What I Bought 3/14/2025 - Part 1

I only found half the books I was looking for last week, but three is better than zero, so we'll roll with what we've got. And today, what we've got is a pair of books on their second issues, one of which on much more solid ground with me than the other.

Bronze Faces #2, by Shobo and Shof (writers), Alexandre Tekenkgi (artist), Lee Loughridge (colorist), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letterer) - That does seem like good headgear to wear in a fistfight, provided you can see what you're doing. Or you're Daredevil.

In the 4 months since the heist in issue 1, Gbonka, Timi and Sango have expanded their operation, bringing in more people, including some with actual experience at stealing things. Smart, though it does feel like the sort of thing that opens more potential holes in their group. Especially now that there's a determined cop, Detective Lai, on their tails.

Still, those are problems for a future issue. For now, the goal is a heist on a train carrying a lot of stuff for an auction at the site of a famous horse race. Most of the issue, Shobo and Shof show us what's happening through Ev, some video streaming person with a rich dad, who can't resist showing off some antique horse that's passed to her, and records all the security measures and passcodes it took to get to it.

Tekengki puts a scrolling view of various comments when someone is looking into the phone, which vary from excitement at potential drama when Ev remarks she might try to hit with a suave gentleman who bumped into her (and copied her palm print), to someone asking if the thieves, who now call themselves "Ogiso", intend to put the art in another museum, just in Nigeria, lol. You know the type.

It is a little difficult for me to take anyone seriously if they start a statement with, "Hashtag," as the Ogiso do at the conclusion of their public statement. I initially thought that was Gbonka, because it seemed like the sort of thing an earnest, but painfully square, politician would do. But going by the masks, it was Timi. Ah, well, he's the hip young musician, and I'm a fuddy-duddy, so what do I know? Other than Sango is not happy about Timi and Gbonka making out, and the two ladies still don't seem to be seeing eye-to-eye. Tekengki is still setting it up so even when they do make eye contact, they're in separate panels and look as though they're looking away.

Mine is a Long, Lonesome Grave #2, by Justin Jordan (writer), Chris Shehan (artist), Alessandro Santoro (color artist), Micah Myers (letterer) - That's what life in decaying, mining towns will do to you: You wind up with tapetum lucidum like a dang raccoon.

Harley left last issue's victim tied to the hood of a car with railroad spikes through his eyes (something about preventing the soul from escaping.) So the Weavers send more guys, who end up either shot or buried in a collapsed mine. The ringleader of the squad, to the extent he qualifies, at one point briefly sees Harley with a bunch of glowing eyed faces looming behind him. Not sure what the means. I was operating under the impression the Weavers knew the magic around here, but maybe Harley's got a little, too.

Preliminaries taken care of, Harley beats up a guy in a bar to learn how things stand, then starts destroying all their holdings, what there are of them. Mostly this involves burning down a huge warehouse full of pills, then hitching a ride on the underside of the lead goons SUV to get inside the Weaver's compound. 

And that's about it. Harley's hallucinations are getting worse, distracting him often enough he gets clipped by a few rounds. He comments at one point he has to live long enough for the curse to kill him, which might only be a day. I thought he had seven days, or does he mean something else? Either way, my new theory is the priest did it, as a way to use Harley to clean up the dying town. And there's a certain amusement in the man of God using heathen curses. I'm not sure if I'll stick around long enough to find out.

Burn Country (2016)

Osman's (Dominic Rains) trying to settle into a new life in California, having moved there after seeking asylum from Afghanistan. He's living with the mother of a journalist he worked with, and gets a $50/week job with the local paper, writing the police blotter. After some initial disappointment, Osman leans into the job, deciding to use it as a way to get to know the country and the people, a way to go out an investigate and observe.

After a rough first encounter, he strikes up a friendship with a local guy, Lindsay (James Franco), who promises to introduce him to people in the area, help him understand who the real criminal element is. Then a man turns up dead in the woods, and Lindsay goes missing.

People, at various points, ask Osman if he's glad to be away from Afghanistan, away from the danger. Or ask him what it was like. And Osman will explain, politely and earnestly, that, yes, there were some terrifying or surreal moments, but for a long time he wanted to move away simply because he thought that was what you had to do to grow. This is while there are corpses turning up in the woods, while Osman is getting chased through those same woods later and having to beat a guy with a rock to save his own life. No one he tells is too surprised by that, nor that the man apparently survived and left. The lady he's staying with, who is a local cop, assures him it was self-defense, so he's fine, completely missing that isn't really what Osman's freaked out about.

The movie cuts in a few conversations between Osman and Gabe, his journalist friend, who is still in Afghanistan working with a different, 'cultural translator', as one character describes it. We only see bits of what's going on; an overturned car in the road at night, Gabe standing on a mountain somewhere, no towns in sight. We don't know what's happening, but I think the implication is, if Osman was there, he would understand and fit back in perfectly. Where he is, though, is alien to him, and he doesn't really have a good cultural translator. Everyone is holding things back. (Gabe, for example, apparently has spoken with his mom in months, for reasons we and Osman don't learn.) Or it's that they know how things work here so intuitively, they don't recognize that there's anything to explain to Osman.

Rains shifts between striding with purpose to drifting through crowds of people gathered around a bonfire outside the house of some local Mister Big. He spends a lot of time tapping or pounding on doors, peering through windows, trying to get someone to open up, to let him in. Often he doesn't. Mom Cop may only roll the car window down enough to tell him to stay there. Lindsay's mother may open the door, but only enough to see there's a guy asleep on her bed while her son's whereabouts are unknown (unknown to Osman, at least.) He has moments of glee, and moments where he's so frustrated the polite exterior cracks and he loses his temper, unable to understand what people aren't saying or why.

I don't know that I entirely understand the whys and wherefores of the plot, which would be something Osman and I have in common then. Whether that's by design or because the movie was trying so hard to give us a sense of Osman's confusion that it overdid it, I'm not sure.

What I Bought 3/7/2025

OK, with books from previous months dispensed with, we move on to March comics. Well, one March comic at least. This month is one of those odd distributions. 2 books the first week, 5 the second, none this week, 3 the last week.

Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu #6, by Jed MacKay (writer), Domenico Carbone (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Feel like Khonshu is warning Marc that he's not ready to handle everything Tigra's got in store for him. "Beware, my son, that backside is one moon I have no power over!"

Pretty basic set-up. Marc's more or less in a coma after getting his ass beat, and getting berated by Khonshu for acting like such a chump. Fairchild's smart enough to realize killing Moon Knight just means you've soon got a resurrected, even crazier Moon Knight on your ass, so he plans to keep M.K. under wraps like this for the foreseeable future.

Good thing Hunter's Moon can ask Khonshu - politely - where Marc is, so they can rescue him. Or Tigra can ask the same question, impolitely. Either way, Moon Knight's crew ambushes the vehicle carrying him, Fairchild's enforcer convinces him this is not the time to fight an entire team, and after some time in a good ol' Consecrated Sarcophagus, Marc's up on his feet, and ready to actually make a plan to attack Fairchild. I don't know, are plans allowed? Much better to charge in recklessly.

With Carbone's art, Marc looks kind of like some teen manga protagonist. Much younger than the other artists MacKay's worked with depict him (and much younger than Tigra, which at least sort of tracks with Marc somewhat admitting he's been acting like a dope.) I also don't remember Marc's hair poofing up that much in the front, either. Oh man, Fairchild must have beat him so badly he switched genres - and cultures - entirely.

Or maybe this is Into the Moon-Verse and we've swapped Moon Knights? Khonshu was griping about how if Marc would just die enough he was too crazy to use, Khonshu could get himself another one. Honestly, Khonshu's a real shit, always playing his kids against each other, withholding approval and affection in exchange for them jumping through his hoops. What a shitty god.

Sunday Splash Page #366

"Top Dog," in Moon Knight Annual (2022) #1, by Jed MacKay (writer), Federico Sabbatini (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer)

The only annual Moon Knight's had in the 3+ years MacKay's been writing the character, this one involves the Werewolf by Night, Jack Russell, trying to kill Khonshu. There's a prophecy that says it can be done, but only at a certain time, and in specific circumstances. Circumstances which apparently shouldn't exist, but do. Namely, that one of Khonshu's fists has a kid of their own.

Yeah, according to Hunter's Moon, Khonshu's fists can't have kids. I don't think is so much an edict Khonshu hands down as they are physically incapable of doing so. Maybe the idea is when Khonshu brings them back to life as his priest, he renders them sterile? Not sure, but either way, it didn't take with Marc, and Russell's kidnapped his and Marlene's daughter.

This story also marks the only time so far that either Marlene or Frenchie has appeared in MacKay's run. He writes Marlene as focused and distant. The only reason she's there is for their daughter, which she makes clear to Marc by telling him either come back with the girl or don't come back alive. She's learned her lesson about life close to Moon Knight, and isn't allowing herself the luxury of even considering trying again.

MacKay writes Russell as grimly determined to do something he doesn't like, because he's convinced it'll save lives. MacKay places werewolves as "berserkers" in Khonshu's forces, given that they gain their power under a full moon. If Russell can kill Khonshu, he thinks that will break the curse and there won't be anymore werewolves. My main issue with this is, I feel werewolves in the Marvel Universe are often portrayed as not discerning about who they attack, assuming they even retain any control of their actions. So doesn't that make them creatures who prey on those traveling at night? MacKay tries to square that with the notion that Khonshu's fists like Moon Knight or Hunter's Moon are the ones who keep the wolves in line and under control. I've not see much evidence of that, either.

We only get about two pages of Moon Knight vs. Werewolf. Most of the comic is focused on either Marlene's perspective on Moon Knight, or the conflict in Hunter's Moon between loyalty to Khonshu and protecting an innocent life. Sabbatini draws Khonshu as this shadow on the wall that whispers in the ear of Hunter's Moon. Nobody dies, but it's not what I'd call a happy ending for anyone, except maybe the kid, since she gets ice cream at the end.

Saturday Splash Page #168

"The Mud King," in Seven to Eternity #1, by Rick Remender (writer), Jerome Opena (artist), Matt Hollingsworth (colorist), Rus Wooton (letterer)

Kelvin had mentioned this book in the comments of my Sunday Splash Page for Coda, as another book set in a world where the bad guy has already won. Beyond that, they're very different books. For one thing, it took five years for the 17 issues to come out. For another, here the Mud King has stuck around to rule, rather than depart for some other plane of existence. Which means there's still the option for resistance, but also the risk of reprisal.

Adam Osidis has spent his life living on the fringes. His father was friends with the Mud King when he was just Garlis Sulm, a couple of knights. But Garlis had a power to see through the eyes of anyone that would let him in. So all he had to do was offer them something they wanted badly enough. Adam's father held out, and got framed as a butcher and betrayer, retreating into the wilderness. But now he's dead, and Adam's dying, and the Mud King's found them.

What seems like a suicide run for Adam gets flipped on its head by the arrival of a small crew of resistance who capture the Mud King. They don't kill him, because supposedly every person who let him in will die, too, but there's a place they can take him that will break that connection. Then they can kill him. So Adam joins in, but that means there's opportunity to hear whispered offers.

Opena and Hollingsworth are an impressive art team, though. Opena creates a wide variety of characters, creatures and locales. Cities held aloft by balloons, massive reptilian behemoths with metal mouths that spit lightning. Spirits that burst from the barrel of a gun, or elongated serpents that rise at the playing of a flute. It makes Adam, as the closest thing to a regular human in the cast, seem that much more alone. There's no one around quite like him, no people that accept him willingly or without some condition. And that's how it's always felt to him.

One thing that comes up is the lies people tell themselves. The Mosak, the small squad that captures Garlis, I don't know how they know for sure executing Garlis will kill all the people who accepted his offers. Maybe they just tell themselves that as assurance that it was OK to take so long to make this move. They had to be sure, had to make a good plan because they have to take him alive. Definitely not hesitation over possibly getting killed themselves. (It turns out to be true, but I'm not inclined to give any character the benefit of the doubt as to their motives in this book.)

Some members of the Mosak look askance at Adam because of his last name, because of the lies the Mud King spread. They expect Adam to betray them because it's in his blood and aren't shy of expressing their contempt. Then they make the shocked Pikachu face when he decides to make his own play. "Self-fulfilling prophecy" is apparently not a term anyone in Zhal is familiar with. Adam's father no doubt had reasons for keeping the truth of things from his son for several years, then can't understand why a young Adam disobeys and talks to a girl that seems like she wants to make friends. He thought his son understood the danger, without ever explaining what the danger was.

Of course, Adam's lying to himself about why he's doing all this, too. If Coda had notions people could (with difficulty) pull themselves back together in the wake of catastrophe and build again, Seven to Eternity seems to say those efforts will always collapse in the face of individual desires. The best you can manage is to tear down whichever latest tinpot dictator has assumed control, but that does nothing to reverse the slow decay of your world.

What I Bought 3/5/2025 - Part 4

Hitting up the annual big used book sale for the county libraries today! Which means there'll probably be a lot of vaguely disappointed reviews of novels in the coming months! Hopefully I'll find at least a couple of interesting non-fiction books. In the meantime, here's the two first issues.

Bronze Faces #1, by Shobo and Shof (writers), Alexandre Tefenkgi (artist), Lee Loughridge (colorist), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letterer) - Very good, looking professional and stylish.

We've got Timi, Sango, and Gbonka (also called "Rose" in a couple of scenes.) Timi's father was an artist, sculptor of bronzes especially, who took in Sango and Gbonka under circumstances not entirely revealed yet, although it sounds like Sango's father is dead, and Gbonka's parents might not have been well off.

When Timi's father dies, all his works are sold to a British museum to pay off his debts. The three kids, now young adults, run into each other at an exhibition, catch up a little (and argue a little, as was apparently common.) Then Sango argues they should steal the art back. Timi's in, Gbonka's not initially, but saves their butts from a guard. Timi happened to grab a box that contains a list of every Benin Bronze taken from Nigeria, and their current locations, and the trio agree they're going to take them all back.

Shobo and Shof lay a lot out in this issue. The basic concept behind the story, these three deciding to retrieve cultural treasures, many taken under, shall we say, questionable circumstances. But also what each of them are doing currently, their financial situations, greater aspirations, and especially the dynamics between them. Timi's younger, and each of the girls seems to look after him in their own way, but Sango and Gbonka don't get along at all.

Sango seems to act on impulses and holds little back, while Gbonka is more cautious and thinking about consequences. Around each other they seem to bring out the knives in different ways. Sango mocks Gbonka's desire to become a senator or dismisses her from a discussion she calls a 'family matter.' Gbonka needles Sango about turning her back on her country, and questions her motives on everything. Tefenkgi often draws them talking without looking at each other. Backs turned or looking opposite directions, or we can only see the person speaking, so we don't see the reaction of the other. They both seem comfortable being close to Timi, supporting him or hanging off him, but they don't interact with each other that way.

And Timi clearly feels how he's caught in the middle and gets frustrated with it, but doesn't seem able to really stop it. I get a real sense he's kind of passive, especially as one of his first scenes as an adult is him surrounded by white guys making various sales pitches while he stands there looking, pleasantly neutral? Not saying anything, not leaning towards anyone, but not away from anyone, either.

We can see how their different skills could mesh beautifully for something like this, but also how easily they could self-destruct.

Mine is a Long, Lonesome Grave #1, by Justin Jordan (writer), Chris Shehan (artist), Alessandro Santoro (colorist), Micah Myers (letterer) - Looking completely deranged, fairly concerning. 

Harley's out of prison and returning home. Not for long; just to dig up some money (and guns) he buried and to give the cash to his daughter, who wants nothing to do with him. Because he killed her mother, his wife. Although the circumstances are thus far vague, and the way Shehan draws the glimpses we get, mostly the victim on the ground bleeding from a gut wound, trying to tell Harley something, I suspect everything's not as it seems.

Either way, he kept the guns, which might be good, because Harley was in town longer than someone wanted him to be, and he gets cursed. Either he kills the one responsible in seven days, or he dies. He says there's only one person who could do it, but kills the schmoe he thinks laid the item/totem/whatever for the curse as a message. The whole scene leading up to the killing, as Jordan has Harley explain what he's about to do, and Shehan draws several close-ups on Harley's face, Santoro seems to keep coloring the pupils larger and darker, until, combined with how narrowed they are, Harley's eyes are basically voids. Contrasts nicely with the shots of his victim's eyes, which are wide and terrified, the whites clearly visible. At least, until they're obstructed.

There's a lot of ways this could play out. I half-suspect it was Harley's daughter that set the curse, even if her mother's side is the ones that know about that kind of stuff, and they apparently don't believe she's one of them. But I only have Harley's word on how many people could do this, and he's been in prison over a decade. Things change. Granted, it wouldn't be much tension if it was her, because I'm pretty sure Harley would just let himself die then. But if he doesn't figure that out until well into the bloody swath he clearly intends to cut, it may be too late to keep someone from trying for revenge by targeting his daughter.

After one issue, this doesn't interest me nearly as much as Bronze Faces. Probably because it seems like it's treading such familiar ground, and so far, it hasn't done anything particularly creative. But maybe with the stage set, issue 2 will do a little more to get my attention.

One Man's Dreary Tourist Experience

As mentioned earlier this week, the Playstation Store was having a sale on games that got good critical reviews, so I grabbed several. Good thing, too. If I'd paid full freight for Dear Esther, instead of a buck-fifty, this would probably be a much more hostile review.

The game starts you at the shoreline of a bleak island somewhere out in a wind-battered sea beneath a cloudy sky. The lighthouse and attached house are in disrepair, but there's some sort of broadcast tower further down the shore, the red transmission light flicking on and off steadily.

So you move that direction, for lack of better options, a man's voice occasionally narrating as you go. He's not describing what you're doing, though he may discuss certain points of interest or lore on the island if you move near a specific area. No, it's like letters or diary entries describing his life or, an accident involving Esther, to whom the narration was addressed. The further in the game you go, the more the specifics of the accident are revealed.

The gameplay is, you walk across the island and you look at things. You don't pick things up, you don't jump to clear crevasses where the slope has given way. You don't press switches or light torches. You just walk, at what became a maddeningly slow pace that you cannot speed up, via the joystick. The path may branch, or more accurately, offer little cul-de-sacs you can venture down. Or not. I did, because I wasn't sure what was going to happen in the game, so I didn't want to miss anything.

As it turns out, not a lot happens, so all you'd miss is more narration. Any controller button you push simply lets you zoom in slightly on whatever's on-screen. The sea, the wind blowing the grasses, the rock formations when you fall into a cave. You spook birds once or twice. The walls and cliffs are covered in fluorescent paint, spelling out molecular bonds, circuit diagrams and what look like neurons. I guess you would miss some of that if you didn't explore.

Once, while in a narrow canyon along the shore, I saw movement above me and thought it was someone watching me. Then the wind blew again and it was just grass fluttering into view. I saw a spectral figure later, only to conclude it was just mist or fog off the sea. Then I saw another one, and I was sure it was there. Although the character could be hallucinating.

There's music, sometimes. Slow, sad, bleak like the island you traverse. It's not so much a game as it feels like you watching a guy in the last spirals of despair. You can't put him on a boat off the island. You can't make him paint something different, or pluck a flower and smell it. All you can do is send him on to the place he's ready to go. Which is true in a sense of most games. Mario ain't gonna save the princess unless you pick up that controller. But with Dear Esther, there's nothing to it. It feels less like you're helping him achieve a goal, and more like he's taking you on a guided tour of this island he's already turned into a crypt.

It took me about 90 minutes to get through, and I can't see myself ever bothering to do it again.

What I Bought 3/5/2025 - Part 3

I'm not much of a sushi guy. It's fine, outside that one time I had it and (combined with several other factors, including a gas leak somewhere nearby) wound up puking in the street outside an apartment where we were celebrating Alex's birthday. But I've never eaten it and been seized by the need to have more. I definitely enjoy gyoza, those pork dumplings. Outstanding. Anyway, here's the first two issues of a mini-series.

The Surgeon #1 and 2, by John Pence (writer), Zahcary Dolan (penciler), Laurie Foster (inker), Eve Orozco (colorist), Marcelo Brisemo (color assists, issue 2), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - Wouldn't be an apocalypse without shirtless guys in goggles and mohawks. 

The surgeon is one Jenny Hanover, who accepts an offer on "Craigslist", a series of watchtowers that hang out signals about requests for one thing or another, to act as doctor for a fort called Turtle Island. Hanover's pretty skilled, and not just in doctoring, and Turtle Island is seemingly very well-run. Good irrigation and septic systems, plenty of food, blacksmithing, ammo, organization. Though I can't tell if Pence is establishing all this to make us suspicious of exactly how they manage that.

The doc gets a little soused at a celebratory party and makes some kind of promise to train up the people in the art of self-defense. Just in time, because the scouts for a group called the Hot Animal Machines find them. Despite her best efforts, one escapes to alert the rest, and now it's your classic siege situation. Right down to the suicide bomber that blows a hole in the fort's walls.

Pence writes Hanover as competent but blunt, and aware of it. She admits to a lack of social graces, and may even apologize for it, but doesn't have a lot of time for hurt feelings from the guy nominally in charge of the fort's defense. And that guy, after getting wounded, is probably addicted to the opium she used as a painkiller.

(The fact she doesn't entirely remember the terms of her agreement with the guy who runs the fort - an engineer - feels like another of those things Pence is foreshadowing. Dolan depicts the party with tall, narrow panels where she's increasingly relaxed and smiling, even as the edges of the panels progressively crumble. Orozco starts with natural coloring and keeps increasing and shifting the tint from pink to blue to a the point where the doc's skin is bright green and her hair is blue.)

Dolan's art reminds me a bit of J. Calafiore's. Not as stiff or scratchy, but something in the squareness of the heads, the particular way he draws bloodspray or violence. Something jagged and brutal, appropriate to a world where a skilled doctor admits she's killed far more than she's saved, because it's much easier to take lives than save them.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

In the wake of her father's sudden (apparently gruesome) death, Lydia (Winona Ryder) tries to deal with that, her sarcastic daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega), her mother's (Catherine O'Hara) bizarre performance of grief, and the useless, irritating dipshit (Justin Theroux) that wants to marry her. Oh, and she keeps seeing brief glimpses of Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton), who is himself fleeing an old flame that wants to devour his soul (Monica Bellucci) and ducking a deceased actor (Willem Dafoe) now in charge of the Ghost Police, or whatever they were called.

When the movie focuses on Ryder, Ortega, and O'Hara, their respective relationships and ways of coping with the loss of a loved one, it's not bad. O'Hara consoling Lydia about the poor relationship with Astrid by comparing it to (a rose-colored view of) their mother-daughter relationship, or alternately, taking glee in the headaches Astrid gives Lydia as a form of karmic payback, is funny. The two revert to this faked optimism and exasperated eye rolls as a familiar coping mechanism. The way Lydia shifts between trying to connect with Astrid, trying not to hold too tightly, or trying to protect her. How she seems to just accept Astrid's resentment for her father's death, or how Astrid keeps defaulting to dismissing her mother as a 'fraud' whenever anyone compliments her.

(I half-expected the whole thing about Astrid's dad dying in the Amazon to be a lie she told to protect herself. She refers to her dad as loving to travel and being a free spirit. I wondered if he didn't just up and leave one day, and rather than sully her memories, sanctified him and threw all the blame on the parent who was still around to lash out at.)

Most of the rest felt tacked on. Bellucci is pursuing Beetlejuice (his retelling of how they met and fell out, shot like either The Seventh Seal or some early German Expressionist horror film, was kind of clever), but she's so far behind he never feels in any danger. No narrow escapes, because he's always off enacting his plan to tie Lydia to him forever. Maybe that's because Burton knows we wouldn't necessarily want Beetlejuice to escape. Not because Bellucci's character is some innocent victim, but because Beetlejuice is a morally questionable sleaze, at best. Having his body reduced to a used Capri Sun package once Bellucci drained his soul might not be the worst thing. When she finally catches up, she's dispatched within about 2 minutes.

Dafoe's character is, well, I can see how he's supposed to be funny, but it doesn't work for me. The movie does this entire wedding song bit with "MacArthur Park" - which feels like it goes on for 5 minutes and had me questioning my life choices - repeatedly showing us Dafoe and his squad closing in, only to instantly render them irrelevant when they make their move.

Theroux's character is as irritating as I imagine he's meant to be, but that meant every time he started talking I changed the channel. Either he was so obliviously earnest that I'd feel embarrassed, or he was a disingenuous twerp spouting crap, in which case I didn't want to hear it. I was changing the channel to Bad Boys, which ought to tell you how desperate I was to escape.

It's 105 minutes long, so it's not an especially bloated movie, but it certainly feels like it at times. Probably could have been as good or better at 90 minutes.

What I Bought 3/5/2025 - Part 2

I didn't make it far enough to figure it merits a proper review post, but Hello Neighbor is the early frontrunner for my least favorite game of the year. Just did not dig the look, the gameplay, any of it. Really glad I bought it on sale, so I didn't flush any more cash down the toilet than I had to.

For today's reviews, we're looking at two issues of a single mini-series. Which is also what we'll be doing Wednesday, just a different mini-series. 

Dust to Dust #2 and 3, by JG Jones (writer/artist), Phil Bram (writer), Jackie Marzan (letterer) - The rattlesnake proved more effective at deterring trespassers than the sign.

Issue 2 is centered around a missive dust storm that sweeps over the town, forcing everyone indoors. It gives the sheriff a chance to speak with the town doctor about the jawbone the kid found in issue 1, though the doc warns not to go digging into the past. It also tells us a little more about the sheriff via conversations Sarah the photographer has, first with the doctor's wife, and later with the sheriff, as they drive to the nearest town to investigate if the Olsen family (the ones leaving their farm in issue 1) made it that far.

As the car is found on the road, with the occupants burned alive, the answer would be "no." The sheriff finds a gas can, but by the time he returns to town and collects the local bigwig/mayor (and said bigwig's PTSD and gas attack-afflicted brother), it's gone. The mayor is, predictably, quick to dismiss any notion of a gas can, and later invites Sarah to his office to, essentially, discredit the sheriff's judgment via character assassination. Although he oddly does so by taking how unflappable Lawton was during the war.

There are some other minor threads. Jones and Bram introduced some snake-handler preacher the sheriff and mayor both expect to make hay of a brutal murder. The mayor's daughter is engaged to some local ballplayer, who mostly seems horny. The local moonshiners found the Olsens' mule, which will make them prime suspects. And what I suspect is a rainmaker arrives in town with a fireworks display. but right now, it feels like things revolve around the sheriff, the mayor, and the photographer.

Which probably makes Sarah the pivot point, though I suspect she'd side with Lawton. He wants to expose the killer to protect people, while the mayor is trying to cover it up to protect "the town." Sarah's presented as believing (or at least saying she believes) that the right photograph can open people's eyes and create positive change. Helping expose a killer would seem to fall under that heading, if we take her at her word. Issue 2 starts with her trying to photograph two boys playing along the road, but she's encouraging them to act like it's any other day, so it's not a totally genuine picture, is it? I guess you have to make allowances for the time it takes to set up a camera back then.

Jones uses a lot of short, wide panels, emphasizing the emptiness of the region. No trees, barely any houses once you get outside town. The road runs through an expanse of nothing. Which suggests the scope of what the people trying to hang on are up against, while making it seem as though there's no place to hide.

And yet, someone killed a little girl not too long ago and was never caught. The sheriff either sees the ghosts of both the girl and the Olsen boy, or these are just hallucinations. I'm not sure which was it's meant to go yet, though I lean to the latter. This doesn't feel like a book where the supernatural would be involved, so much as one where people try to disguise their human motives behind a supernatural facade. The sheriff also seemingly had a dream where the girl was carried off on horseback by a character from one of the John Carter books.

Sunday Splash Page #365

"Mr. Knight's Neighborhood," in Moon Knight (vol. 8) #1, by Jed MacKay (writer), Alessandro Cappuccio (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer)

Marvel apparently dispensed with volumes numbers in between this series and the Max Bemis-written one 4 years earlier. Maybe when they started back in with the "Legacy" numbering (this would be issue 201 by that count, fyi.) Whatever. My blog, my ordering rules.

I don't know what all went on in Bemis' run, nor the Jeff Lemire run that preceded it, but at this time, Moon Knight had (I believe in Jason Aaron's Avengers) just finished first helping Khonshu take over the world, then turned against him, leading to his god being locked up in Asgard. So Moon Knight's not on great terms with his patron deity or the other super-heroes (although they keep letting Stark hang out with them again, and Moon Knight didn't even make any cyborg murder-clones), but he's still doing the work of a Fist of Khonshu as he sees it. Protecting those who travel by night, although primary artist Alessandro Cappuccio, and Federico Sabbatini who takes over in the back half of the run, rarely draw anyone on the streets. I guess Moon Knight made sure all of them got where they were going safely already.

The art generally runs to thin lines and stark contrasts. Rachelle Rosenberg, who handles color duties for all 30 issues, uses solid blocks of color and sharp divisions between light and dark to help the linework stand out. More so when Moon Knight is in costume, versus when Mr. Knight is in his office, talking with someone. Cappuccio draws characters with faces that are sharp and precisely defined, not many spare lines in them or their surroundings. Sabbatini's approach is softer, more give in the linework, faces gain a roundness absent with Cappuccio.

With Moon Knight on the outs with most heroes, MacKay fills the supporting cast with new characters. Reese, a young woman turned into a vampire against her will in what is apparently some dipstick's notion of a vampire siring pyramid scheme. Soldier, a former HYDRA recruit trying to turn his life around. Dr. Badr, who turns out to be a fellow acolyte of Khonshu, none too pleased with how Marc's handling things. One character trying to make the best of a bad situation, another trying to atone for bad decisions in their earlier days, and Badr, who is positioned as a more typical Fist of Khonshu, to contrast what an odd specimen Marc Spector is.

As far as pre-existing characters, Tigra shows up a few issues in and eventually becomes a love interest, though MacKay does little with that. I think Marc's therapist, Dr. Sterman, is a previously established character, based on comments about being part of V-Battalion at one point. She serves as someone for Marc to have conversations with, which are usually broken up by whatever Moon Knight is getting up to at that moment. Eventually 4th-tier villain 8-Ball gets added to the cast, as someone Marc can easily intimidate into helping them out from time to time.

The first year of the series, Moon Knight's under attack from Zodiac, in one of those, "make you better" plots villains sometimes use. Except Zodiac thinks Moon Knight is denying himself by playing priest and superhero, when he ought to just embrace being a killing machine. Moon Knight doesn't really triumph in the sense of rejecting Zodiac's ploy, and he does get fairly sadistic with some of the guys that Zodiac throws at him. But he doesn't kill the guy, so I guess that's something. Although I found Zodiac's constant harping about how much of a real villain he was tedious. If you have to tell people you are, then you aren't.

There's a six-issue story about tearing down the vampire with the pyramid scheme, notable mostly because MacKay finally uses Jake Lockley and Steven Grant a little bit. He also seems to ignore Ellis' idea that Jake and Steven are an attempt by Marc's brain to handle whatever Khonshu did in the process of resurrecting him. The two conditions are treated as separate things, one more straightforward than the other. Then it's into the final arc, a year-long saga with a new Black Spectre moving behind the scenes. Though the character strikes at Moon Knight's former allies early on, his plan isn't so narrowly focused.

Despite feeling that he's caught on his own, Moon Knight is consistently shown to have gathered a little group around him, and to be willing to draw on them. Most of the arcs force him to call on resources he'd rather not. Against Zodiac, he needs Khonshu's assistance. Against The Tutor's forces, he not only has to make a deal for information with a different powerful vampire (vampires apparently being blasphemous to Khonshu, as they who prey on travelers of the night), he has to let Jake and Steven have their say.

In the Black Spectre arc, his entire supporting cast all help, but it comes down to Moon Knight needing the assistance of someone who can no longer reach him, and he has to go the last steps alone.

Saturday Splash Page #167

"Light 'Em Up," in Sgt. Rock vs. the Army of the Dead #4, by Bruce Campbell (writer), Eduardo Risso (artist), Kristian Rossi (colorist), Rob Leigh (letterer)

I don't know what brought this mini-series about, but it's Sgt. Rock and Easy Company trying to stop a last-ditch plan by the Nazis to augment their forces by bringing their soldiers back from the dead, with enhanced strength and aggression.

The mini-series is essentially one long mission, except Campbell keeps having Easy Company locate some critical objective, only to withdraw and do further planning with the rear command. That's already where they spend most of the first issue, being alerted to the problem they're facing and given general directives on what to do, so it seems like a bad idea to keep stopping when they have some momentum. Especially as the chief scientist (and Hitler's personal physician) is aware he's being followed by issue 4.

Campbell writes in a lot of tough guy one-liners - one soldier with a flamethrower watches a pair of burning zombies stagger from a pillbox and asks, 'Is it just me, or is it hot outside?' - and despite all the planning sessions, keeps the action moving. As Rock and Co. chase the scientist all through issue 4, they have to take over a guard post, destroy the previously mentioned pillbox, crash another barricade and wipe out a couple of motorcycle-riding zombie Nazis. The last two issues are a big hand-to-hand fight with a Hitler pumped up on the revitalization drugs while bombers try to level the place.

Risso's Sgt. Rock, who a thick mop of hair on top and shaved close on the sides, and smoking cigars, more closely resembles Sgt. Fury to me, but he captures the horror aspects of the story. The leathery skin of the revived soldiers, that has drawn back to leave their teeth exposed in this massive grins. The casual indifference to being shot. Campbell and Risso get some dark humor from that in a scene where the revived soldiers are in a pub and one shoots the other, causing his beer to fountain out his stomach, while they all laugh about. But prior to that, Rock had shot one two or three times without it even pausing from strangling Rock's C.O.

The pages tend to be drenched in shadows, but that allows the occasional use of brighter colors by Rossi to have greater effect. The orange as gasoline ignites, or the bit of light in the trail of a bazooka shell as we watch its path reflected in a soldier's goggles. Risso and Rossi make a good team.

Campbell also makes the decision to start giving Rock caption boxes, but not until issue 5. It isn't a case where he's writing from other characters' perspective prior to that; Rock is the main character throughout. So I'm not sure why he waited until that point, but the narration does more closely resemble what I'd think of as Rock's "voice" based on my dad's comics, versus the action movie, profane dialogue.

What I Bought 3/5/2025 - Part 1

The comics were supposed to arrive Monday, which would give me the chance to get this review written up for Wednesday before I had to leave town a couple of days for week. The comics did not arrive Monday, so here we are on Friday, kicking off a series of reviews of books from the last two months with the conclusion of a mini-series.

Calavera P.I. #4, by Marco Finnegan (writer/artist/colorist), Jeff Eckleberry (letterer) -  Nice of her to remove his hat. Wouldn't want to get a bullet hole in it.

Maria and Mike figure out that while the adult Mexicans may very well be getting shoved across the border, the cops are rounding up the kids to send them to the creepy scientist and loony bereaved mother. Which means hustling back to Calavera, who is growing some flesh back? Like one of those diagrams of a human meant to show the musculature without skin in the way. Not sure if that's because his time is almost up or because of something Fantasma did to him.

Fantasma and the creepy scientist's plan is to make Calavera keep taking the kids the cops rounded up through the portal until her son possesses one of the bodies. Which seems like an incredibly stupid plan, but Fantasma is too fixated on her grief, and the scientist doesn't care what happens to other people, so there you go.

Either way, they're gonna start with Maria's son. Calavera gets Fantasma to give him a little boost of energy (which makes him look like a skeleton again), which is a distraction for Maria and Mike to make their move. Which promptly fails, but Calavera tackles Fantasma through the doorway. Which is just a cave entrance, it's not glowing or otherworldly, but Finnegan has kept the whole thing looking pretty mundane throughout.

Miguel falls through with them, but Calavera's able to bring him back out before his time runs out. Maria and Mike reunited with their son, the creepy scientist on the loose, all those other kids presumably now without parents. Not exactly the feel-good win of the year.

There's also a flashback to Mike and Calavera serving together in WWI, and Mike later failing to honor his promise to get Calavera a job with the LAPD, because the commissioner won't hire a Mexican. Juan tells Mike to stop calling him Johnny, that his name is Juan. So Calavera stopped trying to play by the white folks rules and just lived as himself. Which explains his work as a private investigator, but I'm not sure how it fits into this specific case. The cops clearly weren't protecting those kids, but Calavera wasn't involved because of them. He was there because Maria asked for his help. Which he provided, so maybe that's the point. He couldn't save Fantasma's son, or her from her grief, but that didn't mean he'd turn his back on someone else who asked.

They Wrote on Clay - Edward Chiera

This is about ancient civilizations in the Tigris-Euphrates region. Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and the like. However, the book is a lot older than I thought at first glance - originally published in 1938 - so Chiera talks about the discovery of King Tut's tomb as a relatively recent occurrence, and that archaeology itself is a new science. Leaves me wondering how much of what's discussed here has been debunked or reinterpreted in the intervening decades.

One thing people in that part of the world did that works out fairly well for archaeologists, is they used clay. The fire-baked clay apparently lasts very well, but even the ones that were simply sun-dried (as fire-baking bricks was apparently expensive and time-consuming) last a long time. And in addition to being used for building materials, clay was also used as a writing surface (hence the title.) Which means, as archaeologists excavate, they find a wealth of information written down about business, law, religion, political communications (he notes at one pint an excavation in Egypt found correspondence between a pharaoh and a king of the Hittites, and that's how archaeologists and historians figured out the Hittites were a much bigger deal than they previously thought), the great sagas of the culture.

Once they're able to translate the writing, that is, and Chiera discusses not only how that came about, but also what was the notion for how the writing style developed from using pictures, to more simplified pictures that could be easily drawn with a reed stylus, to a series of line, to eventually, an alphabet. Again, I have no idea if the progression he puts forth here still holds, but he lays it out in a way that makes sense of something I'd never spent much time considering.

Chiera's pretty good at giving the overview of how certain aspects of society worked, and what evidence it's based on, and then maybe delving into specific examples. He spends most of a chapter on what they learned about a single family, Tehiptilla, based on a vast collection of clay tablets spanning generations found in the remains of a place called Nuzi. How you can track their business dealings, as well as the legal, but not ethical business practices. There's an entire deal built around landlords making their tenants essentially name them in their wills. But historians can also trace the shift in local power as one invading army rolls through, and then another later on.

Overall, this is a pretty good starting point if someone were wanting to learn more about the ancient cultures in that region. It covers enough different aspects of life in those places and times to get a sense of what might interest you, and it's an old enough work you can probably find books devoted to whichever specific topic interested you most that have greatly expanded on what's known.

'And so we may have first the unknown settlement, then a Sumerian city, then a Babylonian city, and thereafter continue through the Persian, Greek, Parthian, Sasanian, and Moslem Strata. We may even find a medieval town above these, and then on the very top the existing modern city: "The Hill of the Seven Cities." But the city is always the same; it is only the people who change.'

The Nines (2007)

Ryan Reynolds plays an actor placed under house arrest after crashing his car because he got freaked out about not having a belly button while on crack. Since he accidentally burned his own house down (before he used the crack), he's under house arrest in the home of a writer who is away for a while. Melissa McCarthy is a p.r. person that works for his agent, who is trying to keep him from ruining things. Hope Davis is a bored neighbor, but she and McCarthy both know something Reynolds doesn't, even as Reynolds becomes obsessed with the number 9.

No, wait, Ryan Reynolds is a writer trying to get the pilot to a TV show he hopes to get picked up by the network. Hope Davis is the middleman for him and the network bigwig that makes the decisions. Melissa McCarthy is the lead actress in the TV pilot, who has known Reynolds for a long time. But Davis tells Reynolds McCarthy didn't test well with audiences, especially the ones that almost think the show is the best thing ever, the 9s, and he should ditch her for a younger lead actress. And all of this is being filmed for some reality TV show.

OK, never mind, sorry. Ryan Reynolds and Melissa McCarthy are a married couple on an excursion into nature with their daughter. When the car battery is dead, Reynolds heads out alone to find cellphone service, and is led astray by Hope Davis, who has ulterior motives for once again trying to keep Reynolds and McCarthy apart.

As you have likely guessed, all the stories are connected. Elements overlap, little things in the first story make more sense in the second. I'm not sure the big reveal really works, or even totally makes sense given how the first story ends. It might; there are ways I can square the circle based on things he says in the third story, but I'm not sure the movie entirely pulls it off. The reveal certainly makes sense with the careers of Reynolds' character in the second and third stories, the first to a lesser extent.

For both Reynolds and McCarthy, it's a more subdued performance than you'd typically expect, albeit this was still when Reynolds was at least trying to show a little range. It's not a comedy, although parts of the first story are funny (McCarthy's delivery of "Oh yeah, crack is classy," cracked me up.) McCarthy, depending on the story, is alternately hopeful, or frightened, or cheerful in a way you can tell it's false but aren't sure what's hiding behind it.

The first story is closest to Reynolds typical role, just kind of a dumbass, but one who's been humbled by circumstances and is growing increasingly unnerved at things going on around him he can't understand. I think the second story is his best work in the movie. He's mostly quiet and you can see the superficial charm the writer has, but the intensity and selfishness breaks through easily in a way where you can tell the writer really doesn't even see anything wrong with how he's acting or what he's doing.

Davis doesn't get as much to do, because her characters are always superficially friendly, where the best thing you could say about them is maybe they don't have malicious intent. Maybe they're just bored. Still, she's very good at projecting that in public settings, then dropping her volume and bringing a more cutting edge to her delivery. Not threatening so much as withering, like the person she's talking to isn't even worth destroying.

A Chill Wind

He commits genocide, and he's a lech. A true double-threat.

I picked up several of those 3-in-1 manga volumes for One Piece last year, so expect the Monday manga reviews to be focused on that for a while, starting now. Volume 34 is a transition volume, as Eiichiro Oda concludes the Davy Back Fight Arc with the tail end of Luffy's fight with the rival captain of the Foxy Pirates. At stake is the freedom of Luffy's crew. If he loses, they're absorbed into the Foxy Pirates and the manga's probably over.

He doesn't lose, naturally, and the Foxy Pirates are sent off with no loss in crew, only pride. Luffy takes their flag, and replaces the Jolly Roger on the main sail with his own design. (P.S. Luffy is a terrible artist.)

Before departing the island, the Straw Hats run afoul of the asshole in the panel at the top. Aokiji first claims he's not planning to bother the pirates, then, after helping out a friend they'd made, changes his mind. Specifically, he targets Nico Robin, the most recent addition to the crew, and the one whose past Oda had only hinted at. Luffy challenges Aokiji (who has power over ice, versus Luffy being rubber) and loses. The admiral lets the crew live because he agreed to settle it between just the two of them, but also declines to take Luffy's life.

I really can't figure Aokiji out. I know the backstory about him letting Robin live 20 years earlier, but it's not like the guy brought a division with him. He's there alone; no one to say anything if he just let them leave like he originally planned. So why change his mind and hassle them, defeat the captain, then let them go anyway? (Answer: presumably to test Robin, whether this is just another bunch of suckers she's manipulating, but it's a stupid way to go about it. But even the generally competent Navy characters are either nuts or stupid.)

That concluded for now, Oda moves along to the next locale, Water Seven. A city that looks like a giant fountain, and is apparently based on Venice. The remainder of the volume is mostly setting the table, introducing setting, character, and concepts that will become relevant later. There's a "Sea Train", which is literally a locomotive that runs on rails through the ocean. There's a big shipbuilding company, Galley-La, run by the mayor of the city. No emoluments clause in Water Seven, apparently. The shipwrights are tough customers in their own right, and there's a crew of goofballs called the Franky Family, that seem to commit all sorts of crimes, from robbery to bounty hunting. Pity they tried to start with Zoro.

The two primary threads started are, first, the Straw Hats want to get their ship repaired, but it's too late. This is meant to be a sad affair, but given Luffy's consistent reckless disregard for the Going Merry's well-being, it's difficult for me to read it as anything other than a child breaking their favorite toy, then pitching a fit about it. That's me as a person who tries damn hard to take care of his stuff. Second, only barely hinted, is some mysterious group that approaches Robin on the streets of Water Seven. What a "CP9" is, won't be revealed for a while yet.

Sunday Splash Page #364

"Brutal Moon Rising," in Moon Knight (vol. 5) #5, by Warren Ellis (writer), Declan Shalvey (artist), Jordie Bellaire (color artist), Chris Eliopoulos (letterer)

The first Moon Knight title I bought was volume 3, the one where Charlie Huston and David Finch brought Moon Knight back as an especially brutal, especially nuts, guy. Cutting dudes' faces off and carving crescent moons in their foreheads. I didn't start buying it until #20, by which point Mike Benson was writing. Mike Deodato drew that issue - involving a run-in with Werewolf by Night, who Deodato drew as roughly 15 feet tall. Then Mark Texeira drew a run-in with Osborn's Thunderbolts, before Benson sent Marc south of the border (drawn by Jefte Paolo).

The only issue of that I still have is the Deodato one, which had no splash page, so on to the next. Except the next volume was the one Bendis wrote, where Marc's dis-associative disorder took the form of Captain America, Spider-Man, and Wolverine. Hard pass.

Bringing us to this, which I picked up several years ago in the cheapest back issues I could find. It's Warren Ellis, so the usual caveats about him being a horrible creep apply. If it matters, and I don't blame you if it doesn't, this book's a lot like Two-Step, in that Ellis seems to provide just enough story to allow the artists (in this case, Declan Shalvey and Jordie Bellaire) to go nuts.

Each issue - there are six before another creative team takes over the book - is a done-in-one where Moon Knight handles some issue related to his role as protector of those who travel at night. A SHIELD agent decommissioned after being badly injured attacks people to steal their body parts and rebuild himself. A little girl is abducted on the way home from school for ransom. In each case, Moon Knight goes after them and brings the violence. Sometimes subtle, he beats the organ thief with with seems a throwaway flick of the wrist when he first enters the room. But issue 5 is basically just Moon Knight tearing his way through the entire kidnapping crew.

Shalvey gives Moon Knight his now-common "Mr. Knight" look, the all-white suit with the mask, but also an armor made of bones that lets him punch ghosts in issue #3, where he has to confront a gang that died decades ago, only for their ghosts to suddenly appear. Bellaire colors the suit in such a way that the reflected colors and lights of his surroundings don't touch the suit. It's white, or the shadows are black. That's it, as though he's something entirely separate from the world around him. Walking through it, beating the shit out of things in it, but not part of it.

Which matches the state Ellis puts him in, where Marc lives alone in a mansion full of stuff he doesn't remember buying. Has a limo that drives itself, a moon-plane-thing that responds to voice commands. His old supporting cast - Frenchie, Marlene - have no contact with him now, which seems to be a mutual agreement. They recognize Marc is nothing but death, and he thinks wanting nothing means he can't lose anything, so he can't lose.

Saturday Splash Page #166

"Rage in the Rags," in Shadowpact #8, by Bill Willingham (writer), Shawn McManus (artist), Mike Atiyeh (colorist), Pat Brosseau (letterer)

In between Max Lord murdering Ted Kord and the start of Infinite Crisis, DC released 4 mini-series related to the various problems that were building. OMAC Project was Batman's arrogance and paranoia coming back to bite everyone in the ass. Except Ted Kord, who was already dead because of Batman's arrogance and paranoia. Rann-Thanagar War was, well it's what it says on the tin, and was some stuff going on in space that never felt particularly connected to the larger event. Villains United was about a small group of villains that brought together by a mysterious person to resist the larger villain society that formed (that eventually became Secret Six, which we'll get to sometime this year.)

Day of Vengeance was the Spectre going bugfuck crazy (again?!) and trying to destroy all magic, and a bunch of relative castoffs - Nightmaster, Enchantress, Nightshade, Ragman, Blue Devil, Detective Chimp - banding together to try and stop him. After Infinite Crisis, the cast got this ongoing series.

This was the first issue I bought, when I was looking for something from DC I as interested in. Batgirl had been canceled earlier in the year. I dropped Robin after that abysmal One Year Later storyline established Cassandra Cain as crazy, evil, and possibly hot for Tim Drake. Teen Titans was a joyless book, whose characters all seemed to hate each other and want to be any where else. As to why this book, specifically, I guess the odd cast of characters I knew little about appealed to me. If I don't have any preconceived notions, I can't be as irritated if Willingham does something stupid with them, right?

I bought it for 9 issues. This issue was the one I liked best, seeing as it's the only one I've kept up to this point. And while the plot of the moment moves in the background, it largely about tweaking Ragman's backstory. Now the ragsuit has existed in different forms for thousands of years, and it's possible for one of the trapped souls to earn release if they help the wearer often enough to atone for their sins. Although the fact the soul we see released was a Roman soldier suggests an unfriendly parole board. But DC's God is always being presented as a capricious dick, so that tracks.

Beyond this issue, Willingham seemed to try and have various smaller plots that occupied 2-3 issues, while a larger story moves in the background, while also trying to delve into or expand the casts' abilities. Blue Devil gets promoted (or demoted, you move down in ranks in Hell) and becomes a rhymer, pissing of Erigan. Nightmaster figures out some stuff about himself. But it always seemed to boil down to this character or that needing to embrace their fate and stop raging against their sacred duty or whatever.

It's also got some of that weird affection for procedure or minutiae Willingham seems to like. The team calls a press conference to essentially explain the rules they intend to operate by, which seems pointless. Willingham even includes a segment where other heroes are asked their opinions and Nightwing basically says, "No shit, that's how all of us operate." So what was the point of that scene?

At any rate, it never quite lived up to what I envisioned. Maybe the stories weren't weird enough given the cast. Maybe Tom Derenick, who drew all the issues after this one that I bought, didn't do anything for me as an artist. Willingham stepped away from the book the same issue I did, replaced by Matt Sturges for the final 10 issues. Maybe I'd have liked his stuff better, although his JSA All-Stars didn't knock my socks off.

What I Bought 2/26/2025

Beautiful 70-degree day, but I spent it all inside for a safety training. Interminable, not helped by the fact I usually take off early on Fridays. I don't think I've worked a full Friday in at least 18 months, and that was spent driving (back from a different training). Last full Friday in the office was probably 6.5 years ago.

February: always finding new ways to mess with me.

Fantastic Four #29, by Ryan North (writer), Cory Smith (penciler), Oren Junior (inker), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Whose bright idea was it to shrink down to fight Doom? Hank Pym's? Well, that tracks.

Doom's running the world. Bummer. Sue is bummed, so Ben takes her to New York to hang out with She-Hulk. Talk inevitably turns to Doom, and so I learn that Doom's gotten popular support by inciting hatred against the people turned into vampires during Blood Hunt. Also that whatever is letting vampires go out in daylight was reducing the need for blood, but that's wearing off.

The heroes utterly fail to protect a couple of parents from a wannabe vampire slayer, which leaves them with two vamped, and increasingly hungry, kids to protect. Reed discovers a plant-based substitute for blood that you can make in your own kitchen! I'm disappointed Ryan North didn't include a recipe. Now what am I supposed to do the next time I lose too much blood throwing myself off cliffs? Seek professional medical treatment?

Sue feels a little better about being able to help people in at least some way, and that with vampires not needing blood, Doom won't be able to use them as a scapegoat. Which is wildly optimistic, given human nature. Now it'll be how nobody else can afford whatever the ingredients are because the damn vamps are buying it all up! Assuming people even bother to adjust the particular bullshit they base their stupidity on. And, indeed, the FF's neighbors are now rocking a yard full of Doom flags (although the symbol looks more like something I expect from the Covenant in Halo.)

Metamorpho the Element Man #3, by Al Ewing (writer), Steve Lieber (artist), Lee Loughridge (colorist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - I feel like Lara Croft would have fit the vibe Java and Rex are rocking better than the Bride. Lara's British, she toes the archaeology/grave robbing line.

Rex is making a big production of leaving Sapphire, complete with packing his sailor suit(?) and Crocs (really, Rex?), only to get instantly sidetracked when Urania shows up looking for Java to take on a mission. Urania's got a line on Mad Mod (thanks to his lack of respect for clearly labeled food in the fridge), and it's a temple built by Vandal Savage. hence Java.

Anyway, Rex sneaks along, and after Java gets separated from them, has to find a way for he and Urania to get inside. Which Lieber draws as a giant maze, with a few larger chambers to showcase traps and sight gags and whatnot. Meanwhile, Java's having a conversation with Vandal Savage, which Ewing uses at first to highlight differences in their perspective. Java remains focused on the future, Savage, seems more beholden to his past.

Then it turns into a discussion of all the stuff that went on in The Terrifics - Stagg dying, Java being Doc Dread - and the fact Java apparently remembers none of this. I really hope Ewing's not planning to get really meta about this. The Orb of Ra as some representation of characters constantly being melted back down to their base elements and built back up in vaguely familiar forms. Or something.

Savage turns out to be an exploding robot, everybody escapes together, but now Stagg's gone and done something stupid again.

Transistors Can Do Most Anything

Transistor is set in a sci-fi city called Cloudbank, and revolves around a popular singer named Red. She survives an assassination attempt due to a guy pushing her aside and getting impaled by a big sword, the Transistor, which now has his consciousness trapped within. Wielding Transistor, Red tries to first hunt down the ones who targeted her, and after learning they've lost control of a program or artificial lifeform called "the Process", tries to stop the Process from overwriting and remaking the entire city and all its inhabitants.

The game is played from an isometric perspective, what I tend to think of as "3/4 top-down", and involves Red trying to cross the city. You periodically run into areas where you have to fight various Processes, and can't advance until the battle is over. Most of the combat is turn-based. When activated, you have a certain length of time available, over which you can map out Red's next movements. Advance to an enemy, use an attack, move away from the enemy. Or, if you're next to the enemy already, spam the hell out of attacks for the duration. While in that screen, you have as much time to plan your strategy as you want, and you can make a decision, then change if it you decide there's a better option, before finally committing.

The Transistor gains additional skills as you either level up or encounter people the Process has already killed and duplicated, at which point you can absorb their remaining consciousness/essence/whatever into the sword and gain an ability. You can assign the skill as a Primary, Secondary, or Passive skill. Primary is what you use in combat. Secondary modifies the Primary skill you attach it to. Passive is in effect pretty much all the time. So you might assign Crash, a sort of stabbing attack, as a Primary. Then depending on what you assign as a Secondary, using Crash might do more damage if you backstab (because the Secondary skill cloaks you), or temporarily make the enemy you hit an ally (because the Secondary turns their allegiance.)

So there's a lot you can do there, although each skill takes up a certain number of slots in the Transistor, and you only have so many slots at one time (though that increases as you level up.) In practice, while I would try to assign Secondary skill to complement the Primary skills, I tended to just spam Crash during fights. Plus, the first few times you "die" in a battle, you instead lose certain Primary skills for a time, and it seemed like I'd no sooner assign something than lose it in the next fight. That kind of turn-based strategy has never been a game-type I particularly enjoyed, so that's probably something I should've considered before I started.

The plot didn't interest me. I don't know if it was Red being silent (the attempt on her life has somehow taken her voice), or how distant the people responsible seemed. I couldn't muster any distaste for the so-called "Camerata", not aided by the fact two of them admit what they did to the entire city, and that it was a mistake, long before I get near them. The Process seems to have no personality of its (their?) own. It was thought of as a tool to redesign Cloudbank in the Camerata's vision, and has gone beyond their control. But when fighting it, I never felt like there was anything personal on either side. It was just following the end of its programming, trying to absorb something (me) that refused to allow it. From my perspective, it was just an obstacle. Something you fight to break up running through the streets and reading viewscreen news updates.

It doesn't help the guy who saved Red's life never shuts up. Maybe it's really boring as a consciousness trapped inside a weird sword, but I got tired of his constant chatter and attempts to assure Red that he was with her. I guess Red's supposed to fall in love with him over the course of the story, but that didn't land with me, either. Which sums up my experience with Transistor: A well-done game that just didn't work for me.