No, that's seriously why he did it.
Enough of that shit. Ben and Logan are drinking when the weird guy from last issue shows up with a bunch of crappy robots. The robots are a diversion for the guy to steal some stuff from Krakoa's brewery. I wouldn't, those micro-brewers take formula theft seriously. The guy's upgraded his armor and picked up some new toys, so things are looking bad for Ben until Logan arrives and stabs the guy. . .a lot. As he does.
So the guy injects himself and becomes a big, fleshy monster with lots of superheroic symbols on his body, incinerates Logan's flesh from the pecs down, then gets his arm pulped by Ben's punch and retreats. Ben sticks his head through the portal long enough to see this guy is building a big bomb which, combined with his statements about how superheroes are causing contractions in existence, does not bode well.
More nods to Ben's intelligence, in that he immediately recognized the device being built as a bomb. I probably would have figured some sort of starship drive, but the Thing's seen enough of both to know the difference. Skroce seems to be having fun playing with Ben's physical makeup. Beyond the part where the guy makes the rocks lift up to see what's underneath, there's also a bit where he gets a glancing blow with the flame breath that roasted Logan and it actually bakes the rocks a different color. You'd think he'd be fireproof after all the feuding with Johnny over the years.
Also, the future guy has a member of his group called Lyle, and all I can think of when he gives that guy orders is the Lyle from Blazing Saddles. Not Slim Pickens character, the moron that tried to get Cleavon Little and the other black guys to sing while they worked. Mister, "When you was slaves, you sang like birds." That moron. Little hard to take the future people seriously as threats now, actually. Even without future guy mangling Ben's catchphrase to "Here comes the Powie!"
2 comments:
So Skroce is portraying the Krakoans as supercilious dicks? I mean, they are, but it's odd to see that recognised. Normally Marvel seems completely blind to how the X-Men are the bad guys now.
I'm pretty sure it was a couple of characters Skroce made up for that scene. Young mutants skeptical of Ben and, I guess, anyone who isn't a mutant. Wolverine's the only established character Ben interacted with.
The scene could certainly read like a marker of how Krakoa's whole deal is turning its citizens into mutant isolationists/supremacists, though I think Skroce just wanted to do the gag about Reed giving Ben the PR spewing earpiece and Ben issuing mild platitudes to defuse the situation.
I would say it's wild how Marvel doesn't seem to get how the way the X-Men are written could be perceived, but there seems to be a fair amount of the audience in complete agreement with everything the X-Men do, so maybe they just know their audience.
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