Random Back Issues #128 - Amazing Spider-Man #677

I do not believe for a second Peter Parker wears Axe Body Spray. That's a Lance Bannon move all the way. Peter uses plain Old Spice, or some industrial-strength perspiration fighting deodorant you buy in 5-gallon jugs.

Peter is depressed because his current girlfriend broke up with him. I have no idea who that would have been in 2012, so whatever. Peter webs up some loser trying to rob a joint and that is the only moment he'll manage even mild competency for the rest of the issue.

The Black Cat appears on the fire escape and Peter tries (pitifully) to flirt. You've already seen how that goes. Felicia reaches her hideout and after a shower, discovers a spider-tracer on her costume. Then the cops bust in. No, he didn't actually put a tracer on her, it's part of a larger plot by shadowy organizations.

Next morning, Peter is late for a meeting at Horizon Labs. Oh yeah, I dimly recall that being part of his status quo for a hot minute. But work is canceled, because there was a theft of some hologram-projecting phone, by the Black Cat. Caught on camera, no less. Setting aside how uncharacteristically sloppy that is, she was deflecting Peter's weak game at the same time, so he knows something's not right. Time for a jailbreak!

OK, never mind, she's got that handled. Time to consult a legal professional! Failing that, talk to Matt Murdock, in the middle of his cat-and-mouse game with Kirsten McDuffie about whether he's Daredevil or not.

They meet up later at the Chrysler Building, so Spidey can lose a game of suicide fall chicken (or whatever you want to call it) to Daredevil. I know, "Man Without Fear," but Spidey is "Guy with vastly superior speed, strength and reflexes that would enable him to pull off moves Murdock couldn't on the best day of his life." I know this is "pretending to not be depressed" Murdock, and Waid's writing that book so he's going to make his boy shine, but come on. How the fuck does Daredevil, the universe's litter box, always manage to make Spider-Man the Daffy Duck to his Bugs Bunny? Every damn time.

Spidey suggests they go question the scientist whose hologram phone was swiped, but they find him being held hostage by a bunch of armed guys. Or do they? DD's radar sense says no one is there, and Spidey forgot the hologram-projecting phone that got stolen makes really good holograms. I wouldn't mind Daredevil being the one to easily see through the deception there if not for the entire rest of the issue making Spider-Man look like a hapless dope.

Dropping into the tunnel the armed guys used, Spider-Man is sure something is still up, because his spider-sense wouldn't go off if there had been nothing dangerous. Are you sure? Maybe you've just got indigestion, or it's warning you forgot to pay the electric bill.

Once in the tunnel, it is (of course) Daredevil who senses the trap and tries to get them to backtrack. Too late, the entire tunnel collapses and as Spidey tries to dig his way out, he grabs a power line that's protective sheathing breaks so that he gets electrocuted.

Well, Black Cat's glaring down at him by that point, so that's less down to incompetence than angry ex with probability powers. It doesn't get any better in the second half (which takes place in Daredevil, because the shadowy organization that framed Felicia is trying to strongarm her into stealing something from Matt.)

{1st longbox, 133rd comic. Amazing Spider-Man #677, by Mark Waid (writer), Emma Rios (artist), Javier Rodriguez (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)}

PrairyErth - William Least Heat-Moon

This is about a single county in Kansas. It's about more than that, really - the prairies as a whole, what's happened to them since white folk got there, what's happened to the people who were there first, the nature of history and time, the ecology and the history, the psychology - but it's all filtered through this largely agricultural county in the Flint Hills, where the trees first start to fall away and there's nothing between you and the sky above.

Heat-Moon breaks the book up into sections, each broadly focused on the 12 primary quadrangles of the National Survey which comprise Chase County. There's a map of the quadrangle at the start of each section, and each chapter has what looks like a tic-tac-toe board with an extra column next to it, a dot in the box representing where he's at. 

He usually starts with a short chapter of quotes from various sources which outline what's going to be discussed with that quadrangle. That may be the quality of the grasses, the reactions of white American settlers upon reaching the Great Plains, quotations of Sam Wood, who was a notable abolitionist (though he still wanted black people and Indigenous Americans living in separate places), or even quotes from Tristram Shandy, which was an unwelcome reminder of my miserable experience reading that book.

For there, he shifts to a general physical description of the quadrangle: notable natural features or towns (more often the remains of towns since abandoned.) Usually a chapter focused on a current resident - a woman running a cattle ranch, the man who worked in a since-defunct limestone quarry whose rock went to the state capitol, the last holdout of a nearly-dead town - and then perhaps a chapter on a past resident. A woman who left a journal of her first year on the plains, composed mostly of the day-to-day of the life, or the will of a preacher who moved his family there and died shortly after, as a sign of what people considered essential equipment.

He might spend one chapter in 3 successive sections on a 19th Century murder trial revolving around a prominent rancher, which left only unanswered questions. Like why it's so easy to get away with murder in Chase County.) Or he might spend a chapter on the prairie chicken, or wood rats, or harriers.

So he moves from north to south and east to west, though a chapter may sometimes take us into an adjoining quadrangle, or even outside the county entirely, such as the Wonsevu section, which focuses heavily on the Kansa (bastardized by the white settlers to "Kaw") who were forced onto increasingly smaller reservations within Chase County and eventually sent off to Oklahoma.

But he's also moving up and down through time, looking at the past and the present, speaking with people looking at the future of the county - agriculturalists and high school students alike. He makes a point that the limestone the county sets on is the remains of an ancient sea. Rock set down in thin layers over long spans of time, eventually covered by soil similarly laid down (or stripped away) by wind and water over time. People live, and die, and more people live on top of where those past people did, and they die, and the cycle repeats.

And things are forgotten or ignored. He finds a grave in an out-of-the-way cemetery, all by itself. Whatever inscription it had, has faded over time. What little he can discern by a rubbing or changing the light leads only to dead ends. There's nothing in the newspaper archives, county historical society, or court records to tell him definitively. If any of the ~3,000 current residents know, he didn't find them. That bit of history is more buried than the limestone, which people know is there, but not so much as many of the Kansa traditions (to say nothing of those who lived in those plains even further back), who are in some cases barely more than suggestions or guesses.

So it's a meandering book, the approach matching his tendency to pull of on the side of a gravel road and just start walking in a direction. Sometimes the approaches work - the chapter where he tries to prove even an allegedly "pointless" town can have something going by doing covert observation from the back of his van for 12 hours - and sometimes it feels like he's just getting us lost in the weeds. He lets the residents, living and dead, speak for themselves, which can work better or worse depending on how free a hand he gives them. One chapter is basically a farmer just talking for 7 or 8 pages straight, just the transcript of it. It gives you a deep dive into one person's perspective, but it almost feels too narrow, too limited of a perspective. Prairies let you see for miles in all directions; that was like peering through a fixed toilet paper tube.

'Yet the fact remains: limestone is a rock not unlike bone; the fact remains: the chemical nature of the old seawater produced a stony land that produces good grasses that produce good, hoofed protein digestible to man. Flint Hills beef is a 250-million-year-old gift, yet the sense of history here goes back only to 1850 or sometimes a little further to the time of lithic weapons, and then it ceases.'

Heating Up in Late Summer

Hey, gimme one of those really BIG months, full of books I'm excited to buy!

Internet: *dumps August solicits on the bar* That big enough for ya, Yank?

*skims through the solicits* Yeah, that's pretty big. I guess.

What's coming out that's new? DC's continuing the descent of Amanda Waller with a level of super-villainy that no doubt makes Lex Luthor envious. Yeah, I'll pass on that. Marvel, besides the continuing flood of new X-books - how many charts will Jonathan Hickman make Greg Capullo draw in their Wolverine mini-series - and letting Liefeld write and draw Deadpool Team-Up, is starting up Venom War. Will I never be free of symbiotes?!

One version of Marvel's solicits listed Werewolf By Night: Red Band, which might be some sort of one-shot. I enjoyed that Werewolf by Night book I bought last year, although this one is apparently going to be polybagged, which has got my Shitty 90s sense blaring, so who knows.

Boom! has the first issue of Red Before Black, by Stephanie Phillips and Goran Sudzuka. I'm not sure I'm the audience for a 'crime thriller reminiscent of 2000s-era Vertigo', and Phillips hasn't exactly knocked my socks off, but it probably merits a first issue trial. Magma Comix has The Pedestrian, by Joey Esposito and Sean Von Gorman, about a stranger who "speed walks" into a city and quietly changes the lives of the people living there. You know, that could describe the shopkeeper in Needful Things, but I don't think that's what they're going for. Not the speed walking part, the quietly changing their lives part. He acted quietly, even if the results often involved guns or explosives.

Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows are working together on Babs, a 6-issue sword and sorcery mini-series about a barbarian thief with a talking sword, published by Ahoy Comics. I dunno, it's been awhile since I bought anything new by Ennis - based on the tags, it was the first issue of All-Star Section Eight - but this also doesn't appear to involve superheroes, so maybe it's safe from the impulses the capes bring out in him. Because I don't expect "restraint" is a word to associate with this book.

I've been wondering what would happen with some of the books that were solicited through Scout Comics, what with the bad press and apparent chaos of unpaid creators. For at least one book, the answer is, "get published by Dark Harbor," as Loop #1, which was supposed to be released last month, pops up there. Looks like half of the six books Dark Harbor's releasing in August were originally solicited by Scout. Hopefully this company doesn't go under between now and then.

What's ending? Morning Star and Blow Away will both be on their 5th and final issues, if I'm still buying them by then.

And all the rest? Well, Blood Hunt is over, so I can welcome Fantastic Four (double-shipping in August) and Vengeance of the Moon Knight back into the mix. Deadpool's in deep trouble and relying on his daughters to save him. I thought for a second the text meant Warda, the kid Deadpool was going to have with Shiklah at some point according to Duggan's post-Secret Wars run, before I realized they mean the giant symbiote dog.

Scout Comics re-solicited the third issue of Rogues. I notice they also cut out all those imprint lines they were starting up, back to consolidating everything they publish under one heading. Which is probably a smart plan.

Viz Media has the 15th volume of Zom 100. I actually bought the 4th volume earlier this month, so maybe I'll get there, eventually. Along the lines of series I'm way behind on, I also bought the first volume of Yakuza Fiance this month, so the solicitation of the 8th volume from Seven Seas is of interest to me (although it's description of Yoshino as having 'resting bitch face' seems highly inaccurate, not to mention rude.)

Best case scenario, that's 12 comics, more than June and July combined. Call it progress.

Any Gun Can Play (1967)

A gang steals $300,000 in gold from a train. One of the gang tries to steal it for himself, hiding it in a location only a medallion he wears will reveal. He gets killed by the bandit leader, the leader then gets caught by the Army.

At this point, the movie's intent to ape The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly becomes even more obvious than it already was in the opening scene, when the bounty hunter called "The Stranger" (that is how he introduces himself when asked) kills three guys with bounties, two of whom are obviously done up to look a lot like Angel Eyes and Blondie. The third guy doesn't look a thing like Tuco, foreshadowing how half-assed this piece of garbage is.

The movie starts an almost 3-card monty shuffling of the pieces. The bandit makes a deal with The Stranger and they split the medallion. But the bandit loses his half in his escape and so the Stranger throws in with the guy from the bank that got it. Then the bandit gets The Stranger's half away from him, but The Stranger steals the book of 18th Century titles from the records office while the banker and the bandit form an alliance. Around and around and around.

There's also an agent of the insurance company whose money was stolen. His role seems to be, after some conversation is finished, the camera pans over to reveal he was listening around the corner (or behind a curtain). Then he arches an eyebrow at us.

Rather than gunfights with long builds that are resolved in quick, sharp sequence, we get extended (and extremely boring) fistfights. The one in the bathhouse is interminable, as the only use of the setting is guys getting punched so they fall and break the cheap tubs. The goons are not any sort of credible threat, but they can all take more punches than Rocky Balboa so it takes forever to conclude, just to reveal, surprise! another double-cross and changing of allegiances.

Part of me thinks it was meant as a parody or spoof, especially given the climactic faceoff between all 3 of them and how it plays out. Except it doesn't fully commit to the bit, like say, Blazing Saddles or Airplane! It wants to mess with audience expectation and maybe laugh about it, but only sometimes. The rest of the time, we seem expected to take it seriously. Well, the best thing to do with shit is bury it, so that's what I recommend here.

Forces Weak and Strong at Work

Good try, very comforting.

Volume 1 of The Terrifics, titled Meet the Terrifics, is initially a get the team together arc. Lemire manages that by having Mr. Terrific's company bought up by Simon Stagg while Terrific was off doing something involving other dimensions. Stagg's presence means Metamorpho's there, as well as that Stagg will be messing with some science he doesn't understand. Namely, a door to the "Dark Multiverse".

Plastic Man was involved in the multi-dimension stuff, so Terrific brings him along. Except Plas has been in some sort of comatose state for 5 years, until the otherwordly energies wake him up. Lemire's going for a more volatile version of the Fantastic Four, and having Terrific (and Batman, apparently) basically keep Plas around for all that time, making no attempt to find something else that might awaken him, or locate anyone who might care about Plastic Man, is certainly Reed Richards at his worst.

A signal picked up through the doorway takes those 3 into the Dark Multiverse, where they find Phantom Girl (or a Phantom Girl, at least) stranded on a giant corpse, along with the machine sending the signal. She's able to bum a ride back to the right dimension, but understandably wants to go home. As does Plas, and Terrific just wants to study these readings and figure out who "Tom Strong" is. Metamorpho's arguing with his girlfriend Sapphire about what a crumb her dad is.

So Lemire concocts the idea that dark multiverse energy has bonded them, so they can't be more than a mile apart. Then he throws together a few other threats to basically force them to actually do stuff, since otherwise each of the four seem content to sulk otherwise. The end of the trade reveals a mysterious figure in a metal mask, who promises he'll find and kill Tom Strong first, nyah nyah. It feels like the pacing got wonky, because the end of issue 6 starts having multiple full-page splashes, one after the other. The last 11 pages have 23 panels total, so I don't know if Lemire intended more struggle for the cast before they triumphed, or Dr. Dread's monologue was supposed to last longer, but something definitely feels off.

The book has 3 pencilers in 6 issues. Ivan Reis is gone by the end of issue 2, replaced by Joe Bennett for the fight with the War Wheel in issue 3. Then Evan Shaner handles issues 4 and 5 before Bennett returns for issue 6, which is the second part of a story about an entire town being slowly turned into Metamorphos.

Bennett's art can at least lean in the same general direction of Reis', though Bennett's characters are bulkier and drawn with a much busier line. A lot of hatching and trying for extra texture, especially on Plastic Man and Metamorpho. Reis' Plastic Man is very smooth and almost artificially clean, while Bennett tends to draw him with sharper angles and joints, almost like his version is trying to mimic having knuckles or actual goggles on his face, rather than the goggles being part of him, which I assume is what's going on.

Shaner's work doesn't look a bit like either of the others, keeping his characters much cleaner and simpler in design and look. None of the artists seem to do a lot with Metamorpho's ability to change shape, but I guess with Plastic Man (who basically never holds one form or set of proportions for more than a panel) it feels redundant. Nathan Fairbairn colors Shaner's issues with brighter, more sharply defined tones than Marcelo Maiolo does for Reis and Bennett. Maiolo may be going for something closer to realistic coloring and shading. They both seem to work for the artist they're paired with.

Lemire writes Metamorpho as gruff and sarcastic, bickering constantly with Plastic Man, who is basically never serious. Mr. Terrific just seems exhausted by everyone else's presence, and whenever he's not barking orders, it feels like he's talking out loud to himself more than any of the others. Phantom Girl is alternately petulant and impatient, frustrated that when she tries to turn solid, she disintegrates whatever she touches. She's the youngest, so you see the guys each trying to help in their own way. Plas tries to keep her spirits up, Terrific gets a journal she can use without destroying it so she can interact with something.

It does feel like a book that's struggling to hold itself together, and not just because of the shifting art teams. Dread has to reveal himself to goad Terrific into pursuing him, by presenting Tom Strong as an answer to Terrific's questions. Lemire's version of Holt seems mostly interested in Tom Strong because he doesn't know who he is or how he encountered the giant creature floating in the void. He just wants to pull apart a mystery, but there isn't a sense of why the others would care, except they seem to figure Terrific is the best chance to break this bond between them. So they could just refuse to go until he fixes it. He can't go more than a mile without them, and he doesn't seem to really want them around anyway, so why not focus on that first? Prioritize!

Sunday Splash Page #324

 

"Targeted Advertising," in Mail Order Ninja vol. 1, by Josh Elder (writer) and Erich Owen (artist)

Timmy McAllister's a 5th grader with typical 5th grade problems: Annoying, brown-nosing little sister. Bullies that steal his Pokemon cards. Snobby rich girl that dominates the school.

Then he enters a sweepstakes and wins kickass ninja Yoshida Jiro, inspiration for Timmy's favorite manga, and now he's on top of the heap. He has the services of an expert spy to get dirt on his sister. An incredible fighter to deal with bullies. A status symbol to give his popularity a nitro-boost up the ass so he can overthrow the rich girl's stranglehold. All for the low, low price of a grown man's indentured servitude.

OK, the actual manner in which Jiro agreed to this sweepstakes arrangement is never disclosed. We know he lost his voice due to a poison blade used by his arch-rival ninja, Nobunaga (who naturally enters the fray at the behest of the rich girl when she moves to regain control of the town) but other than Jiro's an excellent dancer, that's about it.

The first volume is Timmy's ascension on Jiro's coattails. The second volume is Timmy learning to stand up for himself, as he has to rally the other kids to free Jiro and the town from the rich girl, who used her dad's money to smuggle powerful and ancient mystical artifacts out of China for Show and Tell.

Owen's art has obvious manga influences, but still its own distinct style. He keeps the character designs simple and exaggerates for broad comic effect to match the mostly broad humor of Elder's story. The rich girl arrives at school almost on a parade float, and when her personal photographer temporarily blinds her with the flash, her coterie of yes-girls batter him in your typical cartoon smoke cloud of fists and anguished faces. That sort of thing.

I think I bought both volumes of this on the recommendation of Dave's Long Box. I know Ken at the comic store looked at me funny when I did. In his defense, I hadn't shown any interest in manga or things aping the style up to that point. Maybe he thought I'd hit my head.

Saturday Splash Page #126

 

"Me and My Mecha-Dad", in Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. #0, by Geoff Johns and James Robinson (writers), Lee Moder and Chris Weston (pencilers), Dan Davis and John Stokes (inkers), Chris Chuckry (separator), Tom McCraw and Carla Feeny (colorists), Bill Oakley (letterer)

Unwilling to leave any potential heroic legacy unplumbed, Geoff (spelled it as "Geoof" on the first attempt again) Johns created a successor to the Star-Spangled Kid in the form of the step-daughter of the original Star-Spangled Kid's sidekick. Who was a grown man who dressed like a barber pole when he was that sidekick in the '40s, then got lost in time, which explains why he's not a geezer in the '90s.

Johns uses the "new kid in town" approach of Courtney trying to make friends, crushing on a boy, fending off the local queen bee (who turns out to have been trained from birth as an assassin by her father who is also a dragon?) and trying to maintain a secret identity from her mom. There's also the antagonistic relationship with her stepdad, and Courtney leverages the fact he hasn't told her mother about his vigilante past (or his vigilante present) as blackmail to get to keep the cosmic converter belt. 

Eventually Courtney's mother takes a job at the school, but the book ended too quickly for anything much to come of that, or of Courtney's mother being in the dark about all of this. There's also a subplot about Pat's son from his first marriage, booted from military school, showing up and demanding the converter belt as his birthright. Again, the book ends too soon to play that tension out for long, either.

There's some monster-of-the-week stuff revolving around the school. The mysterious cult the queen bee character is part of that provides a steady stream of cannon fodder for Courtney to skirmish with over her stepdad's objections, aliens looking to take over Earthling bodies, disgruntled teachers with superpowers. Given the time the book was released, it feels influenced by Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it's also not an uncommon hook for a book focused on a teen hero, so maybe just coincidence.

Lee Moder is the artist for most of the series, and he avoids making Courtney look too perfect. A bit gawky, long limbs like not everything is growing at the same rate. For all that Courtney tries to play being cool, she's drawn as being open with her emotions. I mean emotions besides sarcasm and disdain. She wears huge smiles when she triumphs, she glares when someone she cares about gets hurt. She's no hardened, experienced hero, the whole thing is still alternately fascinating and terrifying, and it shows.

The book ended after 15 issues, but by that point, JSA had been revived, and Courtney became a steadfast member of the team, gradually growing into the role. And she got another toy to play with, courtesy of Jack Knight, but we'll get to him in a few weeks.

What I Bought 5/22/2024

I finally saw one of those Cybertrucks in the wild a couple weekends ago. I only got a quick glimpse because we were going opposite directions on a divided highway, but I had to do a double-take to be sure of what I was seeing. 

Then I burst out laughing. It's just so bizarre, and ugly, it's hard to believe anyone would want to drive one, let alone pay 100 grand for the privilege.

Black Widow and Hawkeye #3, by Stephanie Phillips (writer), Paolo Villanelli (artist), Mattia Iacono (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - Ghost of Hawkeye Past up there wondering, "What the hell happened to my fashion sense?"

In the present day, Hawkeye's not dying of poison, because the symbiote saved him. But it's presence is lingering, amplifying Hawkeye's inferiority complex. Probably in an attempt to get him killed and out of Natasha's life, symbiotes being greedy tar monsters. So Hawkeye tries to set up a meeting with Damon Dran - I've been flipping through my issues of Marvel Fanfare in preparation for that entry in Sunday Splash Page, so at least I know where Phillips got this dope and Snapdragon from - to bargain himself to save Natasha. Except, of course, Dran doesn't want Clint, so he's just turned himself into effective bait.

This mini-series, the present day portions at least, are not exactly doing Hawkeye any favors. It's him being mostly inept and incompetent so the Widow can keep saving him. Yes, the flashback sequences are about Clint storming the Russian Embassy to rescue the Black Widow, but even there, we see Natasha taking advantage of the confusion to free herself. Present Day Clint Barton is a hapless dope with apparently no peripheral awareness.

At least in the flashback we get to see him get Iron Man with an exploding arrow in the flashback sequence. That's after Stark calls Hawkeye "kid", and says it's better they let the Russians have Natasha, even though he agrees they'll kill her. Iron Man: Always ready to let someone else get it in the neck!

But seriously, there's one issue to go, and we haven't received an answer for how or why Hawkeye committed the murder. Or, in the likely event he's innocent - and sure I hope he is, I'm so fucking tired of stories about Hawkeye killing, and especially when it's somehow only a problem when he does it, while the X-Men are killing people willy-nilly like Garth Ennis is writing their book - how everybody got fooled. Or, how are he and Damon in contact in the first place?

Phillips has 20 pages left to work with, and presumably we also need some sort of conclusion to the flashback, but Phillips is not giving me a lot of confidence she can pull one of those off satisfactorily, let alone both.

What I Bought 5/17/2024

They tore up one of the baseball fields a mile or so down the road from my apartment. I thought (hoped) they were putting in some basketball courts. There's not really a good outdoor court anywhere close to my place. But I think it's for pickleball. Boooooooo. There's a couple of tennis courts like 200 yards away that hardly ever get used. Just tell them to play pickleball on those.

Ms. Marvel: Mutant Menace #3, by Iman Vellani and Sabir Pirzada (writer), Scott Godlewski (artist), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Good thing about a Zombie Cyclops, nobody gives you any grief when you blow its head off with a shotgun.

Back in Jersey City, Kamala finds the Red Dagger waiting for her. He's rather confused that she's alive, since he escaped Emma Frost's non-consensual mind wipe and remembers Kamala died. It seems like Kamala maybe doesn't remember his name, something missed in the resurrection protocol, but there's still a spark between the two.

We are spared further awkward conversations and smoldering gazes by the arrival of Zombie Cyclops! Never thought I'd be grateful such a thing exists, but here we are. Zombie Cyclops is easily dispatched, Red Dagger stabbing it with 3 daggers held between his fingers (complete with "SNIKT" sound effect), which allows for more teenagers talking about whether to have a relationship or not. The part where Zombie Cyclops is still blithely firing optic blasts into the sky behind them as his body decays is kind of funny.

More Zombie X-Men arrive! More fighting! A two-page splash of the fight taking place above an alley where Kamala keeps trying to convince Red Dagger her friends are normally very cool and not crazy zombies! The bit where Red Dagger throws one of his weapons on the end of a chain in the upper left corner, and it bounces around until it pierces Zombie Nightcrawler in the lower left (what had to be several seconds and multiple teleports later) doesn't really make sense if I apply any logic to it, but here we are.

Then the Inhumans show up, hopefully to bring some sort of resolution to Kamala's powers glitching out, which is happening with greater frequency. I also assume the ex-ORCHIS doctor lady, who is responsible for the Zombie X-Men, will be sending out Kamala's old body in her original costume to. . .I actually don't know what that accomplishes. It's very obviously going to be an inarticulate rotting corpse, but I guess she figures it'll hold together long enough to make Kamala "kill" herself in front of the city she loves? Don't see what the doctor - whose name I don't bother to remember because Vallani and Pirzada haven't given me a reason to care about her - gets out of that.

7 Chinese Brothers (2015)

Jason Schwartzman plays a guy just drifting through life. He lives in a crappy house with his dog (played, I believe, by Schwatrzman's actual dog, Arrow.) His nights are filled with drinking at home. Fired from his job as a waiter at a crappy Mexican restaurant for stealing, he applies at an oil change place because he thinks the manager is cute, though he's incapable of expressing that other than by playing the clown. His visits to his grandmother (Olympia Dukakis) in the senior living community are as much to buy pills from his friend who works there.

I kept waiting for something to really start to happen. Things happen, but they don't really seem to move to any sort of conclusion or climax. Schwartzman keys the car of his boss at the restaurant after getting fired, and the boss and some annoying, waiter, chef, something, break into Schwartzman's house and pee all over his bathroom, only to flee when Schwartzman comes home. Then the annoying guy comes back alone later, and when Schwartzman admits he keyed the car, punches him. Why come back and do that later, after you wrote unflattering comments on his photos his dog?

Why is there a scene of Schwartzman throwing his cap at a passing car, only for the guy to get out and argue with him about it and complain this has ruined his friend group's plans to celebrate his graduating from vet school?

I think it's because Schwartzman is waiting for something to solve all his problems. The something being the death of his grandmother, who he assumes will leave her money to him, her only surviving relative. The jobs are just his way of killing time until his ceases to need to worry about money and can, well that's the problem. It's unclear what, if anything, he wants to do. Which is related to the lack of any progress towards a climax, I have no idea what his character wants. To sit around and drink, I guess. Study whatever foreign language catches his fancy. Wait for the perfect woman to fall into his lap.

Everyone else in the movie is actively trying to do something, even if it's just their job, looking after kids, trying to form a connection when the opportunity presents itself. Living life, basically.

Schwartzman plays his character with the mixture of creepy and pathetic I associate with most of the characters I've seen him play. Due to my low tolerance or interest in cringe stuff, there were a few scenes of him making a fool of himself I just didn't want to watch.

Loaded Bases

That girl's about 5 seconds away from learning Giantopia definitely isn't inside her locker.

Gemma Hopper, the lead character in Brie Spangler's Fox Point's Own Gemma Hopper, is a 13-year old who feels like she's being crushed by the weight of too many things, unnoticed by anyone. Her mother is absent, the specifics only hinted at, and her dad seems to always be working. Which leaves care of her twin younger brothers, and the house in general, entirely to Gemma.

You might think her older brother Teddy could help, but he's busy being the hotshot baseball star, everyone's darling. Gemma's reduced to being the pitching machine for his hitting exhibitions. She's tall for her age, and awkward about it. Spangler draws Gemma looking twice the height of her best friend Bailey, and at least as tall as her brother or dad. School is an endless string of things, trying to get in with the popular crowd is a struggle, it's just a lot.

Some things Spangler shows us, like a three-page sequence of laundry day. A panel of Gemma moving through the rooms, gathering clothes, lugging them to the laundromat, washing, folding, and coming home to her little brothers still scarfing chips in front of the TV like they were when they left. 

Sometimes, Spangler leaves it to the imagination. When Gemma's letting her brother show off, she does it by throwing at least a half-dozen different pitches to the exact locations he tells her to. It's not commented on, since Teddy is swatting them all over the park, but that's pretty impressive for a 13-year, both in the number of pitches and the command of them she must have. So when she gets fed up playing the comic sidekick for Teddy's ego boost, it's sort of a natural outcome of what we've already seen.

Spangler avoids making the story just an airing of grievances of Gemma, by having her make her own missteps. Gemma has a few heart-to-hearts with Teddy that help her see his perspective on his own fame, even if Teddy's attempts to help feel at least a little self-serving. When taking Bailey's advice on a school project goes awry, Gemma throws Bailey under the bus in a moment of frustration. She tries to just ignore everyone for a day or two (Spangler illustrates this in a simplified style of Gemma navigating some dotted line trail like one of those Family Circus cartoon strips where the kid takes the ludicrously roundabout course to cross the street), and that gets her chewed out by Bailey when the girl finally corners her. Gemma's so wrapped up in what's weighing her down and thinking she's on her own, she missed the people who were actually trying to help her.

I'm not sure how I feel about the ending. Gemma gets her moment to shine and be seen, which is good. More importantly, while nervous, she doesn't run from it. Spangler has Gemma trying to pitch while being mocked by a spectral version of herself (with wavier hair), which Spangler outlines in red, rather than the blue that dominates the book otherwise.

But it still feels as though her father only notices the amount of stuff he just sort of dumped on her to deal with because he's been told she's really good at baseball, which he's crazy about*. In much the same way that baseball was just something fun he did with Gemma and Teddy, until he saw Teddy's talent. Then it was serious business for Teddy, and Gemma was left behind to handle all the things Mr. Baseball was too busy for.

* The twins are named "Pedro" and "Carl", and I assume that's for Carl Yastrzemski, but my mind first went to Carl Everett, who played on the Red Sox with Pedro Martinez and all I could think was, "You named your kid after the guy who said he didn't believe in dinosaurs because he'd never seen one?"

Sunday Splash Page #323

 

"Makin' the Sausage," in Mage and the Endless Unknown, by SJ Miller

Released last year, this follows Mage, who is a young, well, mage, as he traverses the world, on the orders of a cloaked figure with a coyote skull for a head to face the destroyers of the old worlds.

Miller mostly sticks to one image per page, with occasional pages with 2-3 panels if he wants a slightly quicker reaction shot. There's not much dialogue either, just a couple of expository word balloons.

So it's mostly down to the art, and Miller tends towards a deceptively simple art style. It reminds me of a children's book. Maybe the one about the kid with the purple crayon, except Miller adds a lot of body horror to this story. I'd think the art style to "cute" to really work for that purpose, but Miller pulls it off. The mostly-silent pages, and the focus on Mage's expressions as it encounters these things, helps to sell it. 

It's not a peaceful world Mage stepped into, and he gets increasingly worn down and hurt as the story progresses. He's swallowed by some immense shadow thing, and its innards bite and corrupt his arm. So he blasts it off with the magic wand and grows an arm of vines in its stead. He meets either an anthropologist or a biologist - who Miller dubs "Fortune" - and they find more trouble. It's sad to see Mage go from cheerfully helping flowers bloom and greeting those he meets with smiles, to later keeping his guard up and trying to warn people away from his friend. The world has taken its toll in tangible and intangible ways.

It isn't all misery, thankfully. The infected arm becomes its own being (called "Double"), who helps Mage escape the shadow creature's insides. Fortune helps him repair his wand, and takes care of him after an especially brutal encounter that leaves him with a mangled leg and down an arm. Again. It's not clear how much good Mage actually accomplished, as Miller makes it clear this process has been going for a long time, and may go for a long time yet. But we at least see how his actions have made things better for those that follow, and maybe a community effort will speed things along.

Saturday Splash Page #125

 

"Aurora Borealis," in Station 16, by Hermann (writer/artist)

This isn't actually a full-page splash, as there were three other panels taking up the top quarter of the two pages, but it was the closest thing to it, and it's a cool image.

A Russian squad stationed in Novaya Zemlya receive a distress call from a weather station that has been abandoned for 50 years. Still, best to be sure. They helicopter in, and find an abandoned base. Then the aurora occurs, the helicopter vanishes, and the base is lit up and lively. Things go downhill in a hurry from there.

Hermann keeps the story focused on Grigory Grigorievich, the rookie on the squad. He's the one who hears the initial distress call, and when everything shifts, he's the one who finds a wounded man in a lab coat, who seems to recognize Grigory and accuses him of being a counter-revolutionary. Soon after, Grigory finds his sergeant, chained shirtless to a lightpost, and an unearthly blue that I think is meant for effect.

Oh, and he's missing his eyes. Lot of people missing eyes in this story.

Grigory is written as gradually going from uneasy to panicked. There's no planning or forethought, he just reacts as threats appear or recede. Shoot until the bullets are gone, run until he can't or there's nothing to run from. Though he does know the phrase, "spatiotemporal rift," so that's something.

Hermann uses a lot of small panels focused on Grigory's face, keeping him hemmed in. That's when he isn't using broad, short panels to remind us of the isolation. Whatever time he's in, Grigory is a long way from any help. The skips through time are erratic and unpredictable in duration and the amount of time lost. It doesn't always make sense - Grigory drops a scalpel under an operating table long after the base is abandoned, then finds it there when he is shunted back into the past a few pages later - but that adds to the disorientation for the reader and Grigory.

Random Back Issues #127 - Test #1

Looks more like Kansas to me. Maybe eastern Colorado.

Aleph's hitchhiking comes to an abrupt end after asking too many personal questions and gets dropped off somewhere in Iowa. Or Nebraska.

While Aleph converses with some sort of AI/Alexa thing, a bunch of guys in white SUVs show up. Aleph underwent a lot of experiments that involved modifications, and the companies that did those experiments want their proprietary technology back.

Judging by the flashback to Aleph's journey to the middle of nowhere, those aren't the first people they've killed trying to find Laurelwood. A town that was removed from all the maps. What's there? Aleph doesn't know, but they want to find out.

Their arrival is marked by immediately being stung by some mechanical mosquito, prompting Aleph to bolt for the nearest hotel to wait out whatever will happen. Takes a bunch of "brain pills" (use not detailed) and crawls inside the steamer trunk to sleep, while weird shadows watching through the mirror. You know, one of my coworkers briefly stayed in a hotel where she thought there was something weird about the mirror and promptly found a different hotel. But Aleph's in either no position or no mind to be choosy.

After another flashback detailing how Aleph escaped the research lab (having a fellow patient stab them bad enough to get moved to a less-secure place) Aleph's up and patching up the places where the seams are starting to show, it's time to investigate the town. Laurelwood looks a lot like a regular town, except for all the things that don't fit. Roombas cleaning the streets, VR helmets, grocery stores stocked with brands never seen before.

All of which seems to overload Aleph, who then somehow overloads the lights in the supermarket. Well, that'll get most anyone asked to leave, but the streets are full of more guys with white SUVs, so Aleph tries their luck in a bookstore, and gets a quartet of senior citizens wielding sabers for the effort.

{11th longbox, 75th comic, Test #1, by Christopher Sebela (writer), Jen Hickman (artist), Harry Saxon (colorist), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letterer}

Hellfire - John Saul

You know how the story goes. There's an old mill, closed a long time, lots of ugly stories about the reasons why floating around town. The patriarch of the family that owns it dies, and his son resolves to turn it into a classy little shopfront. Even when people die under mysterious circumstances, even when his stepdaughter insists she's made friends with a dead girl who lives in a little room behind the stairs in the basement of the mill, he pushes ahead.

It ends badly. Really badly.

In a lot of ways, it's about the stepdaughter, Beth, feeling uprooted by her mother marrying a rich guy who lives in the big house on the hill. None of her old friends want to spend time with her anymore, and her stepsister and step-grandmother are snobbish assholes who treat her as garbage. She's trying not to make like difficult, so she's ends up with no one to confide in, except a ghost.

But it's also about the limits of what you can force to happen. The stepdad, Phillip, ignores any objections to the project. His mother objects that it isn't what his father wanted? Ignored. His wife Carolyn, Beth's mom, suggests that maybe there is something wrong with the mill and it should just be torn down? Ignored. Too much money sunk into it now.

And by that same token, Phillip tries to brute force the halves of his family together. It's to his credit that he defends Carolyn and Beth from his daughter and mother's cruelty. But he can't undo generations of claptrap about breeding and one's proper station in life. His daughter in particular, goes round the bend to what seems an excessive degree on Saul's part. Not the cruelty, but the fact she ultimately deigns to get her own hands dirty trying to get rid of Beth once and for all. Up to that point, Tracey's been content with harsh words and backhanded comments, spreading rumors among her friends. Suddenly she's up to murder she's going to clumsily disguise as suicide.

Like I said, it ends badly. For everyone, since this is one of those horror stories that ends on an ominous note, rather than a hopeful or relieved one.

'And even though he was crying, she knew immediately that he, too, had retreated into a private world where the mill could not penetrate. He, like herself - like all the children - had escaped into another world, oblivious of the world in which his body toiled.

The fire was spreading now, sending tongues of flame out across the floor as billows of smoke rose from the rags and filled the room with a choking fog.'

Spoor (2017)

A schoolteacher (Agnieszka Mandat) lives alone in a rural valley in Poland. Janina loves her dogs, and nature in general, an opinion not shared by most of her neighbors, whose lives revolve around hunting, or trapping. Often outside the bounds of the law, not that the law much cares when the teacher tries to report them.

The teacher's dogs are gone one day when she returns home, not to be seen again. The townsfolk are unhelpful. The local priest chides her for the sin of pride by making graves for her past pets, and says he'll pray for her. Several prominent men around town, all part the big hunting parties, begin turning up dead. One is found with animal bones in his mouth. The police chief is lying in the snow with a head wound, but only deer tracks around him in the snow. The mayor, simply disappears.

The movie parcels the deaths out slowly, the story spooling over months from winter to summer, the passage marked by calendars which detail what animals are in season for hunting in that month. But this allows time for us to see how Janina interacts with others, the bonds she forms with people. A young woman that runs a clothing shop who Janina calls "Good Time", in some way related to astrology. An IT guy for the police who lives a minimalist lifestyle, allowing himself only 80 items in his life. An older man with a lot of trauma in his life, and a strained relationship with his son (a big city detective). A Czech entomologist she meets while out hiking in the woods.

Janina often chatters cheerfully with them, often running off on a tangent at the slightest provocation. In more stressful situations, this turns into impassioned tirades against the hunters and their culture of killing, or about how astrology explains what happened to the deceased. But she's also capable of listening quietly as someone else discusses their own burdens. Mandat gives Janina a passionate air, but also an empathetic one.

The interpersonal relationships occupy the foreground of the movie. Every so often, a body pops up. Janina answers some questions from the cops. They roll their eyes as she discusses astrology or that nature is striking back against these men. Then we're back to Janina trying to help Good Time gain custody of her brother, or the old gent inviting Janina to a party of the local mushroom hunters.

The mystery is resolved at the end. It makes enough sense, I guess. Makes you look at everything in the movie up to that point from a different angle.

Intent Signed in Blood

That is not the face of a man that should be allowed within 500 feet of children. Or teenagers. Or, anyone really. Just shove him in a steel box and sink it.

But, like it or not, Yu's got to hospital bills that need paying. Bakesan's maybe, though I wonder if he it's Injae's bill. Doubt K cares either way. He's got his prize, so it's off to America to get him ready.

JH immediately sets in on showing hints of what Yu's capable of, as he's challenged by another young fighter who wants K to train him. Josh is a gifted amateur, has worked very hard, while Yu knows nothing about boxing beyond that time K showed him a one-two combo.

It doesn't make a difference. JH stays in Josh's mind for most of the fight, focusing on how his jealousy and confidence gradually shift to awe, terror and resignation. But we catch glimpses of Yu's thoughts, or how he perceives things. How slow everything moves for him. But even that serves only to play into Josh's mindset, as he grows increasingly disheartened, realizing what he's up against.

That done, the story skips ahead two years, to Yu's debut fight against a fighter dubbed "The Rookie Killer." Again, JH focuses primarily on this new fighter, who seems to delight in his rep as a dirty fighter who crushes the dreams of highly-touted prodigies. JH takes the time to reveal some of John Taker's backstory, how he got into boxing, why he loves it but is still willing to be this dirty fighter reviled by the crowds.

Of course, things don't go well for him here, as K gives Yu a specific plan on how to excite the crowd and make them holler for more. Even before the first punch is thrown, Taker's frightened by what he feels coming off Yu.

JH likes metaphorical imagery. Bakesan pictured himself as a giant atop a mountain, peering down at indistinct shadows. Josh sees Yu as an immense, endless wall. Taker is unnerved by what he feels staring at Yu. Having Taker visualize it as staring down the barrel of an immense gun feels ridiculous, but if you want to sell Yu as something almost inhuman, you go big. And JH pays these things off, referring back to them. The first punch Yu throws, which essentially tells how the match will go, the sound effect is "BANG", rather than, I don't know, "whoosh" or something.

In what will also become a recurring approach, JH starts with the fight, then flashes back to K's declaration of the goal - his goal - for the fight. It's pretty obvious K is after more than just training one more fighter, but what, I'm not sure. It may have something to do with his previous fighter, who's still active and the current heavyweight champion, but mostly, JH makes K seem like some kind of sadist. Again, letting the man anywhere near any kid, let alone one who seems to give no fucks and will do whatever's asked of him, is a terrible idea.

The second volume ends with Yu having caught the eye of both the current lightweight champion and another prospective challenger for the belt, who appears to be a physical marvel himself. And we see where both Injae and Bakesan ended up in the after they left the hospital.

Sunday Splash Page #322

 

"Schizophrenic Conversations," in Madrox #3, by Peter David (writer), Pablo Raimondi (penciler), Andrew Hennessy (inker), Brian Reber (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer)

A precursor to David's second X-Factor run, which places Jamie Madrox front and center as a private detective, in this case, investigating his own murder.

David had already started the idea of Madrox's "dupes" as beings of their own, with thoughts and desires that might not match the "prime" Madrox in that first X-Factor run. Here he expands on that theme. On the one hand, Madrox has been sending duplicates out to learn different things, or even just to go out and have a fun night at the bar if Jamie can't decide whether he wants to or not.

(Which also ties into an issue being decisive David really hammered on in the first couple years of X-Factor, that Jamie's ability to pursue any option via his duplicates left him unable to actually make a decision when he needed to.)

But Madrox ends up in Chicago after a duplicate he sent there to have fun, ended up stabbed to death. So Jamie has to investigate his own murder. It involves a beautiful woman, of course, and her husband, who is a major crime boss. And there's a hired gun with powers like Jamie's, who Jamie still manages to generally outflank in the best noir tradition of tough-talking, soft-chinned goons.

Pablo Raimondi's work is stronger on the facial expressions and body language than the action sequences, though he has a tendency to use photo-references for characters. A reporter friend of Madrox's, for example, is very obviously Steve Buscemi. Raimondi also has this tic of drawing characters with their heads tilted down, but looking up at you. Usually with a raised eyebrow, which just makes it feel like someone trying too hard for an effect. What effect, I'm not sure. To look cool?

I could see it with Madrox, who is trying really hard to give off the "private eye" aura, but it's usually characters like Bishop (who was in his District X, cop of Mutant Town, era). No man that wore a mullet is concerned about looking cool. Point is, it makes Raimondi's art seem like a stiffer Kevin Maguire at times. He does a nice job, when Madrox absorbs a homicidal dupe from a distance, of making the act look freaky. The dupe being stretched out into noodles colored like a person or their clothes, a brief panel of a big, frightened eye.

Saturday Splash Page #124

 

"Tenderized Ham," in Steel Fist Riku, ch. 1, vol. 1, by Jyutaroh Nishino

I wasn't going to pass this by, lack of a proper splash page or no.

Riku's a young martial artist, living with her pervert of a sensei/adoptive father in his movie star photo shop. The shop barely scrapes by, but Riku supplements the budget by occasionally solving problems for other people. Problems that can only be solved by punching!

Riku also has a left arm that turns to steel when she concentrates. That she has an unusual trait isn't the notable part, as her world is full of people with either animal traits or other odd skills who are deemed "demihumans". But Riku doesn't know where she comes from, though it rarely gets her down.

In a lot of ways, Steel Fist Riku is a fairly typical shonen manga, just with a teenage girl for a protagonist rather than a teen boy. The cheerful protagonist who loves to eat and enjoys a good fight. Hates bullies and makes friends easily. The unique physical feature. In volume 2, we get the rival who eventually becomes a grudging ally, and later, a crazy old woman who helps Riku get stronger.

And the pervert martial arts master. Can't do without that! A fair amount - though not all - of the humor in the series revolves around characters reacting in shock to Riku's bust size, and that includes Rokuhara, her father and teacher (in whichever order you care to list those.) Riku wears bindings most of the time to avoid getting drenched in a nosebleed geyser from Rokuhara, but in most of the fights, she either ditches them - because her fighting style relies on breath control, and the bindings restrict that - or they get torn by an enemy's attack. Nishino doesn't really draw her any different, but the characters sure react like there's a noticeable change, to Riku's irritation.

It helps it feels like we're meant to laugh at those guys behaving like morons, rather than at Riku for having big boobs. Plus, there's a lot of other humor that doesn't revolve around that, so I get a lot of laughs from the book. The introduction of the rival thankfully doesn't derail the theme of stories about Riku being hungry or trying to help a person in need. The "case-of-the-week" stories are some of the best parts, largely for the fact Nishino is getting silly with them.

Sadly, since the book only lasted three volumes, the training with the crazy old lady eats up most of the final volume, forcing a rush through the rematch with a person who has the same trait as Riku and might know her origins.

What I Bought 5/8/2024

I took a little driving trip Wednesday to run an errand and check out a few stores. Got the errand done easily enough, didn't find much of the stuff I was hoping to. But I did find two of this week's comics in a store I checked at random, so that's good.

Fantastic Four #20, by Ryan North (writer), Carlos Gomez (artist), Jesus Arbutov and Fer Sifuentes-Sujo (color artists), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Crap, Reed's miniaturized HERBIE. At least Ben's got him under control. . .for now.

Ben and Johnny, independent of each other, get jobs at the same grocery store. Annoyed with each other, they each decide to win Employee of the Month. Johnny opts for cheesy flattery and shameless flirting, Ben by showing interest in the everyday lives of the customers. Sounds exhausting.

The first month ends in a tie, so the two keep it up into a second month, until some guy comes up wanting to writing a story poking fun at the Human Torch working a minimum wage job and living in a house with a large number of other people. Hey, that's environmentally friendly, or so I've been told by articles I've seen touting shared living spaces as the future! I mean, no thanks, I did my time on that shit, but if other people want to be close to their loved ones or total strangers, great. More elbow room for me, suckers!

Anyway, Ben comes to Johnny's defense, not that it stops the article from running, but the important thing is they care about each other, even as they fight like wet cats. Ben even compliments Johnny's mustache and implies Johnny would be an excellent exotic dancer. It makes sense in context.

So the story issue lives or dies on the bits North and Gomez get out of the framework, and it does pretty well. Ben and Johnny messing with each other is well-established, so it doesn't feel weird when they argue at dinner, or when Johnny annoys Ben by saying, "It's collaboratin' time!" Although the touch I like best is that Gomez draws the Thing with a regular pencil taped to his index finger. Presumably because it makes it easier to use than trying to hold it like most people would. (Gomez draws an excellent Thing. He avoids placing Ben's head too high up on his body, which is I think what Coello and Fiorelli did, which was why it looked like his head was barely connected to the rest of him sometimes.)

Now the book starts Blood Hunt tie-ins, so I guess I'll see it in later in the summer.

Deadpool #2, by Cody Ziglar (writer), Roge Antonio (artist), Guru-eFX (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - Nice to see someone remember Taskmaster has a bow. Seems like you only ever see the sword and the shield these days.

Deadpool makes enough money killing people to afford to buy the place the guy he killed last issue owned to set up his new Mercs for Money operation. Understanding that he's lousy at organization, follow-through, details, budgeting. . .basically everything, Deadpool brings in Taskmaster for that, and Taskmaster brings in some guy from the previous run of Amazing Spider-Man (the one that ended with Ben Reilly as, whatever the hell he is now) as their IT guy. Taskmaster doesn't know much about Death Grip to justify wasting even the 3 or 4 panels spent on it, but they get a job protecting some loser at an "influencer-con", only to have Crossbones show up trying to kill. . .I think Deadpool? For Death Grip?

I mean, one Taskmaster's exposition panels actually shows Death Grip talking with Crossbones - about what we don't know, it's video footage from, somewhere - and then Crossbones shows up, which makes Taskmaster suspect set-up. Which I don't really get. They were hired by the influencer, because he thought there'd be an attempt on his life (or he thought they'd get him more notoriety.) But Deadpool was taking jobs that involved killing, not protecting. Why would anyone think that was going to draw him out?

Of more interest is the subplot with Ellie. She didn't hide the fact Deadpool gave her a phone to contact him, but she's annoyed he'd only come see her when she's in trouble. So she's figured out how to connect the GPS in one of Preston's LMD hands to the phone to find him. Which I thought meant Ziglar was changing her mutant power to some technomancer thing like Forge, especially after she said just watching a few online videos made it click for her. But she cuts herself and her hand heals in a couple of panels, so. . .it's still a change to her mutant power, but not as far off. I'm actually most surprised Preston is annoyed Deadpool wouldn't chat with her. I figured she was still kind of pissed at him from the end of Duggan's run.

Man, I hope Eleanor's not going to get herself in the crossfire and end up injured enough she combines with the symbiote dog. Although I could see a jealousy subplot that Wade has another "daughter" he does let hang around him all the time.

The Price of Time - Tim Tigner

A small pharmaceutical company comes up with a drug that will arrest aging. Quickly realizing widespread distribution of this drug could lead to ecological and societal collapse as people live longer and longer, and fearing the backlash if they market only to the super-rich, they find one rich person they know who will keep them financially secure forever in exchange for the treatment.

Having avoided reprising The Postmortal, Tigner jumps 20 years forward in time. The handful of "Immortals" have realized they need new identities. Rather than pay someone to concoct entirely new identities, they hire a man to find loners who are physically similar enough the Immortals can assume their identities.

Of course, that requires the originals to be dead, and one of those originals just happens to be the friend of recently ex-CIA agent Zachary Chase, who begins trying to figure out who is impersonating his friend, and why.

When Tigner reveals that two of the Immortals want these real identities because they're planning to run for Senate and eventually the presidency, I thought we were in a faux-Manchurian Candidate situation. Chase would uncover what was going on, then struggle to convince anyone these up-and-coming politicians were not who they claimed to be, while they put the full weight of their billions to discrediting/eliminating him.

That's not what Tigner does either. Instead, he runs two mysteries (although one is only a mystery to the characters). In that one, Chase and Skylar, a near-victim of the scheme, try to figure out the mercenary handling the replacements' scheme and purpose, and then capture him. In the other, the Immortals figure out someone is picking them off in ways that mostly look like accidents, and how they react to that.

It's an interesting move, especially for how little the two cross. Chase and Skylar never met the Immortals, only the merc who is essentially a (very dangerous) middle manager. The Immortals are only aware of Chase as a brief annoyance, and Skylar as a possible replacement who didn't work out. It's a bit of a play on the double-edged sword of secrecy. The Immortals have kept their gofer in the dark as to why they need the identities, confident that the money they're paying (and the unlimited credit card) will keep him in line. But that also makes him keep secrets from them, lest they cut off the tap, so they have no clue when things go badly for him.

The mystery of who is killing the Immortals isn't really treated as one for us to solve. None of the characters seem to be poking too deeply into it, beyond suspicions of each other, even once they figure out these aren't just accidents. Again, maybe that's the secrecy aspect. Several of them are in their new identities already, and they aren't supposed to know each other. So that makes it difficult to get information, except through more paid intermediaries. It is a little funny that they've eliminated the ultimate end - time - but as soon as they're reminded they can still die in other ways, several of them go into a flurry of panic.

Related to the largely-parallel tracks, I don't like how Tigner writes Chase's chapters in the first-person, and all the other chapters in third-person. It's a little jarring, especially because we know a lot of things that Chase doesn't, so the first-person approach can't pull us into his perspective. He's trying to figure out why this guy killed his friend, what these people wanted with his friend and Skylar's identities, but we already know that stuff.

'"I understand it's not your first choice, but it might be the only way to stay alive until we figure this out."

"Not the only way. There are seven billion people out there. How hard can it be to disappear?"

Aria shook her head, but smiled kindly. "You may get lost in a crowd, but you'll be alone."

Lisa took her oldest friend by the hand. "There's no place more lonely than a coffin."'

Mr. Holmes (2015)

Ian McKellan as a Holmes at the end of his life, living alone in a cottage in Sussex, grudgingly (on both sides) cared for by his housekeeper (Laura Linney) and her precocious kid (Milo Parker). Holmes, long since weary of the version of himself everyone knows from Watson's stories (we only ever see Watson as a blurry outline or his hands writing) and the various adaptations thereof, is determined to write the truth of his final case, from 30 years ago.

If he could only remember it clearly.

The movie moves between the present, as Holmes befriends the kid (or vice versa) and struggles with age and its related problems, and two different times in the past. One is the final case, which they cut to and from as the memories crystallize in Holmes' mind. Sometimes it's blurry, other times it's crystal clear, brightly lit, sunny skies. McKellan walks straight, head high, clothes neat, well-composed.

Then it's back to the present, where he's slump-shouldered, wearing loose knit sweater-vests and looking very ruddy in the face. He holds his mouth slack at times, too, when his mind is especially scattered, in a way that reminded me unpleasantly of my grandmother's final months. A lot of the present scenes are set inside the cottage, with low ceilings and muted lighting. Nothing's as vivid as the past glory was.

The other flashbacks are to his just completed trip to Japan. He's in pursuit of a plant which is said to help with dementia and arthritis, but the young man helping him has ulterior motives related to Holmes' past. Holmes initially has no recollection of the specific event, and when he does remember, I'm unclear why he was involved at all. It does offer a chance, in the present, to apply a lesson he'd learned from his final case but hadn't properly internalized.

Milo Parker plays Roger as clever and curious and full of dreams that don't necessarily align with the realities as his mother sees them. He peppers Holmes with questions, and McKellan gives Holmes the air of a man looking for someone to pass something of himself to. So a kid eager to learn, even if the Mr. Holmes he sees doesn't match the Mr. Holmes he read about, is a godsend.

Linney gets what could be a thankless role - the responsible one, at times caring for two stubborn children - but she gives the audience glimpses of a woman who knows she can't fill the void of Roger's deceased father, knows her own limitations, but is trying her best within those limitations. There are several scenes where it feels like she's on the verge of crying, but not letting herself do it in front of Roger.

Wants to Write, Stuck Editing

If the uncomplimentary comparison fits. . .

Volume 2 of No Longer Allowed in Another World starts with the main cast learning the "Dark Lord of Wrath" was defeated a week earlier by 7 otherworlders. Which raises the question of why Sensei arrived in Zauberberg on that same day. Obviously the Savior Acquisitions Department of the Isekai Organization is not being kept in the loop by the Savior Progress Department.

As it turns out, the two things may be linked, as another otherworlder (though not one of the 7, since they're going to be naming themselves after Deadly Sins, because of course they are) arrives in town, proclaiming that they'll be running things now, and this town is his.

I don't know if there's a significance to how artist Takahiro Wakamatsu draws some of the outworlders, like Suzuki, as having adopted the fashions of Zauberberg, while others stick with the clothes of the world they came from, like the imbecile playing hype man up there. I feel like he's going to become some recurring joke sidekick antagonist. Which would be fine if it results in Tama kicking his face in.

Suzuki's "cheat" skill is to make others obey him, which he quickly turns against Annette and Tama, leaving Sensei and Annette's fellow priestess, Ysha, to handle things alone. This is Hiroshi Noda's way of having someone new to react with shock to Sensei's blithe dismissal of danger and unsettling attachment to harm, and also a way to add a little additional conflict, since Ysha's the one who greeted Suzuki upon his arrival, and she can't understand why he's turned out this way. Which piques Sensei's interest, and ultimately reveals his skill, which might just save the world. . .from the people who just saved the world.

From there, a new character gets added to the party. Nir's a fast-talking con artist and thief, who might know how to wield the sword he carries. He's a little cowardly, and more than a little cynical, which contrasts him with the aggressive and impulsive Tama, or the emotional and adoring Annette.

The volume ends with a visit to Tama's home country, where we finally learn her true name - Matilda - and that she's the princess of the kingdom. Her father's an overbearing, emotionally constipated goon, so he relies on emotional extortion to get her to obey rather than, you know, actually trying to understand his daughter. Sure hope there's someone intrigued by the frailties of the human condition that can help these two. . .