Shanghai (2010)

Paul Soames (John Cusack) is assigned to Shanghai on a mission from American military intelligence. He's playing a Nazi-sympathetic journalist who's close with the wife of a member of the German diplomatic corps, but really, he's trying to find out who killed his best friend (played in flashback by Jeffrey Dean Morgan.)

The person who might know is a young girl his friend was seeing, but she's gone to ground. Anna (Gong Li) might know something, but she's working with the Chinese resistance without her crime boss husband (played by Chow Yun-Fat) knowing. And there's a taciturn Japanese commander Tanaka (Ken Watanabe) always lurking.

Cusack handles his intelligence work perfunctorily. Writes his boilerplate columns arguing the U.S. doesn't need to get mixed up in this war, absorbs his editor's condescension calmly. Woos the German lady, but when she catches him sneaking out of her bed to takes photos of correspondence between her husband and the Japanese about some piece of naval technology, he doesn't bother to explain or chase after her. Just keeps snapping photos.

But with his friend's death, and later with Anna, he won't let it go. He shoots one Japanese soldier to protect his friend's informant, and bayonets another to protect Anna. He gets captured and beaten, and still won't let it go.

It feels like the movie is playing up the contrast between him being so concerned with the death of this one person while the entire world is on fire. Tanaka's worried about stamping out the resistance and any traitors. Anna's focused on fighting back against the Japanese, and while they've killed people she loved, she insists it isn't a personal war to her.

And maybe it's not, but she is trying to protect her husband, who is likewise playing nice with Tanaka to try and protect her. She's tries to call off an attack by the resistance in a nightclub when her husband walks near the table full of Japanese officers. He, in turn, draws the line on playing along with Tanaka when he insists on questioning her. And Tanaka has a personal reason for seeking the missing girl, beyond any intelligence Cusack's friend might have passed along.

Chow Yun-Fat plays Anthony most of the time with that sort of false geniality you see out of professional schmoozers. Glib, easy smile that isn't real most of the time. Keeping up appearances. But around Anna, at the end, the words aren't so smooth, but more real. Gong Li spends a lot of time looking, I guess I'd call it quietly nervous. She's not trembling or crying or anything, and she only seems to get angry when Cusack thinks she's in this for revenge like him, but she always seems wide-eyed, like she's constantly on alert.

Watch for the Remix

Now that's an Evil Star Power.,

Where volume 4 was a "horrors of war" story, volume 5, Star Power and the Choir of Dr. Hymn, starts as a suspense/mystery story that shifts into body horror or a sci-fi monster territory in the later stages. Set roughly a year after volume 4, Danica's been exploring the worlds beyond the Millennium Federation's borders, confirming there's a lot of chaos out there.

While Danica's pleased with the data she's gathered on numerous stars, it's all the warlords she's punched that bring her to the attention of Dr. Hieronymus Hymn, regarded as the finest composer in the known galaxy. (The concept sketches in the back include a note from Garth Graham that Terracciano wanted a Vincent Price as Dr. Phibes vibe, but Graham insisted on the mustache even though it really does make Hymn look a lot like Dr. Strange.)

Hymn is characterized by a massive ego that demands perfection, so much so each applicant for his choir has to perform solo first. If he deems them inadequate, he shoots them. So along with the question of what he wants from Star Power, there's the mystery of where he's getting these applicants, as well as why he keeps them masked. 

This ends up tying into a case the Chief at Space Sanctuary Six had been investigating for some time, and which also involves the former Void Angel pilot, Burke. He's done his time, and looking to start over. And Danica's friend Grex, a former Void Angel herself, is willing to give him a chance. Danica's less inclined, what with the multiple time he tried to kill her and all, but gives him a chance.

This part I'm less enthused by. It follows a kind of predictable arc where Danica is wary, but is thrown by the revelation he cleans up good. Burke figures out something's going on with Hymn, so Hymn has him framed to look drunk and violent so Danica will assume the worst and then have to apologize later.

Some of that is to parallel and contrast with Danica's supervisor Dr. Brightman, who is a Dr. Hymn superfan, but not so enamored she overlooks the horrible things he's done once she finds out about them. Meanwhile Danica is so suspicious of Burke because of his past actions that she can't see him clearly until after the fact. But it's still an "enemies to lovers" thing and I do not truck with that.

That said, the slower pace and build of this story compared to The Lonely War allows for more humor. Some of it is just star-based puns, or bits revolving around the pronunciation of "Hymn". Those are hit or miss. I got a better laugh out of the gags about Burke's appreciation for Earth "classical" music. Sure, both Star Trek: Beyond and Futurama have done that bit before, but it's still good. Especially since Terracciano uses it for a "play Freebird!" gag at one point.

Sunday Splash Page #320

 

"Vicissitudes," in Longshot Saves the Marvel Universe #1, by Christopher Hastings (writer), Jacopo Camagni (artist), Matt Milla (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)

Released across two months in December 2013 and January 2014, Longshot Saves the Marvel Universe is probably one of the few stories since the original Nocenti/Adams mini-series that actually explores the ramifications of Longshot's powers, and the tightrope he would have to walk to use them.

In this case, Longshot finds himself targeted by the In-Betweener - who Camagni draws in a nifty suit and a face like a harlequin mask, black on one side, white on the other - because his incredible luck is a threat to the universe. But, Longshot happens to be mixed up in trying to stop a robbery of a super-scientist (which went awry the moment Longshot wished he had some money to buy tacos, because that constitutes a selfish desire to use his powers) at that moment, and Reed Richards and Tony Stark are cruising past with a Cosmic Cube, and well, things go wonky.

Now SHIELD's run by a mysterious guy with a white theater mask, who is hunting all magic users as a threat to Order. Also a child's teddy bear, which has a peculiar reflection. Longshot ends up briefly teamed up with Dr. Strange, Scarlet Witch, Ghost Rider, and Deadpool. Sure, Deadpool's not technically magic, but he's certainly a threat to Order. Plus, the 4th wall breaking probably registers as weird. Dazzler, working for SHIELD(?) gets involved, because of course Longshot doesn't remember they dated. Superior Spider-Man shows up, too. Well, they can't all be winners.

Things get weirder and weirder as Chaos manifests and Longshot's powers are stretched further and further to pull his butt from the fire. He's under attack by vampire Wolverine and Cyborg Dracula! A taxi crashes and Blade somehow flies out of the trunk. That sort of thing. It gives Camagni the chance to draw a lot of goofy stuff. Iron Hulk. Giant Doombots. But that much improbability is kind of a bad thing.

Hastings writes Longshot initially as sort of breezily confident. He takes good things in stride, he takes weird things in stride. The cable guys turned out to be criminals, and the scientist has a hot daughter? Yeah, that'll happen to Longshot. He does recognize the risk of his powers, but sometimes all it takes is a momentary slip. He hadn't even fully committed to wanting some money so he could buy tacos and suddenly a wall is exploding and money is falling from the sky.

The longer the series goes, and the more Chaos and Order openly war against each other - with Order being very precise in their speaking, while Chaos is a total shit, saying things like, "On behalf of my butt, I order you to smooch my butt," -  the further the ramifications of Longshot's powers stretch.

Sure, it's wonderful that after those nice hairdressers gave Longshot a new look for free (because they thought he was hot, Hastings really plays up the idea that Longshot's hotness is an actual superpower) some big movie star just suddenly appeared outside their store and loved the look they gave him. What a lucky turn of events!

But it completely fucks the haircut place across the street, a couple who struggled for years to find some measure of success and now are going to have to sell their shop because all their business switched to the trendy place the movie star touted. Causality stretches a long way, and it's hard to avoid harming one person while helping another, unless you're really thoughtful about it. Which doesn't really seem like a strong point of Longshot's, thoughtfulness. What with all the memory wipes and whatnot. But maybe that's the only way it can work for him, he can't think about it, he just has to act. Thinking about what he's doing brings motives into it.

Saturday Splash Page #122

 

"Ouch," in Stellar #5, by Joseph Keatinge (writer), Bret Blevins (artist/colorist), Rus Wooton (letterer)

A 6-issue mini-series from 2018 focused on Stellar, a child turned into a super-soldier of incredible power, at some point long after that. It's hard to say how long, as time is for some reason inconsistent in her universe, as a result of the war she was modified to fight.

The war may be over, but the other products of the project are hunting her, though the reasons for that are unclear. They attack her on sight, but also want her help dealing with the member of the project deemed most dangerous, a man called Zenith. That's him getting some cheap dental work. He'll heal up in a few panels.

A lot of things in this story are malleable. Time, the character's motivations, the war itself. The other members attacking Stellar, then expecting her to help them fight Zenith. The war is supposedly between their universe and another one, but when Stellar and Zenith supposedly reach that universe (in the back half of the mini-series), there's no sign of the war. 

So the reasons change, the causes change, but the players don't change, not really. Zenith may be free of whoever created him, but that just means he's building war-bots and portals to other universes for his own ends now. Are those good ends? Another possibly malleable thing. There is a version of Stellar in that other universe, minus any powers, but plus a daughter (who also looks exactly like a younger Stellar.) Zenith abducts them and creates a family, for decades. He plays the role of family man. Sweater vest, spectacles, all polite and contrite when his wife (the older alt-Stellar), makes apologies. Yet as soon as it's he and Stellar in his garage, here come the monologues, the sneering, the robots.

Stellar had, after the way, worked for an orphanage/temple place, helping however she could, mostly by collecting bounties. But in that other universe, where there is no fighting, where she goes literal decades without seeing Zenith, she does nothing. She lives in a crappy apartment, she takes no lover, forms no family. She doesn't age, but Blevins makes her look old and tired. Stringy hair, sunken cheeks. No spark, no crackling energy or glowing eyes. Until she meets Zenith and she has to fight. 

As soon as he appears, all her focus is on destroying him. She had seemingly been content to avoid him and everyone else in her old universe, but now, all she can think about is finding and killing him. She isn't happy, but she's more expressive, more animated. Moves with a purpose, shoulders back, fists clenched, rather than wandering aimlessly, head down, shoulders slumped.

There was some backmatter after the final issue that hinted there might be more to come, but to my knowledge, it hasn't happened yet.

What I Bought 4/25/2024

Another Deadpool 3 trailer. Or is it Deadpool and Wolverine now? I may, actually, go to a movie theater to see it. The first two didn't let me down, they earned my goodwill. Not much going on comics-wise, but there's at least one book this week to discuss.

Night Thrasher #3, by J. Holtham (writer), Nelson Daniel (artist), Matt Milla (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - Can Silhouette manipulate Darkforce energy like that? Eh, why not.

Dwayne surveys the complete cock-up his fight with Rage last issue produced and decides to try and fix things. Without accepting any help from Sil, of course. He tries speaking with the head cop about making talking to Rage, but when he mentions he's a friend, the cop gets very aggressive and accusatory. Dwayne does not break several of his bones like he thinks about doing. Boooooo.

Next he tries the local councilman, Ikolo, who has rallied the community for a peaceful march/protest towards the police station. Dwayne advises against this, but Ikolo argues the community needs a rallying point since one of their major pillars of support is gone. *looks significantly at the shuttered Taylor Foundation*

Throughout the entire first half of the issue, Daniel draws Dwayne as separate from everyone. When we see shuttered businesses or people being frisked, Dwayne's always off to one side, just observing. He's separated from Armez's officers by a barricade, and he stays at the edge of Ikolo's rally. Touching nothing, only touched when Sil reaches for his hand, which he doesn't reciprocate, or when Armez pokes him in the chest, and Dwayne's leaning away from that. Trying to avoid involvement even when he says he's trying to fix things.

Having failed to sway either side Dwayne. . .gives up. This is unwelcome news to Sil, who found Rage's little army and promised to help them in exchange for help. But that means getting Dwayne out of his ennui over a life he feels he wasted and was only granted a reprieve out of stupid luck. The breakthrough comes via Dramatic Graveyard Combat, the #1 therapeutic technique for all head-shrinkers! So it's 2 New Warriors and a bunch of, kids?, pre-teens? early adolescents? Daniel draws the lead kid with a scruffy goatee, but also half the size of Sil or Dwayne, which makes him look about 8, so I don't know. Anyway, it's 2 New Warriors and the Hoodie Infestation to deal with some abuse of police authority.

Beatdowns Even an Eternal Dragon Can't Undo

Dragon Ball FighterZ - I feel like the "Z" ought to be separate, but the case for the disc insists otherwise - is definitely the best looking DBZ game I've ever played. Damning with faint praise; it's the most recent DBZ game I've played by probably a decade, but it seemed like a good place to start.

It's bright, colorful. The signature attacks are made to look big and dramatic and flashy. The animation and movement is crisp. The fighting looks good, once you get the controls down. I would imagine I'm a middling player at best, and a lot of times I'm just moving the thumbstick in a general direction and hitting a button to see what results, but the game's responsive.

It's a 3 vs. 3 fighting game, ala the Marvel vs. Capcom series. Not my favorite style of fighting game, but it works OK. There are certain super-move combo attacks that get their own animation because you're using two particular characters, which I imagine is designed to make you try a lot of different character combinations.

There's a story mode, with a vague plot about another Red Ribbon Army scientist unleashing a bunch of clones of different fighters, while at the same time a machine is suppressing everyone's powers. I feel like that was to eliminate power level differences between the characters, probably to prevent people bitching about their Super Saiyan Blue Vegeta losing to Yamcha.

It didn't work, of course. Nothing short of death will silence those people.

No one can fight unless they merge with a soul. So really, you're the soul, and the other characters acknowledge you and will sometimes speak to you in brief cut scenes where you can pick between a couple of dialogue options. I don't think which option you choose really changes anything. It's not that kind of game. But it can be fun to annoy Frieza by telling him, no, you're not interested in killing people.

Each level is a map of locations, connected by lines. You have to follow the lines to get from place-to-place, and win the boss fight within a certain number of moves. You can take the most direct route, or meander through, making sure to fight every other battle available if you want. Since the fights provide experience to level up fighters, it pays to use those other fights to grind a bit.

That said, it boils down to round after round of just fighting palette-shifted versions of your characters. There's usually some vague goal - finding and rescuing your other allies, depriving the ultimate threat of a source of power - but it definitely feels like a hamster wheel.

There are sometimes custom scenes before the fight, depending on which characters you're using, or which you're fighting. Cell might be annoyed to see another version of himself, or might goad the Gohan he's fighting alongside. Or Tien gets annoyed at the Ginyu Force and their stupid poses. Or Goku acknowledges that Krillin's too busy to spar because he's got a wife and child of his own.

Look, 18's got infinite energy, Krillin's getting PLENTY of training.

There's actually three versions of the story. Listed in escalating difficulty, one with Goku and his friends as the focus, another where it's Frieza and the other villains, and one focused on the Androids. That last one is where the repetitive nature really drags because for a long time, you only have Androids 18 and 16 to use. Not only are you almost always outnumbered 3-to-2, but you can't even mix and match to find a team that suits your play style. (Big, slow characters like Android 16 or Majin Buu don't work well for me.)

That said, there are actually a lot of nice moments for Krillin and Android 18 throughout the story mode. Each of them being protective of the other. Krillin being angry that Cell's hurt 18, or 18 having to beat Krillin up to protect him from Android 21. Then Krillin later reveals he knew 18 must have had some sort of a plan because he could tell she wasn't really trying to hurt him. Some of the conversations each character has with you involve them praising the other, or talking about how lucky they are to have them.

It's all very sweet, and I enjoyed it as a fan of that pairing. Especially given how much undeserved crap the pairing (mostly Krillin) takes among the brainless fuckwits that make up a big chunk of the DBZ fandom.

There are a few other game modes. Online play is of no interest to me. There's a training mode, but that seems to quickly become stringing together 8-10 distinct commands and I either couldn't get the timing right, or wasn't positioning my character properly. But I beat all the story modes, so I don't think that stuff is critical.

There's also an Arcade mode, which is the thing where your team fights a succession of several other trios, from 3 to 7 depending on which course you pick. Thankfully, it's not the type where your characters' health doesn't return after each round. One nice touch, your specific course will vary depending on how well your performance is graded. So if you win your first fight with an A or S grade, you'll fight one trio for your second match. B or C grades send you down a different path, and D or F still another. But if you get a D on the first fight, then an A on the second, you could still jump to a higher path. In that sense, there's at least some potential variety, even though you're probably trying to get the best scores all the time.

Like I said, the game looks very nice. The fighting's very smooth, though probably pushing the limits of what I can be any good at. The cut scenes are often funny or clever. I do prefer the more individualized story mode of Budokai 3, where the playable characters could each have their own story to a certain extent, and you could fly around the world in more of a free-roaming mode. But those were usually just alternate takes on preexisting stories (the Frieza Saga, the Cell Saga), while FighterZ is trying to build on those past stories to create a newer one. Making a unique story for all the playable characters would probably be a lot.

Kansas City Confidential (1952)

A guy gathers himself a small crew to rob an armored car. He's got everything mapped out perfectly, right down to the florist who always arrives at the same time as the armored car. Wait for the florist to drive off, pull up immediately in an identical van, ambush the guards, speed off. Hide the van in a big truck while leaving the state and then make the crew scatter until it's safe to split up the dough.

So at first glance, it seems like a heist movie, but the heist itself was done within 10 minutes. Then it seems like it'll be the rest of the crew that blow it. There's a degenerate gambler with bad nerves (Jack Elam), a would-be Lothario (Lee van Cleef, weird to see him in a bright-colored hat), and a silent guy prone to violence. They always wore masks around each other, so only the mastermind knows exactly who's involved, but it seems like their flaws could tear it apart.

But that's not what this is, either. Because the driver (John Payne) of the real florist van took the fall, at least long enough to get repeatedly roughed up by the cops while in custody. The movie doesn't actually show the cops beating a person we know is innocent - probably violates the Hays Code - but we see Payne having to be helped along back to his cell and basically collapsing on the cot.

Eventually they find the other van (though of course one meathead cop insists he could still be involved), but the damage is done. Payne lost his job, his picture is front and center in the papers as an ex-con (something related to gambling) linked to a $1.2 million heist.

He gets a line on Elam's character via the brother of a war buddy, coincidentally about the point when the mastermind's calling everyone together. Elam doesn't survive the trip through customs, so Payne tries to pass himself off as Elam. So it becomes cat-and-mouse, as van Cleef and the other guy think Payne may be the other guy, but think there's something funny about him. The mastermind knows Payne isn't, but none of the three ex-cons know who he is.

The movie even adds another twist as to the mastermind's true goal in the last quarter of the movie. It mostly works, better than the mastermind's last-second change of heart, which is probably the only thing that keeps Payne out of the electric chair.

What I Bought 4/18/2024

My dad's dog is getting better behaved. It certainly helps to not be constantly having to tell her to get off me. Though she still doesn't do great at sitting still when you try to pet her. Hard to pet her when she chases her hand around with her mouth.

Black Widow and Hawkeye #2, by Stephanie Phillips (writer), Paolo Villanelli (artist), Matta Iacono (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - What is it with people in the Marvel Universe getting a symbiote and letting it near fire? Did no one give them the "how to care for your alien slime friend" pamphlet?

Clint tells the Natasha to leave, she refuses. He insists he killed the foreign minister (who he was tailing on some covert job), both she and the symbiote know he's lying. The symbiote attacks him, Natasha reels it in. Hawkeye acts like he doesn't recognize a symbiote when he sees one, but also comments that it seems jealous he knew Natasha first. Well, Phillips has the "cocky and kinda dim" aspects of his character down.

Hawkeye gets hit with a poison dart by someone in an old helmet. The shooter escapes because Natasha makes the symbiote deal with the poison, which may or may not have worked, but offers a chance for a trip down memory lane. This flashback actually started last issue, when someone sent Snapdragon after Natasha not long after she defected, and Hawkeye got smacked around trying to protect her.

I don't know who the mastermind villain controlling (and killing as a precautionary measure) the shooter. Name is vaguely familiar, but I guess he's another ghost from the Black Widow's past. What a shocker.

Villanelli softened his lines a lot for this issue. Definitely compared to the Captain Marvel mini-series he drew last year, but even compared to the first issue, the faces of the characters look a lot softer, less sharply defined. Maybe Villanelli didn't ink himself as strongly, so Iacono's colors are overwhelming the lines? It gives things a bit of an unfinished, smudged look.

I could argue it works for all the murkiness in the plot, between Clint's insistence on his guilt and the awkwardness of their past history with the added mess of the symbiote. But if that were the case, I think the flashback's art should be more distinct, sharper defined as a time when things were clearer between Nat and Clint, which isn't the case.

Blow Away #1, by Zac Thompson (writer), Nicola Izzo (artist), Francesco Segala and Gloria Martinelli (colorists), DC Hopkins (letterer) - You're not supposed to go out on the ice. A very annoying woman at a park once berated me about that.

Brynne's on assignment in the Baffin Islands, trying to capture photographic proof of a pair of nesting endangered bird. 6 weeks in, she's got a lot of pictures of snow and a few of a hunter. Then the mountain climbers show up. We don't know why they're there, because what we see is always through Brynne's camera, and it's set up for long shots. When she does zoom in on the photos, they're blurry and there's no audio, so it's all conjecture on her part that "Blue" looks frightened at one point, or that they started fighting at the summit.

There's also some sort of messy business in Brynne's backstory, involving something called "Arson Media" and blood splatter. She also seems to have some self-worth issues that are hinging on her getting these photos of the endangered birds. How that's going to factor in going forward, I don't know. I also don't know if the person watching Brynne through a sniper scope at the end of the issue is the same hunter as early, or some new problem.

Izzo keeps us at a distance from everything, even Brynne. There are very few close-ups on her, and when there are, she's usually outside with her face covered. Inside her base camp, there are a lot of panels looking over her shoulder the shots the cameras got. If the focus is on her, Brynne is usually looking off to one side, and our view is from at least a few feet away. Nothing close, nothing that's being said directly. Everything's inference and conjecture, which probably contrasts with her trying to get this definitive proof the birds nesting. That has to be a sure thing or it won't be accepted.

Sunday Splash Page #319

 

"Rabbit's Footrace," in Longshot #1, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Arthur Adams (penciler), Whilce Portacio and Brent Anderson (inkers), Christie Scheele (colorist), Joe Rosen (letterer)

In 1985, Ann Nocenti and Art Adams brought Longshot into the Marvel Universe. A young man with a power that makes things work in his favor, hunted by strange monster-men. Longshot doesn't know anything about Earth. Doesn't know where he came from, how he got these powers, why he's being hunted.

Longshot lacking any idea who he is or what he's supposed to be doing allows Nocenti to have him drift into a variety of situations. He falls into a job as a stuntman for a reckless director, alongside a stuntwoman called Ricochet Rita. When that nearly kills him, Longshot tries to help a man frustrated with his life by stealing a lot of diamonds. Except actually having the wealth doesn't make the man happy, so he goes back to his family.

He runs afoul of both She-Hulk and Spider-Man, meets the kids that Nocenti used in her Daredevil run, has a mysterious "friend" he met early on, a talking, furry creature that keeps growing larger and more monstrous, turn against him. He meets someone with a power the opposite of his, creating bad luck for its wielder rather than good.

Then Mojo and Spiral show up.

Two things Nocenti introduces, that it feels like most writers subsequently ignored or forgot, is that one, his power only works when his motives are "pure". Trying to jiggle the odds to make himself some bank, or just to show off a little, won't work. The other is, if Longshot's getting unnaturally, unfeasibly lucky, isn't someone else getting equally unlucky? This, more than lack of knowledge of his past, or really even Mojo, is Longshot's challenge. How can he be sure that when he acts, it's for the "right" reasons? Is he fighting Fang to protect others, or because he's mad his friend turned on him? And if his luck being good, so that he's someplace else when Mojo arrives, ends with Rita being tortured and driven nearly comatose, then does he can have business using his power at all?

Mojo's later appearances typically present him as some parody of a TV or movie producer. Chasing whatever cheap concepts will provide quick ratings, as that conveys power in his world. Hence things like "X-babies." Nocenti's original version of Mojo is just as egotistical, and suffers from just as much if not more of an attention span deficit, but he's more delusional, and always cruel, whether unwittingly or not.

Mojo may order everyone to wear masks of his face, then panic two pages later that everyone is stealing his face. He claims the sun, then assumes Longshot is trying to steal it when he arrives on a hang-glider. His very presence brings death, draining the life away from anything around him, making him poison from the moment he arrives on Earth. Adams draws a lot of panels that are close-ups of Mojo's face and head, letting him dominate the field of view, while also showing the wild swings in emotion.

In contrast, Spiral, who hates Longshot and regards Mojo with equal parts contempt and dependence, is usually kept at a distance. Even when she's in the foreground on panels, her face and expressions are usually obscured. The focus is on her actions, the "dance" that allows them to bridge dimensions, or the flashing of her swords as she tries to kill Longshot for reasons he doesn't understand. On a rare occasion we do get a close-up of her face, Scheele colors the entire eye yellow, with just shading to define the retina and pupil, the same as Mojo and Quark, the modified ram with bad luck ability. Longshot's the exception, marking his origin as something separate and outside Mojo's control.

The mini-series ends with Longshot determined to fight Mojo in their home dimension and free all the slaves there. A battle he's seemingly repeated through endless cycles of success, failure, mind-wiping repeat for the last 40 years. Except Claremont almost immediately hauled Spiral and Longshot both into the main X-Books, with Longshot seemingly still none the wiser for what Spiral's beef was with him. Also, any progress he'd made in his naivete over the course of this mini-series seemed undone. Those mind wipes come fast I guess.

Fabian Nicieza's the one who decided Spiral was actually Rita from some point the future, captured and modified by Mojo, then sent back in time to serve his earlier self. Meaning her hatred towards Longshot is that he didn't save her. Doesn't really jibe with Longshot having no sense of his connection to Spiral here, even once he regains his memories, not to mention that seems like too much of a long-term plan for Mojo to undertake. He'd be too jealous of his past self benefiting from all his hard work.

Saturday Splash Page #121

 

"A Winter Murderland", in Step by Bloody Step #1, by Si Spurrier (writer), Matias Bergara (artist), Matheus Lopes (colorist)

A 4-issue mini-series from 2022 about an armored giant who guides a young girl on a circuit of the world. It's a silent mini-series, because while there are sporadic dialogue balloons, they're filled with pictographs, and there's no translation. Bergara's art is expressive and clear enough that the reader can grasp the notion of what's going on.

The silence also keeps the page free for Bergara's beautifully detailed landscapes. The variety sells just how far the duo are traveling. Sometimes we see a gradual transition, the snowy forest thinning into a vast plain. At others, they reach a cliff and things have simply changed. The plain overlooks a wide stretch of narrow pools and swamps, or they've reached the ocean.

With no dialogue or expository captions, the only sense of how long all this takes is via the changes we see in the girl's appearance. From a scrawny, awkward child to a sullen teenager, to a determined, clever young woman. The giant is silent and stern, always pushing her forward, but not unfeeling. It won't let her go back, not one step, but it will go back and pluck a flower for her.

But with no explanation for why any of this is happening, we see distance grow between the two. At the same time, other powers have become aware of the giant with incredible destructive power and the young girl with blood that promotes incredible plant growth it escorts. There is a war of some sort going on, the clean human-looking types spending at least some of their time in vast airship city-castles, while the green, goblin or orc creatures live on the ground below. The precise causes or motives are unclear, beyond the airship-dwellers are quite content to use others to destroy their enemies.

Lopes' colors are more subdued than what Bergara used for his work on Coda. Still rich and varied, but no searingly bright neon bursts of magic or force. While there is certainly something magic about the girl and the giant, this is otherwise not a world of that sort of thing. The people here aren't scrabbling for the last shreds of a once-commonplace power.

The threats the giant defends the girl from are often simply animals that are hungry and see easy prey, illustrated in a wide variety by Bergara. Were-creatures, flame spitting mollusks, giant bugs. Or it's the cold, the rain, the danger of crossing the ocean. The general/prince that attempts to use the girl may recognize there is power there, but his motives are more simple and base. If he didn't have the girl, he would just use guns and the lives of those he can command or coerce.

Random Back Issues #126 - Power Company #2

Hey, it's a rough economy out there. The superhero market is flooded with folks trying to either make enough to get out or make a big enough name to avoid dying in a big event.

The Power Company's first mission is to keep a group of high-tech mercs called the Strike Force from stealing a mysterious stone ring with a big pretty gem from a museum. The gem got hit by an energy blast and out popped a green guy with a staff, riding a dragon.

He calls himself the Imperial Dragoneer and asks what world that the "Dread Master" can add to his dominions. When no one has any clue what he's talking about, he decides they're thieves in the temple and it's time to get to killing.

The team is completely disorganized and getting their butts kicked until Skyrocket - who hadn't even accepted the offer to join - takes command and gets them sort of working together. At which point the mercs re-enter the fray, the brief moment of cohesion is over, and the Power Company get the humiliated.

At least the mercs didn't make off with the "stone doughnut," as their boss puts it. That's sort of a success! Except they stuck a tracker on the dragon, so they'll find it sooner or later, even if their employer - a Dr. Cyber - is kind of a dick. It seems like a time to cut your losses, but you stiff one mad scientist type and so you're blackballed. It's a rough job market for merc teams.

In the aftermath, Witchfire - a musician who uses real magic in her shows - is already looking into music videos and movie deals in case this falls through. Bork's worried he's going to lose his job because he stopped keeping the dragon in a choke hold and got smacked halfway across the city, and Manhunter vanished as soon as the fight ended. As for Skyrocket, she figures they ought to be more worried about the Dragoneer's claims his master would take over the world.

On the plus side, Striker Z's buddy, who used to work for S.T.A.R. Labs before turning to movie special effects, upgraded Skyrocket's flight and power harness. Her parents built it, but they're dead and she doesn't really know how to fix it.

Manhunter checks in. Turns out he didn't bail, he was just busy tracking the Dragoneer his own way: following a big dragon flying around in the daytime. He tracked it to Alcatraz, where the Dragoneer's got the ring set up on a pile of trash. I picture the dragon thinking like a Flinstones' appliance: 'Sigh, it's a living.' Again, rough economy.

The Dragoneer waves his wand and makes a magic sign and says what this world needs is - well, he says a lot of stuff about sin and darkness and a doubled moon, a piece of ice-blue shadow. Doesn't really lend itself to a parody of "Love Potion No. 9." The Power Company's hiding in a fog bank Witchfire conjured up, ready to attack, but Strike Force is on the ground, ready to swoop in once the heroes do all the hard work.

Bold of them to assume the heroes will actually succeed.

In other developments, a woman in a hotel sees Manhunter on TV and is very distressed by it, putting in a call to Japan. And a cop hassles a teen sleeping on a bench in a train station, but the teen's intrigued by a for-hire super-team. She'll end up being the last member of the team, whose introduction we covered 4 years ago.

{8th longbox, 80th comic. Power Company #2, by Kurt Busiek (writer), Tom Grummett (penciler), Christian Alamy (inker), Alex Sinclair (colorist), Comicraft (letterer)}

One-Shot Harry - Gary Phillips

Set in 1963, One-Shot Harry is about a black photojournalist trying to uncover the truth behind the death of a wartime friend of his.

At least, that's what the book is about some of the time. Phillips spends a lot of pages fleshing out Harry Ingram's life, the day-to-day realities of making a living taking photos of ugly deaths, of dealing with white cops who wouldn't hesitate to hit Harry with a nightstick even if he wasn't taking photographs. Additionally, there's a subplot involving a member of a local councilman's campaign that Harry starts dating. Anita's parents are pretty far to the left politically, and a diary with the names of several of their friends has gone missing.

So Harry's theoretically looking for that, on top of investigating his friend's death, trying to finagle work, dealing with the long-term scars of fighting in the Korean War, dealing with the difficulties of his side-gig as a process server, and questioning his career choices. Looming over all that is a visit to Los Angeles by Martin Luther King.

I'm not sure Phillips manages to keep all threads together. Or the plates spinning, depending on which metaphor your prefer. There's a long stretch of the book after he agrees to search for the diary for Anita where it isn't mentioned at all. And that subplot sort of sputters out at the end. But the mystery of his friend's death doesn't really lead to any real conclusion. Harry knows the death wasn't accidental, and he may have killed the two guys personally responsible, but they're just mooks. The mind behind it remains untouchable.

That part is by design, as Phillips often has Harry's internal monologue focused on just how far he can go, even defending himself, when the people trying to harm him are white. Harry isn't of a mind to go a suicide run for revenge, so there's only so far he can go in the society in which he lives. It might also be that Phillips has further stories starring Harry Ingram in mind, and there's further plot development in mind down the line.

There's a trick to adding history of a place without making it feel too much like an infodump, and Phillips mostly manages it. Having Harry as a photog and process server, where he both has to know his way around town, and know what sorts of neighborhoods he's going into ahead of time, helps. I don't know how historically accurate those parts of the book are, but Phillips writes in such a way that it feels like real history.

The only reason I question it at all is that late in the book, there's a bit about Ingram and a childhood friend having dreams of building their own submarine after reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Ingram says they would have named it the Fantastic, after the Fantastic Four. Except Ingram's a Korean War vet, so his childhood would have been the 1940s, not the 1960s. It's just a little detail, and I was reading an "advance uncopyedited edition" that turned up at a book sale, so maybe that was caught and fixed subsequently.

'There were two nicks from bullets grooved in its casing and Ingram rubbed one of them for luck, as he always did. He'd brought the camera home from the war. Fleeting was the notion of photographing normal people doing normal things. Where was the kick in that? Melancholy moments like the one he'd had last night he invariably washed away with booze.'

What I Bought 4/11/2024

I wasn't in the totality of the eclipse last week, but that's alright. The one several years ago swung right through town, so I didn't even have to go anywhere then.

Fantastic Four #18, by Ryan North (writer), Carlos Gomez (artist), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Once again, Sue's attempts to get Reed's attention fail.

It's Alicia as a private detective, trying to find the missing egghead Professor Richards on behalf of his main squeeze, Susan Storm. Ben (in his human appearance) works for/with Alicia. As either her eyes, or muscle, depending on the need.

The story follows the usual pattern of dead-end suspects. Johnny as the dissolute brother who is in debt to the local nightclub owner (role filled by the Mole Man.) Namor as an honest, but arrogant, cop that's hung up on Sue. Gomez doesn't shift his art style much beyond adjusting character's looks and fashion to match the motif. Maybe softens the lines around Sue's face, makes the eyes a little bigger to fit the "dangerous beauty" role. Johnny still has that terrible mustache, though.

Arbutov colors most of it in grey, with certain objects in color. Sue's dress, Namor's uniform, the lights and door of Mole Man's club. I don't really get the rhyme or reason of the choices of what to color. Why Ben's cup of coffee, or the seats in the diner where Alicia questions Johnny?

The whole thing ends up being the result of a Cosmic Cube falling into the hands of just about the last character you'd expect to get their hands on it. No, not Willie Lumpkin. No, not HERBIE. Just stop guessing! Reed turns out to be shielded from the effect (how is Sue's force field holding when she doesn't even know she can do such a thing?) to guide Alicia to it, and she undoes what was done. Though, in noir fashion, she does it knowing it'll erase her world, but that she's already lost a key part of it, so this is the least amount of losing she can end up with.

Ms. Marvel: Mutant Menace #2, by Iman Vellani and Sabir Pirzada (writers), Rob Di Salvo (artist), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Joe Carmagna (letterer) - The cover list Di Salvo as artist, but the interior still says Godlewski. Oh Marvel, when will you stop being a clown car of a company?

Lila Cheney grabbed Ms. Marvel because Lila stupidly made a contract with Mojo, and when she didn't accept him rewriting the terms of said contract, he abducted her most loyal fans. Kamala was the only X-Man she could find, so here we are.

The rest of the issue is Kamala posing as a new member of Lila's group to keep Mojo occupied while Lila looks for her groupies. This starts with Kamala doing some truly terrible mugging for Mojo's cameras. Then, when it turns out the youth demographic really likes "Chord", Mojo throws her into a million different things while Lila's still trying to figure out how to detach her fans from some gizmos they're hooked into which make them, 'real-life engagement bots.'

I have absolutely no idea what that means. That they're forced to watch stuff to falsely pump up viewership numbers? Either way, Lila gets them loose eventually, while defeating a Spiral clone in a fight (and I call bullshit on that), but Mojo drugs her with something that tamps down her powers. Not enough they can't escape, but enough she can just barely send Kamala back home, where Red Dagger is waiting.

OK, Kamala has a space adventure. Fine, space opera is an X-tradition, and so is dealing with Mojo. But what was the point of this issue? We're halfway through the mini-series, and there was no progress on any major plot points. Not the cause of Kamala's weird spasms, not what the ORCHIS doctor lady is up to. She's getting shipments from ape-scientists (as in apes who are scientists), but if I'm meant to know who those apes are, I don't. Not the fact Kamala's friends think Ms. Marvel's a phony because they were mindwiped with regards to Kamala being Ms. Marvel and having been resurrected.

Literally any of that - Bruno helping Kamala test her powers, difficult conversations with Nakia, Dr. Gaiha actually making an overt move - would have been a better use of 20 pages than this.

X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes (1963)

Ray Milland thinks he's developed a chemical that will allow human eyes to see beyond the visible light spectrum. I mean, it worked on a monkey (who went catatonic a few minutes later). What could be the risk?

Well, it works, but Dr. James Xavier sees something besides what's underneath that paper, or under his friend's labcoat, and it freaks him out. Enough the organization that was funding the work decides there are no beneficial uses and cuts off his funding. Oh well, he's still got his career in medicine. Until he overrules the surgeon on an operation for a kid and removes the tumor he saw on her heart. Which makes him guilty of malpractice, apparently. I guess, "I saw it with my x-ray eyes" is insufficient explanation.

At which point the movie gets odd. Xavier's friend assures him they'll find a way to reverse what the serum has done, and Xavier freaks out, shoving his friend through a window, where he falls to his death several stories below. Now he's on the run, playing "Mr. Mentallo" at a carnival, where he comes to the notion of the barker (played by Don Rickles, with a considerable amount of sleaze.) Rickles, after seeing Xavier diagnose a woman's injuries after a fall, convinces him to set up in a dingy apartment as a "healer", who people can visit for cheap diagnoses they can take to the doctor for treatment. No expensive tests required.

Then he decides he really needs money if he's to continue his work, so he runs off to Vegas to win a crapload of money at blackjack. He wins too much, they get suspicious, his special glasses get knocked off, everyone freaks out at his eyes (very cool contact lenses), there's a car chase, things end badly. Whatever he's been seeing that the rest of us can't - ghosts, god, the devil - is too much to deal with. Everything from his friend dying to the end takes about 50 minutes (it's only an 80 minute film.)

It seems like the effect might fade if he stopped using the eye drops, although he also says the effect is cumulative. But he also says that the ability seems to wax and wane, where he can sometimes barely see through a layer of skin, so who knows. He's at a party, and we're seeing people's bare legs, or their bare shoulders and enough of their chests to understand he's seeing under their clothes. He sees into their organs, and sometimes it's actual footage of organs and others it's like a screen of a drawing from a book. The movie uses this yellow-gold ring in the middle of the shot to signify when we're seeing through his eyes, although as things progress, he starts seeing almost photo-negative shots of wires and buildings, or blurred kaleidoscopes.

First Contact with a Closed Fist

Life on the Internet.

I actually bought volume 4 of Star Power, titled The Lonely War, a few years ago, but didn't get around to reviewing it. I asked Alex for Volumes 3 and 5 for Christmas a couple years ago, he bought 4 and 5, and here we are. Well, the copy he bought is in better condition than mine, anyway.

Volume 3 (which I ended up reading online just to see what I missed) revealed the origin of Danica's powers, and also introduced a robot sentry. His designation is "T-O.M", and he's thousands of years old, so Danica naturally named him "Old Tom". With his permission, of course, because she's considerate like that.

Tom factors into a theme of characters wondering if Danica is up to the challenges of wielding this power. There are certain precepts a Star-Powered Sentinel is meant to uphold, and if she doesn't meet the standards, Tom's supposed to deal with that. Terracciano teases that out over the course of five issues, through a series of conversations between Tom and Beena, an archaeologist who had been a background character trying to befriend Danica in the first 2 volumes, and joined the main cast in the third story. So she gets her own little arc of being friendly with, then terrified of, Tom, before finding her resolve to learn from him as a way to protect Danica.

Danica herself is elsewhere, as she's been transferred to a special ship the Millennium Federation uses to travel to star systems beyond their "jump-gate" network. Danica questions whether she's up for making first contact with new worlds, considering her previous experience was the fighting a homicidal Scintillian queen in volume 1. She's also questioned by a psychological operative, or "psi-cop" (that Terracciano and Graham introduced in volume 3) under the pretenses of friendship. The mission involves her being far away from the friends she's made through the first 3 stories.

That the world she reaches is embroiled in some old race war between two groups who no longer remember why they originally started fighting doesn't help. Graham draws the two groups as distinguished by hair color, ear shape, and the color of their eyes. Not all that different from Danica (something she immediately notes), probably for the purpose of emphasizing how ridiculous it seems to her that these two sides are determined to commit genocide against the other. 

All Danica's attempts to protect them accomplish is making her an enemy of both sides. The commander of the emissary ship tells her to simply observe and report back, but Danica can't just float there and watch people kill each other. Worse, Mitch is receiving some sort of upgrades, but it's rendering him unable to communicate with her. So she's really on her own (though Mitch does eventually return late in the proceedings, with a solid light form that's kind of Gumby with a messy pompadour.).

Terracciano has Danica come close to breaking down a couple of times, including fleeing her observation post for a time. Which comes back to Tom's mission to make certain she's a proper host for the power, as well as the psi-cop's concerns that she may not be ready for the less-civilized circumstances beyond the Federation's borders.

(There are also references to Danica's relationship with her parents, where she seems to get along well with her dad, but her mother is overbearing and Danica's feelings for her are complicated. It seems to be her father who instilled in her the idea she needs to help people in a crisis, while her mother's the one who makes her doubt she's ever doing anything well enough.)

We get several panels switching between her watching with increasingly horrified expressions and the two races fighting and dying. Graham doesn't make it gory, mostly bodies slumped and staring vacantly, maybe some (purple-colored) blood stains. But there tend to be several dead bodies in those panels, and the places they're fighting are usually damaged or crumbling, indicating this has been going for a while. Either nobody has time to repair their homes, or no one bothers.

Danica does eventually find a way to help at least some people. The story avoids having her stop the fighting or convince everyone to get along. Instead she finds locals who don't divide themselves, and are considered heretics by both sides. I expected Graham to draw some of the children as having mixed characteristics, but he doesn't. Maybe to emphasize they're more different than Danica thinks from just looking at the surface?

There are also some background plots involving Grex, the angry lady in the panel at the top, interviewing one of those three pilots that tried killing Danica in the first story, and have kept popping up since then. Burke turned on the other two in volume 3, but his backstory here makes it seem like he was a decent guy who made a rash decision, then compounded it with more poor decisions. Making him discuss working for the Void Angels forces Grex to deal with her own past doing the same. 

There is a lot going on in these five issues, most of it pretty heavy. So Terracciano lightens things up with brief cuts to Danica's friends back on the space station watching a show called "Psi-Cop", which includes an episode titled, "Showdown on the Bikini Planet." It's ridiculous, but having the story begin and end with that brings it around nicely to how much Danica relies on her friends and likes having them around, and how difficult it was being away from them.

Sunday Splash Page #318

 

"Bugs' Hunt" in Locust: The Ballad of Men #3, by Massimo Rosi (writer), Alex Nieto (artist), Mattia Gentili (letterer)

Locust was originally solicited as an 8-issue mini-series, but for one reason or the other, it was split into two 4-issue minis instead. Ballad of Men picks up where the previous mini-series left off, following Max through the past and the present.

In the past, Max escaped Ford with Stella in tow, and we see him try to care for this little girl as they gradually escape New York City and travel into the wilderness. They camp out and he makes her pancakes, and Stella generally enjoys the whole experience. It's telling about what her life in Ford's hands was like that camping out in the winter and having someone make pancakes for her counts as a spectacular experience. Except Ford has never stopped hunting them, and eventually catches up.

In the present, Max and a young prisoner/devotee of Ford's he rescued for information on how to get into Ford's base end up captured by a different group of heavily-armed, unhappy people. Ford killed some of theirs, and while Max had nothing to do with it, he did happen to take a laptop belonging to one of the victims, which makes him suspect. But Ford, having already devolved into religious lunacy by the time he recaptured Stella, is making his grand statement, and there's no time for any other concerns.

Nieto keeps the colors dim and murky again, but it serves the story. For three-plus issues, any time we see light, it's a bad thing. It's the headlights of Ford's trucks as he catches up with Max and Stella. It's New York City, on fire because of Max's lunacy, driving the locusts out to swarm the humans who fled to survive. It's torches in some creepy underground ritual altar in Ford's new base, where he thinks he's going to make things right with God by killing Stella.

Only in the last few pages does he switch to a soft blue, as Max and Stella sail towards Iceland. It's still a washed-out hue, because this is no great, cheerful triumph. They haven't truly escaped whatever's come over the world, but they each found someone to care for and to be cared for them. The ending's also a bit of a role reversal from Rosi's Red Leaves, in that the child changes rather than the adult, but still retains some part of themselves, at least for now.

Saturday Splash Page #120

 

"Call-Out Post," in Stormbreaker: The Saga of Beta Ray Bill #2, by Michael Avon Oeming and Dan Berman (writers), Andrea Di Vito (artist), Laura Villari (color artist), Chris Eliopoulos (letterer)

Released in 2005, around the time Thor was being shelved for a couple years via a Ragnarok, this mini-series sees Beta Ray Bill return to his duties as protector of the Korbinites, right when they need him the most. Galactus has arrived, though the Korbinites see him as Ashta, a great destroyer god of their religion (Di Vito draws this as sort of giant purple jellyfish or flagellate protozoan), and he's hungry. As usual.

Worse, Big G has himself a new herald, and Stardust might be the worst of the lot. Stardust carries a religious fervor in its devotion to Galactus, so much so it regards beings refusing to be eaten as an affront. Not just those who try to fight Galactus. Even the Korbinites who are trying to flee, Stardust is intent on eradicating.

While it makes sense Galactus finds such devotion desirable in his herald, after all the others were either too self-serving or too moral, it still annoys me. Galactus knows this is happening and does nothing to stop it, which puts a lie to all those, "Galactus only does what he must," and "Galactus takes no pleasure in it," soliloquies. Then tell your herald not to finish off the genocide you start, you purple jackass.

Between Stardust and a Korbinite religious order that dislikes how Bill talks up the Asgardians, Beta Ray can't save the planet. But he puts up enough of a fight - including one bit where he slams Stardust into an asteroid, then uses Stormbreaker to drive Stardust's own spear through its chest - protecting the survivors, transferred into the glowy orb up there, that Stardust ups the ante to the point of endangering the entire universe by releasing some nightmare creature. The creature, called Asteroth, presents itself as a lady with bat wings and a Witchblade-esque costume. Di Vito didn't bring much of an other-dimensional hellbeast energy to that design.

It feels as though the mini-series kind of goes off the rails there. One too many additional elements, as Bill and Stardust team-up to try and fix Stardust's mess, and mostly fail. Asteroth is ultimately defeated, but Bill and his ship Skuttlebutt end up in some white void, thanked by mysterious beings for their efforts, and at Bill's request, sent to Asgard. Which is destroyed. So much for re-settling the surviving Korbinites there. Oh, and Asteroth hid its essence in the orb and feasted on the souls within. So much for there being any Korbinites to re-settle.

The end result is, Bill is reborn on Earth, in the body of a homeless man that's just died. He's still got Stormbreaker, and can transform into his traditional horse-face form (albeit with a new costume that mostly involves a more elaborate helm and no cape.)

I feel like most of this was ignored. I'm not sure Beta Ray Bill appeared in anything until JMS brought Thor back in 2007. Kieron Gillen referenced Galactus eating the Korbinites' home in Beta Ray Bill: Godhunter, but Bill describes the bit about nearly dying on Asgard and seeing some mysterious cloaked figure take what was left of the meta-orb as possibly just a hallucination.

Sometimes a Symbol's What My Mind (Makes Up) Of It

I mentioned in Monday's post that I thought some of Ferry's page layouts were kind of odd, and possibly were done to represent symbols or something that might relate to tabletop games, since the cast were stuck in one.

Kelvin asked if I could post an example, since I went with the enjoyable sight of Clea walloping Mordo mid-villainous spiel, rather than actually showing the thing I spent a paragraph of the review discussing.

I don't want to post too much stuff from a comic that came out just last week. Don't need to get Peter David on my case like he was after scans daily back in the day. So we'll stick to the page I mentioned first, seen above. This is the one that made me wonder if Ferry was making deliberate reference to something, because it really feels like something I've seen before. Circle atop three narrow (I suppose the middle one isn't so narrow) panels, though the image I see in my mind may have wings on either side of the circle.

None of the others produced as strong a reaction as this one, but that could just be a product of my upbringing, assuming there's anything to any of this. Or I could just be seeing things.

Basil's War - Stephen Hunter

It's a spy thriller set in 1943 France. The British send Basil St. Florian on a mission to recover a copy of a document they believe a Soviet spy is using as a book code to conceal the identity of a mole in their operations. So Basil has to figure out to get to the copy of the document before either the Abwehr or the SS catch him.

Hunter spends 80% of the book switching between chapters focused on Basil's mission and chapters about his briefing in some underground war room typically used by Churchill. The lingering of the cigar smoke is referenced repeatedly. In both cases, it's a constant string of bait-and-switches. A Basil chapter may end with him pulling a gun on the pilot flying him across the Channel, or with the Abwehr having seemingly figured out exactly who they need to be looking for, only for those things to end up being something entirely different when we return.

Likewise, the chapters in the war room are always having Basil think his mission is to do one thing, only to be told it's actually going to be something else. No, we don't need you to find the Soviet spy in Cambridge, we know who it is. No, we don't want him eliminated, we want him to send information to Stalin. No, we don't want you to steal the document, etc. It seems meant to keep the tension up, repeatedly subverting expectations or pulling the rug from under the reader, but it gets tedious after a while.

Hunter keeps the tone of the book light. Probably too light, considering the mission's importance is described as needing to sacrifice thousands to save millions. The French Resistance is mocked, the Nazis are treated as primarily concerned with remaining in Not-Russia (as the book terms it), the occupation of France is depicted as generally no big deal to the French citizenry, ignoring that this is almost certainly not the case for anyone belonging to any of the groups the Nazis were trying to mass-murder.

Florian's written as sort of drily amused with the whole thing. Pithy comments and cool reserve at all times, the biggest issue that this is keeping him away from an affair with Vivien Leigh. One of the blurbs describes it as being a spy thriller in the vein of James Bond, but I feel like Bond flicks usually at least attempt to sell the audience on the importance of Bond succeeding in his mission. That Bond wants to succeed in between the drinking and sleeping around. It's hard to feel like Florian really gives a shit, even as far as whether he survives.

On the plus side, with the spacing and wide margins on each page, the book reads incredibly fast for 270 pages. I got through 235 pages just sitting in a hotel room waiting for Alex and his buddy to sleep off their hangovers. It's like something a college kid would try to pull to stretch the length of a term paper.

'He had gathered up his 'chute to reveal himself to be a rather shabby French businessman, stuffed all that kit into some adder bushes - he could not bury it, because a) he did not feel like it and b) he had no shovel but c) had he a shovel he still would not have felt like it.'

What I Bought 4/3/2024 - Part 2

I've been nosing around through stores with used PS4 games when I have the chance the last couple of months and man, how are used PS4 games still so friggin' expensive? One of the nice things about waiting until 2012 to buy that XBox 360 was that I could buy a crapload of games for less than $20, and in many cases less than $10. Not having much luck with that now.

Deadpool #1, by Cody Ziglar (writer), Roge Antonio (artist), Guru-eFX (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - How did he throw all those grenades when he's already holding two weapons?

Deadpool is doing his usual bit of taking money to kill people. Whatever relationship he had with the Valentine person from Alyssa Wong's run apparently fell apart when Valentine figured out Wade is a dumpster fire, but Wade still has the symbiote that was growing inside him when I dropped that book. Except now it's a giant, red dog that Antonio draws with big, soulful, pupiless eyes. Which Wade calls "Princess", and that calls him "Papa." Giving Deadpool a child that is especially vulnerable to fire seems like a bad idea, unless you're a fan of child endangerment.

His other daughter, Eleanor, is still around, in that she's living with the Prestons in Arizona. Wade is wisely avoiding Preston, who would probably robot-body punch his jaw clean off, but he does visit Ellie to give her a phone with only his number, and he promises to always answer if she calls. I'm sure he won't break that promise at an inconvenient moment!

There's no indication of where Wade or Princess are living, so I assume we're back to Daniel Way-era "living in abandoned warehouses with a single chair made of C-4." Most of this issue is Wade and Princess chasing some French-Canadian named Henry. Why they're killing him is not explained - beyond they're being paid for it - which probably says a lot about Wade's mental state. We could also note Antonio has given Deadpool back the little grey-black booties he wore back in the early, Liefeld-drawn days. That doesn't feel like a good sign.

He has a device on his wrist that makes portals, so they have to chase him across a city, including a bit where they chase him back-and-forth down a two-page spread, and Wade expresses regret for the artist who has to draw it. Antonio makes it seem pretty easy, as they dive through one portal into the next panel and reverse course, then repeat.

Somehow, Henry stumbles into some monk guy who kills him, then tries to kill Wade, then doesn't die when Wade stabs him through the chest and escapes. And he's very excited about the fact Wade didn't die. Though the way Ziglar is writing Wade, he would probably be happy if they figure out how to fix that issue. He's jumping out of planes from 15,000 feet, without a parachute, and thinking that hitting the ground at 120 mph will feel good. Although Antonio draws the landing as Wade just stabbing a guy with his swords like he just jumped a fence, so it doesn't really match the dialogue. Have him land on a guy and liquefy both their bodies!

The Sisters Brothers (2018)

Eli (John C. Reilly) and Charlie (Joaquin Phoenix) are brothers who perform various violent jobs for the "Commodore." In this case, they're given the job to kill a chemist (Riz Ahmed), but not until after they torture a particular formula out of him. At least they don't have to do the actual finding, as that's the job of a scout named Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal). Except that Morris decides he likes the notions Hermann believes in and switches sides.

So on the one side, you have Morris and Hermann, where the two men become friends, and Morris turns back to certain ideals he rejected in his youth. Hermann believes his formula will make finding gold much easier, and with that money, help others like him to establish a true, civilized society. In Dallas, Texas. Well, he's definitely an idealist, and Morris decides he likes the sound of that over helping the Commodore become a wealthier man. Ahmed plays Hermann as a quiet, genuinely earnest man. He can't conceal his emotions, be it excitement, indignation or fear, and maybe Morris, who pretends to simply be a guy on his way to a place, envies that.

On the other, you have Eli and Charlie, where Eli is becoming increasingly disenchanted with the work, and dreaming of a more respectable life. Running a store, marrying a schoolteacher who gifted him a shawl which he takes out and smells before going to sleep. Charlie's not blind to the shift in his brother, but doesn't share his interests. For him, "respectable" is that people know (and more critically, fear) the Sisters brothers.

There's also the aspect that their father was a troubled man, and Charlie believes the same trouble is in them. Which could be real, or could just be an excuse for Charlie's tendency to get fall-down drunk and start killing people. Either way, it's a reason to not ever think about leaving the life of violence. But he's Eli's little brother, and so Eli feels bound to try and watch his back, care for him.

Reilly and Phoenix play siblings well. There's a lot of squabbling and picking at sore spots - Charlie taunts Eli about the schoolteacher's "scarf", Eli gives Charlie grief about using big words instead of just speaking straightforward. When Eli's angry Charlie slapped him in public, Charlie offers him a free shot in return. So Eli punches him in the face, which Charlie objects afterwards wasn't equal.

And yet, when there's trouble, they have each other's backs. Charlie will pull himself from a drunken stupor where he can barely stand to help Eli drive off a half-dozen armed men out to kill them. Eli will go to comfort his brother when he hears him crying in the night (even if it turns out to be a prank.) It's a complicated mess where the two of them may not have much of anything in common besides their blood, but that's enough.

Director Jacques Audiard is fond of shots that are meant to be from the perspective of a character, usually Eli. They're shot a bit like looking through a peephole or a cardboard tube. Just a circle of vision, which slowly comes into focus, surrounded by black. In one case, where Eli awakens from a fever dream, the view is a diagonal slat that slowly widens as he wakes up. I thought at first they were almost marking chapters, that the story had reached a new point, but I'm not sure of that.

The dialogue reminds me a bit of True Grit, in that characters often speak in stilted or awkward ways. It's not nearly as obvious as True Grit, and the characters themselves will sometimes remark on it - Charlie complains about Morris leaving a note that says Hermann left in a "precipitate manner" - but it's still noticeable even without that.

With Hermann, I think it's a matter of education, and that his profession and long-held ideals mean he sees things differently. With Morris and especially Charlie, I think it's a matter of them each trying to be something they aren't. Or maybe for Morris, it's part of his upbringing he hasn't managed to bury. But Charlie has designs on being like the Commodore, so he's definitely aping that man. And the Commodore has an end that's rather fitting, and emphasizes the hollowness of the life Charlie pursued.