It was a very chill week, aided by my taking today off. Not a lot going on at work, which was fine. I am going to try not to think about what next week might bring. I'll have to deal with whatever it is then, so let it be Future Calvin's problem.
A training exercise for some of the newer kids is interrupted by all those villains General Immortus has been recruiting, who warp inside the base. In the middle of that, the magic-using guys who were hanging out in the basement in issue 2 show up, because the real threat is Houngan is doing something to give the general a new body that involves Dorothy's corpse. Hey, a Doom Patrol member I sort of know!
Did the evil plan work? Maybe? Immortus is more "wax melted over a skeleton" than ever, but there are a bunch of candles hovering around him and he's calling himself the Eternal Flame. Seems ominous. It's a nice look, though, props to Burnham, and the name is a good play on Immortus' longevity.
I'm not sure how Culver's going to resolve this and whatever Peacemaker has going in one issue. Plus, the seeming conflict in Jane's system about The Chief being in charge all the time. It makes the capture the flag sequence feel like padding the story can't afford at this point, even though it was probably important for a variety of reasons. Introduce the people Doom Patrol is helping and show some examples of how (community, self-confidence, control of their abilities, etc.,.) It evens up the numbers in the big fight, and provides some potential casualties. Although the core cast have died so many times, it's hardly any big deal to kill them again. Go ahead, blow Robotman up! He goes through bodies like the Gotham goes through innocent civilians.
Kamala's still having that dream, but a conversation about it with Bruno helps her realize the Silver Surfer she keeps seeing is from one of her fanfics. Kamala resolves to try actually talking to it the next time, while Bruno cobbles together some machine to monitor her brain waves.
But first she has to deal with an anti-mutant hate parade. There's one person standing up for mutants, and she gets threatened and forced to run. Kamala does nothing. I mean, OK, you're not going to bust out the superpowers and whoop bigot ass because you're undercover, but you could stand with her as a fellow student, right?
ORCHIS tracks her encrypted communications with the X-Men and attack Ms. Marvel with a bunch of drones that can combine into a larger robot. That's kind of cool, in a lameass Voltron knock-off way. Iron Man shows up in his stealth armor to help, but apparently one of the drones already injected Kamala with something that will let them control her so they can make her do things to make people hate mutants more or something. And of course she's going to be sleeping soon to try and unravel her dream.
Somehow that last bit of the summary really depressed me. ORCHIS hasn't done enough damage, they have to keep doing more? Like a bunch of lame asses, they're going to control someone else into doing it instead of just doing their own shit. And it's not as though I'd want Ms. Marvel to kill them, but maybe Frank Castle could return from the dead conveniently and start shooting people?
The dream sequences are still a different art style from the rest of the issue, and I still don't know which artist is responsible for which. Maybe it's Arciniega's coloring that makes it look different. There's less going on in the panels during the dreams, so there tend to be fewer colors. It's more just gradual shifts from one shade in the background to the other. But the lines also look thicker and things blend a little more.
I think I prefer the dream sequence art, the expressions feel more natural. Some of the panels during the rest of the comic, character's faces feel frozen in awkward or uncanny valley expressions. Like the character is posing or acting - this is me enjoying playing a video game with my friend - rather than just doing that.
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