Friday, October 25, 2024

What I Bought 10/23/2024

When Microsoft sent out their monthly updates a couple of weeks ago, it did something where their stupid News & Interests feed wouldn't stay turned off. I'm used to their crap - I always check whether they've reinstalled their AI "Helper" before I open Word, and delete it if they have - so I long ago set N&I to not show up on my taskbar. Now, according to Task Manager, it was running in the background anyway. Always when I was trying to do something, thus slowing my computer down. I'd tell it to end task, it'd start itself back up again before long.

After trying at least 4 different things I found online, I finally hit one that actually worked. True, it seems to have disabled the Search function on my computer, but I'm willing to call that acceptable collateral damage. Especially since my laptop runs much faster now.

Dazzler #2, by Jason Loo (writer), Rafael Loureiro (artist), Java Tartaglia (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - What is happening to Strong Guy's face? Or did they just shave Magilla Gorilla and figure no one would notice the difference?

Scorpia doesn't know who hired her, only that a lot of people took jobs to wreck Dazzler's tour. Oh well, the show must go on. Appearing on some morning talk show in London, Dazzler defends her music as not being solely for mutants, and neatly disses the host (who is wearing a suit so hideous, I think he must have escaped from Gotham.)

Then Dazzler goes nuts during her live performance on the show. No, wait, she was being mind-controlled. Oh, that's the X-Men's excuse for everything. The telepath's kind of mediocre at best, as it turns out to be one of the production assistants for the show. An anonymous person knew he was a mutant and threatened his family if he didn't make Dazzler look bad. Mission probably accomplished, but then Lila Cheney shows up to offer to get Dazzler to her next tour stop.

For some reason, I thought Lila was initially talking in lyrics, or singing or something. Not sure why, other than, "That live stream was hard to watch. Looked like you found yourself in quite the jam," read as so stilted I didn't think a person would actually talk like that. Especially not Lila Cheney, who I tend to expect to make more of a spectacle of her arrival. Or maybe "Wing! Bling! Ding!" sufficiently lowered the bar for my expectation of lyrics.

Anyway, outside of some vague interest in the person behind all this trouble, there's really nothing selling me on this book. Other than the flashback last issue showing her sparring with Domino, Loo's not doing much of anything with the characters he assembled as her road crew. Loureiro's art is fine; I like the civvies look Dazzler sports for the talk show appearance, and there's no trouble following the action this time around. But it doesn't impress me wildly or make me go "wooooooooo".

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