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.