Alien: Romulus (2024)

Sort of. We were watching it at Alex's sister's place, but we had to leave right as the derelict Weyland-Utani ship starts hitting asteroids. But I might as well review what I saw.

A bunch of young adults who are slowly dying working on a Weyland-Utani mining planet, recognizing the company is going to constantly change the terms of their contracts so they can't leave, board a derelict Weyland-Utani ship that's floated into a decaying orbit over the planet, in the hopes of swiping its cryo-pods and escaping to a free planet 9 years' travel away.

The derelict ship is, of course, loaded with facehuggers, who thaw out once the cast start swiping the cryogenic fuel and things rapidly go downhill from there. It was actually impressive the number of times something would happen causing me to think, "That's not good," only for something else to immediately occur where I'd think, "and that's worse."

I definitely get the comments about how it's just playing the hits, with all the little callbacks to the earlier movies. People freaking out as an alien bursts from someone's chest. Finding someone still alive in the tacky cocooning stuff the Xenomorphs secrete. "Get away from her, you bitch." It reminds me of Terminator 3 in that way, which at least tried to subvert some of the expectations, even if the attempts were mostly groan-inducing. Either way, not a comparison this movie should want to evoke.

Also, I really hate this CGI'ing in a facsimilie of a dead actor so you can use a character from an earlier film. Even for just a cameo, let alone an extended role like Rook (CGI Ian Holm) here. Besides, it doesn't even have to be Ian Holm's android character for us to mistrust him (not that it really is Ian Holm's android, it's just another of the same model.) It's an android that works for Weyland-Utani, and Xenomorphs are involved. That's enough even before it tells Andy (David Jonsson) his previous was overriden by the company's directive when he got his impromptu upgrade. We know what that means, OK? You don't have to use a shoddy-looking fake of a dead actor whose character tried to choke Ripley with a rolled-up magazine to hammer the point home.

In terms of how it's set up, how the characters are endangered, it feels more like Alien or Alien 3, but the pacing, the constant barrage of new problems, feels like the more action-oriented Aliens. To be clear, this movie isn't as good as any of those, but I think, strictly as something to sit down and watch, I probably enjoyed it more than Prometheus, and definitely more than Alien: Covenant.

(When this came out, I saw someone describe those two movies as being about how enraged someone would get to learn God didn't exist. Which might explain why they don't do much for me, a person who would be even less impressed if you told me someone actually designed humans to be like this on purpose. That's without getting into the fact I had no need to understand exactly how Xenomorphs came to be. Alien was not a movie crying out for a prequel, let alone two.)

To the extent this movie works, it relies on Andy and Rain's (Cailee Spaeny's) relationship. Andy and Rain's interdependent thing is the core of the film; the movie doesn't spend enough time developing any of their personalities for me to care. They're just there to be the body count, except maybe for Bjorn, the guy who's a dick to Andy for the purpose of driving a wedge between them. And I found Bjorn really annoying, so I wanted him dead even sooner. Probably not the reaction they were going for.

Andy keeps Rain from being alone, and gives her someone that will always put her safety first, while Rain keeps him from being taken apart for scrap. Andy also gives Rain someone to look after, and a surviving piece of her parents. So we see how it throws Andy when he learns he won't be joining Rain on this new world they're planning to escape to, because synthetics aren't allowed, and how hiding that ate at Rain. Then, when Andy's "upgraded" and no longer acting the same, we see how that throws Rain. Her security blanket's pulled away and she finds it's suddenly very cold.

The shift in mannerisms is a nice bit of work by Jonsson, both in the obvious ways he changes - posture, the lack of twitching, ceasing with the bad jokes - but the less-obvious ones. The distance he maintains from Rain, the way he starts leading instead of following, the hint of boredom of irritation as he has to explain why his decision was the smart one to the emotional organics again.

What I Bought 12/28/2024

On my way home from my dad's, I managed to find two of the three comics from last week I wanted. It'll probably be early next week before I get the other one (plus the other two books from the last month I want), so we're probably looking at mid-January for the Year in Review posts.

Metamorpho: The Element Man #1, by Al Ewing (writer), Steve Lieber (artist), Lee Loughridge (colorist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - I was going to make a comment about whether there's significance in Rex's seemingly having burned silver on the periodic table, but instead I'll note when I typed into google to confirm what element is between palladium and cadmium, their "AI Overview" nonsense - which was, of course, the first result - told me there was no such element. Fucking useless.

Metamorpho fights Mister 3, who can switch between 3 states of matter, including replicating the Orb of Ra, which is bad news for Metamorpho and the Element Girl, who shows up to help out. I've never understood why the Orb, which gave them their powers, also cancels those same powers. I suspect Bob Haney didn't have an answer to that question either.

Mr. 3's defeated, but he's working for some group with unknown goals that involve Metamorpho, so that's the problem the cast will have to face. And it's somehow related to Prince Ra-Man defeating some guy named Helio in a world with two suns. Well, it had two suns until the fight ended, then one of them blew up. I'm assuming a piece of it landed on Earth as the Orb of Ra.

Ewing and Lieber are definitely trying to mirror the style of the original, '60s Metamorpho series. The opening splash page has the little cast of character scroll down the side, Metamorpho says things like, "Maybe 'cause he's a gas, gas, gas," and Mister 3 calls him "Fab Freak." Java's constantly, openly pining for both Sapphire's love and Metamorpho's death.

Lieber's art doesn't have the fluidity of Ramona Fradon's, Metamorpho certainly doesn't get as creative with his transformations, although Lieber does work the element's symbol into the transformation a couple of times. One of the graphite skates Rex creates being in the shape of "Gr", for example. He does make the effects of the Orb more horrible-looking however, as Metamorpho's outer covering melts away until you can see his skull underneath. Feels a little at odds with the "groovy" aesthetic Ewing's going for, but maybe they're doing '60s style adventures through a body horror lens.

Dust to Dust #1, by JG Jones (writer/artist), Phil Bram (writer), Jackie Marzan (letterer) - Damn, that truck's transmission fluid is contaminating the town's aquifer!

This issue is basically establishing setting. It's the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma in 1935, which means it's also the Great Depression. Farmers are pulling up stakes and heading for California, leaving behind places where things won't grow and there's no water to be found. There's a sheriff, who likes to read, and also likes to drink moonshine. The moonshine's made by a particular family of assholes, who like to pick on a WWI vet with PTSD. There's a photographer from Chicago in town, looking for anything that might work as a newspaper feature. There is, of course, one guy who owns most of the town and expects to get everything he wants.

The child of one of the departing families found a part of a human jawbone and gave it to the sheriff, but the sheriff's not made any move towards figuring that out yet. The sheriff is reading a book on Irish fairy tales by Yeats. The photographer keeps a rifle in her car. The local big shot isn't happy about these farmers leaving when they still owe him mortgages damn it. I assume any or all of that will become relevant at some point, but how and when, no clue.

Jones keeps the book in washed out color. Really highlights the desolate nature of the place, makes the ribs on the farmer's mule stick out. Without much color - there's a little, in a couple of panels - the eye isn't necessarily pulled anywhere. So you just kind of drift over the panel, taking in the faces of these people. The few smiles - mostly the photographer - the scowls, the desperation. Although it mostly made me notice the extent of the sheriff's stubble varies widely from one panel to the next. From a beard to appearing almost clean-shaven. We'll see if Jones adds more color as things accelerate, drawing attention to certain things (or maybe away from other things.)

Sunday Splash Page #355

 

"Better Killing Through Chemo-stry," in Metal Men #46, by Gerry Conway (writer), Walt Simonson (artist/letterer), Carl Gafford (colorist)

Metal Men started in the early 1960s, with Doc Magnus usually having to repair the robots he created after most of their adventures. I guess when you make it that easy to restore them, there was no reason to refrain from an, "Oh my God, they killed Kenny!" approach. The book continued on an every other month schedule for almost 7 years, albeit the last 4 issues the Metal Men donned human disguises. As far as revamps go, it might rank slightly higher than when DC gave each of the Blackhawks some dumb super-gimmick, but the book still ended at 41 issues, returned briefly three years later (reprinting earlier stories), then went dormant for another 3 years.

When the book returns again, Magnus is in therapy to recover from a dictator brainwashing him, but when he's not in therapy, the military has him building weapons. So he builds a radioactive robot with his brain patterns, that tries to kill the Metal Men. That gets sorted, temporarily, but from there, they have to recover a vault full of cash Magnus stole, fight Eclipso, fight a secret lab that's trying to accelerate the development of children, fight Green Lantern, fight the Missile Men.

There's a few attempts to change things up. Doc's rebuild of the group after they fight his Plutonium-bot results in a new look for Platinum, and she's no longer fawning over Doc. Now she flirts with each of the male robots, which doesn't seem like an improvement, but it doesn't last long before she reverts back to pining for Doc. The Metal Men actually walk away from Magnus, correctly noting their lives are spent getting destroyed and rebuilt at his command, whether they want to or not. Magnus respects that and tries building a new creation without emotions to appease the military (and make him feel less guilty if it gets destroyed.) It naturally decides it needs to kill the Metal Men.

This stretch lasted 12 issues, although that includes issue 50, which was mostly a reprint of issue #6. Sadly, Walt Simonson only draws the first 5 issues, up through the Eclipso arc. He doesn't have the chance to go grand as often as he would on Thor, but he draws some very nifty designs of the Metal Men forming one device or another. A solar powered laser cannon, a hydrofoil-powered car, things like that. He also gives them and Magnus a lot of character via body language, able to show how easily Magnus can shift from confident and in control (when he's rebuilding the Metal Men) to nervous or flummoxed (pretty much the second things start to veer off-course.)

Saturday Splash Page #157

 

"Super-Power-Skrull," in Skrulls vs. Power Pack #2, by Fred van Lente (writer), Cory Hamscher (artist), Gurihiru and Wil Quintana (colorists), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

This wasn't an official Secret Invasion tie-in, what with all the 2000s-Power Pack mini-series existing in their own little continuity. But van Lente sticks with part of the basic premise, as the Power kids are captured by alien bounty hunters and hauled before an interstellar tribunal to face accusations they committed some serious crimes. Meanwhile, 4 Skrulls impersonate them in a bid to get access to a super-weapon via the kids' father's job with SWORD.

The real Pack bust out of jail. . .and promptly begin committing crimes in hopes of drawing out the imposters. Instead, they end up in a search for the identity of legendary figures called "The Annihilator" and "The Protector", who are of much interest to the Skrulls and the Kymellians (the horsefolk who gave the kids their powers.) That part felt like it was more van Lente setting up something for a future story that never took place, as well as a way to keep Power Pack from just rushing home and stomping the imposters.

Franklin Richards is present when the kids are initially captured, so he contacts their ship Friday. HERBIE actually agree to help Franklin, because he's immediately smitten with Friday. This is a recurring bit through the mini-series, HERBIE swooning or trying to act impressive and heroic, while Friday doesn't even remember his name.

(There's also a one-off gag during an interstellar bar fight where a Kree named Noh-Var warns the kids they aren't prepared for his blah blah blah and Katie just blasts him while complaining he lost her six high concepts ago. Even though he's dressed like a standard Kree soldier, it feels like a poke at Morrison's Marvel Boy.)

Cory Hamscher draws the first two issues, then he and Jacopo Camagni draw the next two issues collectively, though I can't find any rhyme or reason for who draws which pages. Hamscher's style is much rougher, much heavier lines. He gives Katie some really aggressive bangs, which are great when the imposter is grinning maliciously (or when Katie herself is trying to act bad), but less so at other times. I assume Hamscher came up with the looks for the Power kids when they try to act like crooks, which are suitably goofy, especially considering they're mostly dealing with aliens who shouldn't have any idea what those clothes would signify on Earth. Camagni has a lighter line. His figures and faces are rounded off versus Hamscher's more squared off look. It's a bit closer to the Gurihiru team's look, but less prone to exaggerate for comedic effect.

Random Back Issues #144 - E-Man #1

The filming of a big stunt sequence for "Riders of the Last Buick II" goes wrong, as a defect in the tracks flings the boulder towards not only "Minnesota Schwartz" and "The Girl", but a crowd of gawkers. Seems risky to endanger your star, though Garrison Bellot is high on Aunt Jemima's Pancake Makeup, and if you're hoping we're almost done with the sub-Mad Magazine-level parody names, buddy, this is just the first page.

In an apartment overlooking this mess, exotic dancer and part-time archaeology student Nova Kane has brought a date home, but as they're about to get down to sexy business, her roomie Alec Tronn (E-Man) shows up. Rodney's apparently not up for experimentation, as he's got lots of questions about this other guy, not the least of which why he seemed to materialize out of the TV. By then, Alec has noticed the trouble outside and transforms to energy to phase through the window and destroy the boulder. Nova tries to rush Rodney out the door, but when he keeps asking questions, uses her own energy-manipulating powers to slow his brain's electrical activity and temporarily put him in suspended animation. Did she not want to waste the good liquor?

E-Man keeps anyone from being hurt by the boulder - minus a street performer that took a chunk of rock in the kisser - and the film's producer, sigh, Stringpull Schmaltzberg is trying to convince E-Man to star in his next movie. It's called V.D., about caring and sharing and how adulthood breeds those traits out us, expressed through the innocence of an alien. E-Man says he'll think about it, which isn't good enough for Schmaltzberg's mysterious boss, "B.S."

Next day, Nova visits E-Man's partner, unkempt, unpleasant, private investigator, Michael Mauser. She's looking for E-Man, but gives us a 4-page origin recap, by the end of which Mauser's asleep. E-Man shows up, soaking wet, pissed off, and ready to accept the movie offer. He was drawn to an aquarium by strange music, and saved a man about to be eaten by a Great White Shark. Except "FBI Agent I.M. Faceless" was undercover to catch fish thieves. The ingratitude has soured Alec on using his powers to aid mankind, making him smarter than anyone who ever served on the Avengers.

But wait! Mauser notes that sounds like a scene from Schmaltzberg's "Maws,", and the music that drew E-Man to the aquarium was the theme from "Gross Encounters of the Weird Kind." Mauser decides to question Schmaltzberg, but once inside his 'palatial cottage', he and E-Man find themselves in a constantly changing environment. Coney Island one moment, and a bar from the first Riders of the Last Buick, until they're captured by Schmaltzberg and E-Man's original arch-foe, the Brain from Sirius, aka B.S.

He's gone loopy after the dome containing his native atmosphere got cracked in a previous fight, as his clever plan was to 1) make E-Man a movie star, 2) mind-control him to run for political office like Reagan, 3) make him declare himself King of Earth, and 4) have him assassinated. Now he'll just lower E-Man and Mauser into a pit of lethal Sirian snakes. Which is about when Nova shows up, zaps the alien helmet Schmaltzberg's using to make it look like there are snakes, and they defeat the Brain. But Nova still wants to go back to being a regular woman, or, failing that, at least have a regular guy.

Would you settle for a short, bearded weirdo that keeps kids locked in cattle cars until they sign consent form to be turned into his latest batch of "F-Men"? Because Ford Fairmont's going to try and make you into a Phoenix-knockoff and this issue is absolutely toast in the upcoming annual collection purge.

{4th longbox, 80th comic. E-Man (vol. 3) #1, by Martin Pasko (writer), Joe Staton (artist), Bruce D. Patterson (colorist/letterer)}

Do Not Unwrap 'Til March

The first couple of publishers, I was feeling pretty good about March's solicits. Planning post titles around "Christmas miracle." Then I got past the first few publishers and things sputtered out. The number of new things wasn't too shabby, there just didn't seem to be much besides that, especially since Deadpool is still crossing over with Miles Morales, meaning another month of no-go. So I end up in roughly the same place as January and February.

What's new? Marvel's got a new The Thing mini-series, by Tony Fleecs and Leonard Kirk. Kind of strange timing, since it looks like Doom just reverted him to plain old Ben Grimm in the latest Big Event, but there it is.

There's a Godzilla vs. the Marvel Universe thing, that's less a mini-series than 6 loosely connected one-shots, starting with the Fantastic Four. That feels like something I buy a beat up tpb copy of in two years.

DC's got a new Secret Six book, by Nicole Maines and Stephen Segovia, about hunting down an escaped Amanda Waller. It's 50/50 classic Secret Six members and new folks. The only one of the new ones I know if Jon Kent. I'm not sure the overarching plot interests me, but maybe it gets a try.

John Allison and Max Sarin are doing another Great British Bump-Off, Kill or Be Quilt. The mystery in the first mini-series didn't impress me but, Max Sarin art is hard for me to pass up, and it'll almost certainly be funny. Paul Tobin and J. Holden are releasing Dark Pyramid through Mad Cave, about a girlfriend searching for her missing live-streamer boyfriend on Mt. Denali.

What's ending? The solicitation doesn't say it for certain, but volume 10 of The Boxer sure feels like it might be the conclusion, seeing as we're finally going to learn with Yu and K are so fucked up. If not that, then nothing.

And the rest? Fantastic Four's in One World Under Doom tie-in country. I guess we'll see how effectively North can make this book work if I'm not reading the main mini-series. If he can't, I may have to drop this until the event's done, by which point Marvel will probably have canceled it anyway.

Moon Knight's in trouble with Khonshu again, Laura Kinney's teaming up with The Revolution. Sadly it's Bucky Barnes, not a Prince cover band. Batgirl's still dealing with mama issues, and Metamorpho's up against angry, sentient buildings. I think. Bronze Faces is up to issue 2, as is Mine is a Long, Lonesome Grave. Dust to Dust is at the midpoint, and the title character of The Surgeon made a friend. In a post-apocalypse? That's a terrible idea!

Busting (1974)

Elliot Gould and Robert Blake play a couple of vice cops trying to bring down a guy with the veneer of a respected businessman, and all the connections that go with it. Which means they maybe got break some rules, but that's OK, right? They both tend to be glib, talking fast and casual, playing dumb as they discuss questioning a dentist about his affairs in front of his wife and kids, or trashing a lady's apartment looking for a book, that kind of thing.

Since I tend to associate Gould with comedy, I expected this to be sort of a parody or satire of the French Connection or Dirty Harry. But no, it seems to be a movie like those, except the protagonists are arresting sex workers. Which doesn't really work to gain my sympathy when they start breaking into people's apartments without warrants or whatnot. Dirty Harry was after a guy who was killing people, then kidnapped and held a lady for ransom (who he had already killed.) I didn't particularly care so much if "Scorpio" had a bad time when Dirty Harry catches up. But when Gould and Blake are acting as the point men for the cops to bust up a gay bar for putting on some sort of "show" after closing time, yeah, I'm not going to be on their side.

The plot eventually turns to trying to link the "respected" businessman to drugs, and there's some shootouts in an all-night marketplace, a car chase at the end with the types of ambulance the Ghostbusters used. That works a little better, as there's evidence the drugs, among other uses, are a way to keep the sex workers in line by getting them addicted. The all-night market shootout is slower-paced, characters creeping between aisles with the camera following them before it jumps to a different character. The car chase definitely feels like it's trying to be French Connection briefly, with the camera views from the grille of the cars as they barrel down the road, swerving and whatnot. I'm not sure it's long enough, or else the cars they're using aren't fast enough, to be very exciting.

One thing the movie does well, it keeps the villain, Mr. Rizzo (Allen Garfield), out of sight for the first half. He's only mentioned or obliquely referred to. Gould and Blake muse about the show one lady puts on in Rizzo's cabaret, or how much they'd like to bust it. Their boss will mention Rizzo's lawyer made bail for a guy they busted running a "massage parlor." The guy running the parlor will tell them they aren't supposed to be there, without specifically mentioning Rizzo's name, of course.

And when we do finally meet him, watching some the training of some boxer he sponsors, he's an assuming guy. Nothing impressive about him visually beyond how indifferent he is to Gould and Blake's verbal jabs and threats. He doesn't laugh in their faces, but you can tell he's laughing on the inside. Even they acknowledge they didn't get anywhere with him.

It does feel like the scene where his goons get the drop on Gould and Blake and beat their asses should have come after they started following him everywhere, rather than before. They sat behind him and his family in church, then hung out in the parking lot of the restaurant where they went to eat after. They eventually set his car on fire and danced around it singing "Happy Birthday," which feels like the kind of thing that would prompt a severe beating. That does make Rizzo call the commissioner and have them suspended, but that makes it weird how Rizzo escalates and de-escalates his response. They bust a sex worker of his, he gets her a good lawyer, encourage the police chief to tell them to drop the case. They follow him to a boxing match, have them beat up. They light his car on fire, have them suspended. Does he just flip a coin? "Heads, we use influence. Tails, we use violence."

What I Bought 12/21/2024

My body tried to speed-run something last week. Scratchy throat Tuesday, head jammed full of snot Wednesday, hacking up yellow stuff Thursday. It has subsequently settled into occasionally coughing, occasionally runny nose since, which isn't great, but I can operate around it.

Fantastic Four #27, by Ryan North (writer), Steven Cummings (artist), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - It doesn't seem fair that only some of the Moloids get to wear specs like Mole Man. It must be an "employee of the month" perk.

Nicki, Ben and Alicia's Skrull daughter, observes that Earthling myths and legends consistently portray shape-shifters as untrustworthy and evil. So she tries to prove they're actually cool and good. By pretending to be the Fantastic Four to get her siblings out of trouble with the principal. Also by flawlessly impersonating her dad to rent PG-13 movies.

She eventually gets caught, and Ben tells her not to impersonate other people at school, and not to do it elsewhere without asking first. Which she initially perceives as having to get permission to be herself, but by the end of the issue has concluded that she's really been using shapeshifting to try being liked by being other people, and she should just be herself. Using her powers openly to defeat the Mole Man when he attacks the school to get at Franklin and Valeria probably helps.

It's a nice idea to play with the cultural differences Nicki has to deal with coming from the Skrulls culture, where shapeshifting is the norm and you're expected to use it, versus Earth where it's a relatively rare trait, and most of the people get spooked if they eventually learn they weren't talking to who they thought they were. Hopefully North will do something similar for Nicki's brother Jo-Venn and having grown up among the highly militaristic Kree at some point.

Cummings struggles drawing The Thing consistently, as he sometimes seems to have a neck and other times doesn't, and the shape of his torso changes a bit. For the more regular characters, he's fine (I feel like he used Abe Lincoln as a starting point for the principal), and when Nicki is just stretching her limbs or bulking herself up, there's no problem there. And Mole Man's 3-headed, fire breathing, beady-eyed creature looks cool, so overall, it works.

Deadpool #9, by Cody Ziglar and Alexis Quasarano (writers), Andrea Di Vito (artist), Guru-eFX (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - Maybe MODOK should put the shiny gem thing in a less easy to access (and stab) location.

Eleanor, Princess, and Valentine fight MODOK for half the issue. This is mostly Ellie getting increasingly battered, as she runs up against the limits of her healing ability, but keeping MODOK occupied until Valentine can get close and pump him full of a hallucinogen from mushrooms. Odd that Valentine says they both know he won't enjoy the trip, but the one panel we see, MODOK's got a giddy look and is proclaiming (in multi-colored text) "The colors taste like colors!" Seems to be enjoying it to me. It's when he wakes up he'll be pissed.

So Ellie's in bad shape, but Valentine's got a plan to use some magic powers she gained partway through the Alyssa Wong-written series to essentially do an alchemical transfer of Ellie's healing to Wade to make his cells heal like they're supposed to. It works, Deadpool's back on his feet, Ellie doesn't die, Wade and Valentine have a brief conversation where Valentine whispers something to Wade he claims not to have heard, but will doubtlessly come up later.

Most significant, during the ritual, Ellie saw her mother. Or something claiming to be her mother, who tries to warn her of the cost of this procedure. But Ellie inherited her father's attention span along with his healing factor, so she doesn't listen, or even give her mother time to explain. So she doesn't know what's going to happen, and neither do we. But now Eleanor sees her mother's spirit. Or, again, something passing itself off as her mother's spirit. I don't know if that's going to be something different from what Valentine tried to tell Wade, or if they're the same thing and neither Deadpool got the message.

I really thought Deadpool's resurrection would involve finding Death Grip and learning what he did wasn't exactly death. The fact that Wade wasn't rotting seemed to suggest this was something other than true death, so I thought maybe it was a state similar to it, because Death Grip wants to learn something from a man who can't die coming to a state like death. Maybe we'll find out that was Death Grip's plan, and Ellie messed it up.

Sunday Splash Page #354

 

"Deconstruction Site," in Mekanix #5, by Chris Claremont (writer), Juan Bobillo (penciler), Marcelo Sosa (inker), Edgar Tadeo (colorist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer)

Mekanix focused on Kitty Pryde, attending college in Chicago, bartending to pay for off-campus housing, and trying very hard not to deal with the recent death of her father amid the mass Sentinel attack on Genosha that occurred early in Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men.

Unfortunately, even if the other students don't know she's a mutant, that doesn't mean she's free of stupid bigots and their nonsense. When the story begins, she's already attending mandatory counseling sessions after she whupped the shit out of some anti-mutant guys that tried to get her to listen to their propaganda. That same hate group targets the project team she's part of, and when their sabotage causes a meltdown Kitty only narrowly keeps from killing anyone, the FBI naturally treats Kitty and the scientists as suspects, rather than the right-wing hate group that posted very public threats about them online.

In the midst of that, a few of the Sentinels from the Genosha attack - smaller, more insectile in appearance, but highly adaptable - hitch a ride on a freighter into the city and begin targeting mutants. The only other X-Man around to help is Karma, who has her own concerns trying to protect and care for her younger siblings. There's also Shola, who I think was a new character, a very powerful telekinetic from Genosha, trained to use his powers for defense by his parents, and dealing with his own grief at their recent deaths.

Bobillo's very good at making the various Sentinels look a bit different, but in similar ways. They remind me a bit of the machines that patrol the real world in The Matrix, but less uniform, and certainly less sturdy. Lots of thin wires and cables, and multiple optical lenses, rarely any weapons beyond their own mass (though one does incorporate a pistol Karma had been carrying.) Nodding to their ability to rebuild and improve themselves from whatever is available.

I feel like his human characters' heads are a little big for their bodies, or their bodies - especially the women - are too narrow for their heads, but he's good with body language. Critical in a Claremont-written book, where there's going to be lots of talking - Kitty naturally has to make a big speech in an impromptu debate with the leader of the hate group, a moment where she sets aside her anger and focuses on trying to help rather than just fight - and Bobillo keeps the characters moving or gesturing in ways that are appropriate so things don't grow too static.

This version of Shadowcat's hardened by loss and experience, or is trying to be. The way Claremont writes her, she's more like an open wound, taking very little prodding to provoke a reaction, whether from the bigots, the feds, her therapist (I'm not qualified to determine if this therapist is any more competent than most of the mental health professionals in the Marvel Universe. She at least doesn't appear to be evil.) Her grief, like Shola's, is mostly still directed into anger. She's trying to run from "mutant" stuff, but that didn't work, and now she's almost resigned to the notion of never having a moment's peace to enjoy herself or love anyone. Claremont also seems to moving towards a romantic relationship between Kitty and Karma, which so far as I know never went anywhere. Nowadays it always seems like they're going to push Kitty into bed with Emma Frost, which is just a terrible idea.

Anyway, the point seems to be Kitty can't give up on letting people in, on thinking things can be better.

Saturday Splash Page #156

 

"Scatterpoint," in Slingers #1, by Joseph Harris (writer), Chriscross (penciler), Rob Stull (inker), Felix Serrano (colorist), Richard Starkings and Liz Agraphiotis (letterers)

In his brief "Identity Crisis" story, Spider-Man donned four different, all-new superheroic identities - Dusk, Hornet, Prodigy, and Ricochet - because there was a bounty on his head and seemingly everyone was trying to collect. Once he cleared his name, he put the costumes in a trunk in the attic and that was that.

Until a girl was found dead in an alley, dressed as Dusk. Before too long, he ran into two more people, one dressed as Ricochet, the other as Hornet. Though Spidey doesn't cross paths with him, there's a new Prodigy out there, too. And Dusk doesn't stay dead. All four were brought together by a benefactor with ulterior motives.

No, it wasn't Norman Osborn. Or the Kingpin. It also wasn't a Spider-clone thing, in case you were worried.

The book only lasted 12 issues, and I can't decide if that's why it feels like it lacks any sort of direction, or if it died after 12 issues because it felt aimless. The four college kids that got tapped for this only vaguely know each other ahead of time, and only Ricochet and Hornet seem to get along. Neither of them quite knows what to make of Dusk, and Prodigy is basically Vegeta: an arrogant dick not nearly as competent as he thinks he is. Nobody gets along with that dude.

The benefactor is a Golden Age hero trying to recapture past glory, or rewrite history to undo a past mistake, but what that has to do with recruiting these four teens and giving them these costumes I don't know. He doesn't call them together for training, doesn't advise or guide them. Prodigy is pretty much the only one that talks to him, in the hopes of receiving validation. That might explain why Prodigy is in all this, the old man feeds his notion of how he's "supposed" to be seen, but doesn't explain what the others are doing mixed up in this.

Harris and Chriscross also don't provide them with any compelling villains. A brief run-in with some Maggia guy and a hotel fire, but it's really their benefactor's ego that's the danger. A mass transit worker Hornet and Ricochet tried to keep from committing suicide, only to derail a subway and get the guy accidentally exposed to some experimental waste that makes him a big, angry, furry thing that wants revenge. He controls big, mutated rats that live in the tunnels, which just sounds like Vermin, personally. Though this guy looks more like a steroidal Man-Bat, sans wings. Nanny and the Orphan-maker show up for Ricochet, and, I mean, could we some villains whose whole shtick isn't being creepy bastards?

And then, after all that, Mephisto. I mean, maybe put them up against the Wrecking Crew or the Death Throws first, as a warm-up? Those guys are always good for "trial by fire" stories for teams. Anyway, that's when the cast finally start to resemble something like an actual team, and the book ends. Until then, they were mostly 4 individuals who happen to occupy the same book. Even at their most adversarial, the Defenders usually worked towards a shared purpose, they just butted heads about how to do it and when to stop. These kids are all running around without a clue what they're doing (Ricochet), what they should be doing (Hornet), or why they're doing any of it (Prodigy), except maybe as escapes from unsatisfying everyday lives (except Dusk, who is dead, which kind of limits everyday life.)

Chriscross draws 7 of the 12 issues, in a style that feels similar to Ed McGuinness, or maybe a bulkier Mike Wieringo. Tends to keep faces and designs simple and straightforward, but also clear and distinctive. None of the artists who draw the other 5 issues - Oscar Jiminez on #4, Greg Lunziak on 7 & 8, or Javier Saltares on 11 & 12 - have styles at all like his. They all use much thinner lines, much busier styles, more crosshatched intensive styles. You can still tell who's who, but it helps that Chriscross gave even their civilian looks such different styles. Can't readily mistake them for each other.

Random Back Issues #143 - The Spectre #19

After 50 years, Jim Corrigan finally gets that his mission is to confront evil in others to understand it in himself. Only took him leaving a friend to die alone because he just had to punish her killer, him basically wiping out the nation of Vlatava, getting possessed by Eclipso and nearly ending life on Earth, but hey! Jim's in the remedial class, any progress is encouraging.

The Spectre's going to get his chance to put this to work, because there's trouble brewing in New York City. An elderly rabbi was acquitted after he crashed his car into a group of black kids, killing one of them. This is after his sect bought up a bunch of  buildings in a predominantly African-American neighborhood and converted them into an enclave, off-limits to outsiders.

Tensions are running high, the cops are maintaining a perimeter around the enclave, but the Spectre flits right in and confronts the rabbi, who admits he hit the kids. Not intentionally, but he had known he shouldn't still be driving, and couldn't accept one more sign of his encroaching mortality. Old Moonface weighs the rabbi's soul and says that, taken as a whole, the good he's done outweighs the sin. Will the father of the dead child accept, "God says this man is no sinner?"

Yeah, me neither. The Spectre tries to disperse the angry people on both sides, and two demons of hate and anger emerge from the crowd and start brawling in the sky. It takes a couple of pages, but Spectre takes them down, and it's revealed his old foe Asmodus summoned them. Unfortunately, it's turned into a street fight down below during that, until the Spectre breaks it up. I guess the crowd could see his fight with the demons, but decided to have their own fight anyway? The rabbi emerges to apologize to the grieving father, but that's not helping.

So the Spectre makes them experience each other's grief. The concentration camps, dealing with the Klan. It seems to cool the father's anger, but the experience, the grief, something, kills the rabbi. Even when the Spectre isn't trying to kill people he still kills them. Frank Castle would not approve of such sloppy work.

In other plot threads, a young environmentalist who was set on fire by oil rig workers is reborn as Earth's water elemental (I assume this is picking up threads from Ostrander's Firestorm), and President Bill Clinton takes a break from being a scarfing Big Macs and being a creep to bring in one of his old professors, Nicodemus West, to discuss if there's a way to control or destroy the Spectre after he, you know, killed an entire country because he can't process grief in a healthy manner.

{10th longbox, 36th comic. The Spectre #19, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Carla Feeny and Digital Chameleon (color artists), Todd Klein (letterer)}

The Hills Run Red (1966)

Two guys steal 600 grand from the Union Army, but when they see they can't both get away, they draw cards to see who gets caught. Jerry (Thomas Hunter) gets caught, and spends five years in prison. Ken gets away and becomes your typical Western ranch baron, buying up all the land and with an army of goons to intimidate everyone into doing nothing.

Of course, Ken also promised to look after Jerry's wife and son, but when Jerry returns to the old homestead, he finds it deserted, save a few things. One, his wife diary, which tells him Ken didn't keep his word, because he refused to even loan her money to pay the mortgage. Two, two guys Ken sent to kill Jerry. Three, a random guy (Dan Duryea) hanging out in the barn loft who bails Jerry out and offers to go to Ken and claim he killed Jerry. He gets a steady goon job, and Jerry has the element of surprise.

I thought that Hunter was the same guy who played "The Stranger" in Any Gun Can Play, which would not have been a ringing endorsement. He's not, but I'm not sure he's an improvement. Hunter tries, sometimes, for this uncontrolled anger, where he stumbles out of his home and screams Ken's last name like he's Shatner in Wrath of Khan. Which is actually funny, hearing him yell "SEAGULL!" in the middle of the open range of Texas. Or he laughs oddly or whips his head around to glare at someone when they ask him something. It's too much - there's a couple of times I can see Dureya wondering what the hell this guy is doing - and it's not exactly consistently portrayed.

Beyond that, the film is mostly your standard "revenge Western," where the guy is hellbent on payback, but oh no, he finds things to care about again. You know, once he's done killing that guy. There's a requisite scene where Jerry gets shoved around a circle of guys who punch him - don't know why that was such a popular trope with Italian Westerns. Actually, there's two of those, but in one he gets to fight back.

Despite his initial standoff attitude, Jerry tries to help the townspeople push back against Ken's goon army. Except, in one of the film's quirks that nonetheless fails to elevate it above mediocre, the attempt fails, and the town is abandoned by the time the final gunfight (though it's less a gunfight than Hunter and Duryea chucking dynamite all over the place) begins. His help attempt fails because the tavern singer - who's only been in one scene so far - turns out to be in love with the chief goon (who is sort of the stereotypical cheerful psychopath.) So she intercepts Jerry's warning and alerts the goon.

The goon's also in love (or lust, more likely) with Ken's sister, who just so happens to have the same name as Jerry's deceased wife. At first, I thought she was Jerry's wife, who married Ken after he told her Jerry was dead. Then Ken referred to her as his sister, and I thought Jerry married his pal's sis. But no, she just has the same name so there can be a scene where she meets Jerry because he called out to his wife while delirious after fist-fighting 9 guys.

The movie either sets a lot of things up it doesn't do much to pay off, or lets things hang for the entire film, then remembers at the last second, 'oh yeah, we should probably explain that.' There's some stuff with Jerry's son that falls in the first category, and the reason Duryea's character keeps helping Jerry falls in the latter.

Another Year Under the Blogging Gun

Yesterday marked the end of year 19 here at Reporting on Marvels and Legends. No major disasters or disruptions again this year, which is a pleasant trend I'd be fine having continue. I didn't end up switching TPB/GN/manga review day from Monday to Wednesday like I considered, so the general schedule remained the same.

I don't know if that'll continue into this year. If the local comic store is going under I probably won't be picking up new books until the weekend most weeks, assuming there's anything to get. If new comic reviews start landing heavily on Mondays and Wednesdays, I may feel the need to shift features around.

Or maybe not. This groove - don't call it a rut! - is awfully comfortable.

The total number of new comics keeps going down, which has meant more reviews of graphic novels and manga. We actually finished the stuff I bought in 2023 two months ago. Random Back Issues, however, stayed about the same as the last two years (the progression has been 21-23-22.) Guess I've been getting just enough books to cover Fridays, but not much more than that.

Saturday Splash Page didn't make a lot of progress through the alphabet, starting with Swords of Texas, and just reaching Slumber last weekend. At least I got a little further along than I figured I would. Sunday Splash Page did a little better. Legend of the Shield to Master of Kung Fu (Secret Wars edition.) Actually finished the "L"s! Next year should be more productive, as I expect to get somewhere around Patsy Walker: Hellcat on Sunday Splash Page and to reach something Rocketeer related in Saturday Splash Page.

Some day the two Splash Page series will meet, but not in the next year.

One thing I've been looking at from time to time is which posts end up getting a lot of views. My best guess on why was I used some phrase that caused a search algorithm to lock on. That's the only way I can explain this year's Blogsgiving getting over 3 times as many views in a 4-hour span as any other post has this year. I figure the same is true for my review of The Gods Must Be Crazy, Star Power volume 4, and Apparently Disillusioned Adventurers will Save the World (#1 posts of August, April, and November, respectively.) I used some notable or popular phrase, and the bots flocked to them.

I'm less sure what's going on when it's one of the Splash Page posts. Why was Legion Lost so much popular than Legionnaires? How the heck did the post on Sub-Mariner beat out the one on a Suicide Squad comic with a predominantly movie-themed cast? For that matter, why did the Gods Must Be Crazy sequel get 1/4th as many views? Do search engines hate Roman numerals? All mysteries with answers lost to time, or lost to my laziness in pursuing them any further. But it sounds better the first way.

That's all I've really got for this post. Thanks for sticking around and watching me dump my brain out on the internet for almost two decades!

Sunday Splash Page #353

 

"Run the Gauntlet," in Master of Kung Fu (2015) #3, by Haden Blackman (writer), Dalibor Talijac (penciler), Goran Sudzuka (inker), Miroslav Mrva (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

And here's the other Secret Wars mini-series I bought. Set in a version of K'un Lun ruled by Shang-Chi's dad, Zheng Zu, where Shang's become a drunken derelict since Zheng made him kill the leader of the Iron Fist clan.

Shang's prompted into action when a group of outcasts (kind of like Morlocks, but half of them are New Mutants) try to defend him, and agrees to be their teacher. Realizing none of that will do any good so long as his dad rules the roost, Shang enters the Thirteen Chambers, the tournament held every 13 years to determine who will rule the city.

I admit I was expecting more focus on the tournament, which is relegated to maybe the last issue and a half. But I was also expecting something more like a shonen anime tournament. You know, with a bracket and 1-on-1 match-ups, leading to a final 2. Instead, Shang has to fight everyone else (see above) before he can face his father, which doesn't seem like much of a tournament to me. It's also kind of weird that Shang tells Kitty the Thirteen Chambers predates K'un Lun, but Zheng is somehow able to control it to make sure Shang will have to face everyone else.

Talijac and Sudzuka combine for a very clean look, even during the fighting, nothing is too gritty or rough. They tend to use each panel as a beat in the fight, showing the flow of action from one move to the next. A block in one panel, a twist in the next, a strike in the third. It's a nice way of showing he, even having given up on anything, Shang's still a well-trained fighter.

The designs on the characters vary widely in how close they hew to the character that inspires them. Black Panther and Psylocke - sorry, Lady Mandarin here - look pretty much the same. But Jessica Drew of the Spider Cult's quite different. Not that she's in the book much. Most of the other challengers are introduced and discarded in the course of the third issue.

It all boils down to Shang facing his dad, but first he and Danny Rand have unresolved business. Which turns out to not be what it seems at first. Shang isn't innocent, but he did it to prevent a greater evil. I guess as some sort of arc for Danny, that he sets aside his desire for revenge against Shang for the greater good of the city.

Overall, it's not really what I was hoping for, but it's not bad. The Francesco Francavilla covers are excellent, however.

Saturday Splash Page #155

 

"Bad Sign," in Slumber #2, by Tyler Burton Smith (writer), Vanessa Cardinali (artist), Simon Robins (colorist), Steve Wands (letterer)

A cop named Finch (that's him with his bare ass showing) is investigating a string of murders, each by a different person, all of whom claim it wasn't them. But each murder is marked by similar messages and symbols. The trail leads to a woman named Stetson, who advertises as a "Dream Healer", who helps people with issues by using a device that lets her physically enter their dreams and kill the memory that's causing the problem. Of course, Stetson is hunting for something else in the dreams of others. . .

The mini-series feels like a pitch for a Netflix show. Smith does some interesting things with the concept of entering someone's dreams, but in ways that would have been easy to translate to a moving screen. He and Cardinali don't really do anything with weird perspectives or the floors becoming the ceiling or locations looping back on themselves impossibly. The strangeness is relegated to the things they see, spider-turkeys and having some sort of goblin/zombie thing I assume she befriended in someone's dreams as a partner. Cardinali's art is very good at that; it's loose and scratchy cartoonish style, easily exaggerated for Stetson wearing Finch's skin as a suit to infiltrate his memory of a funeral, or a possessed teddy bear.

But Stetson's response to basically any situation is to shoot it, or threaten to shoot it unless it gives her answers. And despite apparently having a closet full of stuff she's likely pulled from people's dreams, she sticks to regular guns or maybe a flamethrower if she's feeling exotic.

As for the interesting things, first, the way Stetson's shtick works. If she kills the memory causing the nightmares, the person forgets it entirely. Bad experience with a clown? She kills the clown and you don't remember the clown ever existed. Except this isn't the best approach when the person that's the cause is someone the patient doesn't want to forget.

Second, the fact that even if the patient forgets what was traumatizing them, Stetson remembers, tying the mocking title of "dream eater" to the "sin eater" notion, I think. Whether it's because of that, the psychic damage of walking through a man-made portal into someone's dreams, or her not sleeping to avoid her own dreams, Stetson's waking hours are a surreal experience in themselves. She hallucinates a lot, seeing giant bugs in trucker hats at the convenience store, or random ostriches, and has internal conversations with a voice that isn't identified for a long time.

The book ran six issues in 2022, and ended on a number of cliffhangers. One character's under arrest, one's lost in someone's dreams, and Stetson got what she wanted, but it isn't clear what that's going to mean for her. I've not heard anything about the book continuing, so the answers may never come.

Random Back Issues #142 - The Jaguar #6

It's winter in Michigan, and, at least in the early-90s, that still means snow! Maria's excited and having a great time on the quad, only to be interrupted by her Mean Girl roommate Tracy. Although Maria finds Sammie's "polite liberal" condescension more patronizing.

But Tracy's actually here to invite Maria on a weekend trip with her, Sammie, and Tracy's boyfriend Brian. Assuming Brian can get his jeep to run. It's got a flat, and Brian can't get the lugnuts loose. While Brian goes to call his dad about getting some cash - for a different car? a mechanic? a hydraulic torque wrench? - Maria's alone with the jeep. Easy enough to change to Jaguar and use super-strength to remove the lugs and replace the flat. Except now she has to explain how it happened when Brian returns! Time for a clever ruse!

Brian has got to be the Wallet Inspector's favorite customer.

While on the road, Tracy's inner monologue reveals her reason for inviting Maria. Maria doesn't know Tracy saw her change into the Jaguar a week ago. Tracy's making nice while she figures out a way to use Maria. A conversation about super-heroes that have started popping up is interrupted by the Abominable Snowman, causing Brian to crash the jeep. They ski to a nearby town of. . .Doom Creek? Oh, come on!

The guy running the local diner doesn't dismiss their story. Nope, what they saw is the Doomster! It's been around for decades! People use to come to see it, but you were never the same once you saw it! it fought crime, but then it started attacking people at random! Diner Guy advises them to try the farmhouse down the road for a phone, as he doesn't have one. The electricity gets in your brain, you see. Messes with the Sasquatch blood.

Before they get there, the Doomster strikes! It seems focused on Tracy, but that gives Maria a chance to transform and tackle it. Tracy considers the fact that Maria's saved her twice, when all Tracy wants to do is use her, but still rationalizes keeping Maria's secret from Brian and Sammie on the grounds it isn't worth anything if other people find out.

They find a strange nursery in the root cellar of the farmhouse, along with a shotgun-wielding old couple! The farmer explains his grandfather saw a space ship crash in 1901 and there was a weird little baby inside, that he and his wife raised as their own (once they figured out it ate sand and ammonia water), while teaching it to do good. Only problem, this baby's people experience all time at once. They see a person's past, present, and future. So the Doomster's been pulling a Minority Report, though how anyone was able to discern this I don't know, as there's no indication the Doomster speaks English of can communicate telepathically.

Either way, the notion it's after her for something she's going to do freaks Tracy out enough she runs back into the snow, and into the Doomster. Jaguar wasn't able to bring him down in Round 1, though she did end up in a position to get their jeep unstuck. Now she's back for Round 2. There's no talking between them and they eventually cause an avalanche. Tracy insists on staying to look for Maria, who does manage to dig herself out. No sign of the Doomster, though.

We looked at the next issue back in January, which was a winter excursion for Maria with a more commonplace threat: dumbasses with badges and guns.

{6th longbox, 6th comic. The Jaguar #6, by Bill Messner-Loebs (writer), Chuck Wojtkiewicz (penciler), Jose Marzan Jr. (inker), Tom Ziuko (colorist), Tim Harkins (letterer)}

Second-Rate Danger on a Fourth-Rate Budget

Journey to the Savage Planet puts you in the role of the intrepid, under-equipped, and probably under-trained, individual sent to planet AR Y-26 by Kindred Aerospace - the 4th best outer space exploration company there is! It's your job to determine if the planet could be suitable for human habitation, by roaming around and scanning things with your helmet.

You quickly determine you are not the first intelligent species to visit, and are ordered to investigate this mystery further, while continuing your other research, as well as gathering resources to upgrade your equipment so you can keep exploring.

The gameplay reminds me of Metroid Prime. First-person perspective, your weapon in your right hand, a visor mode you activate by pressing up on the D-pad, scanning plants, animals, alien artifacts, all kinds of stuff. You eventually get a Grapple Beam, sorry Proton Tether, and your backpack can be upgraded to give you a jetpack. But the jetpack functions more like a double-jump (eventually a triple and quadruple-jump if you upgrade it enough.)

There is no upgrade to let you curl up in a ball and roll around, though I'm sure your character will want to do after the first time they stumble upon their own corpse.

Yeah, the gameplay may be similar to Metroid Prime, right down to the immense amount of backtracking you do as upgrades grant access to places you had to pass by earlier, but the tone is not. Your ship is a broken-down, cramped piece of junk, where every time you enter the ship or wake up, annoying live-action ads start playing (which you can thankfully stop.) The reason you have to upgrade your equipment is because Kindred gave you cheap crap.

They did, however, do a complete genetic scan of you, so when you die, they just, clone another. You wake up in a tube on the ship (the sliding doors of the tube jam), and you're back in action! You also have an AI assistant who offers you platitudes like, "You did your best. It wasn't very good, but you tried,." Or, when you smack a certain creature, because the game encourages you to slap the creatures you meet, causing it to split into two creatures that shriek in fright like a terrified cartoon dog, "Great, it's twice as annoying now! Seriously, you should just kill it."

You're also given the option to set how chatty the AI is at the start of the game. I chose the medium option, where it mostly just provides information, but there was one for it to talk a lot, and another to silence it. But that seemed too mean. It's stuck on this ship on this shattered mess of a planet, too!

A lot of the game is platforming, finding some way to make it from Point A to B. In recognition of the fact that not everyone is going to prioritize the same upgrades, the game usually provides multiple routes or approaches, depending on what tools and devices you have. You might use the Proton Tether for a direct approach, or the Gelatinous Blob (which acts a springboard) combined with the jetpack booster for a longer route of leaping from rocky outcropping to rocky outcropping.

One thing I would have really appreciated was a map function. The visor does have a vague ability to show you a bright symbol indicating your current objective and its distance (or highlight fuel sources or alien artifacts if you upgrade the visor enough.) But trying to figure out which way to even begin going from your Point A to reach your Point B, let alone how, can be a hassle. Plus, for a game that encourages backtracking, the lack of a map makes it hard to remember where I've revisited or where I saw that one weak rock seal earlier that I can break through now that I have the Stomp ability.

Boss and sub-boss fights are mostly a matter of dodging around and shooting the parts of the enemy that glow or light up when the opportunity presents itself. The sub-bosses tend to be very quick, so you have to time your dodges carefully so they rush by, exposing their backs. The bosses are typically enormous and sedentary, but they have ways of making the few safe platforms unsafe, so that it's difficult to find a way to stand still long enough to shoot anything. the targeting on your laser pistol is pretty forgiving, but there's no lock-on targeting.

I got 100% completion in about 20 hours, and beat the story in 2-3 hours less than that, so it's not a long game. I had fun with it, and got a few laughs, so maybe that's good. It doesn't overstay its welcome.

What I Bought 12/7/2024 - Part 2

I went to the next town over to try some local store Christmas shopping, and in between that, stopped at the comic stores. The guy at one store remembered what town I was from - surprising, considering it feels like a year since I've been in - and asked if I visited the shop here. He said he asked because he heard the guy wasn't doing too well. 

He may have meant healthwise, though I haven't noticed anything in the brief stretches I'm in the store, but assuming he meant financially, I said there never seem to be new releases on the shelf these days. Which, of course, was why I was looking for last week's books in this guy's shop. Still, if the word's getting around to stores in neighboring towns, the local shop's probably not long for this world.

Avengers Assemble #4, by Steve Orlando (writer), Valentina Pinti (artist), Sonia Oback and Fer Sifuentes-Sujo (color artists), Cory Petit (letterer) - All that Kirby Krackle is gonna ruin the finish on Mr. Doomsmore.

Victorious, Doom's herald and wife is trying to bust through the magic barrier he placed around Latveria. Just for the heck of it, I note that Pinti draws the barrier as a green wall or partially transparent energy, while in Fantastic Four it was a solid, metallic-looking dome.

Even with the Power Cosmic, she can't get in, but her punches are wrecking stuff in all the neighboring countries. So most of the team goes to try and talk her down, or punch her down as necessary. The punching doesn't go terribly well, but the talking eventually gets her to stop and fix what she did.

But, suspecting this is more cover for a heist, the rest of the team look for different activity and find something happening at an old mine in a neighboring country. The Serpent Society's there, but it's actually a trap, as they have their Serpent's Tears ready. Viper says each ampule can infect a city, then wastes one throwing it specifically at Shang-Chi, knowing Captain America will dive on it first. So now Cap's a snake-guy.

OK, so here's the thing where I trip up. The whole running bit has been the Serpent Society goading one person or another into starting something, which draws the Avengers' attention, giving the Serpents cover for their heists. So am I supposed to be believe they somehow goaded Victorious into trying to punch her way back into her homeland right now? Because otherwise, they sat around waiting for some sort of big problem, so they could go cause trouble nearby that the Avengers would notice and investigate, all to spring this trap on one guy. And yeah, Sidewinder's a teleporter, so mobilizing isn't that difficult, but still. It's thin.

Some of the faces Pinti draws look a little strange - mostly mouths, and mostly in smaller panels, maybe the lines need more space - but the panel of Captain America mid-change, is solid. Although I do wonder why transforming into a snake-guy made his fingernails become more clawlike. Snakes don't have claws, or hands.

Rolling Thunder (1977)

Charles Rane (William DeVane) is one of two soldiers returning to the U.S. after being released from a Vietnamese POW camp. It's not an easy return; his son was a baby when he left and looks more naturally to a state trooper that's taken up with his mother, Rane's wife, in the interim. Rane can't sleep, and stays in his workshed because it reminds him of his cell.

He gets a big box full of silver dollars at some public ceremony, which makes him the target of some guys looking for quick cash. He won't tell them where the box is hidden, even when they jam his hand in the garbage disposal. His son, not understanding the situation when he arrives home, does tell them, and the thieves shoot them all, though Rane doesn't die. And thy were kind (read: stupid) enough to mention where they were going and who they'd be seeing, so he knows where to start looking, as soon as he learns to use the claw hand he's got.

The quieter moments, where DeVane gets to show how out-of-place Rane feels, work pretty well. The awkward conversation with his wife the first night back home. She tells him she saved all his back pay, and bought him a big box of Mounds bars, because he loved those. And he sits there, and all his responses are muted, and she eventually gets around to what she's been building up to the entire time: admitting she and the state trooper are together now. And Rane just kind of shuts down. Doesn't want to deal with it.

There's a different woman, Linda (played by Linda Haynes) who describes herself as his "groupie" (then has to explain the term to him), who tags along on his revenge trip without really understanding what he's doing. She keeps trying to get him to forget about this and let the police handle it. It never works, but she can't bring herself to either walk away or call the cops herself like she threatens.

Rane eventually turns to a fellow soldier and POW (played by Tommy Lee Jones) who returned on the same flight, and they take care of things in the big, final shootout. But the interactions between them are interesting in comparison. There are a lot of silences, but it doesn't feel strained. Jones doesn't rush to fill them like everyone else does. He waits and lets DaVane choose if he's going to talk or not. Or the two of them sit in a room of Jones' relatives, all chattering about the poor quality of American-made goods, and Jones and DeVane are just silently watching each other the entire time. Jones knows there's a reason DeVane's there, and he's ready. Everything else is just chatter. At the end, as they stumble out, the shoulder DeVane gives Jones to lean on is probably the most natural-looking physical contact either character demonstrates in the movie. If you didn't know better, it could be one guy helping a friend who had one too many make it out to a taxi.

But the pacing and some of the choices are just so odd. There's a subplot about the state trooper/new husband guy trying to track down Rane, only to get gunned down by one of the thieves before ever getting close to catching up. It comes off as, "we need a brief action scene, but we don't want to kill anyone important yet." That character is basically irrelevant. Rane doesn't care about him one way or the other, so why should we?

The first bar Rane goes to, the one the guys mentioned as meet-up point, they aren't there, but he gets the name of a different bar. He goes there, he finds one of the guys, who is not surprised at all to see him, likely because the guys at the last bar called ahead. Rane gets the claw grip on the guy's nuts enough to use him as a shield, but then lets him go and bails. And this is not apparently meant to goad them into chasing him onto a battlefield of his preference, because it doesn't happen. I mean, what the hell? The element of surprise is gone. If he's really wanting to die - and I'm not sure he isn't - the numbers will still be against him when he catches up to the rest, even with Jones' help.

It's strange, because he told the cops he didn't remember anything about the men who attacked him, specifically because he wanted to do this himself. But it doesn't seem like all the time he sat on the information resulted in any sort of a plan. He's not some efficient, ruthless killing machine, but he's also not some raging berserker. He's a slightly more competent, or just better-armed, version of the main character in Blue Ruin. Just sort of doggedly moving forward on this path, dealing with the messes his previous actions create as they arise.

What I Bought 12/7/2024 - Part 1

I tried to do the novel writing thing last month. Not officially; I didn't use the NaNoWriMo website even before they said it was fine if people let AI write their novels - what's even the point if you just let a machine do it - but I went into November with the general notion of writing 50K words of fiction, and maybe actually finishing the thing I'd been working on since June of last year.

I barely got to 21,000. Just couldn't get motivated, which has felt like a problem most of the year, really. Oh well.

Calavera P.I. #2, by Marco Finnegan (writer/artist), Jeff Eckleberry (letterer) - If people's torsos are turning into buildings, this might be beyond the skills of even a skeleton detective.

So, Calavera's back, as a skeleton in a fedora and trench coat. And she actually smacks him, yelling at how she mourned him anyway. Like, lady, do you think he's just wearing really nifty make-up right now? A priest shows up to offer some exposition, that the dead can return on this night, but only for one night, whether they finish their business or not.

Calavera gets a quick rundown on what the Great Depression's doing to the city, and especially the Mexican-American population. Scapegoating and forced deportation, mostly. Calavera also finds out she's been producing comics, pulps, and even films about him. Starring a white guy, of course. That's got to be a weird feeling.

Having burned 40% of the issue, and with over 30% of the mini-series already done, Finnegan decides it might be time for Calavera to get to work actually detecting. I'm just not getting the pacing. Why have the priest make explicit Calavera's got one night, then doodle around like this? Where is the urgency, if not from Calavera, who has no connection to the kid other than having been friends with his mom, then from her at least. Push him a little, demand they start asking questions, something.

Calavera does question the first homeless guy he sees on the street where she saw, who the clown gave a matchbook with a meeting place scribbled on it. He goes there, barely gets started doing anything, and two guys attack him, including one who stabs him with a shaving razor. Which has a blunt end, because it's meant for cutting, not stabbing. Am I supposed to assume this goon is a moron, or what? Just draw him with a switchblade or, you know, anything meant for stabbing. It doesn't do any good, and he at least gets the name of whoever wants to meet him, but then the cops show up to deport Mexicans and Calavera runs into Mike the Cop.

And then the clown just, drives by in a van, with the kid locked in the back. That's obviously bait, or maybe this "La Fantasma" figured out this wasn't going to get where she wanted if things kept proceeding at the same pace. I like the concept, but either the execution, or the things Finnegan's focused on, aren't clicking for me.

Batgirl #2, by Tate Brombal (writer), Takeshi Miyazawa (artist), Mike Spicer (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - It helps break up the black on the mask, I know, but giving her mask big white eyes like that makes it look strange. Like Batgirl's version of the really huge, Erik Larsen-style Spidey-Man eyes.

Batgirl and Shiva escape, but Cass still isn't willing to leave the city. She brings Shiva to a restaurant she apparently frequents and the elderly Vietnamese lady that runs it, stitches up Shiva and convinces her to stop trying to order Cass around if she wants results. It's probably useful for Shiva to observe Cass outside of combat, which is pretty much the only thing they ever do around each other. Get a better understanding of what actually matters to her daughter.

Although we don't get any internal narration from Shiva, she explains the Unburied found that flowers that sprouted from the graves of 100 murdered fellow monks. The flowers grant powers, so other people wanted them, there was a lot of fighting, the monks and the flowers appeared to die, but apparently not.

Before Shiva gets around to explaining a) why the Unburied are back now, and more critically from my perspective, b) why they're after her, the monks catch up. There's another fight, and Miyazawa seems to have Cassandra use Batarangs almost like spiked brass knuckles. There's a couple of times where she's punching guys while she has the 'rangs projecting from between her fingers.

Which isn't a concern for Kalden the Unseen, blind and super-fast and proceeds to kick Cassandra's ass. She can't read his moves, but I can't tell from the faltering internal narration Brombal gives her in the the aftermath if he did something to wreck that ability, or just shook her confidence really badly. Probably the latter, but either way, she and Shiva are riding on the top of a train out of Gotham, and the blind swordsman probably just killed that nice family that gave her soup on a regular basis. But he's sad about it, you guys! He cried when he killed two firefighters earlier!

More seriously, I assume Brombal's planning to contrast Kalden with Cass. Kalden kills, then uses some power to experience the pain and terror he inflicted, but he keeps killing. Cass killed once and was horrified by what she saw in her victim's eyes, to the point she swore against doing it again. How that's going to play out, especially with Shiva, a generally unrepentant killer, in the mix, I don't know.