I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (2003)

Will Graham (Clive Owen) is living as a drifter, until he learns his kid brother - a local drug pusher - died. He returns to the old neighborhood to find out what happened.

It's not really a revenge flick, not a proto-John Wick or anything like that. Most of the first half-hour of the movie is focused on Owen's brother, Davey, as he goes around selling drugs to wealthy partygoers and fooling around with different women. Occasionally, the film cuts to Owen, living in a van out in the woods or at a truck park or wherever he can pull off for the night.

Even once he learns Davey's died, Owen's more concerned with the whys of it. Davey killed himself, the coroner's report says. Why? Davey's friends don't know, Owen's old flame doesn't know, and Owen's been gone for 3 years, hasn't called or written in months, so he sure as hell doesn't know. Yet somehow he's sure there's more to it, as though Davey couldn't have changed drastically in the interim. So it's Davey's friend that's trying to figure out Davey's movements in his last hours, while Owen gets an independent autopsy done, then has a long conversation with an expert about the findings.

It's kind of a hard movie to get a bead on. The music is this discordant jazz, like people are playing out of tune or hitting the wrong notes on purpose. It doesn't fall into a flow, nothing quite fits. Owen plays Will Graham very quiet. It's not one of the roles where the quiet person seems to be visibly holding back, or repressing violence. If it's there, its buried deep. Instead, he's deliberate in how he does things. Always watches before he moves. Lets other people talk themselves out, then maybe gives a short response. I guess he'd been hasty or quick to violence in the past, so he won't let himself act like that again.

The local movers-and-shakers think he's come back expecting to establish himself, so they waste time preemptively warning him off, but he never responds directly to any of it. People keep expecting violence from him, but he doesn't really do anything until the very end, when he catches up with Malcolm McDowell. Even then, he seems more interested in answers than revenge. He wants to know why, but as he reflects at the beginning and the end, it's all just guesswork. People make assumptions based on what they think they know, filtered through their own biases.

What I Bought 10/25/2023 - Part 2

The temperature started dropping like a rock midday Friday and didn't stop until Sunday morning. Went from mid-70s to mid-20s. As long as there's no ice, I'm fine with it. Meanwhile, we've got two X-Books to review.

Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant #2, by Iman Vellani and Sabir Pirzada (writers), Carlos Gomez and Adam Gorham (artists), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Again, only one of these characters appears in the book. Thankfully, it's not Gambit.

Contrary to the first two issues, over half of this issue is spent in Kamala's dreams, as she and her fanfic Silver Surfer/Dr. Strange mash-up travel through her mind, trying to sort out her identity issues. Whoever draws the dream sequences makes Kamala look a closer to how she did when Adrian Alphona was illustrating her adventures. Kind of gangly-limbed even without her powers, alternately drawn in on herself and uninhibited (scarfing down popcorn while watching one of her memories with Dr. Surfer.)

Meanwhile, ORCHIS' little bug thing has injected something that, if Kamala unwittingly accepts it, will attack the minds of every telepath she communicates with. The virus appears before Kamala, pretending to be her X-gene that never activated, offering her the chance to feel fully accepted by the X-Men because she'll be a "real" mutant now. It would seem ridiculous for ORCHIS to think that was going to work, if the X-writers hadn't spent the entire Krakoa era with the X-Men touting Magento's "mutant supremacist" horseshit. Also if ORCHIS wasn't employing a bunch of morons who take the zero-sum approach to human & mutant relations.

Either way, Kamala finally recognizes she won't be defined by any one aspect of herself, biological or otherwise, and wakes up. To find a Sentinel outside her window, because she does register as a mutant now. Although the color scheme seems like the classic purple Sentinel, and I thought they were all rocking the red-and-gold Stark paint job now, so I can't rule out this still being some sort of hallucination. But the art style shifted back to what it is when she's awake, so I assume this is the point where she manifests the energy powers they gave her in the TV show.

There's a point where Bruno's hacking of the little drone allows ORCHIS to figure out which dorm building Kamala's in and send drones to look for facial recognition. Which Bruno beats by slapping Kamala's floppy-eared winter hat on her head and a facial mask over her mouth. The drone concludes this student matches no one in their records. But Bruno comments the X-Men must have some serious tech to fool facial recognition software.

I know the X-Men did do something similar to that, but I'm pretty sure it turned out face masks were great for fooling facial recognition software when the cops were trying to arrest people after the fact for protesting the cops being authoritarian, jackbooted thugs. But Bruno didn't know about that, or why disguise her? And since he did, why assume that wasn't what did the trick?

Uncanny Spider-Man #2, by Si Spurrier (writer), Lee Garbett (artist), Matt Milla (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - I don't mind when Marvel does alternate universe versions of the Rhino that are in big mechanical exo-suits (like the Ultimate Universe's version), but I don't like it for the classic Marvel version.

Most of this issue is Silver Sable flirting (or openly lusting after, if you prefer) Nightcrawler. There's a little bit at the beginning where he's trying to talk to Mystique, except she doesn't recognize him. Oh, and the details of his birth are going to change. Again. I know, right? Kurt's origin gets shifted around more than Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver's. ORCHIS sends Rhino, controlled by the same doohickus they used to make Kurt kill people, after Kurt.

I would have been curious to see how Nightcrawler handled that sort of challenge on his own, but Silver Sable's group bust in and briefly capture him. The control thing is messed up and hurting Rhino, so he goes berserk and Kurt escapes into the sewers, bringing Sable with him. Who acts extremely unprofessional, unable to stop openly making comments about how attractive she thinks Kurt is.

That's one of her two settings in this issue, the other being condescending.Spurrier writes her a lot like he wrote Elsa Bloodstone in that Black Knight mini-series, but hornier. It just seems silly. Let one of Silver's subordinates be the one openly ogling and being reprimanded for it. Silver Sable's supposed to be professional, but with enough of a core of decency she ends up doing unprofitable things sometimes anyway.

Either way, Nightcrawler escapes to spend another day arguing with little Bamf ghosts and keeping all his problems bottled up.

Sunday Splash Page #294

 

"Brand Issues," in Kim and Kim #1, by Magdalene Visaggio (writer), Eva Cabrera (penciler/inker), Claudia Aguirre (colorist), Zakk Saam (letterer)

I did a more lengthy review of the first Kim and Kim mini-series 2.5 years ago, but in short: Kimber Dantzler and Kimiko Quatro are bounty hunters. They're not unskilled, but they are unlucky, as all their bounties go awry somehow. So they're usually broke, either living out of their interstellar capable VW Bus, or having Kim D. resort to asking her parents for money. Kim Q's dad is a lot better off financially, but there's a whole other mess of issues there.

Visaggio takes what feels like an odd approach with the story, in that most of it involves the Kims trying to help a guy with a large bounty on his head return to his home dimension, rather than turn him in for the bounty. But the actual conclusion to that is sort of handwaved by having the Kims explain to two other friends that they woke up the next morning and everyone was just gone, so they assume mission accomplished. There's some fallout from the whole thing still to contend with, but it's such an abrupt resolution.

That they're usually broke makes more sense in that context, however. They careen from one thing to the next, and on the rare occasion Kim D. comes up with a plan, either she botches it, or Kim Q. gets impatient and starts a bar fight.

Aguirre keeps the book in bright colors, so everything's vivid, and Cabrera's art is both expressive enough to handle a quiet conversation between Kim D and her presumed-dead aunt, or a loud argument between Kim Q. and whoever she happens to be picking a fight with at that moment. The art's not grounded in trying to look photo-realistic, which is a good thing when the setting includes sandworms, octopus people and a Franken-Ape.

Saturday Splash Page #96

 

"Working on Laundry Day," in Taskmaster (vol. 1) #2, by Ken Siu-Chong (writer), David Ahn, Omar Dogan, Alan Tam, Rob Ross, and Shane Law (artists), Jon Babcock (letterer)

In spring of 2002, Taskmaster got his own mini-series, and a Casual Friday costume redesign to go with it. The Udon team handled writing and art chores as Taskmaster gets stiffed on a job by Machine Man of 2020 enemy Sunset Bain. In response, Taskmaster tries to use the Triads to steal his payment for him. Which will also start a war between them and Bain, keeping her too busy to finish tying off the tracksuit-wearing loose end. Things, of course, do not go according to plan.

This version of Taskmaster will learn just about anything, whether it has practical work applications or not. He'll study the mannerisms of a Triad boss down to how he holds a cigarette for a job, but he'll also learn to cook or cut a radish into a flower to impress a lady. He'll take a high-paying, high risk job to wreck semiconductor specs Stark's cooking up, but also help a pal who owns a casino with a guy that's cheating somehow. He'll use a holographic disguise to make himself look classier, and learn a new accent to help convince clients he's more than some guy from the Bronx.

Curiously, he has perfect recall of all his memories, but it still takes seeing something a few times before he can copy it. But the total recall might help explain his unwillingness to let the double-cross go. Taskmaster says he thinks it would set a bad precedent, letting someone stiff him successfully, but I wonder if it's the fact he'd never forget it. Literally, he would never be able to forget she played him for a patsy. So he has to do something in response.

This mini-series also, introduces Sandi, a young woman Taskmaster meets after the casino job and asks out. Sandi and Taskmaster would both go on to appear in the Gail Simone and Udon's brief stint on the first volume of Deadpool, and then on Agent X. Sandi hung around in Deadpool's orbit, at least through Cable/Deadpool, although Outlaw definitely surpassed her in use and popularity. Taskmaster himself could almost be considered part of Deadpool's supporting cast, although he went back to the cloak and pirate boots look pretty much as soon as Agent X ended.

What I Bought 10/25/2023 - Part 1

Three books this week, and the store actually had all three. That's nice. In other news, I've been going like crazy at work the last six weeks, trying to get a lot of inspections done since it sure as hell seemed like no one else was going to. I have a couple more weeks of that to go, and then I'm hoping to glide through the last six weeks of 2023 on mental autopilot. The fun will be in seeing precisely how that plan goes belly-up.

Unstoppable Doom Patrol #7, by Dennis Culver (writer), Chris Burnham (artist), Brian Reber (colorist), Pat Brosseau (letterer) - Just tell Negative Man to stop flying in a corkscrew pattern and it'll be fine.

Culver and Burnham give us a flashback page to start, helpfully explaining that Immortus has combined with the form a thought-being took with the unwitting help of the late Dorothy Spinner. I really did appreciate that, since I had no idea if there was any significance in Immortus suddenly having candles floating around his skull prior to this.

The team is stretched thin between this and the Brotherhood of Evil attacking their home, but The Chief gets the idea of convincing The Quiz to switch sides by letting Crazy Jane speak with her. Inside a shared thought-space, they aren't standing in the middle of the battleground having a polite chat. I don't know if the space Chief and the other alternate identities hang out in being a subway station is something Culver and Burnham came up with or something pre-existing, but I like the map that I assume charts the connections between them.

While that's going on, Negative Man's convincing Mento to really cut loose with his powers. He assures Mento he won't go to far because he has his family to help, but the book hasn't sold that. We've hardly seen anyone interact with Mento through 7 issues, mostly the Chief implying Mento and Niles Caulder are chafing at the restrictions they're facing now that they aren't in charge. That sounds less like family and more like wardens. Maybe if we'd seen Beast Girl coming down to visit and chatter with Mento, something to show he was really treated like part of the team.

Mento keeps General Candlemaker (not his actual title) slowed down long enough The Quiz banishes it to The Bleed and then leaves, uninterested in making friends at this time. I can respect that. "I did this job with you because it was necessary, now leave me alone." Then Peacemaker shows up with his knockoff Sentinels and Degenerate offers to stay behind and give the others time to escape.

So they still don't know the caterpillar thing is a double-agent, but there's other things that didn't get much time, either. Most of the new characters are still ciphers, nothing's really been done exploring Rita and Flex Mentallo's relationship. Presumably all that would be for some follow-up series, and in an attempt to entire us, Gen. Candlewax lands on Danny the Street, being tortured by *the most exhausted aggrieved sigh you can imagine* the Batwoman Who Laughs. Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. 

It's not like it's even a good character design, which I think Burnham is more than capable of, because the new characters are distinctive and at least visually interesting, even if we don't know spit about most of them. But the whole, "Character Who Laughs" shtick doesn't allow for much variety. Dull, monochrome costume, stupid spiked helmet thing, and she's wearing a Kirbytech-looking yellow glove thing. As you can see, the last page had the precise opposite effect I assume the creative was shooting for.

Mars Crossing - Geoffrey A. Landis

A 6-person research mission to Mars goes downhill fast when an unforeseen mishap destroys the habitat they were supposed to live in for months, along with the return shuttle and one of the crew. With no other options, they try to cross most of the planet in the hopes of flying a Brazilian shuttle left behind at the north pole after its crew died unexpectedly.

Except that shuttle can't carry more than 2 people. 3, at the most.

Landis takes the approach that space will surprise you. He takes pains to describe the amount of training the crew went through, the briefings, the screenings to make certain these people could do this. The number of redundancies and safety back-ups in the equipment. But catastrophe still occurs, because there were elements of being on Mars or space that people on Earth weren't prepared for.

An unexpected condition that causes the oxygen sensors of their space suits to malfunction. If caught in time, it can be addressed. If there's someone not yet affected to save the people dying from low oxygen. It plays up how hostile an environment Mars is, for all that it's relatively similar to Earth. But also that there may be workarounds available to human ingenuity.

He also sticks to very short chapters. Some of them no more than a paragraph, but hardly any longer than 3 or 4 pages. He splits the book into sections, each one focusing on one of the five survivors, and alternates between the backstory and what's happening in the present. Although the present-day chapters may not pay much attention to the character under the microscope in the flashbacks, which seems strange, but it's necessary if he's going to add any depth to most of them before the end of the book.

The writing is a bit clunky and stilted. Overuse of certain words in close proximity, in situations where it was probably wasn't necessary the second. I would find myself stopping after a sentence, thinking it could have been written much more smoothly. It's almost technical, someone preparing a report and wanting to be extremely precise. Except, not done so the reader interprets this as how a particular character thinks about things. It's just how Landis writes.

'After a few minutes, Brandon stopped.

"That's it?" Ryan asked.

"I think so. A hundred and twenty. You think that record will last?"

Ryan nodded. To every direction, the landscape was barren, sterile rock. Nobody was here. Nobody had ever been here before, and if the expedition failed to reach the return rocket, probably no humans would ever return.

"Yes," he said. "I expect it will last quite a while."'

Starting the Year in a Deep Freeze

There wasn't much for me in the January solicitations, although it's hard to be sure these days. Marvel listed an issue of Fantastic Four in last month's solicits that will come out in January. Then they listed another issue with a January release in this month's solicits, plus an issue with a February release. Meanwhile, the first issue of Vengeance of the Moon Knight was listed last month for release in January, and there was no listing in this month's solicits.

I assume this is some attempt suss out sales trends as far in the future as they can manage to best time canceling titles.

So, tentatively figure two issues of FF and one of Khonshu's boy for January. The only other Marvel thing that caught my eye was a Power Pack book, Into the Storm, by Louise Simonson and June Brigman. Doesn't say it's a mini-series or ongoing, but it's only $4, and Marvel would never miss a chance to crank up the price if it's just a one-off. So who knows?

Beats DC. Between Batman going crazy and/or being possessed (I'm not clear on if Batman and Detective Comics have tied these things together, or if the writers are doing this independent of each other), Tom King writing Wonder Woman, Superman being written by Jason Aaron (?!), some Titans event thing about seemingly everyone becoming animals (when they just got done with having everyone drenched in Lazarus Pit water), shit's bleak. The most eye-catching thing was the Valentine's Day one-shot they titled How to Lose a Guy Gardner in 10 Days. In other words, a book that actually comes out in February.

OK, is there any good news? Coda #5 and Midnight Western Theatre: Witch Trial #5 are both supposed to arrive, and. . .those are the last issues of each mini-series. Crap. Square Enix is releasing volume 13 of those enhanced editions of Soul Eater! But I'm not past volume 2 yet. The second issue of A Haunting on Mars? Good in theory, but the first issue was supposed to ship in October and *looks around dramatically* I haven't seen it yet.

There are two first issues I might try. Deer Editor, by the Everfrost creative team of Ryan Lindsay and Sami Kivela, published through Mad Cave. About a reporter (who is a deer) trying to investigate some sort of mystery. Will I understand what's going on? Given my confusion with Everfrost, fingers crossed! The other, through Scout Comics' new imprint focused on books from Europe, is Rogues, by El Torres and Pablo Moreno Collar. A couple of thieves in what looks like medieval fantasy, trying to recover their own souls. Might be worth a look. There's certainly not much crowding from my view.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)

Nic Cage (Nic Cage) is convinced he just needs that one role and he'll be back as a big star again. Not that he ever went anywhere, mind you. Then maybe his teenage daughter will understand how much he loves her. 

But he also needs money, so he accepts a million bucks to attend Javi's (Pedro Pascal's) birthday party in Majorca. Where we learn Javi may be an international weapons dealer responsible for kidnapping the daughter of a Spanish presidential hopeful, and so the CIA enlists Nic Cage (and the captions kept spelling it "Nick", come on caption writer, get your shit together) to befriend Javi and find out where the girl is hidden.

Which Cage does by suggesting they write a movie together, with a first act of character-driven film, then a paranoid thriller in the second act, and finally, a blockbuster action flick in the third. In other words, the exact thing we're watching on screen. 

First act, a man desperate to be the center of attention, constantly seeking validation in the wrong places, unable to meet people on any terms but his own. So happy to meet a man who loves all his films and considers them formative experiences in his life. Javi proclaims Face/Off his favorite movie of all time, and has a mannequin meant to be Cage's character in the film, although it looks more like Scott Bakula trying to be Nic Cage.

Second act, a paranoid thriller, as Cage tries to do CIA stuff without Javi figuring it out, then has to deal with Javi bringing his family there in what is either a subtle power move, or a well-intentioned attempt to resolve Cage's issues with ex-wife and daughter.

Third act, well, it's car chases and shootouts and Cage getting stabbed in the leg but able to run perfectly well minutes later. Should there be some major emotional payoff to him driving a jeep through the gates of the embassy to protect his family from a weapons dealer? Probably, but instead it was turned into an award-winning movie. Even if there's a tacked-on epilogue suggesting he's putting aside his compulsive need to chase the spotlight to truly connect with his daughter, it's after he. . .compulsively chased the spotlight by taking the experience and commodifying it.

It would be different if he had made the movie, it bombed, but he brushes it off and focuses on being a better dad. Or if he declined to make the movie at all. Instead, he gets the success and his family. Eats the cake and has it, too. Bluntly, JCVD did this whole thing a lot better. He would like to act in better films, but there's child support to pay, so he takes the jobs that pay the bills. There's no big hero moment for van Damme in that movie. Because he's an actor who plays a hero, which is not the same thing. He doesn't revitalize his career (although he did seem to get some different opportunities after this movie, but in the film, he doesn't) or have his child run and hug him, saying how proud they are of their dad.

You could argue this movie is meant to at least partially be a comedy, which JCVD was absolutely not. But if we're talking movies about a guy trying to save his career and stumbling into an insane experience that both saves his career and makes him a better person, while being funny, Tropic Thunder is 1,000 times funnier than this movie. That said, I did laugh at the bit with Paddington 2, and the parts where you can feel Pascal setting opportunities for Cage to go full NIC MOTHERFUCKIN' CAGE on a tee. Just encouraging all the excess. Let it out. Chew that scenery until it's barely recognizable as matter.

What I bought 10/20/2023

If only one of last week's books was going to be available at the local shop, Coda is a better outcome than Moon Knight, but still, it's getting a little frustrating how often even the Marvel stuff I want to buy isn't there. I guess I'm still not good at picking the titles that really sell.

Coda #2, by Simon Spurrier (writer), Matias Bergara (artist/colorist), Patricio Delpeche (color assists), Jim Campbell (letterer) - Wonder if it gets annoying to have so many people bumping into your knees?

Hum finds that he and the would-be savior child are to be exiled. Just because the town's called Gorepit, doesn't mean they're monsters. Oh, but they're going to kill Nag, because unicorns are symbols of the old ways, and that's no good in this new world of cold rationality. The child dies protecting Nag, and Nag obliterates the soldiers, in a very effective sequence by Bergara. I'm not sure they really needed the follow-up panel of the carnage on the next page.

With nothing else to do, Hum and Nag return to the farm, only to have the false savior's hype-man show up (with most of Gorepit's population), promising a great miracle will arise from the crimson lake where Hum and Serka live. Serka had been traveling with the little gnomes to the dark hold those bandits they killed hailed from, only to find out it's Gorepit and the bandits were customs officers. Well, one person's tithe is another's person's extortion, whatcha gonna do?

So now it's the cultists on one side, luring in people looking for the false beauty of their rose-tinted memories of the past, and the little gnomes with their science on the other, prepared to kill the cultists, on the other. Serka and Hum are caught in the middle. And it appears Serka's pregnant, but this isn't the first time, and it's not ever ended well.

Bergara and Delpeche color Gorepit in more muted colors. Slate greys, and even the red armor is kind of dull. Doesn't shine. Once the hype-man and his bullshit show up at Hum's farm, the colors shift more heavily to light pastels. Bright and sort of unearthly. Could be a signal of a return to time of magic, or that this is all a dog-and-pony show. An illusion that's appealing because it looks so much nicer than the reality of life where, as Hum puts it, anyone who doesn't focus on the harvest is buggered.

Sunday Splash Page #293

 

"Outer Demons," in Katana #3, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Cliff Richards (penciller), Rebecca Buchman, Juan Castro, Le Beau Underwood and Phyllis Novin (inkers), Pete Pantazis (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer)

I've discussed before that DC's New 52 didn't do a lot for me, China Mieville's Dial H being a notable exception (both in terms of my enjoying it, and it actually qualifying as something new.) But I was glad DC brought Ann Nocenti in to write some books. None of those runs lasted very long - the 10 issues Katana got was the most of any I read, but I don't know how long she wrote Catwoman - and none of them got much of a proper ending, but I've learned to take what I can get.

Nocenti keeps what I think was Katana's original deal, in that her sword houses her deceased husband's soul, and she's after his killers. Which she thinks is his old friend, now a big wheel in one of the criminal "Weapon" clans. Katana figures she might as well bring all the Weapons down at once, but finds that more difficult than expected.

In large part because she's not really thought much of it through. Nocenti's version of Katana is impulsive, confident bordering on arrogant, sharp-tongued and generally unwilling to concede. She gets her ass kicked more than once for pressing a fight she was better off abandoning. Even when she wins, she's often cut up or scarred, but she's determined to take vengeance, as a way of avoiding dealing with loss. She keeps pushing forward until she gets the truth, and has to decide who she's going to be.

Vengeance and grief, desire and power keep circling around. The people without power try to play by the rules of the ones with power, hoping they'll be able to live that way. Except the ones with power can change the rules whenever it suits them. Some people give in to despair, some lash out, some act to change things. It's all about how people handle it.

The book suffers from inconsistent art. Alex Sanchez is the initial artist, and ends up drawing around 6 issues' worth of the book (he and Cliff Richards share art duties on a few issues), and some of the page layout choices are just peculiar. Sanchez seems fond of a pages with a large central panel, almost a splash page, with postage stamp-sized panels scattered on top. The central panel often makes for a striking image, but most of the important action is relegated to the smaller panels, where it's difficult to parse. I don't think it's an issue of Nocenti's scripts, because the problem disappears when Richards is the artist. Richards has some interesting layouts, too, but they're usually easier to follow. Sliding diagonally across two pages as the battle goes first up, then down a tree. Things like that.

The book ends with several unresolved plot threads I'm 99.9% certain no one else ever followed up, but Nocenti at least has Katana come to a realization of what type of person she wants to be and how she wants to do things. A little closure in that regard, at least.

Saturday Splash Page #95

 

"Death Touch," in Teen Titans (vol. 3) #20, by Geoff Johns (writer), Tom Grummett (penciler), Nelson (inker), Jeromy Cox (colorist), Comicraft (letterer)

I've never read much Teen Titans. What I know of the original Bob Haney '60s madness is from mid-2000s comics bloggers who loved to gawk at the bizarre plots and poor attempts at hip lingo. I've seen bits and pieces of the Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans that seemed to adapt the Uncanny X-Men formula to DC far more successfully than the Detroit Justice League. But the early-2000s volume, written initially by Geoff Johns, is the only one I actually bought for any extended period of time.

Johns took some of the Wolfman/Perez crew - Starfire, Cyborg, Beast Boy, eventually Raven once he resurrected her - and the core Young Justice crew - Tim Drake Robin, Superboy, Impulse, Wonder Girl - and tossed them together, as a sort of mentorship program or something. I didn't start buying the book until issue 11, by which point Impulse was calling himself Kid Flash after getting kneecapped by Deathstroke adopting a "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger," idea.

Looking back, it feels like a grim book, though how much of that was by design, and how much was reaction to what other writers were doing I'm unclear of. There's an arc where the team ends up in a future where Robin, Superboy and Wonder Girl have grown up into cold, totalitarian types. Subsequent writers on the book would return to that notion, but I was long gone by then.

Brad Meltzer kills off Tim Drake's dad in Identity Crisis, so Johns does an issue of Tim trying to avoid dealing with it, because he's afraid the grief is going to make him more like Batman, or more specifically, like the Batman he became in that shitty future. That's actually not terrible, which is probably why that issue is one of two that hung on.

But this is when Johns puts forth that the human half of Superboy's DNA came from Lex Luthor, as an extremely heavy-handed thing about whether Conner was going to be a hero or villain. It's a perfectly Johnsian, extremely literal idea. Can't be that Conner struggles to live up to Superman's standard when he grew up in a lab, where adults intended to use him. Nope, gotta be that the Worst Guy You KNow is the other half of his genetic makeup.

Between that and the shit DC pulled with Cassandra Cain not long after, there was an ugly strain of genetic determinism running through their books. Your biological parent (who you have almost no contact with and actively despise) was evil? You'll be evil, too. Sorry, them's the rules. For some reason.

Johns started something where Ares seemed to be trying to twist Wonder Girl to his side, but that seemed to fall by the wayside, and Cassie was largely relegated to "Superboy's girlfriend." Not an improvement from the increasingly confident leader she'd been evolving into in Young Justice. Johns brought in the new Speedy, Mia Dearden, then had a running mystery about the unknown arrow in Roy Harper's old quiver that Cyborg gave her as a welcome gift. Johns kept teasing moments where Mia would get ready to use the arrow out of desperation, only to have something interrupt. We finally learn during an Infinite Crisis tie-in it's a Phantom Zone arrow, which she uses against Superboy-Prime. It holds him for about three panels. Definite, "that's it?" vibes there.

I gave up on the book after the second One Year Later story. Johns tried another mystery, this time about which Titan over that unseen year was a traitor. Except the traitor was a character we met an issue or two prior to the reveal, and there was absolutely no build. The way the team was being written, nobody seemed to want to be there or liked any of their teammates. None of them were close friends with the traitor, we were shown no touching moments of emotional connection or camaraderie, so who cared? 

The book went through several writers after that, and from a distance, what seemed like a lot of depressingly gory or grim stories about young heroes getting mauled or killed for no particular reason or payoff. I remember some positive buzz about JT Krul and Nicola Scott's run just as the book was wrapping up, but I can't see any book with a large amount of Damian Wayne being worth my time.

Random Back Issues #118 - Amazing Spider-Man #501

Careful, man. Doc Ock gets mean if you mess with his lady.

Been a minute since we looked at the JMS/JRJR Amazing Spider-Man run. This issue is mostly from Aunt May's perspective, as she talks with an unseen person about how she's adjusting to knowing Peter is Spider-Man.

The answer is, it's a process. She likes seeing Peter and Mary Jane back together, but she still leaves when Peter gets ready to change into the costume. It's easier if she doesn't have to see him directly, though she doesn't get much of a choice today, because her trip across town is disrupted by Spidey fighting the Shaker!

No, not the Shocker, the Shaker! In flashback, we see Peter reading about an experimental suit to go deep underground and mine with vibrations. The suit was stolen, and Peter figures if the thief is smart, he'll sell it overseas. But as he notes, 'smart and this guy dine at separate tables.'

We don't see any more of the news article because Peter clearly has more important business.

Unfortunately he couldn't spend all day making out with MJ, and he's not having much luck stopping Shaker. The suit's vibrations almost shake Peter apart when he lands on the guy, and it can vibrate webbing right off. Plus, the suit's tough enough that when Peter keeps a section of an apartment building from landing on the street by swinging it into the air and dropping it on Shaker instead, it doesn't do any good. Granted, the guy is too stupid to notice even if he got any damage.

Back with May, she admits it's difficult to adjust to the notion of how strong Peter is, when she spent years freaking out every time he got a cold or went out in the rain without an umbrella. Probably better  Peter never mentions all those times in the Silver Age getting the flu somehow neutralized his powers, but he went out in costume anyway.

So she's tried to focus on doing little things to help others, like Peter would. In this case, making some loud, obnoxious guy drop his cellphone before he starts cussing in front of children. Well, it's something.

Meanwhile, Peter's fight with Shaker has moved into a gymnasium. They hit a waterline and Spidey gets an idea. Risking the internal damage, he picks up Shaker and chucks him into a pool, then explains to a nearby kid? employee? something, that the vibration of the suit, in a confined space filled with water, will create a miniaturized series of tsunami-like waves, that will just keep rebounding off the pool walls to pummel Shaker until he shuts the suit down.

Shaker says he surrenders, but Spidey lets him get battered a bit longer. Although if the waves are still going, the suit's probably not turned off. Wouldn't surprise me if Shaker didn't know how. Guy says stuff like, 'disburse your moleculars.'

Battle over, Peter makes sure he's the first to call Aunt May on her new cellphone and invite her to dinner, and we see May was seated at the graves for Uncle Ben and Peter's parents. Well if that story about Richard and Mary posing as double agents for the Red Skull's still in continuity, he probably has the tombstone bugged. Great work, May.

{1st longbox, 114th comic. Amazing Spider-Man #501, by J. Michael Straczynski (writer), John Romita Jr. (penciler), Scott Hanna (inker), Matt Milla (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer)}

Sisu (2022)

My dad tried describing this movie to me when I visited two weeks ago (chimney cleaning successfully completed for another year!), but he was doing so out of sequences, so it was hard to understand. Beyond the obvious that this Finnish guy kills a bunch of Nazis, of course.

The Finn, Aatami (Jorma Tommila), had been mining for gold out in the tundra. He found some gold, and on his way back to civilization, meets a company of Nazis retreating and destroying everything in their path. Yet they let him pass, until he meets four of them over the next rise. Covering the escape I guess, although they also mined the road for some reason. Keep in mind, there's nothing in sight in any direction. Just open ground.

The four hassle Aatami, then decide they'll take his gold and kill him. He kills them instead, the rest of the company comes back to investigate and find out Aatami's got all this gold. The gold does act as an excuse for the Nazi company leader to pursue Aatami, because otherwise he's a damn idiot to chase this one dude around when he ought to be trying to get out of Finland. But he knows the war's a lost cause, and figures all that gold will help with starting a new life elsewhere. So there's the justification for the carnage that follows.

Most of the film is at a, measured pace, maybe. The Nazis pursuing, Aatami resting or trying to find some way to put some distance between him and them, picking them off one or two at a time. Stretches of quiet tension, Aatami trying to remain hidden or evade their dogs, or the Nazis watching and waiting for him to reveal himself.

When then quiet tension breaks, things get crazy. He lights himself on fire to repel an attacking job, then jumps in the river. Survives being lynched, survives two plane crashes. The Nazis have abducted several women for their own enjoyment, and in an effective scene near then, one woman (Aino, played by Mimosa Willamo) explains to two soldiers that all the women know who that guy is. 

Now, the company leader already clued us in on Aatami's rep earlier, that the man supposedly killed over 300 Soviets when they invaded Finland, that eventually his commanding officers just stopped trying to rein him in. With that, it was the leader's acknowledgement this could be tough, which plays up his desperation for the gold. With Aino, it's how she explains Aatami will win this struggle, not because he's stronger, but because he refuses to die. No, they aren't saying he's immortal. He just refuses to die.

It's a nice scene because you know something's about to happen. Aatami's going to prove the truth in her words and things are about to get crazy, you just don't know when or where it's coming from.

Tommila plays the role much like how she describes him. Rarely shows much expression beyond a sot of dead-eyed glower. Doesn't talk much. Nothing flashy when he's killing. Just keeps moving steadily towards his objective. Nazi in his path? Grab him, stab him in the head or slit his throat. he tries to shoot you, jerk his arm so he shoots his pals instead. Move to the next. Brutal, but an unhurried efficiency to it.

Willamo doesn't get a lot of screen time, but she infuses Aino with a nice level of, resigned defiance. She seems to have accepted the Nazis will kill her and the others when they cease to be useful, so she refuses cower. The Nazis use her and another woman to lead through the mine field when the Nazis decide they gotta chase Aatami. The other woman walks fearfully, every step hesitant like she thinks she can step on the mine and jerk back before it blows her up. Aino's stride is almost lazy, putting a little kick in each step. A Nazi mine or a Nazi bullet. At least this way they can't use her to help them anymore. (And maybe she's enjoying the thought of what's going to happen if they catch their target.)

A Post-Apocalyptic Dining Experience

Close, will the judges accept the answer?

Crazy Food Truck volume 1 lays out the core of the series in short order. You've got Gordon, a middle-aged guy who runs a food truck in what seems to be an endless desert. He meets Arisa when he nearly runs over her sleeping in the middle of the road. Arisa eats a lot, doesn't like wearing clothes, and doesn't seem to know hardly anything about the world.

Oh, and she's inhumanly fast and strong. On a related note, the military is after her.

With that established in the first 50 pages, writer/artist Rokurou Ogaki spends most of the remaining pages fleshing out Gordon's day-to-day life and how Arisa complicates that. Her appetite causes her to eat everything in the fridge, so Gordon has to go looking for supplies. Which is both an opportunity to highlight Arisa's unusual abilities, and how this particular world works, as Gordon goes hunting for rockskin sand squid, squid that live beneath the sand in places where there used to be ocean.

Don't ask me how that works.

After that, we learn there are actual towns, but they're vulnerable to unscrupulous elements. Like military deserters. Gordon and Arisa help liberate the town, Gordon claiming he just wanted the brewery running again so he could get some beer and sell some burgers. Arisa's just drunk.

The volume concludes with a squad of soldiers, led by an old acquaintance of Gordon's, catching up with the two of them in a restaurant. Gordon refuses to hand Arisa over, although again he downplays his motives by claiming she owes him for a lot of food she ate. The acquaintance claimed to have the entire town staked out, so the escape will continue into the second volume.

Ogaki loves drawing the different things Gordon cooks in great detail. I don't know how feasible some of the recipes are - can you make burgers from fried squid? - but it helps make Gordon's love for cooking seem real, as a show of how much effort he puts into his cooking and the presentation of it.

Arisa's ignorance of basically everything allows Ogaki a path for exposition. Gordon explains the facts of the setting - like the stuff about the squids - to us via explaining it to her. It gets a little annoying when Arisa's acting like she thinks a fishing lure is food, but it's at least consistent. Even though she's described as being 17, Ogaki writes her like she's a 3-year-old, so I guess the "17" part is meant physically.

Sunday Splash Page #292

 

"Scheme-atic", in Kaiju Score: Steal from the Gods #2, by James Patrick (writer), Rem Broo (artist), Francesco Segala (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

First rule of sequels: Do the same thing as last time, but more of it. Or do it bigger, whichever. And so, this time around, the heist involves stealing a lot of treasure from the gut of a partially excavated but sedated ultra-kaiju out in Siberia.

Patrick actually sticks with the conclusion of the first mini-series as far as its protagonist, Marco, goes. Man retired and, brief appearance to offer some planning assistance aside, stays retired. Instead, the lead is Michelle, the girl who impersonated the master safe-cracker to raise the funds to save her crew. She's leading a crew of her own now, sticking to small, safe heists. Until circumstances force her to take the big, risky, crazy job.

The circumstances, a contract placed on her and her crew, is only there to force that issue. Patrick largely leaves it as a specter in the background, because he doesn't waste time pretending the people who hire Michelle aren't going to stab in her the back. So the tension is in what shape the betrayal will take, and whether everyone in the crew can make it out. Only one of the three characters in her current crew is left over from her first crew, and he's the one who always seems to fuck up somehow.

It raises the question of whether people can change, and if so, is it something you consciously do, or something that happens? Can Glover actually get it together enough to carry his share of the load? Is Michelle the same person she was before the first score, just pretending to be harder, or has she actually changed?

Broo's art is able to make people look very cool and stylish, and also, when needed, make them look like the most insufferable jackasses on the planet. That's important, since the people trying to mess with Michelle are written as incredibly insufferable and arrogant. Being able to make characters look cool is important since Patrick still loves giving people cool one-liners or Tarantino-like dialogue, which we're meant to take seriously at least some of the time. So the characters need to look like the sort who could say such things without being ridiculous.

Saturday Splash Page #94

 

"Malpractice," in Terra #2, by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Amanda Conner (artist), Paul Mounts (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

This mini-series came out in late 2008. I don't actually know what prompted it. There was the original, New Teen Titans Terra. The traitor, the Judas Contract, creepy relationship with creepy-ass Deathstroke, all that jazz. There was a second Terra, who looked a lot like the first, and got killed a year or so prior to this mini-series, by Black Adam when he declared war on the entire world for some reason I no longer remember.

And then this, with a Terra who looks very little like the first two. Who comes from a subterranean civilization which she defends from threats both native to that realm and from encroaching surface world dwellers. Who doesn't seem to want to associate with anyone or explain anything. She's all about that world-saving grind, 24/7, or however they measure time underground.

That can only fly so far, and Palmiotti, Gray and Conner do offer some backstory when she runs into Geo-Force, who is at least a natural person for a team-up, given his connection to the previous Terras. That's mostly in issue 3, which is when Conner gets to show us what Terra's (or Atlee, as that's her real name) home looks like. It's a giant cavern, with a lot of tall narrow buildings and bridges presumably formed from existing rock formations. A lot of their technology seems to be biologically based, as Geo-Force gets helped by some floating jellyfish thing that rewires his neural interface. It fits with how the society is presented, as watching the surface world warily, concerned about humanity's track record of using technology in the worst way.

Geo-Force ends up helping her with a guy that wanted to be a great underground explorer and stumbled into something he didn't understand. Even after the guy, who is acting out of grief and anger because, again, he's a stranger in this world, causes a lot of damage, Atlee's hope is he can be helped and restored. Which helps establish her as someone with a lot of compassion and an optimistic outlook on things. Of course, I feel like she got sucked in some "teen heroes forced into gladitorial combat" thing I vaguely remember from Teen Titans of that time. That would seem to do a lot to blunt someone's optimism about humanity. Or maybe I'm confusing that with whatever Terror Titans was.

But Conner, Gray and Palmiotti would make Terra a major supporting cast member in their Power Girl series that came out in 2009. That had its rough moments for the character, but built up a big sister/little sister relationship between the characters that was usually a lot of fun to read. We'll get to that when we get there.

Random Back Issues #117 - The Web #13

Not if you're going to describe it like that.

Kupperberg and Horne are listed as "guest" writer and penciller, respectively, but this two Part 1 of a two-part story is also the penultimate issue of the book.

Government spy/paranormal investigation agency WEB has a problem. An old enemy of theirs, Frenzy, has escaped from the Army base where he's been kept doped up for 26 years. Frenzy's super-strong and seemingly hasn't aged in all that time, but his most dangerous ability is a 'psychic madness virus', that damages the sanity of anyone within 10 feet of him.

While the Army was acting a jailer, they weren't briefed on that ability, so when Frenzy's escaped, 122 soldiers died, 70 were wounded, and 42 are unlikely to regain their sanity. WEB's Director, Powell Jennings, wants WEB to be the ones who recapture Frenzy, to protect his reputation. To that end, he contacts Mark Austin, the WEB member who caught Frenzy the first time. That this happened 26 years ago and Austin's in at least late middle age isn't necessarily a deal-breaker; half the cast of the book are people who were part of WEB back then and are still active.

This includes Bill Grady, who is the man in the command center for WEB, and hasn't totally shaken off the last fight with Frenzy, and the Sunshine Kid, who's still an active agent (and as much a hippie as the name might suggest), and was the first to actually fight Frenzy. That was in a subway, and Kid chose to save a person driven to jump in front of a subway car by Frenzy's powers over stopping Frenzy. The final battle was in Omaha, when Frenzy and his followers tried to hijack a nuclear bomber. That's where Mark Austin triumphed.

So no big deal, right? Well, Austin isn't part of WEB. He serves as some sort of Undersecretary in the U.S. government since shortly after that fight. Still, Powell visits, asking for help. Austin describes how, on that fateful day, he recognized that all the WEB agents sharing the power that runs their armors weakened their defenses against Frenzy's madness. So, Austin boldly decided called for all the power to himself and leapt into the fray, knocking Frenzy out with a furious attack!

Can you smell the bullshit? Sure you can, but Powell's a stuffed shirt, so he doesn't. He's only too happy to name Austin field leader for this mission. The rest of the team finds out when Powell and Austin show up at their HQ, Austin already wearing the armor under a trenchcoat. Man knows how to make a dramatic reveal. Nobody else seems to think this is a good idea, but they're not in charge, so they just have to deal.

After a stop in a Las Vegas prison to recruit some followers, Frenzy hijacked a plane going to Chicago and caused it to crash (by driving the crew insane.) He survived, but I'm assuming the people in the roadster with him, shooting the cops with heavy machine guns, are new recruits, since I doubt anyone else survived the crash. The 3-person team Austin constructed shows up at the end, ready to fight. The next, and final issue, has two fights against Frenzy, plus, to the surprise of no one except Powell, the reveal that Austin's version of his "victory" was a load of crap.

{12th longbox, 98th comic. The Web #13, by Paul Kupperberg (writer), Barry Horne (penciller), Andrew Pepoy (inker), Linda Kachelhofer (colorist), Vickie Williams (letterer)}

Riding the Rap - Elmore Leonard

A loser gets the idea of taking sketchy people with money hostage and making them essentially pay ransom on themselves to get free. For his first victim, he and his two compatriots selects a former mob bookie. Unfortunately for them, the former bookie is a friend of a friend of federal marshal Raylan Givens, so they're in trouble before they've hardly gotten started.

I don't think I've ever read an Elmore Leonard book, and I've never watched Justified, so I wasn't sure what Leonard's writing was like. I was expecting something to which you could apply the description "hard-boiled". Maybe not noir, but occupying a nearby neighborhood.

This feels more like Fargo, because these crooks are kind of a bunch of idiots. The mastermind, using the term so loosely it hangs off like a child wearing a hot air balloon for a shirt, is a pretend tough guy who alternates between smoking pot and trying to dose runaway girls on acid to extort ransom money from their parents. A scumbag, but a lazy, unimaginative scumbag.

Of the other two, one was supposed to bringing the mastermind to the bookie over unpaid debts, only to switch sides. He randomly decides to rob a grocery store and threaten to cut a woman's finger off with gardening shears for her wedding ring. Louis Lewis is the only halfway competent one, and he's figuring out ways to cut the other two out from the word "go." It's impressive these guys can zip up their flies without a step-by-step picture book.

The situation isn't written as a mystery so much as a puzzle for Raylan. He pretty quickly figures out where things are happening and who at least two of the people are. The real problem is, he needs a way to gain lawful entry to the house, when all he has are hunches and things a psychic that's mixed up in this is telling him. That's the puzzle, finding the right combination to be able to walk in, before it's too late.

Leonard adds a subplot where the friend that dragged Raylan into this is a woman he's sort of seeing, but they've hit a rocky patch over her inability to accept him killing a man. But Raylan seems unable to explain how he knew the man would be armed when he sat down at the table, and Leonard never writes where we see Joyce's inner thoughts. She's looking for a justification, and he can't provide one she accepts, so the thing just goes round and round until the characters spin off away from each other.

'Louis found Chip in the kitchen making himself a Bloody Mary and asked him, "Who's Ezra Pound?"

Chip said, "Ezra Pound," stirring his drink and then pausing. "He was a heavyweight. Beat Joe Louis for the crown and lost it to Marciano. Or was it Jersey Joe Walcott?"'

What I Bought 10/6/2023

The store in town didn't get any of their Marvel shipment last week, but I went to my dad's over the weekend and the next town up had one of the books I was looking for. So we'll go with that. Also no new books this week, which is a little strange for a month where there's supposed to be 12 comics I want coming out. Either a lot of stuff is going to be late, or the last two weeks are going to be crazy busy.

Fantastic Four #12, by Ryan North (writer), Iban Coello (artist), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - The Dino Doctor Strange even has the dark spots on his arms instead of gloves. Nice touch.

Ben gets a call from an old Yancy Street acquaintance about a shimmery thing that's been appearing on his farm recently. The FF investigate and are promptly sucked into a world just like theirs, except everyone's a dinosaur. After a misunderstanding battle, Reed works up a translator and the two sides make peace. Presumably Dinosaur Reed Richards (who appears to be a T-Rex, odd choice for Richards) manages the same on 616-Earth.

Reed figures out the two universes are too similar and are beginning to converge. This will likely destroy both universes, unless a solution can be found. This is sounding suspiciously like Hickman's "incursion" nonsense. A plan is devised, but Doom shows up to interrupt. Dinosaur Dr. Doom. So if you wanted to see Dr. Doom as a giant carnosaur, the last page of this is your comic. Although presumably next issue will be even more your comic, so maybe wait for that to satiate your Dino Doom fix.

North apparently had no interest in using any of the FF's kids, but he had no problem with the Dino FF having their kids around. It seems like they went through the same experience, which mean the Dinosaur Universe is a little ahead, if the 1-year time-shunt is already over for them. I guess on a multiversal scale that isn't a significant difference.

I notice none of the dinosaurs in this comic have feathers. Not even Utahraptor Torch (or whatever you'd call him.) How long do you think it's going to take before feathered dinosaurs penetrate popular culture depictions on a consistent basis?

Laughter Counts as a Higher Power, Right?

Look, lady. You can't do that with your own work. It takes the fun away from the fans with too much time on our, I mean, their hands.

The 3rd volume of John Allison's Steeple, subtitled "That's the Spirit!", covers a lot of ground, mixing between silly one-off adventures and stories that are setting things up for future developments. Billie is still a priestess in the local Satanist church, while Maggie is living in Billie's old place alongside the reverend, though I doubt Maggie is considered a curate.

After the two leads manage to keep a drunken enabler of a foul spirit from ruining Christmas with Mrs. Clovis (the reverend's housekeeper/caretaker), it's time for a crossover. Shelly Winters, who Esther helped get into publishing children's books in the pages of Giant Days, shows up in Tredregyn for a book signing and is abducted by creatures of the deep who regard one of her books as holy writ for the raising of their dark god. Shelly's emergency contact is Charlotte Grote, the top teen detective (ages 15-18) from Wicked Things, who teams up with the Billie and Reverend Penrose to locate Shelly.

Mostly, it's Charlotte being befuddled about what is going on with this town, which is a nice alternative perspective. Even Billie seemed to adapt rather quickly, although her levels of good cheer are probably acting like beer goggles. Although it's funny in itself that switching to Satanism hasn't altered her fundamental personality. She explains to Charlotte that her thing, so far as Satanism goes, is non-judgmental humanist community outreach and I think I just broke out in hives. Or maybe that's poison ivy.

It's all over relatively quickly and with no harm done, so long as the crap Shelly scribbled won't actually raise an elder god. Never can tell with those things. Guest stars having successfully survived and larked off to whatever story Allison next uses them in, he turns to the question of Billie's drained bank account. A prayer to Baphomet gets Tredregyn used as the setting for what seems very much like Midsomer Murders after a big and unexpected storm wrecks Devon. Certainly Midsomer Murders matches Penrose's description of all the priests being milksops or murderers, although with the history of religious conflict in England I'm hardly surprised. Either knuckle under to the shift in churches or getting to killin' in the name of your God, right?

In the midst of that, Penrose has to deal with some sort of shaggy creature laying eggs underneath the docks, while Maggie's father invites her home for a celebration. Of the two, the dad is a much bigger problem, and looks set to be one moving forward. He might serve as a focus to unite the disparate forces in town against him, except the Reverend Tom of the local Satanist church is making his own plans that will probably mess with Penrose but good. 

It feels like Allison's building to Penrose realizing he's got to be an inspirational figure to the townsfolk, rather than skulking about in the shadows punching mermen. Essentially the lesson Robert Pattinson's version of Bruce Wayne had to learn in that recent The Batman movie. Either that or Penrose steps away from the church and Billie unites both churches with her as vicar/high priestess/whatever you'd call an Anglican Satanist.

Allison's writing is much better than that movie's, however. Certainly funnier. His pages almost always end with some gag or visual joke, and more of them land than not. Whether that's Billie leveraging her being announced as a "priestess to watch" in Sex Magick magazine, or the "sesh gremlin" disliking feeling judged when the girls rebuff his offer of another drink.

Sunday Splash Page #291

 

"Problems Bigger Than They Appear," in Kaiju Score #4, by James Patrick (writer), Rem Broo (artist), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

Marco is the master of coming up with creative plans to heist what's supposed to be impossible. Unfortunately, he's also the master of missing one crucial detail that fouls everything up. So when he has a plan to steal a vault full of priceless art under the cover of a kaiju landfall, he's not in any position to form a crew of the best of the best.

His financing comes from a loan shark known for brutality, who insists his man-bun wearing goon goes along. The one responsible for getting all the equipment's available because he's considered practically cursed at this point. The one thing that went right, his getting world-class safecracker Gina? Well, that's fool's gold, too, because what's he actually got is a rookie named Michelle who killed the world class safecracker and took her identity because she had to do this job.

Patrick and Broo efficiently lay out how this world has adapted to the existence of kaiju, from the early warning systems like we have for hurricanes, to evacuation protocols. It's all dressed up as part of Marco's sales pitch, so they get world-building and the set-up for the heist taken in one swoop. It helps outline Marco as being creative, clever, but also a bit too glib. That last may just be Patrick's writing style, as almost every character is armed with a snappy comeback or one-liner at all times, similar to his Hero Hourly.

Broo captures the size of the kaiju, mostly by keeping them in the background. It shows off their scale and the differences in design - and I like how he they look wildly different - This is really about the desperation of the cast. Marco to pull off a score that will make his rep. Michelle to save her crew. Palmiero to prove he's not a jinx, and too that end, there are a lot of short, widescreen panels to focus on their faces as they try to keep up brave fronts, or start to snap at each other as things go wrong.

Patrick makes sure to have things go wrong in several ways. Some of them are predictable - which doesn't make the resolution less satisfying -  but others are more of a surprise. But they're done in such a way that it feels logical that it happened. The reader (and the characters) might not expect it, but they can each see how it could happen.

Saturday Splash Page #93

 

"Bizarro's Funland," in The Terrifics #22, by Gene Luen Yang (writer), Stephen Segovia (artist), Photobunker (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer)

Lemire's run on The Terrifics concluded with issue 14, with Gene Luen Yang taking over as writer through the title's end at issue 30. Yang's run seemed to be about progress. The inevitability of it, but that ensuring that people were trampled in its wake took directed effort.

So first there was an arc about an artificial intelligence achieving sentience, and how that endangered all life on the planet. The next several issues after that were about Bizarro getting a time machine from Lex Luthor (not clear on why Lex did that) and trying to use it to stop the march of technology on his world. When that failed, he and his world's version of Mr. Terrific concluded that if progress couldn't be stopped on Htrea, it must be stoppable on Earth. 

It's a nice play on the notion of Bizarro as an opposite Superman. Superman tries to protect humanity because he believes in its potential, without trying to lord over them and force them forward by just throwing Kryptonian technology. So naturally Bizarro would try to stunt any progress, especially if it renders him redundant. It's more important to him to be able to be a hero and have villains to fight.

After that, it was Mr. Terrific trying to make Gateway City into a shining "world of tomorrow" sort of place, and dealing with various setbacks or people who want to exploit it. This involved the reveal that Mr. Terrific was part of a of group of DC super-scientist types called "The T-Council", who were on-board with making the world better through science. It's one of those ideas that makes sense when you're dealing with characters who are established as wanting to help people, and have the intelligence and resources to do it in a way that doesn't involve just punching things. Of course, those sorts of things never get to carry very far, but it was probably important for Mr. Terrific's arc, to put his skills to work improving the world, rather than just putting out fires.

Yang also killed off Simon Stagg, because I guess he figured there were only so many times you can do a variation on Stagg trying to create or use some invention to make money, only to endanger everyone, while Metamorpho and Sapphire argue about whether her father can be trusted.

It still feels like it's mostly a Mr. Terrific book than a real team book. Late in Lemire's run he reaches a universe where it him who died in the car crash, and Laura Holt became Ms. Terrific. Yang plays with the notion of them trying to have a relationship, but realizing things aren't the same. This Michael Holt isn't her Michael, and she isn't his Laura, and with both of them as costumed adventurers, their differences in philosophy cause a bit more friction. Or maybe both of them had sanded away those old disagreements in their memories of their deceased spouses.

There are hints about Phantom Girl maybe having a crush on Plastic Man's kid (and a bit about Plas and "Offspring" improving their relationship), but that's about it. Metamorpho. . .gets a lot of exclamations involving Egyptian deities (see the "Osiris on a stick!" above.)

The book does have more stability in artists at this point. Stephen Segovia draws the first four issues, where they contend with the emergent artificial intelligence and we see one of the major differences of opinion between the two Holts. Segovia then draws three of the issues of the Bizarro storyline, with Sergio Davila and Max Raynor each handling the other parts. Dan Mora draws a one-off "choose your adventure" issue, though it does feed into the next issue and a major part of the conflict in "The Tomorrow War" story that wraps up the title.

As the two primary artists, Segovia and Davila are well-suited to handling the different stuff the plots ask of them. Each able to shift styles during the Bizarro story to fit the shifting realities and timelines. Segovia goes to a thicker line and squarer figures (a less busy Lenil Yu) as time starts regressing to first the '90s and later the '80s. But he and Davila are both capable of exaggerating with big, comically round eyes when the team is regressed to children, or mixing that with their normal styles when things start to break down and different characters are at different states. Davila gets to draw Lobo and Mr. Terrific using his teammates as a battle suit in one issue, and what look like Parasite's head as little scuttling monsters and makes it work.

Random Back Issues #116 - Daredevil #154

"Sinister yo-yo?" Matt's taken one too many shots to the head.

It feels like all the recent selections have been issues focused on set-up or exposition. Not this one. It's time for violence!

Daredevil's been hunting the Purple Man (rocking a cloak he must have stolen from Dracula), but Purple Man's got Matt's girlfriend, Heather Glenn under his control, along with a prison full of guards and convicts. If Daredevil doesn't play nice, Heather will shoot herself in the head.

Which leaves Hornhead up against four of his old foes: Gladiator, Jester, Cobra and Mr. Hyde. Oh come on, at least half those guys are total losers. What, the Enforcers weren't available? There's also no teamwork between the villains. Daredevil catches the sinister *chuckle* yo-yo and chucks the Jester Hyde's direction, but Hyde just backhands the moron away. Cobra tries to shoot Daredevil in the back, Matt simply ducks and lets the darts hit Gladiator.

Hyde's through fooling around and starts choking the life from Daredevil, shrugging off the best hits DD can throw. A mysterious shot knocks Hyde flat, courtesy of Paladin?! Who is also rocking a cape. I guess if you got Gene Colan drawing the book, everybody gets capes.

Paladin's after the bounty on Killgrave, but apparently he didn't read up on his target, because he gets close enough to be subject to the mind-control whammy. Still, he fights it off enough to shoot Purple Man instead of Daredevil, then seals up his costume so he's on internal air supply. Cobra and Gladiator are the only two left standing, and if they couldn't handle just Daredevil, they fold fast when the sides are even. Gladiator doesn't even get to finish saying "Great Ceasar's Gh - " before Daredevil says they've all heard that one before and gut punches him.

But Killgrave still has Heather pointing a gun at her own head. Paladin stands down, so DD grabs his gun, shoots the pistol out of Heather's hand, and now Killgrave's really up shit creek. He runs to a watchtower and tries blinding Daredevil with the spotlight. He'd learned Murdock was Daredevil, but assumed the blindness was a ruse. Realizing it wasn't, he lunges at Daredevil, screaming that he won't lose to a blind man.

Daredevil ducks and Killgrave falls into the ocean. Matt reflects it was too fast for him to save Killgrave, but also, he didn't he really try. Nor should he. Unfortunately, Purple Man would be back, repeatedly. Heather Glenn and Matt would eventually break up, and then Denny O'Neil would have her commit suicide during his tenure on the book. Because Murdock needed another dead girlfriend to self-flagellate over, apparently.

* See Sunday Splash Page #120 for a double-page depiction of the evil assemblage - Self-promoting Calvin

{3rd longbox, 50th comic. Daredevil #154, by Roger McKenzie (writer), Gene Colan (penciler), Steve Leialoha (inker/colorist), Novak (letterer)}