What I Bought 9/27/2024 - Part 1

This is the start of three consecutive weeks with a lot of time on the road. It's a nice time of year for it, but I can't say I'm excited. Although if my luck runs true to form, my being in the field is just the thing to prompt people to send me paperwork I've been waiting on for weeks or months, along with agitated e-mails about how soon I can reply to them.

Red Before Black #2, Stephanie Phillips (writer), Goran Sudzuka (artist), Ive Svorcina (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - Ladies please, this is an IHOP. Save that behavior for the Waffle House.

The first third of the issue is a flashback to 3 weeks ago, when Val ends up in solitary for using another inmate's face to put a divot in the shower wall. The fed shows up with his deal, and then it's back to the present. I feel like most of what gets said between Val and the fed was covered or implied at the end of last issue, but maybe the significance was Val was having one of her episodes (flashbacks? panic attacks?) in the shower, when a blonde inmate was about to get beat up. So the episodes and her hesitance to kill Leo are tied to something that happened with a blonde lady in trouble, maybe?

The rest of the issue is Val and Leo in the diner, where Leo reveals she knows Val works for Miles and is supposed to kill her. Which at first just seems like good instincts, but in the subsequent fight, when Val hesitates to shoot Leo and gets stabbed in the gut as a result, she has another episode. Interesting how Svorcina shifts the colors to these solid blocks of reds and greens initially, then back to something more shaded and variable - not realistic in colors, moreso in shading and tone - once Val's in the episode. Only this time, Leo comes walking through the bushes, remarking on how interesting it all is.

So Leo has some ability to go inside people's heads? She didn't so much read the situation of Val's miraculous appearance last issue and draw conclusions as she's been in Val's memories? That would sort of jibe with the way she mentions the kids dining at the table nearby are gonna need a lot of therapy if they see someone shot right in front of them. Clearly Leo doesn't actually give a shit about that, considering they'll probably also need therapy after seeing someone stabbed, but she knew it would give Val pause.

Oh, and the kid working the counter at the motel where Val's staying passed along a photo of her talking with the fed to one of Miles' associates, so that cover's pretty much blown.

The Pedestrian #2, by Joey Esposito (writer), Sean von Gorman (artist), Josh Jensen (colorist), David Bowie Rendon-Gorman and Micah Williams (additional artists), Shawn Lee (letterer) - Charging ahead, on a path marked for all to see!

Esposito and von Gorman introduce Sophie in this issue, the crossing guard who pulled one of the two kids nearly hit by the drunk teacher to safety last issue (The Pedestrian saving the other.) Sophie goes about her day, helping people in little ways, while wondering if it matters, or if there's some force out there making sure every kind act is countered by a cruel one.

The one cop notes that Sophie moved to town the same time the mysterious hero showed up, and visits her apartment. Sophie's a bad liar, but the cop didn't see The Pedestrian sitting on Sophie's couch, sharing pizza, so she can't prove anything.

In the meantime, the mysterious figure with the red hand on their face visits Tucker, the guy who botched his mugging attempt, in jail. He places his mark on the guy, and the guy somehow escapes jail, beats his old boss to death with a hammer, and then attacks the failed med student-turned-pizza delivery girl. The Pedestrian arrives in the nick of time and seems to have things under control (von Gorman draws road signs illustrating how he avoids attacks) then - 

I'm not sure. There was what I assumed was a specter or mental projection hanging around Tucker, but it suddenly appears behind Pedestrian. He slaps a hand over Pedestrian's symbol and the guy is thrown into some strange space full of floating giants with stoplights for heads. Back in the real world, the delivery girl clocked Tucker (and the symbol disappeared from his face), but red hands emerge from his back to carry him away, leaving delivery girl and Sophie to get the hero out of there.

So this is turning into some battle between anthropomorphized representations of abstract ideals? But I assume it's going to come down to what specific individuals do. I wondered if Esposito was going to keep having Pedestrian interact with different citizens, but it looks more like he introduced the key players in the first issue, and will circle back around to them as the story progresses. Kira (the near mugging victim) got fired for being interviewed about her mugging in front of the store, and is now babysitting the two boys who nearly got hit. The boys are very excited about Pedestrian, and Kira's curious about him, but they all seem to agree he's a good guy. Tucker surrendered to anger and resentment, the delivery girl is on the verge of giving up on herself (she describes returning to this city as "the walk of shame"), but did help Sophie get Pedestrian to safety. We'll see what the cop does once she catches up to all this.

Sunday Splash Page #342

 

"Sure, Why Not," in Marvel Team-Up (vol. 3) #18, by Robert Kirkman (writer), Paco Medina (penciler), Juan Vlasco (inker), Marte Garcia (colorist), Rus Wooton (letterer)

There was a second volume of Marvel Team-Up in the mid-90s that lasted about a year. I owned an issue at some point, where Spider-Man "teams up" with Man-Thing, trying to recover some gem for some mysterious guy. In the mid-2000s, Robert Kirkman got a crack at it. Kirkman tended to write 4 to 6 issue story arcs that swapped in and out heroes as they went, most of which tied together into some bigger arc. But his run is probably best known for the crossover with his and Cory Walker's character, Invincible, in issue 14.

I don't care about that, so the issues I have are 15 through 18, the "League of Losers" story, where a guy named Chronok travels back from 2099 to kill all the heroes using all the information the future has about them. If that sort of shit actually worked, it seems like Kang would have pulled it off years ago, but I guess Chronok attacks them in their homes, dispensing with whatever honor Kang pretends to have.

The only survivors are a bunch of heroes who were too unknown for there to be any solid intel about them. They sort of stumble into each other and manage to steal Chronok's device, traveling to 2099 to stop him before he puts his plan in motion. From left to right up there we've got Darkhawk, X-23, Gravity, Sleepwalker, Terror Inc., Speedball, Dagger, Mutant 2099(?), and Reed Richards' brain in a Ben Grimm robot-suit.

My initial thought was that Reed had hijacked Ben's corpse, but no. Arana was one of the initial survivors, but she got killed and Terror, Inc., is wearing her right arm, which grants him her weird exoskeleton ability.

The heroes triumph, but this is one of those stories where the rule is you just create a new timeline. So in their past, Chronok still succeeded and their world is ruined, but there's another timeline where he never made it back there, and versions of them already exist, so they just stay in 2099.

Kirkman gives Darkhawk center stage as the one who leads and rallies the others, and who ends up bringing down Chronok. Gravity and Sleepwalker seem like much heavier hitters, and Speedball and Dagger were both around for a long time before Darkhawk. It's weird seeing Darkhawk talk to Speedball like 'Hawk is the grizzled vet and Speedball the child, but Kirkman's playing pretty loose here anyway. I've never seen X-23 written the way he does, as having survived the initial attack on the X-Men because she got scared and ran, and eventually getting giggly and cuddly with Gravity.

I think the only time that story was ever referenced was the Deadpool/Great Lakes Initiative Summer Fun Spectacular, when Squirrel Girl uses Doom's time machine to try and retrieve this Speedball to replace the one in her present, who is calling himself Penance.

Saturday Splash Page #144

 

"Lecture," in Spider-Girl #44, by Tom DeFalco (writer), Pat Olliffe (writer/penciler), Al Williamson (inker), Christie Scheele and Heroic Age (colorists), John E. Workman (letterer)

Summer (and Fall) of Spiders is taking this trip across the multiverse, to visit the little book that wouldn't die. Originally the product of a What If? based around the notion Norman Osborn had Peter and MJ's child kidnapped, rather than the child being stillborn, Spider-Girl followed May "Mayday" Parker as she tried to navigate high school, superheroics, boyfriends, and an at-time overprotective father.

The creative team behind that What If? story, DeFalco and Olliffe, would work on the series for most of the first 56 issues of the book. The book was nearly canceled at least twice during that span, but apparently did very well with younger readers (including young girl readers), and especially when Marvel put out digest-sized collections. I'd figure you'd get eyestrain trying to read all DeFalco's dialogue and caption boxes in a manga-sized package, but you can't say he wasn't giving the reader their money's worth on time. (Although he also writes all the caption boxes in second-person, which I know some people don't dig.)

DeFalco's a writer of a particular style, old-school style, and so the book sticks to that. I think he mostly avoids trying to write too hip, which would probably end badly, but characters do tend to make big speeches about not giving up or doing the right thing even when it's hard, especially during fights. It feels maybe better suited for a more mythic figure like Thor than Spider-Girl, who mostly sticks to street-level threats (though she does does tangle with Seth, the Serpent God of Death about the time Ron Frenz takes over as penciler), but if you figure DeFalco's thinking about younger readers, big, on-the-nose speeches might be appropriate for them.

For at least part of the book's run, it would have been contemporary with my high school years. The fashions for the teenagers don't seem off to me, so I figure Olliffe did fine on that score.

On the plus side, DeFalco and Olliffe introduce a broad supporting cast for Mayday, both in and out of school. Best friends (boy and girl), potential love interests (only boys, though I thikn this is the book that established Felicia Hardy as bisexual), rivals, villains, mentors, allies. Most of these characters get their own subplots at one point or the other (often several at the same time.) Those run in the background, often independent of whatever Mayday's doing, until advancing to the forefront. It helps flesh them out, giving them lives that continue on even when the star of the book's not around, and makes it easier to care about them.

There's a lot of focus on her relationship with her parents, as Peter swings between trying to trust and worrying she's in over her head, while Mary Jane, who has to struggle with seeing her daughter risk her neck, sometimes plays mediator and sometimes is the voice that actually gets through to May, who has heard certain spiels so often from her dad they just bounce off.

It's very much a book of its era. It spun out of events of the Clone Saga, and so it draws heavily from that era, plus some of DeFalco's other work (Seth showing up from the DeFalco/Frenz Thor run, but also Lyja, the Skrull who impersonated Alicia Masters, is still around and married to Johnny Storm.) Mayday wears a version of Ben Reilly's costume and webshooters, rather than her father's. Kaine plays a prominent role in the book, first as someone trying to deter Spider-Girl, then as sort of a gruff uncle figure. The Darkdevil character ends up being connected to the Parkers via Ben Reilly's five years on the road. Normie Osborn struggles to deal with the legacy of his father and grandfather, and Mayday struggles with wanting to help someone who was kind of an older brother to her in their early years.

DeFalco and Olliffe mostly avoid just pulling out Spider-Man's old enemies to bedevil Spider-Girl. Jonah Jameson's still around, but he thinks Spider-Girl is great, a wonderful respectful hero, not like that menace Spider-Man. Raptor (who ends up more of a friend than enemy) is the daughter of the second Vulture, but most of the villains have no apparent connection to any of her dad's Rogue's Gallery (minus things like the teleporting, intangible Mr. Nobody working for the Kingpin sometimes.) Their designs are usually unique and avoid feeling like a rehash of someone with similar abilities. Funny Face is sort of a Joker-type, but goes with the full jester look. Kilerwatt has the electricity powers, but doesn't resemble Electro or the Eel or anyone like that.

The back half of the book, however, would not continue that trend, as we'll get to next week.

Random Back Issues #137 - Legend of the Shield #6

Nice try, but everyone knows you stop a bad guy with a gun with a good guy in a multi-million dollar suit of experimental armor.

The last time we looked in on the Shield, his first mission ended with hostages rescued, but his friend  Devon murdered before he could tell Joe the court-martial was a plot by Joe's dad to make sure he had the son he thought he could control wearing the Shield armor. Well, Joe's wearing the Shield armor, but he's also on the run until he can bring down his dad, so, 1 out of 2?

Joe's in Summit City, saying his farewells to Dusty, the sidekick of the original Shield, who was beaten into a coma by members of the gang the Jewels in the previous issue. A guy watches from the shadows, lamenting how he let Dusty down. Elsewhere, the mysterious "Hauser" who runs Summit City, is dealing with the leader of the Jewels, who looks like he was part of Run DMC. He doesn't appreciate being told to report back on sightings of the Shield, to the point he throws a knife into Hauser's chest. 

Which does nothing except make Hauser threaten to cut off the meds the leader's mom needs. Does that mean he controls the pharmaceutical companies or drug stores in town, the doctors who prescribe the drugs? Don't tell me he's, gasp, interfering with the mail. That fiend!

Joe drops a letter in the mail to Devon's parents, explaining what really happened, then steps into a "Techno-Nook" for a new watch battery. Only to find the story being robbed at Uzi-point by more Jewels, who are also on the lookout for him. Joe wonders about their mysterious "boss", but wins the fight easily.

The store's owners, the Carvers, explain they saved enough to move to a 'slightly less bad part of town,' and get this store. It makes them an easy target, but they stay because you have to take a stand somewhere. The Carvers' son Theo arrives and pulls a switchblade on the Shield, thinking he attacked the store. A little talking clears things up, and Theo agrees to help Joe find a news photographer he befriended. They run into more Jewels on the way, irate that Theo refuses to join, but Bert the photog comes out with a gun, giving them a chance to scramble inside his apartment.

Oddly, the Jewels make no attempt to besiege the place with their M-16s. Even stranger these guys don't recognize Joe as the guy they're supposed to be looking for, even though his armor is plainly visible beneath his open trenchcoat. Joe wants to know where the Jewels are based, because this latest bunch were carrying military hardware.

As it turns out, the one supplying the Jewels is McGill, the Green Beret that got Devon killed. Joe's dad is getting McGill the guns to supply to gangs to draw out Joe, and McGill is taking money from Hauser for the guns, with neither of those two the wiser. Presumably he'll use the money to fix the damage Joe did to his face when he went rogue.

So Joe's got a lot to deal with, and that's without him knowing The Web are trying to track him down, or that The Fly is in town and had his own run-in with the Jewels that's got him looking to get involved.

{6th longbox, 90th comic. Legend of the Shield #6, by Grant Miehm (writer/artist), Mark Waid (writer), Matt Hollingsworth (colorist), Albert DeGuzman (letterer)}

Last Month, Second-to-Last Issues

The solicits are a little of both worlds. A couple of new books, but a couple things don't show up. There's a tpb for the first few issues of The Pedestrian, but no new issue, so I'm guessing it's taking a break before the next arc. Body Trade just seems to be absent.

What's new that's coming out? Al Ewing and Steve Lieber are doing a Metamorpho book. I'm not as agog at Ewing's work as a lot of folks, but he's not bad by any means. Marvel solicited Laura Kinney: Wolverine, by Erica Schultz and Giada Belviso. I don't know, maybe I'll get this, although it was listed in CBR's solicitations but not Previews, so who knows what that means.

J.G. Jones and Phil Bram are releasing an 8-issue mini-series through Image called Dust to Dust, about a serial killer lurking in the storms of the Dust Bowl, picking off farmers. Laguna Studios has The Surgeon, by John Pence and three different listed artists (Laurie Foster, Everardo Orozco, Erek Foster). It seems kind of like The Postman, but with a doctor instead, so I don't know.

What's ending? Dazzler, which may be a great comfort to me, if I'm still buying it. Otherwise, a lot of stuff on penultimate issues.

And all the rest: And those penultimate issue books include, drum roll, Babs, Red Before Black, and Avengers Assemble. I assumed they listed its 4th issue solicit last month, because they were rushing to wrap it up by year's end, but no.

Rogues is on to issue 6, although issue 3 didn't show up this month. Believe it when you see it. Dark Harbor solicited Loop #4, but there's still no issue 1, so *points to preceding sentence.* Fantastic Four is back after taking the month off in November for unknown reasons. Deadpool is still dead in his own book, and Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu is on issue 3. Batgirl is on issue 2, as she and Shiva are being pursued by some group, but are otherwise not on the same page. Calvera PI's also releasing its second issue.

As for manga, The Boxer is on volume 9, which seems like it's either the final volume or damn close. Yu's going to challenge the heavyweight that was K's previous fighter, which is the last feather in the cap. While it won't show up in December, Seven Seas solicited Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General volume 11.

Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022)

The Red Ribbon Army is back! Sort of. Goku trashed it pretty good when he was a kid, but there's still Red Pharmaceutical, the cover company that funded the Red Ribbon Army, plus Dr. Gero's later work on Androids. They're looking to get some more artificial beings to help take over the world, and they think Gero's grandson, Hedo, is just the super-genius to make it happen.

One problem: Hedo loves superheroes. World conquest isn't a selling point for him. But telling him there are mysterious aliens working with Bulma and Capsule Corp to rule the world from the shadows, and the Red Ribbon Army just wants to stop them? That's a selling point.

I point out here Hedo had been in prison because he dug up corpses to make androids to work in a convenience store to raise money for his experiments. He might want to be a hero, but he's a little confused about appropriate and inappropriate actions.

The movie does a 6-month time skip to Piccolo getting attacked by a powerful android with a cape and an outfit that reminds me of Cyborg 009. Piccolo survives and tracks the android, which is how the heroes find out what's going on.

A lot of the movie is Piccolo trying to hand this problem off to other people, but being forced to deal with it himself. Goku and Vegeta are off-world, training with Broly, and through a contrived circumstance, can't be reached. Which is fine; I could have done with the 10 minutes or so the movie spent on Beerus' world being cut in half. That would have been enough to explain why the usual suspects (plus Vegeta) weren't showing up to save the day this time. I guess they figured most people want to see those guys. I'm clearly not most people, but so it goes.

After that, and Piccolo using the Dragon Balls to get his potential unlocked (and Bulma using them for mystical cosmetic surgery), it's mostly Piccolo trying to get Gohan amped up enough to handle this problem. Because Gohan's not training. Again. Can't blame the guy, honestly. He's been fighting for his life since he was 5. Let the man study bugs! There are some funny bits there, as Piccolo spends much of the movie disguised as a Red Ribbon soldier, and helps abduct Gohan's daughter, Pan. Then Piccolo gets Pan to actively play along that she's in danger.

Him standing behind the Red Ribbon guys, signaling at her to cry or to not beat up the guy who wouldn't let her have cookies, because, 'those aren't for hostages,' or pretending to grab her by the shirt (when she's actually standing on his other hand), cracked me up.

Hedo and his creations, Gamma 1 and 2, have an 11th hour face turn when the Red Ribbon leader stops pretending this is anything other than a power grab and activates the best version of Cell they could create from incomplete notes (because Gero's computer actually completed Cell, decades into the future.) More powerful, but with none of the personality. Essentially a rampaging, instinctual berserker monster.

Which is fine; they already had Hedo, the Gammas and Magenta to act as antagonists with personality and motivations. There wasn't time to get into a whole thing with another villain and their desires and monologues. Sometimes you just need something big and dangerous that requires the heroes to go all-out to win, and "Cell Max" fits the bill. Everyone gets to have a moment to be cool or helpful, the day is saved. Gohan shows he has been doing some training on the side, so Piccolo's fears were unfounded. Pan gets to have a little arc when she figures out how to fly in a critical moment, after struggling with it at the beginning of the film. I wasn't so sure about Hedo, but he does offer to go back to prison at the end, so I think he's gained a better sense of what heroism is about, and Dragon Ball is nothing if not about giving people second chances (or third, fourth, seriously, why has nobody re-killed Frieza yet?)

A Perfect Monster

Is this the start of some terrifying, and adorable, new Planet of the Penguins? In this blogger's opinion, yes!

Volume 3 of JH's The Boxer sees Yu challenged by another up-and-coming lightweight, Qasim Al-Hajad. It's briefly set up to seem like contrasting rivals, as Qasim loudly boxes for the fun of it and uses unorthodox attacks he probably saw in video games, while Yu shows no emotion and just knocks people swiftly into oblivion with textbook form.

Just as quickly, Qasim is exposed as a bully who turns tail the moment he can't overwhelm his opponent with sheer athleticism, and as such, a disgrace to boxing. Calling back to volume 1, when Injae's father told him that, as a boxer, you can't ever stay down, no matter how outclassed you are, or it's over. The poser dispatched with ease, JH moves to the real show, Yu's bout against the undefeated lightweight champion, Jean Pierre Manuel.

Unlike in volume 2, when JH waited until the fight's began to dive into John Taker's backstory and "rookie killer" persona, we see Jean as he prepares for a bout against what might be his dream, and learn what boxing means to him. He seeks perfection through it, absolute perfect control of every part of his body. In Yu, from the first punch he threw at John Taker, Jean has seen his goal brought to life.

Then we see the extent he's willing to push himself to, in the hopes of attaining that same level. JH might overplay his hand here, as Jean not only begins roaming back alleys at night, fighting gangs that will kill him if they can. No, he goes so far as to steal some of their blood and use it to paint some vision of how he perceives Yu. Given how the fight plays out, though that isn't until volume 4, it pushes things too far.

JH draws Jean with an intense look from the start, but the further along the story goes, the thicker and rougher the lines that define Jean's face become, and the color of his pupils begins to spill over the lines into the whites of his eyes. It gives an air of someone unhinged, or maybe so tightly wound he's almost vibrating. There are also, during Jean's "training," narrow panels of blood cells rushing through arteries, or nerves firing, showing how Jean's body is reacting to the stress of the situation as he slowly attains the control he's sought. By the time of the fight, JH is stretching, almost smearing, their faces as they dodge punches. Partially to illustrate the quickness of their movements, but also to make them look less human, as they reveal the kinds of "monsters" they are.

And volume 3 ends with that looking like it still wasn't enough to keep up with Yu.

Sunday Splash Page #341

 

"Grievous Bodily Harm From Above," in Marvel Team-Up (vol. 1) #82, by Chris Claremont (writer), Sal Buscema and Steve Leialoha (artists), Ben Sean (colorist), Rick Parker (letterer)

It feels like Marvel Team-Up started as a co-starring book for Spider-Man and the Human Torch, only to become essentially a second ongoing for Spider-Man after 3 issues. The Torch gets the occasional starring role in the first 50 issues (18, 23, 26, 29, 32, 36), plus a couple of co-star spots. There are a couple of issues focused on the Hulk teaming up with someone later on (Spider-Woman, Ka-Zar, Heroes for Hire) but it's Spidey's world for ~90% of the book's 150-issue run, so maybe that was always the intention.

Most of the time, each issue stands by itself, with some set of circumstances bringing Spider-Man in contact with another hero, and they have to work together to defeat some greater threat. Chris Claremont takes over as writer in issue 57, starting a 30+ issue stretch. While it wasn't unheard of before that for the events of one issue to spill into the next, Claremont seems to lean into that a lot more, and he sometimes stacks the guest stars, rather than coming up with reasons with last issues hero is gone by the next issue. Spidey gets tangled up in Davos stealing the chi of Shou-Lao from Iron Fist in issue 63, then works with Misty Knight and Colleen Wing in issue 64 to try and help Iron Fist not get killed fighting Davos.

Some of those work better than others. By the end of the story that starts in issue 82, Nick Fury's recruited Shang-Chi to help him, Spider-Man and the Black Widow. Maybe the Master of Kung Fu had some backstory with Viper or Silver Samurai I didn't catch, but it seemed a bit random.

Sometimes Spider-Man gets to be the hero, sometimes he gets bailed out by the guest star, or does something that helps the guest star save the day. Ms. Marvel might be the one who ultimately beats the Super-Skrull, but Spider-Man had to keep him busy until they could set things up for her to have the chance to win. Frog-Man catches the White Rabbit, but after Spidey caught the getaway van and took down the rest of the gang.

Like a lot of books we've looked at lately, Marvel Team-Up lends itself to selective reading. I own 16 issues out of the 150, with 10 of those written by Claremont. Mostly drawn by John Byrne or the Buscema/Leialoha duo. But looking at a cover gallery, there's almost that many other issues I read at some point. The cover promises a character I'm interested in, or at least a wild premise that makes me want to know more about what's actually happening.

Saturday Splash Page #143

 

"The Threat and/or Menace of Tomorrow," in Spider-Man 2099 #1, by Peter David (writer), Rick Leonardi (penciler), Al Williamson (inker), Steve Buccellato (colorist), Rick Parker (letterer)

Summer (and Fall) of Spiders is taking us on a trip to the future! Where corporations control an increasingly ecologically damaged world of dwindling resources and the rights of the average citizen are almost nil.

We should fit right in.

Even in the early '90s the Marvel Universe had no shortage of visions of shitty futures. Days of Future Past, obviously, but the Guardians of the Galaxy hailed from a 30th Century where the entire solar system was under the thumb of the Badoon. Killraven's Earth was conquered by Martians. The original Deathlok was from a lousy future. But those were usually confined to a single book or sometimes a single storyline. In 1992, Marvel started up an entire line of comics set in the far off - but not too far off - year of 2099.

I never got heavily into the line as a whole. I think I've read one issue of Ravage 2099, and less than a half-dozen of X-Men 2099. I heard good things about Warren Ellis' Doom 2099, but, eh, maybe if I could buy it used, for cheap. From the parts I've seen online of it, Punisher 2099 was either meant to be a parody - the character, asked where he lives, says in total seriousness, "Over the edge," - or really ought to have been.

I had a bit of Spider-Man 2099 when it first came out, but tracked the entire series down in back issues in the early 2010s. For Peter David and Rick Leonardi's book, we get Miguel O'Hara, a brilliant gene engineer for Alchemax, one of a handful of "mega-corps" that basically run things, at least in the U.S. I was never all that clear on how things worked in the rest of the world.

Miguel is smart, but also arrogant, condescending, sarcastic (so David can give him plenty of clever insults) and a bit of a coward. He's got a comfortable life, and he's reluctant to rock the boat. But David's careful to show Miguel has some sense of responsibility, even if it comes from an overconfidence in his own skill and importance. When he finds out how far his boss will go to keep him there, he makes a risky move to slip the leash and ends up the victim of sabotage by a supervisor that hates his guts. Because Miguel always talks down to him. Couldn't be Spider-Man without ego coming back to bite him!

The costume Leonardi designs is unlike most Spider-Man outfits, other than the marks on the mask form a space roughly similar to Spidey's big eyes. The skull covering the chest is closer to the Punisher, or maybe the symbiote costume's torso-covering emblem. While Spider-Man was the inspiration for the genetic enhancement Miguel got, Miguel mentions this costume is just something he got for a Day of the Dead celebration he once attended. He only wears it initially because he needs a disguise he won't accidentally tear up with his new talons (unstable molecules for the win.) The "web" on the back is some lightweight cloth from a hang-glider that saved his life. It adds a bit of a cape, although sometimes it's drawn as barely more than a fringe.

Overall, it works. Distinctive, but just enough touches to hint towards the inspiration. Leonardi has Miguel move differently as well. Given the ubiquitous "Public Eye Security", Miguel doesn't webswing from place to place more than necessary. (The fact that his webbing is produced by his body might also make him unwilling to rely on a supply of unknown quantity and strength.)

We also don't see a lot of elaborate leaps and flips across rooftops. In part because the rooftops are so high up, and in part because Miguel doesn't seem to retreat into Spider-Man as a way to blow off steam or improve his mood. Also because he can't stick to a surface with any part of his body, only the fingers and toes. So his movements are more controlled, more regular. He'll almost lope along the side of a building in a four-limbed stance, keeping one hand and one foot in contact with the wall at all times.

For most of the two years Leonardi's the series artist, he and David stick to mostly original enemies. Miguel does encounter a Vulture, but it's a guy with big metal wings who set himself up as a boss in the literal underbelly of the city. Otherwise, it mostly hired guns for the corporations, concerned with this new element they can't control, or stuff related to the "Thorites" and their belief the Gods of Asgard will be returning soon and that the return of Thor's ally Spider-Man is a portent. Where Peter Parker started his career fighting people who gained great power and continued to use it selfishly, Miguel O'Hara fights people who accepted (unwittingly or otherwise) being used as weapons by the forces controlling the world.

The last 20 or so issues of the book aren't as strong. It kicks off with a big reveal about Miguel's father, which felt unnecessary, and then more 2099 versions of characters start popping up. Strange, Venom (ugh), a Goblin. Apparently Peter David had one character planned for that and someone else rewrote the story to have a different character be responsible. The whole storyline felt kind of half-baked, as stuff was just getting thrown into and out of the book like crazy. Miguel's in charge of Alchemax! Doom became President, and he wants Spider-Man on his cabinet! The people of New Atlantis are gonna teach those surface dwellers what for!

Maybe it made sense for Miguel, who had been tangled up in the mega-corps stuff since he was a promising young mind, to be involved in all this world-spanning stuff, but it squeezed out the interpersonal drama with his supporting cast.

What I Bought 9/18/2024

The last two days of this week have dragged. Not that the first three were anything spectacular, but I was, for better or worse, busy. Real "C" grade kind of week. Plus, there were 3 comics I was expecting out next week, but the solicits don't show any of them. Will I ever get to actually see an issue of Loop?!

Deadpool #6, by Cody Ziglar (writer), Roge Antonio (artist), Guru e-FX (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - I see Wade's pissed off Radioactive Man.

Deadpool's healing factor remains missing in action, so he's down two limbs. Which means not is Deadpool now handling finding his new business jobs (Deadpool, in charge of something that requires organization and follow-through?), he's sending Ellie out in the field with Taskmaster and Princess. In her own outfit, but with non-lethal weaponry.

And for their first job, take out an ex-KGB weapons smuggler, who wears a mask that makes me think he's the Plunderer, that villain that likes to act like a pirate sometimes. But it's not him (I think.) For all her talk, Ellie's nervous if the stuttering and hesitation throughout the fight is anything to go by, but they make it work. With only a little bit of people being eaten alive! But their guns literally go "PewPewPew," so they deserve it.

Deadpool's very proud. Then Deadpool's very dead, because Death Grip is not dead. I still don't get this guy's deal. He does his magic thing to slice off Deadpool's other arm, then grabs him and, I'm not sure, magic-burns him from the inside out? Anyway, Deadpool's dead now, just when he thought he was getting his life together! For, what, the 14th time?

Assuming Antonio designed Ellie's outfit, it's solid. The jacket reminds me of early-'90s Avengers, or maybe the one Firestar rocked in the back half of New Warriors volume 1 (that might just be the Taskmaster emblem on the sleeve that reminds me of the Warriors having a logo/communicator in that spot.) The fight scene's illustrated well, good mix of wide panels and close-ups. Deadpool's face looks a odd. Softer than usual, maybe, like Antonio went light on the lines to emphasize Wade's oddly happy with the situation? Until he died, although once Preston tracked him down (and there's no way she's not noticing a dark-haired girl calling herself "Deadpool"), he'd have been in a lot of pain.

Dazzler #1, by Jason Loo (writer), Rafael Loureiro (artist), Java Tartaglia (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - Yep, she's definitely singing.

Dazzler's on tour to promote her new album! And she's in the middle of culture wars, with your various conservative bigot types spewing the usual nonsense about her leading the youth down a - whatever, you're probably on social media more than me, you know the kind of stuff being said.

First concert, she's singing a song about dating Archangel, gets attacked by Scorpia, beats her mostly without using her powers offensively, per her manager and Domino's request. I have a hard time picturing Domino going along with that, even with the flashbacks showing her sparring with Dazzler to help hone her self-defense skills. "You can't worry about bad p.r. if you're dead," or something like that. Especially since she got a little casual with a light shield she made and some of the audience got hit with Scorpia's bad aim. Maybe if she just used a hard light shot they fight would have been over sooner.

I'm not entirely clear what she did to ultimately finish the fight. She makes a big light display that seems to surround Scorpia. Then Loureiro draws a panel of her pointing her glowing fingers towards us while singing "Bling! Wing! Ding!" as actual lyrics. Then Scorpia's unconscious on the ground. So, Dazzler did use her powers in an offense-minded way after all?

But Loo seems to be setting up a subplot where Dazzler's manager is trying really hard to downplay Dazzler being a mutant, seemingly for fear of commercial backlash. So, no using powers in an aggressive manner. Ask Allison's drummer, Shark-Girl, to wear an image inducer collar, which sure as heck looks like a power dampener more than the thing Nightcrawler used to wear. Lots of talk about "transcending barriers", and being "inviting and friendly as possible." You know, bullshit.

I don't know. Dazzler's a character I'm typically more interested in as part of an ensemble than a lead, so this was always going to be a bit of a hard sell, but it didn't set my world on fire. Maybe her being a singer is something that doesn't translate well to comics. Maybe it's that it feels like Loo's nodding hard in the direction of Taylor Swift, who I have no particular feeling about, beyond getting annoyed when drunk college girls would yell at Alex to play "Blank Space" again. 

I can probably afford to give it another issue, but it's on life support.

Nasty Cutter - Tim O'Mara

A notable lawyer turns up dead in the bathroom at a dinner to honor his charity work. By the next day, someone's broken into his law office, though it's unclear what, if anything, was stolen.

Ray Donne's a former cop-turned-schoolteacher whose father was the partner of recently deceased. Which puts him on the periphery of both cases, along with his reporter girlfriend Allison, and his friend (and tech guy) Edgar.

Credit to O'Mara, he really tries to jam a lot into this book. Besides the mysteries around both those incidents, there's Ray working with a couple of different kids have issues at school, Ray and Allison butting heads over how she goes about getting a story, Ray's sister hassling him to move his relationship with Allison along, Ray checking in on a student that got a job helping an elderly man through the dead lawyer's charity. There's two brothers, one who had a brief major league baseball career (the title being a reference to his best pitch, a cut fastball), the other who spent ten years in prison for assaulting a girl when they were in high school.

The truth about that, which ties into one of the two incidents that start the book, was easy to spot a mile off. The solution to the other incident felt like it came out of left field. Maybe because Ray is barely involved in that investigation after the opening scene. He's not doing any snooping for it; he just stumbles into the answer at the end without having any clue he was so close. I had to sit there a moment and ponder if that was really how O'Mara was having the mystery solved.

That speaks to the book's larger; little tension or suspense. There's no ticking clock of needing to clear an innocent person or Ray trying to avoid being killed himself. He's not driven to find the killer of his father's old partner, he's really not even looking. Ray's uncle is police commissioner, but he's not seeking Ray out to talk about the case. It hardly feels like it matters to anything that's happening. 

A few people get angry with Allison for digging up things they want buried, but it's never to a point anyone feels like they're in danger. The closest thing to suspense is whether Ray's going to put his foot in his mouth with Allison one time too many, and that only because, since we only get Ray's thoughts, I have no clue how close to the line he is with her.

'With my back to the stairs, Buzzer Guy looked over my shoulder and said, "Hey, you're in luck. It's the girlfriend."

I turned and looked into the face of Robert Donne's girlfriend.

She did not look nearly as happy to see me as she had that morning.'

The Beekeeper (2024)

See what I get up to when I'm around Alex? He claimed this movie was worse than Breach, which seemed impossible (and upon rewatch he couldn't figure out how he came to such a conclusion,) so we watched it after Bad Boys: We're Getting Old.

Adam (Jason Statham) keeps bees on this nice retired teacher's (Phylicia Rashad) farm. After some guys scam her into giving up access to all her financial accounts and drain them, including the charity she looked after, she kills herself. Her daughter Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman) is an FBI agent, who doesn't hold much hope of finding the ones responsible.

But wait, Adam has mysterious contacts, so he finds the call center and burns it to the ground. The call center is part of a series of such places, owned by some obnoxious trust fund shithead (Josh Hutcherson) who has the former head of the CIA (Jeremy Irons) running security for him as a favor to his mother. Ominous foreshadowing! Irons eventually figures out what Statham was before he kept bees, and at that point, the end is inevitable. Much like the first John Wick, it's just a matter of how many lives are going to be wasted trying to protect the shithead. Frankly, one would have been too many, but Statham kills, wounds or maims a lot more than that.

Statham can play roles that poke fun at his usual (only?) character, but this is not one of those. At least, not intentionally. He might have taken it to the point of parody without meaning to, I'm not sure. Adam's a man of few words, most of those words about bees. Blunt and to the point. When he arrives at the call center, he tells the security guards he's going to burn it down. When the guard tells him to leave and threatens to count to 3, Adam does it for him (though he doesn't immediately move into beating the guy's ass, which seemed like a miss.) When Verona at one point reminds him they have laws, I felt no particular pride in predicting Adam's response - 'And when those laws fail, then you have me' - because, honestly, what else was he going to say?

I guess you could see it as restraint, that Adam knows what he's capable of, so he puts his focus and energy into tending beehives, avoiding any more interaction with people than necessary to minimize the chance he resumes his old work. There could have been something there to contrast with his successor, who is a maniac. She rams his car in the middle of a gas station, and when the fight turns against her, reveals she had a minigun set up in the bed of her truck. A love of overkill, versus a quiet, if showy, efficiency.

Sadly, they killed her two minutes after she appeared. No time for any musing on the kind of people one might assign such a role, or the mental toll it takes, Jason Statham's got more call center creeps to terrorize! Which, you know, that's fine. If I could sic a guy like this on the people responsible for those spam calls urgently requesting I call a bank I've never had an account with, I absolutely would. Hutcherson plays a great conceited, spoiled brat, divorced from any concept of empathy or that there are consequences for his actions. The middleman Adam finds first is a conniving sleazebag, gleefully tricking people out of their money and doing little dances in his ugly suit afterward.

So with Statham being grimly determined, Irons wearily resigned to his futile and unpleasant task, the villains not so much unrepentant as unable to see there's anything to repent for, any emotional heft falls to Raver-Lampman's character. She grieves over her mother, but there's an air of resentment to it, as it seems like Verona's deceased brother was the apple of mom's eye. Like she wants to prove something to a mother she felt didn't appreciate her. Verona wants to bring down the people who scammed her mother, even comes in on her day off to work on the case, but also doggedly chases Adam's string of fires and murders. Caught between following the law and following her own sense of what's just.

I don't think the movie really gives it the time or depth for a proper showing - the movie knows its bread is buttered with Statham kicking ass - but I think Raver-Lampman brings a level of conflict to her performance where you can wonder if she's really trying to stop Adam, or just wants to make sure she's close enough to see him finish it.

What I Bought 9/11/2024 - Part 2

I happened to catch an episode of Columbo over the weekend, and he was making a peanut butter and raisin sandwich. I started eating those periodically back in elementary school, and I can't recall ever seeing anyone else do it. Now I'm wondering if Columbo gave me the notion.

Fantastic Four #25, by Ryan North (writer), Carlos Gomez (artist), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Uh-oh, a planet of floating islands. Those platforming levels are always tricky.

Dr. Doom's erected a magical dome over Latveria. Naturally, the FF try to poke it and end up on an unfamiliar world full of intelligent, friendly aliens. Gomez draws the aliens as having a bit of the "big head and eyes" grey aliens, but on a long stalk neck, with multiple little noodle limbs and red spines sticking out of their backs (the purpose of which I was not clear on.)

The locals agree to let Reed use some resources to build a rocketship to get home (which looks very old-timey, even moreso than the original rocket Kirby drew them taking into space to get bombarded by cosmic rays.) Meanwhile, Johnny's hit it off with the liason, named (or translated to) Angelica of the Shore.

Everything's proceeding well until the clouds clear enough Reed can calculate their position by the stars. Turns out, they're still on Earth, but an Earth that was never hit by another planetary body, causing the formation of the Moon. Turns out the FF aren't the only ones who poked the dome. Reed can make his rocketship into a time machine and stop Doom's magic trick from doing this, but that means Angelica and her people won't exist, which is not OK with Johnny.

North continues to come up with clever bits of science to use as a basis for stories, but this is undercut by how easily Reed seems to solve these problems. Sure, he can make his rocketship into a time machine, too. Confronted with the problem, Reed builds a thing to solve the problem in about two panels. He's continuing one spiel throughout, so it's not like there's a timejump.

I guess there wasn't supposed to be any doubt they'd figure something out, so the real conflict was Johnny fighting with the others about how they can't get rid of Angelica's world to save their own. Then hie and Angelica having to sacrifice their happiness to make the solution stick. The internal narration boxes for this issue are Angelica's, which probably helps to plant their connection in the foreground and make this more than just another doomed relationship for Johnny Storm.

Vengeance of the Moon Knight #9, by Jed MacKay (writer), Devmalya Premanik (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - I bet moon-fire is cold.

Marc owes Khonshu a favor. Not for bringing him back to life, but for that time he got Marc and Tigra a shortcut so they could save Reese and Soldier from Zodiac. And the favor is to kill the false Moon Knight, the Shroud.

So he does, after a brief fight, albeit with a lot of panels as Premanik and Rosenberg have one page of 16 panels, slanted and staggered, showing the main stretch of the fight, against the backdrop of a, I thought it was a crescent moon, but it's actually two crescent moons, one matching the symbol Shroud Knight wore, the other matching Marc Knight's. One shatters, the other remaining whole. Premanik's Moon Knight feels like more of a physical presence than Cappuccio's. Bigger, body less obscured by the cape, a lot of focus on his fists or legs, his instruments of pain.

Marc's talking in a very stilted manner, calling Shroud "Moon Knight", reminding him he disrespected a god, impressing on him that this is a fight for his life. Didn't impress it on him enough, as Marc brings Shroud Knight's costume to the villain bar and pins it on the wall as a message. Or two messages: a) he's back, b) the other guy is dead. That said, I don't believe for a second the Rhino is scared of Moon Knight. Come on, tell me McKay didn't actually tell Premanik to put him in those pages. The Jester, the Shocker? Sure. The Spot? Guy probably wees himself around Moon Knight. The Rhino takes punches from the Hulk. Same with Piledriver, except replace "Hulk" with "Thor."

Anyway, Shroud's not dead. He was, but you know, Hunter's Moon is a doctor. Hearts stops, hearts restart. Easy-peasy, right? Khonshu's pissed, but Marc makes an argument it's a fitting symbolic sacrifice, and points out Khonshu can't strike at Reese or the others in retaliation, because he owes them for getting him out of Asgard Jail. And that's were the book ends. Khonshu's back, Marc's back, with an uneasy detente at best.

Sunday Splash Page #340

 

"Phantom of the Forest," in Marvel Super-Heroes #2, by Steve Ditko (writer/penciler), Hollis Bright (writer), Mike DeCarlo (inker), Renee Witterstaetter (colorist), Diana Albers (letterer)

Many Months of Marvel is glad to get away from Doug Moench's lousy Star-Lord stories and back to Earth!

Marvel Super-Heroes was a quarterly, giant-sized collection of stories that ran for a few years in the early '90s. It's probably best known as where Squirrel Girl made her first appearance. Failing that, it's where Marvel published what would have been the last two issues of Carol Danvers' first ongoing. I assume drawn years after the scripts were originally written, because the art is a stark departure from the previous issues.

I don't own the Squirrel Girl issue - it's pricey - and the reprints of the two Ms. Marvel stories I own in the Essential Ms. Marvel collection are in black-and-white. If the Wasp story Amanda Conner drew in the third issue had a splash page, I'd have gone with that, but instead I picked one of the Speedball yarns Ditko did, though those stories a slog to get through. Robbie Baldwin's the most bland character (and I use that word grudgingly) possible, and the villains wouldn't be worth Scooby-Doo's time.

Occasionally there's a story that takes up most of an issue - Christopher Priest gets 50+ pages for a story about Justin Hammer making Stark's life miserable - and there's a Roy and Dann Thomas X-Men story that stretches across three issues. But most comprise a handful of short one-off stories, focused on one character handling some relatively small or personal problem.

The second features Iron Man (dealing with sabotage of an experimental engine by a government agent gone round the bend), Rogue (falling for a robot Mystique commissioned from Machinesmith to lure her daughter home), Speedball (two adults fighting over a toy gun from their childhood), Tigra (seeking an antidote for a disease a crippled rich asshole infected her father with), Red Wolf (stopping some guys threatening to cause a nuclear disaster), Daredevil (a kid mistakes his mother's insulin for, gasp!, drugs) and the Falcon (tries to protect a briefcase nuke, but an innocent bystander dies in the process.) Most of the stories are 8 pages, and a lot of them seem to end on silent panels, usually of a character standing with their head bowed. Maybe that's just this issue, though.

Like a lot of stuff we've looked at lately, it's a mixed bag, but you see some names in the credits who go on to much bigger stuff later. I mentioned Amanda Conner, and Greg Capullo draws a story about a Project PEGASUS-created hero called Blue Shield in the same issue. Kurt Busiek writes a couple of Iron Man stories, including one about a guy who learns the hard way he's not cut out for the job of Tony Stark's bodyguard.

Saturday Splash Page #142

 

"Night Creatures," in Spider-Man and Batman: Disordered Minds, by J.M. DeMatteis (writer), Mark Bagley (penciler), Scott Hanna and Mark Farmer (inker), Electric Crayon (colorist), Richard Starkings and Comicraft (letterer)

The first of two Spider-Man and Batman team-ups in the '90s. DeMatteis uses the hot new villain of the moment, Carnage, as the entry point, as a scientist who feels regular psychiatric treatment is futile with such people swears she's got a chip that can be installed in a person's brain to render them docile and conflict-averse. Cletus Kasady is the first, and the Joker's going to be the second. While it works on the Joker, the doctor neglects to account for the fact that Carnage is a team-up, and her chip doesn't do snot to the symbiote, and Kasady was simply eager to meet the Joker.

The story follows the basic beats. There's a brief initial team-up when things go wrong, but the villains escape. Batman, in his full 90s/2000s jerkass glory, then tells Spider-Man to leave, because Gotham has 'unique dangers', and he doesn't want Spider-Man getting hurt.

'90s Calvin rolled his eyes at the notion Spider-Man was in any danger from Batman's villains. Most of Batsy's enemies are roughly equivalent to Mysterio, and Spidey beats him all the time!

Whatever. Spider-Man doesn't leave, Batman reconsiders, they team-up, find the bad guys and save the day. DeMatteis doesn't try to put over the new guy as being better than the more established villain. He does outline the differences in the Carnage and the Joker. Carnage claims the Joker understands that life is absurd and meaningless, so insanity's the only proper response. From the Joker's, "Oh. . .that joke," I think we're meant to take he's already mentally downgrading his opinion of this guy. Later, Carnage loses patience with some elaborate scheme the Joker's got and starts ranting about how the point is to kill immediately, which the Joker dismisses as lacking style. DeMatteis doesn't pretend the Joker is above killing, only that he insists there be an art to it. It's like the difference between someone who sculpts hedges into animal shapes, and someone just hacking away with a weed-whacker.

DeMatteis' attempts to interject the sort of pop psychology stuff that littered his Spectacular Spider-Man run are intermittently successful. Suggesting Kasady is a serial killer because he's actually afraid of death, and kills in some bizarre hope it will somehow appease death into sparing him feels like a stretch. He presents each villain as becoming like an avatar of what the other hero fights against, starting with dream sequences where the killers of their respective parents shift to mimicking the villains. So Uncle Ben's killer sports a Joker smile, and Joe Chill transforms to Carnage's jagged tooth leer.

(I also randomly note that Bruce Wayne apparently sleeps in the nude, while Peter wears pajama pants.)

I don't know if it works. Maybe Carnage with Batman, as Kasady's whole thing is just to kill randomly, without pattern or meaning beyond the taking of life. That could be the sort of unthinking, unpredictable Crime that Batman fights but can never extinguish. (Having Carnage not particularly care about killing Batman beyond him being another body to stack on the pile is a nice touch.) But the Waynes weren't really killed randomly. It was either a mugging gone wrong or a revenge hit disguised as a mugging gone wrong, depending on which version they're using. But I guess from a child's perspective - and Dematteis was always writing about how childhood trauma infected one's adulthood - it all feels random, without cause or reason.

The Joker for Spider-Man, though, no. You can't spend a few pages having the Joker extol the virtues of elaborate plans and set-ups for his schemes, then compare him to a burglary gone wrong. DeMatteis tries to save it by having the Joker threaten to release a virus that will kill the entire city of Kasady doesn't release Batman, because no one gets to kill him but Joker, as 'the kind of madness, the kind of chaos,' Spider-Man always been fighting to prevent. Except that's not really what he fights. He fights guys who think the world owed them something, so when they get power, they decide to take what they think the deserve. Power without responsibility. Not really the Joker's shtick at all.

Guess with 48 pages, you do what you can.

I think this is Bagley's first time drawing DC characters. We don't see a lot of Gotham, or any established characters besides Batman, Joker and one page with Alfred, but he keeps everybody on-model. Joker's extremely tall and skinny (looks a head taller than Spider-Man), but I know Alan Davis among others drew the clown that way, too, so it's not unusual. He goes with a version of the Batmobile I associate with early Batman stories, with the big Bat face/shield thing over the front, rather than one of the sleek, sports car/jet plane models I thought were more common at the time. Don't know if there was a reason for that.

What I Bought 9/11/2024 - Part 1

My allergies have arrived to make everything unpleasant, as usual. But I started coughing yesterday, so I'm probably close to the "hacking up yellow stuff" phase that signals the end of this trial.

Here's a comic that didn't make me hack up yellow stuff, but is that a good or bad outcome?

Avengers Assemble #1, by Steve Orlando (writer), Cory Smith (penciler), Oren Junior and Elisabetta D'Amico (inkers), Sonia Oback (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer) - I'm sure she's flying, but it'd be funny if Monica was just standing on the leg hidden behind Captain America and pretending to fly. Make "whoosh" noises and everything.

So there's an "Avengers Emergency Response Squad" now. Funny, I thought that was what the Avengers were for. A problem arises, and whoever's available from the cast on the cover rushes off to deal with it. Seems like it wouldn't hurt to wait for reinforcements and/or intel, but OK.

Problem of the day: The Red Skull's daughter found some helmet that makes people angry and then feeds off the anger. Photon, Wasp and Shang-Chi are the only ones who've shown up, so that's who Cap's got. A lot of leaders, and so the helmet plays on that, making them jockey for authority until Shang-Chi numbs some nerve cluster or something. They still aren't getting much of anywhere, but do manage to knock Sin to wherever the helmet hails from.

Meanwhile, Orlando introduces the rest of the team via poker at the Mansion. They were too late to join the mission, so they're waiting for the next problem and shooting the breeze. It's not a bad approach; reinforces the idea there's going to be someone around as trouble arrives and allows a little back-and-forth to sketch characterization and interpersonal relationships.

I think Smith's art works better for the scenes of people sitting and talking with D'Amico is inking him. At least, I'm assuming those are D'Amico's pages at the end of the book, since she got secondary billing behind Oren Junior. The art's less busy, faces not so cluttered with extra lines that seem to stiffen things. That's less of an issue on the fight portions, because the focus is on the action and everyone's tense anyway, but I don't know if it's really needed there, either.

Anyway, the whole thing with Sin was actually a distraction by the new Serpent Society to gather something that's going to gain them favor with Mephisto? Grant them some of his powers? I'm not clear on that part. Bad news, at any rate. So that's the overarching threat, and I guess the question will be if the "Emergency Response Squad" can draw the connections between the different threats and act in time.

Royalty in Name Only

Something about Dragon Ball Z that amuses me is how, in between getting his ass kicked, Vegeta will keep talking about being 'Prince of all Saiyans.' By the time he's first introduced, two of the other three Saiyans in the universe have just died fighting each other. He's the prince of one full-blooded Saiyan (Nappa), and one half-blood (Gohan.)

The number increases a little bit over time. Goku comes back to life - twice! - Vegeta's got a couple of kids now (I don't know if we can count the time-traveling grown-up version of his son from another timeline as a 3rd kid), Goku's got another son. Gohan's got a kid if we want to count quarter-Saiyans. Broly's apparently in canon now, and maybe Vegeta's got a long-lost brother (Tarble or something like that, not sure if he's in continuity or that was another movie one-off.) Still, Vegeta's not even prince of enough people to fill a small classroom, even before taking into account that once Nappa dies, none of them defer to him as any sort of ruler, leader, or inspirational figure.

But it's not clear Vegeta really sees that as something a prince* does. When he's first introduced, he's just learned about the Dragon Balls via Raditz's communicator. Nappa asks if they'll use them to bring Raditz back, but Vegeta dismisses this as a waste of a wish. We know, from Raditz telling Goku, the Saiyans' homeworld was destroyed, and so the four of them (plus Gohan) are all that's left of their species.

You'd figure maybe Vegeta thinks it makes more sense to wish for the entire planet back. Give him back the subjects he was deprived of ruling. But no, he plans to wish for immortality for himself, and maybe Nappa (though I wouldn't have been surprised if he excluded his lackey.) You could argue he doesn't have any idea if the Dragon Balls can restore an entire planet. All he knows is the guy who killed Raditz (Piccolo), is certain they can resurrect Goku, a single person. That's fair, but he has no reason whatsoever to think they can make him immortal, yet that's his first thought.

It would be one thing if Vegeta was just a shitty ruler, who sees his subjects as objects that exist to serve him, to be terminated if they fail. That's how Frieza operates, killing loyal fighters and technicians if they make the mistake of delivering an update or communication when Frieza's in a bad mood.

But it's more like Vegeta's concept of being a prince doesn't actually require anyone for him to rule or command at all. He doesn't even need other Saiyans to grovel and tell him how awesome he is. He's not interested in bringing Raditz back once he dies. As soon as Nappa's back is broken, Vegeta kills him. He makes multiple attempts to kill Goku and Gohan, when they're all that's left of his people. Frieza took the Saiyans to the brink and now Vegeta's trying to nudge them over the edge into oblivion.

But a lot of his prince talk comes back to his efforts to surpass Goku. Vegeta figures that, as a descendant of a royal bloodline. Goku's a low-level commoner, descended from Saiyans of no particular note. When Goku opens a can of Triple Kaioken Whup-Ass on him, Vegeta's muttering about how he's an 'elite Saiyan warrior,' while Goku's a 'low-ranked fighter,' that shouldn't be able to deal out this kind of damage. When Goku hits Super Saiyan, Vegeta casts aside his belief about the Super Saiyan being a legendary figure that hadn't occurred for 1,000 years. If Goku can do it, so can Vegeta. And his Super Saiyan will be even super-er because of his bloodline.

With the Saiyans being a species whose existence seems to revolve around combat, prince is something closer to a champion. The prince should be the best Saiyan, meaning the strongest. That's why it doesn't matter if all the other Saiyans are dead or not. He doesn't need to rule them to demonstrate his status. His continued existence proves his superiority. He's alive and they aren't because he's stronger.

* I also wonder why he always calls himself a prince. His dad's dead, doesn't that make him king by default? Especially once Frieza's dead and Vegeta's no longer under his thumb.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024)

I tried to talk him out of it, but Alex insisted on paying Amazon $20 to rent this movie so we could watch it. So what did we get?

Mike (Will Smith) is getting married. Not to Rita (Paolo Nunez), the lady cop he clearly had some sparks with in the last movie. No, she's dating the mayor (Ioan Gruffudd), who seems like a supportive boyfriend and nice fellow, so you know he's shady. Mike's marrying his physical therapist, who we'd never seen before. But he's never processed the mental trauma of nearly dying, or dealt with his apparently deep-seeded fears that everyone he cares about dies. Which starts manifesting as panic attacks, which Will Smith demonstrates by making weird breathing noises and rolling his eyes back. Honestly, I thought he was having a heart attack, which would have been kind of grim given other events (see below.) Maybe it's a good representation of panic attacks, I don't know. Pretty sure you don't just get over it by your best friend repeatedly slapping you, though.

The situation is made worse when some cartel guys try to cover their tracks by framing the deceased captain (Joe Pantoliano) as being on the take. Mike's got to get info out of the son he learned he had in the third movie, while dealing with the guilt of never having been there for this kid, who is the one who killed Pantoliano in the first place (the murder now retconned to not be a revenge thing.)

The main villain is a real nothingburger who I remember mostly for wearing stupid ascots and suits that are too tight like he's The Rock or something. Oh, and his dumb hair. I don't know what is with this, "swept back, but raised like a mesa in the middle," look so many guys are sporting now, but it's fucking stupid. He's got a whole crew who can seemingly hack into anything, find anyone, supposed to be really dangerous, but it doesn't come off that way. He keeps going to these elaborate extents to frame Mike and Marcus, instead of just killing them and being done with it, and it makes him seem like an idiot.

As for Marcus (Martin Lawrence got himself in better shape for this one), he nearly dies of a heart attack doing the Wobble at Mike's wedding, and sees Pantoliano, who tells him it's not his time. Now he's convinced he can do whatever he wants and he'll be fine. Also, that he and Mike's souls have been reincarnated several times and keep finding each other. He keeps trying to explain these past lives to Mike, who sits there patiently going "Hmm," and clearly not believing a word of it. But listening to Marcus explain that Mike was once a donkey he owned, and Marcus is sorry for beating him, but Mike was just always so stubborn, just like he is now, was pretty funny.

That's basically where I'm at with these movies. As action movies, they're nothing special. Nothing here you haven't seen in a dozen other cop movies. The current directors don't have Bay's knack (fetish?) for excess. Take that as a positive or negative. Strange to say in a movie with a helicopter and a plane crash, at least 4 separate shootouts and DJ Khaled being hit by a van that will soon be on fire, but there you go. The thing is, it feels like the action is in service to the jokes and one-liners, so that's what sticks with me. Marcus nearly being crushed by a giant replica alligator during the climactic gunfight and screaming, 'It's like a redneck Jurassic Park in here!'

As a comedy, it works great. Alex and I laughed our asses off. From the opening bit, where Marcus has made them late to Mike's wedding, but pleads for Mike to stop so he can buy a ginger ale to settle his stomach, and then that rolls into a whole ridiculous sequence with hot dogs and a hold up. The shootout at John Salley's art gallery, where Marcus is running through a hail of gunfire, shooting two guns and hitting nothing while screaming how he doesn't give a fuck and 'I got this.' Mike's response, 'But you don't, though!' cracked me up.

Escape Company Events Via Space Travel

In any other fictional universe, that might seem strange.

Cannonball Run is the volume collecting the second half of Al Ewing's U.S.Avengers, where Sunspot agrees to make A.I.M. an officially sanctioned entity for the government.

Unfortunately, the first 3 issues of the tpb are Secret Empire tie-ins, as the group is brought down from within as HYDRA Cap uses all the intel Sunspot so helpfully provided to take the team down. The current Red Hulk - a deliberate dollar store version of Thunderbolt Ross - is being controlled by nanites injected under the promise they'd help him use his "Hulk plug-in" for more than an hour at a pop. The current Iron Patriot - Dr. Toni Ho, genius daughter of the doctor who saved Stark's life all those years ago - ends up in a holding cell with Sunspot, who's barely coherent after being shot in the head. Turns out people who work for AIM don't want to work for the government. Go figure. He activated his mutant power to survive, but he's got that "M-pox" from the Terrigen cloud, so using his powers is killing him.

Those three issues are split between Toni's attempts to MacGuyver a way to get herself and Sunspot out of prison, and Squirrel Girl and Enigma working with a hodgepodge of other heroes in Paris to fight the HYDRA forces stationed there. It puts a spotlight on Toni's reasons for what she does and why, and her deciding that making weaponry, even non-lethal weaponry, isn't a good use of her talents, or a healthy one.

The Squirrel Girl and Enigma thread is the pretty standard, "fascists aren't as strong as they think, their efforts to crush resistance only breeds more, and when push comes to shove, they're gutless cowards." Which is fine, Ewing and Paco Medina bring in a hodgepodge of Euro-heroes - actually, they may have created a few of these, I'm not sure about Outlaw, the non-lethal Punisher, or Guillotine, the lady with a bloodthirsty cursed sword - but there's nothing to it that says much of significance about the core cast members.

Medina's work is pretty much how I remember it from Daniel Way's Deadpool run, allowing for some honing of his style over the subsequent 6+ years. The lines are steadier, and everything's less busy. He toned down some of the excess in character proportions, but to be fair, he was drawing a Deadpool book. Unrealistic proportions were to be expected, especially when factoring in the "hallucination" shtick Way used. That's not an issue here, so Medina keeps it straightforward and easy to follow.

The other three issues - drawn by Paco Diaz - see the team dealing with the fallout from Secret Empire, but mostly rescuing Cannonball, who ended up floating in space at some point. He was sold into slavery, and ended up on that Skrull planet from the Lee/Kirby FF where everyone looked and talked like gangsters. Except now they all mimic "Richie Redwood" and his pals. Meaning Sam Guthrie's hanging out with a bunch of Archie cosplayers.

The HYDRA prison sounds preferable.

This whole thing really seems to be Ewing talking about the people whose concept of being a fan of something locks it into a particular state, and only that state, forever. The Skrull playing Richie only wants to act out the status quo of the earliest transmissions they received. When his brother (playing the Jughead knockoff, Bugface Brown) came back from an outer space jaunt with decades of new stuff, introducing all sorts of new characters and updated ideas, Richie threw everyone in favor of that into prison.

The sheer goofiness of the whole thing is almost enough to carry it, but issue 10 also has a conversation between Sunspot and a senator who says he'll be the new liaison for Roberto's group. The Senator insists Sunspot throw out all the people he currently has as being not good enough or "diversity hires." OK, yeah, we get it, thank you. The time for beating horses to death was when half the team was in France, where they might serve as sustenance.

Diaz, like Medina, is a pretty solid artist. Able to draw make-believe Americana, alien super-tech and gangsters and make it all look like it belongs on the same page. He makes all the Archie knock-offs similar enough you can tell who they're meant to be (assuming you know Archie characters), but different enough to not just be palette swaps.

He does, however, have a little trouble with faces. Not so much if they're glaring or neutral, but shock or surprised characters kind of fall in the uncanny valley. Toni's face looks more like someone badly playacting at surprise than actual surprise, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intent. It seemed more noticeable with Tony, Squirrel Girl or Enigma, but I'm not sure why. The shape of their faces, maybe.