Sunday Splash Page #329

 

"The Tax Man Cometh," in Marvel Adventures Avengers #32, by Paul Tobin (writer), Matteo Lolli (penciler), Christian Vecchia (inker), Sotocolor (colorists), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

Welcome to Many Months of Marvel! We'll be rockin' titles that start with "Marvel" all through summer and into the blessed relief of a hopefully grey autumn!

In the mid-2000s, Marvel made one of their periodic attempts at replenishing the dwindling audience with comics aimed towards a younger audience, via the Marvel Adventures line. There were a handful of titles, some of which only lasted about a year (the Hulk and Iron Man titles), while Marvel Adventures Spider-Man ran 61 issues.

The one that got the most mention in the comics blogosphere was Marvel Adventures Avengers. Having a larger cast seemed to offer the writers (mostly Jeff Parker and Paul Tobin, but also Marc Sumerak and Tony Bedard among others) the leeway to go with big threats and concepts that used the entire team, or smaller stories focused on just a few. In one issue, the Avengers might try to stop Galactus from devouring Earth by using the Ultimate Nullifier, resulting in opening up the laws of probability to where they could briefly challenge Big G to a game of baseball for the planet's wellbeing. In another, Hawkeye might show up to join, right as the Avengers keep getting shown up by a second-rate Masters of Evil roster. 

The latter story also involves everyone having a good laugh at Iron Man's expense after the Melter melts his iron pants, as most of the issues take a lighthearted approach. The Hulk gets Bullseye to pay his taxes by walking up behind him and saying, "Pay taxes." The rest of the Avengers try to keep Odin from meddling in Thor and Storm's date, except Odin keeps mistaking Wolverine for a troll and whomping him.

Likewise, the stories are usually done-in-one, and while there can be some good old-fashioned superhero punching action, the resolutions usually involve some measure of out-thinking the threat or otherwise being clever. Spider-Man getting a more first-rate Masters of Evil team to turn on each other once they realize Ultron (less genocidal here, more coldly logical about machine superiority) intends leave them with no real authority after they conquer the world.

Saturday Splash Page #131

 

"A Farewell to Stars," in Starman (vol. 2) #76, by James Robinson (writer), Peter Snejbjerg (artist), Gregory Wright (colorist), Bill Oakley (letterer)

Peter Snejbjerg came on with issue #50, and remained the series artist until its conclusion in issue #80 (ignoring the "resurrected" issue #81 from the Blackest Night event). At that point, Robinson was already a couple of issues into the "Stars My Destination" arc, aka the story where Jack goes into space looking for his new girlfriend's missing brother, the previous, bemulleted Starman.

I've heard the second half of Starman is generally considered the weaker half, with the space arc a prime culprit. And I can see it. Robinson spent the first four year building up Opal City as a major part of the book, then sends the book into space for a year, because he seems bound and determined to tie every star-themed character into the Starman legacy. So they get diverted into the 30th Century, so we can learn the Legion of Super-Heroes' Star Boy is going to become Star Man, and eventually return to the 21st Century under a different name.

Robinson tries to work this stuff into the build-up for the big "Grand Guignol" arc, having Jack help out Adam Strange on Rann, so that Adam will try to repay the favor later, but it does feel like an overlong digression. To say nothing of the detour into Krypton's past to meet Teen Rebel Jor-El..

That said, I do like Grand Guignol (minus the way things went with Nash, the original Mist's daughter.) I can appreciate Robinson trying to bring everything he'd spent 60 issues setting up together - all the foes, the Shade's backstory, the ghost of Jon Valor, on and on - into one big throwdown for the fate of Opal City's present and future. He wanted to do a big story, and I feel like he pulled it off. Made us care about the characters and the stakes enough to justify all the set up and foreshadowing.

Snejbjerg's version of Jack Knight is cleaner, better put-together. He smooths out a lot of the lines and wrinkles, makes the hair less of a rat's nest. Jack still dresses mostly the same, the aviator goggles and the leather jacket, but it doesn't look like he's slept in them for two weeks straight. Jack also lost the tattoos as a result of death by disintegration, followed by resurrection via Rannian science. I don't remember the dying having that much in the way of ramifications for Jack long-term, so I wonder if Snejbjerg just didn't want to have to draw the tats any time Jack was shirtless or in short sleeves.

The book concludes with a few last loose ends, a handful of mysteries Robinson hadn't revealed the solutions to yet. More important, it ends with Jack retiring from the role as Starman, passing the cosmic rod on to Courtney Whitmore, who would take on the name Stargirl. She's kept the title ever since, and Jack's stayed retired ever since. Even the Blackest Night tie-in issue was about The Shade and Hope O'Dare, nary a Jack to be found.

It's perhaps not so surprising in some sense. Jack always insisted he wasn't the kind of hero who was going to patrol. Just a guy who would step up when Opal needed him. And the bargain he made with his father was for Ted to continue exploring ways to use stellar energy to help people outside superheroics. Well, Opal has a new bunch of protectors by the end of the book, and Ted's not going to be doing any further research. It is surprising in that I can't believe someone didn't drag Jack back out in one of the half-dozen revamps DC's done in the last 15 years.

Sometimes the characters get left to their happy endings.

Random Back Issues #131 - Guardians of the Galaxy #21

"Cancerverse" is such inflammatory language. Call it a "Fecundiverse"; that only sounds vaguely dirty.

The last time we looked at the Guardians, they were in the process of failing miserably to convince the Inhumans and the Shi'ar to stop fighting a war that would endanger the very universe. Well, Black Bolt and Vulcan are dead now (hooray!), but not before the Inhumans set off a bomb that tore a hole in space-time continuum, dubbed the Fault.

The Luminals, an irritating band of superheroes that hang out on Knowhere and basically fuck everything up, sent some of their team into "The Fault", and came back infected. The alien tries to attack Moondragon, but she's able to create a telekinetic field to trap it.

The rest of the Guardians arrive, but so do a bunch of followers of the Universal Church of Truth, who think the many-tooth alien squid-thing is their god (due to the particular psychic emanations it produces.) All the excitement of the dumbshit fundamentalists exercising their religious freedom drives the creature nuts and it breaks loose, killing several of them, before attacking the Luminals' leader, Cynosure. The only option Moondragon has is to lure the creature into herself instead.

Now in quarantine, Moondragon's using her telepathy to keep the thing under control. But, it gives her a chance to learn some stuff. The creature comes from a universe on the far side of the Fault. A place where life has won. Star-Lord doesn't get what that means, but he'll have to parse it later. The Luminals are here to be fuck up again!

The creature killed one of their teammates, so they want to "extradite" it. How is not elaborated because Cynosure cuffs herself to Moondragon with something that'll blow them both up without the combination. The Knowhere Council want the creature off the station, but the Guardians are not about to let the Luminals handle that. And fortunately, they've got Drax to claim parental rights, which at least buys the team a few hours.

But since it's all down to whether Moondragon can get the thing under control so they can expel it from her and back into the Fault, Rocket uses the time to jab at Drax about almost sounding like he actually cares about his daughter. Which spurs Drax to go visit, only to find the church loonies kidnapping her and Cynosure. Which gives Drax a chance to do what he does best, kill people. It's going pretty well until the Church's Matriarch does a vaguely Penance Stare-like move and Drax goes into the fetal position.

{5th longbox, 42nd comic. Guardians of the Galaxy (vol. 2) #21, by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (writers), Brad Walker (penciler), Andrew Hennessy and Victor Olazaba (inkers), Wil Quintana (colorist), Joe Carmagna (letterer)}

Blue Highways - William Least Heat Moon

Heat Moon's first, and apparently more popular, book. He was told his position at the university wasn't being renewed, and his marriage was on the rocks, so he set out in his modified van to travel the less-known highways, as opposed to the interstates. Those state routes are usually marked in blue in the road atlas, hence the title of the book.

He essentially circles the country, although based on the map on the inside cover, he never enters Florida or California. You can tell how long ago this was because he makes the trip on his last $246 and 4 gas credit cards. He stops where he likes, or where the weather or fatigue force him to. At one point he's stuck on a mountain in Utah in a blizzard because the road ahead is closed and he can't see enough to turn around. Usually sleeps in his van, which results in him getting repeatedly bothered by cops.

And he talks. To other people, about why they live where they do, or what life is like. Why live in a town in Nevada with a population of four, on a fault line and near a Navy test range? He travels to Selma based on the rather aggressive suggestion of one person, to see if race relations have improved in the decade+ since the bus boycotts and Martin Luther King Jr.'s work. The answer would seem to be, "In some ways yes, but in many ways, no."

But he's also trying to figure himself out. Increasingly as the trip and book progress, Heat Moon questions what he's doing out there. What's he looking for, really, or is he just running away from something? He may have come to some sort of conclusion at the end, though I wonder if it amounted to anything.

The book has a nostalgic air I can't entirely engage with (but does explain to me how the book spent 42 weeks on the New York Times best seller list, as the paperback cover exclaims.) A rose-tinted look at Americana of the early to mid-20th Century, and a scorn for what's replacing it. I can appreciate the desire of many of the people he talks with to preserve their local history, but it often feels like a very selective history being preserved. Not always, as in the visit to Selma - really, most of the "South by Southeast" chapter - you see how people trying to exercise a feeling of greater freedom is met with resistance from the factions that liked the old ways just fine.

Maybe that's an inevitable consequence of a book written specifically about visiting places that are off the main track, where the march of fast food and strip malls haven't reached. He seeks out several towns that exist only as abandoned remains, and in some cases not even that. Of the other towns, many are either dying slowly, or trying to survive as they are, without losing land to power plants or tourist attractions. The people who live in those places do so by choice or lack of alternatives. Either way, they either like it as is, or made peace with it.

But it does start to boil down into a complaining about how things are versus how they were. You can't make money farming except in huge acreages. You can't get real cigarettes anymore (one guy presciently suggests there's a college engineer out there trying to design a cigarette you have to plug in.) The kids don't care about their history or want to walk anywhere any longer. People travel just to get somewhere, without any care for the actual destination. Based on my dad's descriptions of family vacations with his father, that was true long before this book was written, but whatever.

The advantage PrairyErth had was its tighter focus allowed (or forced) Heat Moon to go deeper. It was layered. Here, even when he finds someone that really knows the history of their town, more than just a surface skimming, it's still only one perspective. But even if he took the back roads, he's still on highways. He's still a passerby, so it was always going to be the equivalent of watching through the windshield as he drove through.

'There is one almost infallible way to find honest food at just prices on blue-highway America: count the wall calendars in a cafe.

No calendar: Same as an interstate pit stop.
One calendar: Preprocessed food assembled in New Jersey.
Two calendars: Only if fish trophies present.
Three calendars: Can't miss on the farm-boy breakfasts.
Four calendars: Try the ho-made pie too.
Five calendars: Keep it under your hat, or they'll franchise.

One time I found a six-calendar cafe in the Ozarks, which served fried chicken, peach pie, and chocolate malts, that left me searching for another ever since. I've never seen a seven-calendar place.'

Fall Special: Better Weather, More Comics

I hope the weather is better by September, but if not, at least I'll have more stuff to read from the comfort of my home.

What's new that's coming out? DC has a Plastic Man mini-series I was briefly interested in. Then I saw it was written by Christopher Cantwell. After that Hellcat mini-series last year, he's firmly on my "avoid like the plague" list. Oh well, DC's 2024 goose-egg continues.

Amid all the Venom War crap, Marvel solicited a couple of mini-series, Dazzler (by Jason Loo and Rafael Loureiro), and Avengers Assemble (by Steve Orlando and Cory Smith.) Honestly, in both cases it's mostly curiosity about the overall cast. Dazzler on tour, with Domino, Strong Guy and Jamie Madrox as her crew. Avengers Assemble looks like Captain America, She-Hulk, Hercules, Julie Power, Hawkeye, Shang-Chi, Night Thrasher, Monica Rambeau, Living Lightning and Wonder Man. I feel like that's too big a cast for 5 issues, but what the hell, points for throwing a wide net.

Image has Moon is Following Us by Daniel Warren Johnson, and I don't know that I'll get this, but it caught my eye, so I figure it's worth checking the next couple months' solicits to decide. Mad Cave has Body Trade by Zac Thompson and Jok, about a guy looking for the body of his dead son. It's a revenge story, so I'm sure it'll end with a rumination on the hollowness of revenge, but I can always hope otherwise.

Titan Manga has the first volume of Corpse Blade, a manga set in a zombie apocalypse. I'm not sure about this one, because it's listed as the first volume of three, but the text describes it as a legendary series, which makes me wonder if there were a bunch of spin-off mangas. Not sure I'm up for that. Yen Press has the first volume of Blade and Bastard about a guy who's body was found in a dungeon and resurrected, and now goes back in to retrieve the dead for cash, while trying to find clues to his own past.

What's wrapping up? Commercial Space was solicited by Scout for release in March, but they're resolicited it for September. It's a one-shot, so it would technically end when it begins. I thought I'd read The Boxer was only 8 volumes, but volume 8 certainly doesn't sound like a conclusion, so maybe that info was out of date.

What's left? Quite a bit. Werewolf by Night, Babs, Loop, The Pedestrian and Red Before Black will all be on issue 2. Apparently Red Band wasn't part of the title for Werewolf by Night, it's just some sort of "mature content" designation. Also, probably not good I forgot to check for Red Before Black on the first sweep through, which wasn't a problem for any of the other books.

(I skim through every publisher they list on the Previews website, and when I went past Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, I saw Barb the Last Berzerker, and for a second where I confused the title, I thought Ennis had decided to do a kid-friendly version of Babs. I was just trying to picture him dealing with the restrictions that would bring. "What do you mean I can't have a two-page discussion about how some wizard is a wanker, and precisely how much of a wanker he is?")

Scout resolicited the fourth issue Rogues, while Deadpool is up to issue 6, Vengeance of the Moon Knight is up to issue 9, although the solicit only says "Classified". Which I assume means it's time for Marc Spector's return. Anytime I true to short that book to initials for my notes, I always screw-up and write "VKM" instead of "VMK", so for some reason it's making me think of Vince McMahon.

Oh, and Fantastic Four is up to issue 25.

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)

Elena (Eva Bourne) is kept deep underground in some sort of facility. Barry Nyle (Michael Rogers) will question her each day, trying for some sort of response he only sometimes gets. Elena has abilities. Telepathy, for one. She seems able to change TV channels with her mind. She makes a nurse's eyes explode at one point.

Elena would like to leave, and it seems like something in the facility wants to help. I think it's the glowy pyramid located somewhere in the facility, though the whys and wherefores escape me. The person who founded the place, some "utopia through mind-altering drugs" guy, now a debilitated wreck, thinks of Elena as the future, but doesn't have any clue what's actually happening with her.

The movie is set in 1983, and writer/director Panos Cosmatos definitely tries to capture a late-70s/early-80s aesthetic. Barry's car, the fashions, his mother (I think) watching Reagan on a news program, the computers. The lighting in the facility is often an overwhelming artificial red that reminds me of the room in 2001 that houses HAL's computer brain (or maybe it's the same color as the red dot that was his "eye".) The halls are endless, identical right angles of blank, shiny plastic, but the elevators have that fake wood laminate crap on the walls. The musical score is heavy on synthpop and deep bass notes, the latter especially around Barry. There are security, things ("Sentionauts") that look like a bootleg Daft Punk in the helmet, but the odd look of their outfits evoke the proper era.

A lot of the movie, especially when it's focused on Elena, is given a sort of dreamlike quality. She always moves at a slow shuffle. The film often uses an after-image effect, like there's a ghost of her, trailing her, or in some cases preceding her. She barely speaks, or even makes any sounds. Even when some hideous, straitjacketed thing is trying to gnaw her ankles, she just drags herself away at a snail's pace.

Rogers plays Nyle with this barely contained resentment. Everything he says carries an edge. His mother tells him there's some dinner in the fridge, he can't even bother to look at her when he says, "Oh, that's nice." His speaking at Elena (can't call them conversations) always carry double meanings and threats. The first time we see them interact, when she won't respond, he starts tapping his pen against his clipboard, louder and faster until she gives him a reaction. Then he stops.

There's one flashback, to 1966, which shows what happened to him. Basically, he took something and either met a god on the other side, or became convinced he did. Outside the shots of whirling clouds and a statue of a man that seems to shift medium over time, he crawls from a perfect black circle in a white void, now covered in tar or oil and confronts Elena's mother, as white as the room. I took it that he killed her in a fucked-up mental state (and his black stains her, and her white stains his fingers), but Elena was either already born or they were able to save her.

But then there's the very end, which I'm going to spoil, so if you want to avoid it, watch the movie first, then come back. I'll wait to start in the next paragraph.

Barry's lost it, out of either impatience with Elena or frustration that he's not been recognized as the special one. He doffs his Carl Sagan wig and special contacts, throws on some Noriega puffy leather onesie and goes to kill Elena. Who has escaped, but he had her implanted with a tracker so he follows along. He kills a couple of stoners sitting around a campfire, and finally finds Elena. She won't approach him, so he tries to go to her.

Except his feet are tangled in the underbrush, he trips and smashes his head on a rock. And he's dead. *sad trombone*

I admit, I wondered how the confrontation would play out, since Elena didn't seem to react quickly to anything, but she doesn't do anything here. No indication she manipulated the plants or encouraged their growth. I thought maybe he'd hurt her, or she'd get frightened enough to react like she did when the nurse stole the photo of Elena's parents, but no. Barry's just a clumsy, stupid lunatic.

Which is maybe the point. Whatever ideals the founder had, it was all a bunch of bullshit. They took drugs and Elena's mother died, and Barry's fucked in the head, yet left in charge of the place. The founder is a dying old man who lies in a bed watching documentaries about resorts in Hawaii. The girl he thought was going to save humanity's soul spent her life trapped in a featureless cube, at Barry's mercy (and I can't tell if Barry is jealous of Elena, or he transferred his lust from her mother to her. Probably both.) Elena can barely talk, or function, or do anything. The last we see of her, she's approaching the one home in a suburb of identical houses where a TV's glow can be perceived through the windows.

Weird movie. Visually striking, but weird. And I really don't know how I feel about that ending.

Off on a Tangent

I'm absolutely sure that is not the case.

Volume 2 of DC's Tangent Comics, collects five of the one-shots from that imprint: The Joker (by Karl Kesel, Matt Haley, Tom Simmons and Chris Eliopoulos), Nightwing (John Ostrander, Jan Duursema, Gloria Vasquez, Dave Lanphear), Secret Six (Chuck Dixon, Tom Grummett, James Sinclair, Ken Lopez), Doom Patrol (Dan Jurgens, Sean Chen, Kevin Conrad, Ray Kryssing, Jason Wright, Dave Lanphear), and The Batman (Dan Jurgens, Klaus Janson, Gregory Wright, Comicraft).

Each one is a different type of story. Secret Six is pretty much a "put the team together" story with a bunch of disparate characters happening to run into each other investigating the same thing. Doom Patrol is your classic time travel story where attempts to change the future only bring it about. Joker is a mystery from the perspective of a cop the Joker seems to have taken an interest in, although the reasons for that seem pretty weak once revealed. But I think we're supposed to take it that the Joker's trying to process some trauma in a less-than-ideal manner. Nightwing is kind of a "shadow war/wheels within wheels" story of people vying for power out of sight of everyone else. And Batman is a monster story and doomed romance thing.

The art leans to standard superhero comic style. Grummett and Chen are the artists they've always been, making sure all the visual information is there, easy to interpret and follow. Duursema's the most distinctive, but also the most '90s in look. Lots of busy little lines and questionable proportions and anatomy for the characters. But Nightwing is the least "superhero" of the books, with the backstabbing, manipulation and working in the shadows, so it makes sense to not look like the others.

I've always read that if Klaus Janson is the inker, the art just ends up looking like his. No matter the penciler, Janson's heavy inks overwhelm it and make the look his own. I've read the Wolverine issues Byrne penciler that Janson inked, and I'd tend to agree, it doesn't look much like Byrne's work. Apparently Dan Jurgens is the exception, because The Batman still looks very much like a Jurgens-drawn comic, just with thicker, messier lines than when Norm Rapamund or someone else inks him. I don't know if Janson dialed it back or what.

Since most of the stories are also the first appearance of these versions of the characters, there's a fair amount of exposition or flashbacks. Four pages spent explaining how Batman is a suit of armor controlled by a knight who was tricked into turning against King Arthur by Morgan le Fay, so Merlin condemned him to live trapped within his castle (The House of Secrets) until he atoned. Exactly how he's supposed to do that if he hasn't managed it after several centuries is not outlined, but Merlin's always kind of a shithead, so that tracks. Dude's just pissed le Fay outflanked his withered butt.

Some integrate it into the flow better than others. In Nightwing, Ostrander handles explaining the mysterious magic-using cabal by having one character pass the information along to the President in a dream. With Doom Patrol, since the characters traveled back in time to prevent the Earth exploding, Jurgens just has them explain whatever particular event they're trying to stop as they're trying to stop it.

The re-imagining of the characters and concepts works better for some than others. The Joker as a female vigilante/pest that focuses mainly on mocking or humiliating authority figures isn't bad. Actually, it feels like some of this has been co-opted into Harley Quinn over the last decade (although Harley's got a lot more 4th wall breaking.) Batman as a true dark or disgraced knight, who carries on his mission endlessly because he sees it as the only chance he's got to be free, rather than from a childhood vow to end crime, that can work. Wildcat as a codename for a young lady who transforms into a feral werecat when she speaks her trigger word (Shazam)? Not so much.

All the issues suffer from what seems like a competition between the writers to name-check as many characters or concepts as possible. In Doom Patrol, the teenage daughter of the doctor leading the attempt to change the past says her mother called her "Firehawk" when she was just a kid. It never comes up again, and the young lady demonstrates no fire or bird-themed abilities, so it really feels like just checking a box. Secret Six references a bio-weapon used against Eastern Europe the year before. Codename? Red Tornado. I didn't do an exact count, but I feel like Nightwing wins, especially once the mage "Hex", starts referencing spells called "The Emerald Eye" or "Ring of Oa."

The re-designs vary in how similar they are to their namesakes. Batman's a big red suit of armor, and instead of pointy ears, has a pair of similar-looking (but larger) spines on the shoulders. Still the same emblem, though tilted on its axis. Joker combines bits of Harley Quinn with the Joker, and the poofy-sleeved coat reminds me of some of the Royal Flush Gang.

On the other hand, Hex (real name: Vincent Lord, don't know if that's a reference to something) looks like Constantine crossed with Gambit, and has the same sort of sleazy yet self-assured air you'd expect from a fusion of those two. Plastic Man's a big, shiny, green-faced living polymer that looks kind of like a robot. The look and the name don't fit, but the name does fit his powers and composition, and it was given to him by his government handlers, so I can see them taking a direct, literal approach.

Sunday Splash Page #328

 

"The Face of Mars," in Martian Manhunter (vol. 2) #1,000,000, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Carla Feeny (color artist), Ken Lopez (letterer)

The Martian Manhunter had long stints as a back-up feature in various DC books back in the Silver Age, and a 4-issue mini-series in the late '80s, but he didn't get his own, ongoing solo book until John Ostander and Tom Mandrake took a crack at it in the late '90s.

Ostrander shifts between J'onn's Martian roots and his connections with people on Earth, mostly keeping the book from leaning too heavily one way or the other. It's made easier since the Martians had been established as performing scientific experiments on Earth in the distant past. So J'onn can run into remnants of the White Martians' experiments - drawn in slippery, toothy-ridden form by Mandrake - or even a few Martians that transferred their minds into human bodies and have been doing so for decades or more.

But you also have stories where J'onn has to contend with his brother Ma'alefa'ak, who gets a name that basically implies he's cursed (which she intended as a warning to Ma'alefa'ak), only for him to abduct and torture other Martians until J'onn catches him and his telepathy is shut down. Which leaves him free to create a plague that only attacks telepathic Martians and causes them to burn to death. That would be a great lesson in the danger of self-fulfilling prophecies. You know, if J'onn hadn't been the last Martian left on the planet.

Still, it leads to a lot about how J'onn lost himself in grief for some period of time before being accidentally brought to Earth. Ostrander delves into the nature of Martian beliefs (the Green Martians, anyway, he doesn't diverge from the "ruthless supremacists" mold Morrison stuffed the White Martians into), how J'onn perceives his duty as a "manhunter", things like that.

Those parts work pretty well. Mandrake's art, with those loose pencils and heavy shadows, is well suited for a species of shapeshifters. J'onn's telepathy, combined with some of the stuff he finds in the minds of his enemies, offers another avenue for Mandrake to bring a horror element to the work. It's not a horror book by any means - definitely closer to a detective book - but the nature of the Martian Manhunter's powers means he's going to face stranger, more dangerous things in the course of his investigations.

Likewise, the exploration of J'onn's life on Earth outside being a JLA member is interesting. Ostrander runs with the idea that J'onn has a lot of identities across the world, not just John Jones, private detective. Famous Brazilian authors. A Japanese boy who transforms into a giant robot. A dumb muscle super-villain (who somehow always screws things up for whatever gang he gets hired on to). A cat. It fits not only with J'onn's ability to assume different forms, but with his image of himself as a philosopher, striving to see things from many different perspectives.

One thing that doesn't particularly work is that Ostrander has Ma'alefa'ak kill J'onn's friend and partner, Karen Smith, after "John Jones" finally revealed the truth about himself, but before there'd been any sort of reconciliation or real conversation about it between them. It ends up leading to the DEO (mostly Cameron Chase of the short-lived series Chase) finding a story Smith started writing about the truth about John, and the DEO trying to force J'onn to tell them secret identities of other heroes, but there's never really any reckoning for J'onn about Karen's death, all the times he used his telepathy to make her forget things she saw him do, or where things were left between them.

I like Ostrander's work, but women have an extraordinarily high mortality rate in his stuff, there's no question.

I also don't love giving J'onn a long-standing enmity with Apokolips. It makes sense that Darkseid would want beings with the array of powers Martians have under his control, and symbolically, I can see it. Guy weakened by fire, venturing into a world with fire everywhere. A telepath roaming a planet full of suffering and death, where the inhabitants believe their pain is proof of their ruler's love. J'onn, coming from a people who routinely intermingled thoughts and bodies, as a way of connection and healing, against Darkseid, who wants all thoughts to be his thoughts anyone. Still, it feels a bit like punching out of one's weight class, even for the Martian Manhunter.

Saturday Splash Page #130

 

"A New Knight," in Starman (vol. 2) #3, by James Robinson (writer), Tony Harris (penciller), Wade von Grawbadger (inker), Gregory Wright (colorist), John Workman (letterer)

James Robinson's Starman is a lot about legacy, but it starts with a legacy almost cut short. The eldest son of the original Starman is killed, just an hour or so into his first patrol. There's the younger brother, Jack, but he derided the costume and his brother not long before, so it seems unlikely he'll be able to fill the void, assuming he even tries.

Tony Harris is the primary artist for the first 4 years of the book, drawing around 3 dozen issues. He was spelled periodically by Steve Yeowell, or the guests artists who drew one-shot issues set at some point in Opal City's past. Harris' Jack Knight is a bit of a scarecrow, all wiry limbs and scruffy hair. Sort of a perpetually weary look, with his face lined with deep shadows. Aviator goggles and tattoos, a leather jacket he doesn't wear to his big showdown with his brother's killer because he doesn't want it to get torn up.

Maybe that fits for a character who seems to love the past. Jack's an antiquities or collectible dealer, depending on where the line between the two is drawn. Things with some age, made rare by time or circumstance. Stuff with some history to it. It fits for a book that is so concerned with history, be it Jack's, his father's, the Shade's, Opal City, or even the name "Starman." Everything in the book builds on something from the past, starting with Starman's history with The Mist and expanding from there.

The Mist is probably the main villain of Harris' run. The series opens with an all-out assault on Opal by the original and his two children, Kyle and Nash. From there, it's Nash who engineers another attack later on and haunts Jack for long stretches of the book. Jack makes a trip to New York, teaming up with Wes Dodds and Dian Belmont to track down a memento of the original Mist, all in an act of mercy towards what appears to be a shattered old man. Some of that works better than others - Robinson's build-up of Nash ultimately ends with kind of a wet fart - but it generally serves to highlight the sort of Starman Jack's going to be.

Robinson sows a lot of seeds in the early going, introducing the Starman of the '70s, a Talokkian named Mikhail, plus a gentle version of Solomon Grundy. A theater poster that draws people into Hell, one of whom is a Sherlock Holmes stand-in. The ghost of a pirate wrongly executed. Most don't conclude until after Harris has left, save for "Solly's" arc, and even that only so much as any arc ever concludes for Solomon Grundy.

Opal City itself is a big part of the book, and Harris does his best to make it feel, again, like a place with history. A harbor town, with bridges spanning the waters. Some of the taller skyscrapers, the high-end apartments and business sectors, wouldn't necessarily look out of place in Batman: The Animated Series, albeit a bit brighter. Opal's got some shadows, but it's not that kind of dark. But there's also older neighborhoods, the ones Jack tends to frequent. Smaller structures, stone archways and bridges. Homes that have space for hanging gardens in them, but also steep rooftops with little clock towers scattered about it. I don't know architecture, but Harris' art gives the city some personality.

But like I said, Tony Harris leaves the book after 4 years, right about the time Jack leaves Opal for a somewhat shorter period. . .

Random Back Issues #130 - Black Cat #5

Can I trade it in for Flagstaff, or maybe Santa Fe?

This is the opening chapter of "The Gilded City" arc, the big heist that MacKay's entire Black Cat run (spanning the previous volume) was building to. Felicia, her crew, and the Black Fox have gathered all the pieces they need to break into the vault where the New York Branch o' da T'ieves Guild sends all their stolen goods.

This issue largely boils down to Felicia and the Fox descending through a series of tunnels to the place where they'll use the "dimensional resonator" she broke into Stark's building to make, to help the Randall Gate - whose design she copied from the one in Iron Fist's place - open the doorway they need.

In the meantime, flashbacks! First, to the point when Felicia told Fox that she was going to head out on her own, and that her first heist would be to get her father out of prison. Also, that she was taking the name "Black Cat", a combination of Fox's title and her father's, Walter Hardy, aka "The Cat".

A different "The Cat" from the one that became Tigra. At least, I hope so. That would be weird. "Felicia, your dad appeared to die, but actually, he traveled back in time, became a costumed female crimefighter, then a werecat-woman who was written as extremely horny by Steve Engelhart, and later humiliated by Bendis' latest attempt to prop up a crime boss character."

Anyway, Black Fox reveals 2 critical pieces of information. First, the New York Thieves made a deal with a being called The Gilded Saint. 10% of their take in exchange for immortality. Second, he's dying. He tried to get a lot of different cures, but he either can't get them, or they don't work. Even tried asking Dracula to turn him, but Drac remembers when Fox cheated him in a card game (detailed in an issue of the first volume), then sicced Ulysses Bloodstone on Drac to cover his escape. Dracula would rather watch Fox wither and die than turn him and have the guy under his thumb for an eternity.

I guess at that age, you find your kicks where you can.

Felicia should be getting bad vibes by this point, but Fox is still spooling some line about wanting to go out committing a heist no one else can, so she tells the guys to fire up the Randall Gate. But instead of all that gold landing in their laps, a giant skeleton emerges from a tear in the air in front of Felicia and demands answers. The Fox wants the immortality of the Thieves Guild transferred to he and Felicia, and in exchange, he'll hand over Manhattan (the deed to which Felicia swiped from the Sanctum Sanctorum.)

{2nd longbox, 140th comic. Black Cat (vol. 4) #5, by Jed MacKay (writer), Michael Dowling (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer)}

The Double Human - James O'Neal

This is the second book in a series which is not quite post-apocalyptic, but possibly on its way there? I mean, there is a lot going on in this world that O'Neal works in during what is otherwise about a cop trying to find a serial killer.

Let's see, where to begin? The U.S. has been hit by enough terror attacks of various types that there are five "Quarantine Zones" that are no longer considered part of the country, including what used to be Miami and South Florida. Climate change has resulted in it basically raining all the time in Florida, but somehow, large portions of the state are still above water. There is an entire separate species of hominids that look just like humans, but they live a really long time and they can heal from just about anything. The cop was married to one, but apparently they can't interbreed with regular old humans, so his kids are actually from some jackass that they hoped got blown up in the first book, but is still alive. The Internet barely exists, and a lot of people drive steam-powered cars (which they had to modify by adding a boiler.)

Oh, and apparently there are aliens on their way towards Earth. I mean, that's just kind of in the backdrop, something the characters mention once in a while.

O'Neal lets us know who the killer is early on. So the mystery is, variously, whether the killer is one of these other-human types, whether the cop's suspicion that he changed his name is correct, and whether the cop will catch him before he kills the attractive teacher the cop's struck up a friendship with.

There's another subplot about the cop's friend trying to prove he can be more than just a guy who drives a beat, that's he's got initiative and intuition and all that stuff. He starts out seeming pretty over his head, and you figure he's cooked, but the further into the book you get, the more he starts to demonstrate at least some ability to think on his feet and take chances. Which can take a person a fair distance, I guess.

O'Neal jumps between characters or subplots a lot in every chapter, usually not sticking with one for more than a couple of pages. He also loves ending on cliffhangers. Not just chapters, he'll sometimes end every section within a chapter on a cliffhanger. But everyone being in peril or confronted with startling truths at once dilutes the effect. Which startling revelation am I supposed to be excited to learn? It's better when he parcels out the tension sparingly.

'They were all growling and grunting. Another moved in toward the big light dog and that's when Besslia realized what was happening. They were communicating. Those feral dogs had developed a language.'

Trading Up, Trading Down

With Deadpool having another fight with Crossbones in last week's issue of Deadpool, I got thinking about villains who switched arch-foes.

Kingpin is one of the big ones, at least on the Marvel side. Starts out causing headaches for Spider-Man, eventually becomes Daredevil's #1 enemy. Fisk got switched to a less-prominent character, but gets to be the Big Bad. The one everybody expects to make an appearance eventually.

(Spidey seems to "loan" a lot of his Rogue's Gallery out, like Sandman and Hydro-Man each being part of the Frightful Four at different times, or Electro tangling with Daredevil. But I think those guys really remain "Spider-Man villains.")

I think you could add the Sphinx as a similar case, shifting from the Fantastic Four to Nova (and to a lesser extent, the New Warriors). Except Richard Rider is so many more steps down the ladder from the Fantastic Four than Daredevil is from Spider-Man, it was a downgrade. Nova doesn't have his own title often enough or long enough for the Sphinx to get regular play.

Alternatively you've got Sabretooth. First appeared in Iron Fist, but is now tied heavily to Wolverine. In that case, Sabretooth actually upgraded not only from just another enemy to the Evil Opposite Villain, but ended up tied to a much higher-profile guy.

Count Nefaria was an X-Men foe at one point, but even allowing that Thunderbird died trying to stop him, Nefaria's far and away better known as an Avengers' enemy. If not on the scale of Kang or Ultron, at least he has a couple of prominent stories. (The extreme power upgrade, making him more of a direct threat, helped a lot.)

Crossbones' situation seems most similar to Sphinx, sadly. He was never Captain America's #1 foe. Not even the #1 guy to fight, really, not with Batroc's seniority and fun attitude. But being The Big Bad's Top Goon carries a certain level of respectability. Hell, he whupped Daredevil's ass once (admittedly around the point in Nocenti's run where Murdock had a nervous breakdown and forgot he was Daredevil.) If he's getting tied to Deadpool as Another Killer Who Doesn't Like Deadpool, that is not an upgrade. Deadpool's got plenty of those guys, and every writer is eager to add more.

Vengeance Valley (1951)

Burt Lancaster plays the adopted son of a big cattle rancher, targeted by a pair of violent, stupid brothers angry about their sister having a kid out of wedlock. Note they make no attempt to help provide for or raise the kid (not that she asks them to), they're just here to find and kill the dad, over her objections and refusal to name the father.

It's not Lancaster, rather the birth son (played by Robert Walker) of his adoptive father. Except Walker's married, and a chickenshit, so he won't cop to being the father. Even after his wife (Joanne Dru) figures it out (because Lancaster brought the new mom $500 and Walker just so happened to overdraw with a $500 withdrawal he can't explain.), Walker insists that was to help Lancaster.

Walker plays his role very well, as a conniving, quick-talking, back-stabber. He's got a perfect shit-eating grin, reminding me of the worst coworkers I ever had. The ones who always have an excuse, who find any way they can to shirk even easy duties and don't care if that screws everyone else. Who can never understand why you're making such a big deal about it. They didn't do anything wrong! 

The movie is really about how everyone has made excuses for Walker his entire life, and what kind of person that produces. His dad won't admit the truth about his son to himself. Lancaster knows Walker's a piece of crap, but thinks he owes everything to the old man, so he covers for him. Dru, I think, convinced herself Walker was a better man than he was. Or else got tired of waiting for Lancaster to make a move, because they're clearly interested in each other.

So, to a lesser extent, it's about wondering when Lancaster is finally going to reach his limit with shielding Walker. It takes longer than it ought to, but I think Lancaster takes his frustration out on other people. The idiot brothers, a guy who steals four of their cattle. Lancaster does a fair amount of punching and getting punched, but I wonder if he'd rather be fighting someone else.

The final showdown takes a while to set up, then resolves very quickly, but at least it plays off Walker's established tendencies. He uses the cheapest, readily available goons (the 2 brothers), then doesn't stick around to make sure they finish the job because it's more important to get a head start running.

What I Bought 6/14/2024

My boss is back from his, to be clear, deserved vacation, and I'm very happy. Because it means all the questions and requests he normally deals with stop getting funneled to me.

Deadpool #3, by Cody Ziglar (writer), Roge Antonio (artist), Guru-eFX (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - In the merciless Mustard Yellow Wastes, one man hunts another.

Deadpool and Crossbones fight. Crossbones has a "holoshield" that deflects bullets, although it just looks like a bulky flak vest with his logo on it. If it's supposed to glow or project, nobody told the art team. It is less resistant to swords - sort of, Deadpool notes it takes a dozen stabs to get through, but we see him drawing blood right from the start - and then Crossbones uses some explosives. They are, I assume, strapped to him, but don't hurt at all, while Deadpool's lower half gets separated from the rest of him.

What I'm saying is, there's a lot of stuff where I don't feel the writer and artist are on the same page.

Right as Deadpool's about to get shot in the head, Ellie arrives with some sort of teleporter Power Glove she built from watching online videos and punches Crossbones in the face. And then Deadpool kicks Crossbones through the portal, which now leads to a swamp instead of Ellie's home in Arizona. Back at Deadpool's office, everybody talks. Taskmaster thinks the aspect of rapid healing Ellie got may also have made her a rapid learner? Be better off saying Agent Preston participated in SHIELD's "Take Your Daughter to Work Day," and Ellie poked into something she shouldn't.

It is nice to see that, at the outset, Ellie and Princess are getting along. I expected there to be a measure of jealousy between Deadpool's daughters. We'll see, when Deadpool's in trouble, if he shows more concern for Ellie if that changes things.

On the downside, Death Grip has tracked down, sigh, the Muramasa Blade. The thing Logan had made out of part of his soul that you don't heal after you get cut with it. And Death Grip used magic to break it into pieces. I guess it lets him attack with each piece from different directions. Still, am I never to be free of Daniel Way's terrible concepts?!

Sunday Splash Page #327

 

"Intersection," in Man-Thing #1, by Steve Gerber (writer), Val Mayerick (artist), Sal Trapani (inker), Dave Hunt (colorist), John Costanza (letterer)

The only issue of this I own, courtesy of the first volume of the Howard the Duck Complete Collection. And Howard's only in this for a few pages, as the story carries over from Adventures Into Fear (formerly just Fear.)

Drafted in by the wizard in the pointy hat up there to protect Jennifer Kale, a young girl with immense magical power, Howard, Man-Thing, and the barbarian with the Thor-knockoff helm are hopping from one rock floating in a void to the next. Howard gets a little too lackadaisical and falls into the void, and that's it for his involvement. He'd next appear in Giant-Size Man-Thing, now trapped in a world of hairless apes he'd love to escape.

The rest of the little troupe continue on their way, with the wizard always seeming to have the answer to their problems, just in the nick of time, at least until they run into a big fiery demon (who was previously disguised as an anodyne white guy in a business suit) The swamp monster basically shoves the fire guy in a moat of "pure" water, and that's that. Would that all problems caused by guys with MBAs and oversized egos could be resolved so neatly.

Man-Thing ends up back in his swamp and quickly forgets the entire experience.

Saturday Splash Page #129

 

"Dark Star," in Star Power and the Search for Black Hole Bill #2, by Michael Terracciano (writer), Garth Graham (artist)

Set in a far future where Earth has joined a community of inhabited worlds called the Millennium Federation, Star Power is about a young astronomer named Danica Maris, recently assigned to a top-level space station research facility. While studying a seemingly innocuous star, Danica is hit with a burst of energy that turns her into a "Star-Powered Sentinel". The last one, in fact.

The comic ran for six storylines, usually around 5 issues, plus a short one-off between 5 and 6 I think Terracciano wrote and drew himself. Each volume takes a different approach or tells a different kind of story. Volume 1 is the origin, whereas Volume 6 was sort of a noir or "undercover cop" arc, albeit with a character who transforms in a flash of light into a flying, energy sword-wielding warrior. Volume 5 is a thriller/horror story, while volume 4 was about the horrors of war and how you make a difference in a conflict where neither side wants to stop. Volume 3 is more of a treasure hunt.

Terracciano keeps some other subplots building in the background, so that one of the mercenary starfighter pilots that tries to kill Danica in Volume 1, ends up being critical to an investigation that finally concludes in Volume 6. Additionally, there steadily built relationships between the main cast, and usually some subplots related to them in each volume. The former merc sniper Grex has to deal with someone she works with getting hurt by Black Hole Bill (a perfectly smug and sleazy hired gun) during his escape, and struggles to weigh her desire to protect her friends against her desire to kill Bill. An archaeologist that joins the others in their search in Volume 3 is overly confident she'll solve every puzzle, and has to cope with that not being the case at all.

Graham's art work is clean and cartoonish enough the various aliens look noticeably different from humans (even if most still correspond to a basic "two arms two legs" human body plan), while not looking out of place next to the humans. All these species have been interacting and cooperating for some lengthy period of time, there should be a measure of familiarity and ease between them.

The varying types of stories also give Graham the opportunity to draw a lot of other stuff. One arc may involve giant sand worms or an arboreal planet inhabited by what look like intelligent red pandas. The next involves war-torn cities and robo-scorpions. Then it might be all cityscapes of dirty streets and narrow alleys, people in trenchcoats and fedoras. And Graham makes it all work. Some of it might be the fact the Federation consists of over 1000 different worlds, which allows the possibility of different settings and societies, but it never feels like something doesn't fit.

Terracciano writes Danica as mostly cheerful, inquisitive and kind, if a little shy. She gets really excited about stars, but feels embarrassed if she starts to ramble about them around other people. She anthropomorphizes most things, giving them cute names. And while she's sometimes scared or uncertain, her first instinct is to try and help people. Some characters shuffle from the background to the foreground depending on the arc, but she develops a core supporting cast of 3 security officers that were present when she first gained the powers. Initially assigned to help Danica as a task, we get to see how Grex, Kaylo and Shu Lalis interact with each other as friends, and how Danica is steadily integrated into that group.

The series ended after the sixth storyline, I believe because Terracciano had the opportunity to return to an earlier series and wanted to do so. Given the scope of the setting and the fact they'd established the Millennium Federation comprised only a small portion of the galaxy, while the rest was largely in chaos, there was a lot of ground for different stories out there, but so it goes.

Random Back Issues #129 - Master of Kung Fu #126

The plan to attack Shang-Chi while he's relaxed backfired once they realized he was on a sugar high.

About six years ago, Marvel did this series of one-shots that were numbered as the "next" issues in long-canceled series. I bought three: Darkhawk, Power Pack, and this, which is also the only one still in my collection.

Shang-Chi's doing some crossed armed push-ups while the local news discussing an octopus missing from the zoo. Shang also has himself a monkey friend he calls Chee. They go to get ice cream - mint chocolate chip for Shang-Chi (a man after my own heart), and date ice cream for Chee - and are accosted by several ninjas. You see above how attempts to attack Shang-Chi went, so the ninjas decide to try and take Chee hostage.

That's gonna be tough to live down, assuming they don't contract a deadly disease from monkey bites to the eye. Oh, and that they can escape. And it looks like they just might, because when Shang-Chi gives chase, the ground suddenly opens beneath him and he wakes up in a cell underground. Two ninjas are assigned to guard him, and they're morons, but we learn they work for a Dr. Prasis, first name Mel. Meaning his name is almost "Malpractice", as we (and the doctor) are reminded more than once.

Turns out Shang-Chi's been aware of someone experimenting on animals for weeks. First he saw a rat steal a slice of pizza with kung fu. The ninjas trying to adopt rescue animals was somewhat more obvious, and he tracked them to an underground lair full of missing pets that had died after being experimented on. Which is when he found Chee, who, once he was able to trust again, showed an aptitude for kung fu. Shang used some old S.I.S. and Homeland Security contacts, and learned about a doctor at the local zoo who liked to talk to the animals about martial arts movies.

Mel was fired after trying to sneak the octopus out, but now that he's successfully stolen the (very large) octopus, and has Shang-Chi captive, he's going to transfer Shang's brain into the octopus. Which isn't really teaching an animal kung fu, is it? Plus, that just gives Shang-Chi more arms to whip the shit out of you with. I'm starting to think this insane vet may not be all there in the head.

Chee gets Shang-Chi loose, Shang whups the shit out of the ninjas with only two arms and two legs, and releases the octopus. Into the sewer. The newscaster joked about being careful when you sit on the toilet, but man, don't put it past an octopus to try. But first, it has to take a little revenge. Mel tears by on a speedboat and gets yoinked out of it and tossed at Shang's feet by the octopus, and that's pretty much it. Insane doctor incarcerated, octopus free to terrorize the plumbing of San Francisco, more ice cream for Shang-Chi and Chee.

{7th longbox, 10th comic. Master of Kung Fu #126, by CM Punk (writer), Dalibor Talijac (artist), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer)}

The Road to Ubar - Nicholas Clapp

Clapp and his wife Kay briefly visited Oman in the mid-1980s, filming a documentary on the return of oryxes to their native range in the Rub' al-Khali. Clapp became interested in stories a lost city somewhere in "Empty Quarter" of that desert. A supposedly majestic city, ultimately destroyed by a cataclysm brought on by their pronouncing themselves greater than God, called Ubar.

Clapp takes us through his initial trips to bookstores, searching for what's been written about the desert, and how that got him on the trail of Ubar, trying to use ancient copies of the maps Ptolemy made of the known world as at least a starting point. He's able to contact someone in NASA about the possibility of their using a new satellite when it flies over to look for evidence of a road, now buried under the sand, used to reach Ubar.

There's a vast cast of people brought in, from archaeologists to English landed gentry who love to explore to anyone they can convince to help fund or supply the expedition. Clapp offers short biographies as needed, but avoids getting too bogged down in that.

The middle third of the book is the actual search, or rather, two of them. The first attempt sends them out into the desert, tracking the partially buried road. It produces mostly evidence of Neolithic habitation. Interesting, but not what they're looking for. There's a fair amount of discussion of the interactions with the locals living around the fringes of the desert, their current ways of life, their past ways of life, their beliefs and stories. Many claim ancestry from "the people of 'Ad", who were the ones living in Ubar. I was surprised by that, people proudly claiming to be part of a group of people given a reputation for having their great city destroyed for their lack of humility.

They do find a buried city, so this is not a book about the search for a lost city that goes nowhere, if you were worried about that. Clapp acknowledges that, short of finding the 400 A.D. equivalent of an "Ubar City Limits" sign, they'll never be sure they found the actual place they were looking for. But it's still an impressive find, this city partially buried by sand, partially swallowed by a sinkhole (the collapse of which could be the cataclysm that destroyed Ubar), partially buried by the earthworks of people who came along centuries later and built on top of the remains. There's also sorts of pottery remains from both the Parthians and the Romans, part of a sandstone chess set (although that's from one of the later groups of people who took us residence), dozens of unused arrows, and most of the city walls. It's kind of crazy to think they slowly unearthed all that over the course of a few years (and not even year-round work, since the summer climate is not conducive.)

The last third of the book is Clapp offering a best guess of the history of the location. Some of that is based on the evidence the archaeologists found, but some of it is extrapolated from the stories about the city, or what was going on in other parts of the world. For example, Ubar's wealth would have been based on the frankincense the groves closer to the coast produced. So Clapp hypothesizes the rise of Christianity, and a resulting reduction in people wanting frankincense for burials, might have lowered Ubar's prospects, even as more people were moving to that area as other spring-fed water sources dried up. It's a well-written section, but I don't know the history of the region well enough to know how shaky it is.

Still, I learned several things I'd never heard of before, and Clapp includes enough of the day-to-day challenges and oddities during the excavation to keep the book from getting dry. It's as much a travelogue and memoir as historical record.

'When Ran Fiennes, normally busy with logistics and government liaison, had a go at actually digging, he excavated with his hands rather than a trowel. "Now, we don't dig like that," Juri advised. But there was no stopping Ran as he hit a section of the wall and proclaimed, "I'm an archaeologist, an overnight archaeologist!"

"Stop digging like a fox," Juri pleaded, to absolutely no avail.'

Stir Crazy (1980)

I would not have expected a movie where Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor escape from prison under the cover of a rodeo to exist, but here we are. I feel like this movie has the seeds of 3 or 4 interesting movies, but doesn't develop most of them.

It starts with Wilder as a struggling playwright who moonlights as a department store detective, but seems a little off-kilter (prone to laughing hysterically at strange moments, I'm not sure if he was supposed to have some sort of nervous condition or what), while his friend (Pryor) is an actor not getting a lot of run on Broadway, working as a waiter. OK, do something with the struggling artists bit, either them trying to find professional success, or find peace and happiness in some other way.

But Wilder convinces Pryor that New York City is too stifling. They should move to California, where the real job opportunities and hot women are. Now it could be a road trip movie as they cross the U.S. in a beat to shit van. I gotta say, I was really excited at that prospect, because a Pryor/Wilder road trip movie sounds like it could be fantastic.

Except the van breaks down in some Southwestern town, so they get temporary jobs at a bank, after Wilder convinces the bank manager to try a new ad campaign that involves our protagonists doing a song and dance number in the bank lobby while dressed in brightly colored bird costumes. OK, so you could do the story about a couple of outsiders in a town. Strangers in a strange land, that kind of thing. 

But two rednecks that took a dislike to Wilder at a bar steal the costumes, rob the bank, framing Wilder and Pryor and getting them sentenced to 125 years in prison. So now it's a "survive prison" movie, and that's mostly what it is from then on. There's a large, silent guy that everyone is terrified of, but Wilder and Pryor (somehow) manage to befriend. We don't see how; the chief guard (Craig T. Nelson) adds the big guy to their cell to try and make Wilder agree to participate in the prison rodeo, and the next morning they're all playing cards. There's a gay inmate constantly flirting with Pryor, to his great discomfort. Nelson is opposed to letting Wilder be their top bull rider, because he has some professional he wants to use (who is also a feared figure around the prison yard for some reason.) The warden's bent, because all the money from the rodeo is supposed to go to the prisoners, but he hoards it.

The movie does acknowledge, without really hammering on it, the different perspectives Wilder and Pryor have on prison and the justice system in general. Wilder keeps thinking that everything will be fine. They're innocent, and innocent people don't go to jail. In prison, he keeps acting as though the guards and warden are reasonable people who are openly to calmly discussing the conditions and care about the prisoner's well-being. Pryor is far more pessimistic, at every turn trying to get Wilder to shut the hell up and keep his head down. He may be surprised at the severity of their sentence, but not that they were found guilty. We never see him meet with their lawyer when the lawyer visits, only Wilder. Which implies Wilder's the only one putting any faith in them getting out on appeal.

There's a weak romantic subplot where Wilder becomes infatuated with the cousin of their public defender (the cousin is helping out the lawyer out of the goodness of her heart.) There's the escape during the rodeo, at the same time the cousin has found proof they're innocent. The movie has a training montage of Pryor practicing being a rodeo clown (as the escape requires him to be part of Wilder's "crew"), which I thought was going to come into play during the climax. You know, Pryor's free and clear, but sees Wilder in trouble and has to jump back in to save him. But it's OK because they're proven innocent.

The movie even sets up the chance when the pro bull rider and Craig T. Nelson plot to make Wilder ride a horse called "Untamed." But if Wilder was ever in any danger, it passed so subtly I didn't even notice, and the rodeo clown thing never comes up. Just that brief training bit which is mostly Pryor nervously trying to find the one word that will piss the bull off and make it chase him. To be fair, I did actually laugh at that sequence.

It's like they had a ton of ideas they tried to cram in one movie, but they needed to pick one and really commit to it. If you want to do a prison movie, do a damn prison movie. Or a rodeo movie, or a "city slickers in a country-western town" movie, or whatever. I'd say at best, they went like 60% on the prison movie, but even a lot of that was the rodeo thing.

Conditional Trust Exercise

Come on, you guys are supposed to be a party.

The first volume of Apparently, Disillusioned Adventurers will Save the World (cripes, these manga titles) sees four people who have each lost the ability to trust try to form an adventuring party on, essentially, the basis of each for their own. As to why they'd bother, well, in their depression after their respective betrayals, each fell prey to a vice that has depleted their finances.

Nick is the lead character, the one whose perspective the manga (and presumably the novels its based on) follows the most. Nick was booted from his party because he was basically too skilled and too professional. Most of the others guys were mediocre losers, but the leader wouldn't cast them aside to rise in the ranks (bigger risk but bigger rewards), so Nick had to go. Then he learned his girlfriend was just using him and now he's useless, so he gets dumped.

Nick's written as meticulous and pragmatic. He accepts the others will have trust issues, and tries to make plans that account for that without forcing them out of their comfort zone. So he sets it up so one person keeps the safe for their funds, another keeps the key, he keeps the ledger, and the fourth will check to make sure everything matches. Each person only has to trust themselves, because any thief will get caught.

The other three get varying degrees of focus, with Karan, a dragonian warrior, getting the most. Karan is the other experienced adventurer, but her party set her up and left her to die at the bottom of a dungeon. So she's extremely skittish, unwilling to share her strengths and weaknesses with the others, and quick to assume ill intent when she's nearly hit with friendly fire during their first mission into a labyrinth.

The first volume doesn't get much further than that, as the final chapter shows exactly what happened to Karan, and why she has mixed feelings about a pendant Nick makes sure she doesn't lose after the labyrinth. It also highlights some of the differences between Nick and her old party leader, who treated her more like a child and didn't ask anything of her but to go kill monsters.

Sunday Splash Page #326

 

"Masks and Manes", in Manhunter #14, by Kim Yale and John Ostrander (writers), Doug Rice (penciler), Pablo Marcos (inker), Julianna Ferriter (colorist), Albert De Guzman (letterer)

The most well-known Manhunter is probably either Goodwin and Simonson's Paul Kirk, the super-soldier unfrozen by a secretive "Council" to lead an army of clones of himself (only to end up killing those clones), or Marc Andreyko's Kate Spencer, the district attorney who borrows a bunch of supervillain gear to become a lethal avenger of the night.

But the first Manhunter to get their own series, which ran for two years, is Mark Shaw. Shaw has some backstory about being part of a Manhunter (the proto-Green Lantern killer 'bots) cult, and as part of that, pretending to be both a JLA-fighting super-villain, and a merc hero type (under separate identities.) I can barely follow that even when Ostrander and Yale try to explain it.

The important part is Mark received a lot of training, but at the cost of his sense of self. Now he's trying to rediscover himself as a person, while using that training as a bounty hunter (and solver of other assorted problems.)

Ostrander and Yale try to thread the needle between more serious missions and threats, and sillier ones. So Shaw might get a line on Captain Cold because Cold's a Cubs' fan and bets on them - to win, the dumbass - religiously. Or he might keep Catman from escaping a museum heist by altering the cops to a particular car with a lot of unpaid tickets, and Catman's finds his getaway vehicle booted.

Those tend to be more interludes than long-running threads. There's a lot of stuff with Mark's family and his place in it. He's adopted, so he doesn't feel like he fits, and the family is loaded, full of CEOs and attorneys, so a career as a costumed skip tracer isn't the done thing. Lots of recriminations, guilt, harsh words on all sides there. Mark has to deal with two versions of a superhuman, shapeshifting, questionably sane assassin. The latter fight, which takes up most of the last quarter of the book's run, puts Mark's family in the line of fire and forces him to more fully confront his time in the Manhunter cult. It's not putting it behind him, so much as making peace with the bad and assimilating the good.

Also, it involves a benevolent telepathic alien Yeti, so there's that.

The book and character sort of spun out of Ostrander using him during the Millennium event tie-ins for Suicide Squad, so Shaw interacts with Waller a couple of times, gets some help from Oracle and Waller's niece (the one who died on Apokolips). He gets tangled up in The Janus Directive, which is a better tie-in than the Invasion! one, where Wally West's harridan of a mother hires Shaw to go to Cuba and rescue Wally (aka the Flash) from aliens, or Castro, or something. I think it's an attempt at a more lighthearted story, the whole thing a big stupid mess, but it's not funny, so it doesn't work. The one where he takes a job from an Australian salvage company to stake first claim on some alien war-mech that got left over, and finds Checkmate, the Rocket Reds and Lexcorp all after it too, works better.

Doug Rice draws most of the first year-and-a-half of the book, with Grant Miehm taking over for the final arc. Rice's art is looser than Miehm's, more malleable to comic exaggeration. Mark's mask is more expressive under his pencils, almost fluid at times. Rice uses shadows to break up panels or guide the eye more than Miehm, but Miehm's heavier line probably fits the grimmer, more brutal fight with Dumas at the end.

Saturday Splash Page #128

 

"Unfriendly Skies" in Star Spangled War Stories #154, by Robert Kanigher (writer), Joe Kubert (artist), colorist and letterer unknown

The five issues of this DC war comic I have (courtesy of my dad's collection), are all from the start of The Unknown Soldier's tenure as lead character, a spot he'd hold until the book ended around issue 204. That said, none of the comics I have contained a splash page for The Unknown Soldier I thought really showed off Kubert's work, so Enemy Ace (who became the second feature after his own lengthy stint as the lead) it is.

Kanigher takes a few issues to find his stride with the Unknown Soldier. The first couple of issues just position him as a sort of super-secret agent man, well trained in unarmed combat and disguises, while also implying that "The Unknown Soldier" has been a recurring title held by different soldiers in all of the U.S.'s various wars. This issue establishes the backstory for this specific guy (I don't know if the notion of previous Unknown Soldiers ever comes up again), as your stereotypical clean-cut kid that joined the Army when his older brother did. They're stationed together in the Philippines, and the older brother dies from a grenade when the Japanese attack.

Younger brother survives, badly scarred from the explosion, and from beating a lot of Japanese soldiers to death(?) with his bare hands. Feels like Garth Ennis pulled from that for Punisher: Born, albeit he took the notion in a very different direction. Kubert keeps the guy's face in shadow until it can be swathed in bandages like Claude Rains in The Invisible Man.

The expert in weapons and combat and disguise stuff remains, and the former sergeant introduced in issue #155 becomes what I think passes for a supporting cast, since I only have one more issue past that. I'm not sure if the Soldier achieves his stated goal of being, one man in the right place to change the outcome of the war, as he claims, but it wasn't for lack of trying. The last issue I have, he takes his own shot at Hitler, simultaneous with the Valkyrie plot. The both fail, of course. *sad trombone*

As for Enemy Ace, Kanigher writes him with a sort of fatalistic nobility. The guy believes the sky will be the only true victor, outliving them all, but he also seems determined to never come back from a mission without shooting something down. I guess you could peg that as equal opportunity for him to be shot down, and the whole thing is a death wish. He doesn't seem to take any joy in anything, Kubert drawing him as eternally grim and brooding, always separate from the other pilots and ground crew.

What I Bought 6/6/2024

Looking at the forecast ahead, this is the last weekend I've got before summer sets in for real. At least it waited until mid-June. In the meantime, as we move into a summer of very few comics, let's look at the conclusion to a mini-series, which doesn't feel like much of a conclusion at all.

Ms. Marvel: Mutant Menace #4, by Iman Vellani and Sabir Pirzada (writers), Scott Godlewski (artist), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Lockjaw looking at Kamala like she's a pile of throw-up and wondering if anyone's gonna eat that.

The Inhumans determine the reason Kamala looks like a melted candle is because, while the X-Men recreated her powers they didn't recreate the Terrigen Mists that brought them out. It's a catalyst, or maybe an enzyme, her body can't handle all the stretching and whatnot without it. So into a tube, gas exposure, and hallucination. Instead of Captain America or Carol Danvers, Kamala sees her mother, who assures her it's OK that she can't be simplified to an easily defined person.

Hallucination complete, powers back to normal, potential of mutation expressing itself apparently more remote than ever. Awesome! That evil doctor lady, Nitika, has unleashed the reanimated corpse of Kamala's previous body, with the mutation (read: movie) powerset activated, and has it rampaging through Jersey City. Nitika accurately sees Kamala would not trust a former ORCHIS scientist, but she really wants Kamala to activate her mutation (because she thinks hard light constructs could be used to build homes or some shit, really?), and dusted off the, "I hurt you to make you stronger" strategy.

Kamala makes it out physically OK, but Sheikh Abdullah's in a coma, and now everyone in Jersey City hates and fears Ms. Marvel, even as they acknowledge the rampage was by an evil clone. So the death of her zombified corpse is kind of a symbolic death of her old life as the generally beloved protector of Jersey City. The X-Men basically shrug and tell Kamala, "that's life in the X-verse." Excellent mentorship. Especially funny given Kamala admits earlier in the issue she knew she could ask the Inhumans for help, but keeps forgetting she can rely on others. Then she turns to the X-Men and gets, "toughen up, snowflake."

With Nitika still out there, and still determined to activate Kamala's mutation, this feels like the middle chapter of a larger story. Much of her traditional support circle are against her, save Bruno (with the way Godlewski drew the last page, it looks like they're teasing the Kamala/Bruno thing again), Red Dagger (when he's not on the other side of the world), and the Inhumans (whatever their status quo is.) Presumably she'll have some final confrontation with Nitika, maybe regain the trust of the pinheads of Jersey City. Is that going to be a third mini-series, or will this be relegated to a subplot in that NYX book? Will it even get any follow-up?