Sunday Splash Page #405

"Farewells at the Fountain," in Patsy Walker, a.k.a Hellcat #17, by Kate Leth (writer), Brittney L. Williams (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer)

In 2015, Marvel canceled all their ongoing series as part of Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic's Secret Wars (since the universes all those books took place in were gone.) Even before the event was over, Marvel began relaunching the books. Began the mini-series was behind schedule, and Marvel probably worried they weren't flooding the market sufficiently with just tie-in mini-series.

The number of books I was buying definitely did not recover to where it was a year earlier, and most of what I did buy was books I was buying earlier. Duggan and Hawthorne's Deadpool. G. Willow Wilson and Takeshi Miyazawa on Ms. Marvel. Ryan North and Erica Henderson's Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. There were a few new titles I tried, but Joshua Williamson's Illuminati died in about 7 issues, and I dropped Waid and Samnee's Black Widow after 6. Which leaves this book, which was also part of one of Marvel's periodic attempts to possibly broaden their market. Maybe draw in some younger readers, maybe draw in some readers who, gasp!, aren't dudes.

Charles Soule had used Patsy in his She-Hulk series with Javier Pulido, with Hellcat acting as Jennifer Walters' investigator. But the client list is kind of slim, and Patsy has to seek other employment. Where she's confronted with the fact that a) she's not cut out for retail, and b) people know who she is.

On the former, in addition to her low tolerance for unpleasant customers, she's too prone to changing into costume to pursue thieves, though that brings her into contact with a telekinetic named Ian, who eventually becomes her friend and roommate. His using his powers to commit larceny because there were limited other employment opportunities gives Patsy the idea of starting a temp agency for people with powers. So people can pay bills without breaking laws!

On the second point, the issue becomes people know her not as Hellcat, but as Patsy Walker, star of all those comics about her teenage years. Comics which are being reissued by her old rival Hedy, who finagled the rights from Patsy's medication-addled mother. This forces Patsy to face a past she would rather flee, an image of idyllic teenage years that were followed with a lot of heartbreak and bad decisions. That Hedy later tricks both of Patsy's ex-husbands into attacking her, resulting in Hellstrom sending Patsy to Hell, doesn't help.

The book loses She-Hulk as part of the supporting cast thanks to her grievous injuries at Thanos' hands in Civil War II, so Kate Leth brings in Jubilee (still a vampire and single mom) as an assistant for Patsy. Outside the sometimes-visible fangs, the main aspect of her vampirism is turning to mist, which series artist Brittney L. Williams and Rachelle Rosenberg depict by drawing Jubilee as a fluffy pink cloud wearing her trademark sunglasses.

Most of the conflicts end up resolved with at least some talking, but also some punching. The main antagonist usually gets the latter, the flunkies the stern talking-to (or a kind ear, depending how stupid they were being.) Which is kind of funny since Leth writes Patsy as very eager to jump into action. But she's also willing to listen. Truly, Patsy Walker contains multitudes.

There's also a lot of magic. Magic and mysticism have been a big part of Hellcat's deal since at least her return from the dead, if not going back to Moondragon trying to train her mental abilities. Englehart and Breyfogle's mini-series gave her a better understanding of magic and how to avoid it, from time spent fighting in Hell. Immonen and Lafuente's mini-series suggested Patsy had a lot more going for her than being able to simply sense magic.

(Christopher Cantwell will lean way into this in his 2022 mini-series, with Hellcat being a drug-addled mess haunted by her dead mom, and a "true form" that look a lot like Tigra, but as that description should make clear, that mini-series was trash and is better off chucked into a black hole.)

Leth and Williams keep bringing Patsy into conflict with magic. An Asgardian goddess using unhappy mortals with powers to commit crimes. Hellstrom dumping Patsy in another demon's realm. Even when Leth brings in the Black Cat - unfortunately in her terrible "Queenpin" phase - Felicia is out to steal a set of magical claws that let her control people if she slashes them. Finally, Patsy seems to catch some sort of other-dimensional flu that, when she sneezes, makes weird magic crap happen. Her favorite stuffed animal appears as a giant tiger that claims to represent all her fears. America Chavez's costume gets changed to rep Canada.

(That ends up resolved by Patsy talking about her feelings with a demon, and accepting she can't try to hide away in an ordinary life.)

Williams tends to keep the art style simple, though there's a lot of attention paid to clothes. Sometimes it's simplified even more, like when patsy gets really excited and stars bawling or hopping around, eager to punch things. With most of the other characters drawn as significantly taller, she looks like a child wound up on energy drinks. It's a little strange to see in stories where Patsy's tormented with poor life decisions, or Ian runs into his abusive ex-girlfriend, but those are usually the times where Williams sticks to the stronger lines and stable designs, which gives the book about as serious an air as it can achieve.

Thee book ended at 17 issues, with Jennifer Walters sorting out the rights issue around the comics off-screen, making Patsy independently wealthy. It's unclear if she'll abandon the temp agency idea, but if her discussion with the demon was anything to go by, she's going to embrace being Hellcat again. Whatever that means when she was regularly changing into the costume during this series. I guess she might join the Avengers again or something?

It feels a bit like the end of Dennis Hopeless' first Spider-Woman series, where the Black Widow chides Jessica Drew for ditching the Avengers to go help people on Ben Urich's list. Like superheroics only matter if you fight the big fights, the ones that already have 50 heroes facing them down. Focusing on small-scale problems, people stealing purses to pay the rent, that doesn't count.

Saturday Splash Page #207

"Jetpacks, Ray guns, and Dinosaurs" in Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom #3, by Mark Waid (writer), Chris Samnee (artist), Jordie Bellaire (colorist), Shawn Lee (letterer)

The actual amount of Rocketeer comics Dave Stevens wrote and drew is surprisingly small. The "Complete Collection" consists of around 140 pages, total. Once IDW started having other people make Rocketeer mini-series, they probably blew past that in a year or two.

There were a couple of Rocketeer Adventures minis, anthologies that were often pretty to look at, but not much else. But in 2012 we got Cargo of Doom, a full-fledged mini-series by the writer and artist that had recently been killing it together on Daredevil. A mysterious cargo ship sails into L.A., the man in charge with an important cargo, but also another goal: Take the rocket pack from Cliff Secord.

Cliff, meanwhile, has other problems. He punched out a federal inspector who was getting handsy with Peevy's niece, which does nothing to dim Sally's crush on Cliff. The new inspector is much bigger and unaware of the reasons, so he's quick to goad Cliff into trying to punch him. And Cliff is quick to comply.

Waid really leans into the pulp influences. The dinosaurs were collected on Skull Island, and there's a reference to King Kong's disastrous stint on Broadway. The guy who captured the dinos is Doc Savage enemy, John Sunlight, who is working for some other shadowy figure (a Mr. Trask) that can't see the possibilities in stealing the rocket. Dinosaurs with rocketpacks. The world we could have had.

Samnee goes with the vibe, too. The dinosaurs are old-school. Massive, scaly reptiles. No feathers (minus the giant bird) or quick reactions, just big and powerful things that stomp around. The same could be said of Sunlight's goons aboard the freighter. Big and powerful things that stomp (on Cliff.) Cliff does get beat up a bit, but also manages to use the rocket in some clever ways to get out of trouble.

I don't like how Waid handles Cliff and Betty's relationship, as he writes Betty as being the manipulative and jealous type, who gets mad when Sally starts mooning over Cliff. He tries to paper over it at the end, that Betty is used to having the upper hand, I guess because guys drool over her. She didn't like that the tables were turned, with Sally swooning over Cliff, and that's why she was jealous. I don't think it tracks. Did Betty really have the "upper hand" in the Stevens' stories?

Cliff is the insecure one, yes, the one chasing after her. But that's a function of his insecurity, that he thinks every moment she's not with him, she's with another guy. We never see Betty actively flirting with another man. She's trying to get her career off the ground, so it's not as though Cliff was a kept man. He just doesn't like the way she's going about it. He's always suspecting Marco - with good reason as it turns out - and taking it out on her. Sometimes Betty tried to reassure him, and sometimes she gave it back at him with both barrels. She gets annoyed with him if he tries to control her, or forgets a date, especially during the stretch where she doesn't know he's fighting crime as the Rocketeer.

I think Stevens wrote Betty as reasonable with Cliff as he deserved, if not more, so I don't know where Waid was coming from with his take.

What I Bought 12/11/2025

The seventh issue of Dust to Dust, originally solicited for October, then pushed back to December, has since been pushed back into late January. J.G. Jones apparently waiting for the universe to end, restart and for time to once again reach the 1930s before he finishes this mini-series.

Nova: Centurion #2, by Jed MacKay (writer), Alvaro Lopez and Matteo Della Fonte (artists), Mattia Iacono (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - If you didn't spot the red suspenders, you'd think Nova was fighting Drax.

Cammi relates everything she went through preparing to pull this heist, before someone who might be Ravenous decided just blast his way in. Nova has another passenger on his ship, an Accuser who works for the Kree-Skrull War because she believes it's the best way for their people to work together: A group full of people who spent their lives up to then trying to kill each other.

Prediction: "Ravenous" will actually turn out to be a Skrull member of the group, maybe the leader from their side, maybe not, and Yr-Kett will be disillusioned by this betrayal.

They track down Ravenous, stealing power from a grid on some weapons disposal planet. Nova fights like a dumbass, needing several pages to be informed Ravenous is absorbing the energy he's throwing around. And Yr-Kett's not much better. I should have known things were gonna go badly when Nova got clean-shaven because he wanted to make sure Ravenous recognized him. The guy was on par with a Herald. Focus on winning, worry about introductions after.

We're two issues in, and Lopez is already sharing artist credit. Even for Marvel, that's a really quick bait-and-switch. Fonte leans harder into solid blacks, and Iacono's colors shift to duller or darker shades on those pages. Maybe the latter is just because they're fighting on a messy planet. On the other hand, Lopez makes Cammi look like a middle-aged woman, while Della Fonte doesn't. I don't know how much time has passed since Annihilation, but it can't have been that much.

I'm still not clear on this recurring mention of Nova and the Worldmind having limited power available. This was not a problem the last time I was watching Rider carry the entirety of the Nova Force. Where were they getting the power to "recharge" during the entirety of the Abnett/Lanning run?

The Partial Pieces of the Family Tree

What Remains of Edith Finch details the title character's return to a family home she hasn't seen in years. Not since her mother took her away, leaving her great-grandmother Edie (actually Edith Sr., but "Edie" is going to be easier to differentiate her from the younger Edith) behind.

Edie vanished. Presumed dead, but there's no body, no trace of her. Edith hasn't returned in the idea of finding her, so much as maybe trying to understand what the hell is going on with her family. Because pretty much everyone dies under bizarre or disturbing circumstances. Her mother's response was to seal off almost every door in the house, and Edie's response was to drill peepholes.

As it turns out, there's one, mostly empty, room still open, and it's there Edith learns there are other ways to get into the rooms. So you move from room-to-room, studying the lives of people who mostly died decades before Edith was ever born. The rooms were preserved as is even before Edith's mom started closing them up like she was entombing someone who she perceived as insulting her family's honor, which makes it feel less like Edith is roaming through a familiar house, and more like she snuck into a very strange museum.

In each room, there's some item, that once Edith finds it, triggers a vision or recreation of the person's end. These are the parts that are most like a game, as you have a little more control. Great-Aunt Molly's diary details her waking up and feeling so hungry since she was sent to bed without supper, that she turns into a cat, chasing a barn swallow through the tree branches outside her window. Then she's an owl, and you guide her over snowy fields, before making her swoop down to snatch rabbits and swallow them whole.

Edith's older uncle's epitaph is a poem her mother wrote about him refusing to participate in their father's wedding to his second wife, opting to fly his kite instead. You guide the kite across the sky scattering the words of Dawn's poems, or knocking them loose from where they're wedged against a wood sculpture.

The visuals shift depending on whose story you're exploring. Great-Aunt Barbara's story is told as a comic book, with cell-shading that reminds me of that Gamecube game Killer 7, where you wield a crutch as a weapon. Edith's younger brother Milton's is a flip book, with simple cartoon characters. The depiction of the fantasy world her older brother used to escape the drudgery of his job seems artistically like Journey, though maybe that's just the robes the ancillary characters wear.

The game tells me I found all the stories, which means I don't know what's going on with this family. Edie's father left Norway to escape the ill fortune that dogged the Finch family, but tried bringing his house with him. They both sank. Dawn seemed convinced the stories Edie would tell were somehow responsible for what was happening, but Edith never learns what that means. So we're left with questions. Where the hell did Milton go? What actually killed Barbara? I'm left wondering why there was a train line on a remote island to where Walter could get run over by it. Edith gets there by ferry at the start of the game, so what the hell was the train connecting?

I don't have the answer, and I don't think Edith does, either. Which is too bad, since she seemed to be there looking for something to pass on. I guess it provides a lesson that you lose people, and you may not ever understand why, or even how. I figure there's probably something in not following either Edie or Dawn's approaches.

There are all these pieces or sights that suggest the house was slowly coming to a halt. Each time someone died, the place associated with it was fenced off, to be left unchanged and sacrosanct. But at a certain point, what's left for anyone to live in? At the same time, Dawn seems like she's following "out of sight, out of mind." Whatever she thinks is picking off Finches one after another, she also thought could be contained by closing doors. Literal, in terms of the house, and figurative in how she closes off from Edie and keeps Edith from any answers.

Which leaves me wondering how to interpret her giving Edith a key that would unlock the secret passages. A recognition avoidance was no answer? Edith mentions she hadn't been back since they left, and that, once she gets there, she realizes the feeling she always had at seeing the house was fear. So it seems like there was little chance she would have gone back snooping on her own, if Dawn was worried about that, and figured she might as well give Edith a safer way to explore.

How to Beat the High Cost of Living (1980)

Jane (Susan Saint James), Louise (Jessica Lange), and Elaine (Jane Curtin) have money problems. They also have men problems, but the two are unfortunately interconnected. Elaine's husband took off with a 19-year-old, leaving her with a house and (all the attendant bills), but no cash (he cleaned out their bank accounts and stole all her jewelry from the safe-deposit box.) Louise keeps getting "loans" from her veterinarian husband to keep her antique store afloat, but the IRS has gotten suspicious of multiple years of interest-free loans and Albert's in deep financial shit if he doesn't sue her. The child support from Jane's loser ex can't cover raising two kids, and her current boyfriend just keeps talking about how he needs $25,000 so he can buy the hardware store he works at.

More accurately, he needs $24,943, because he's got $57 in the bank. Almost there!

Frustrated and hemmed in by this lack of cash, Elaine hits on the idea of stealing all the money brought in during the big anniversary sales event at the local mall. So the remainder of the film is the run-up to the heist, both the planning and execution, and all the complications that arise from the 3 of them being broke.

The movie leverages certain things it sets up with regards to the guys in their lives. Elaine's husband is an architect, and just so happened to design the mall. Which means she finds the point of entry in his blueprints. Jane's boyfriend works at the hardware store they rob for equipment, because Jane can just sneak the key out of his pants after they finish making out.

Louise? Her husband being a vet doesn't really factor in, but her situation seems different from Elaine or Jane's to an extent where it doesn't entirely feel like she fits. The other two, the guys in their lives either just took the money and ran (Elaine), or are full of excuses for why they can't help (Jane.) Albert has, according to the IRS, given Louise over $36,000 in "loans" (whether he calls it a loan or a gift depends on whether he's talking to the IRS or Louise, though Louise insists they're loans) to keep her business afloat. It is clearly not a viable business, but rather than change her approach, or try something else if she wants independence, she just keeps asking for money she insists she'll pay back.

It isn't great his solution is to sue her and have her declare bankruptcy to settle the whole thing, but if he wasn't giving her money for who knows how long, she'd have declared bankruptcy already.

That aside, I laughed more than I expected. The movie portrays all three women as long on grit, but maybe a little short on skill and trying to learn fast. Elaine's idea that they need to prove they're psychologically capable of a robbery, with Jane trying to stick up the grocery store, was pretty funny. I thought the follow-up heist of a canoe was just them setting their sights lower. "OK, robbing a grocery store failed. Let's see if you can steal a canoe that's only guarded by one bored guy in a clapboard shack." But no! The canoe is actually integral to the heist.

There's a funny bit when they rob the hardware store, where things are going smoothly until Jane can't control her Mom instincts, and another when they're planning the heist during one of Jane's kids' baseball games, and they casually tack on the cost of dental bills for Jane's ex after her dad punches him out for arguing calls, then go back to making plans. It feels like Elaine and Louise are the driving forces - maybe because they don't have any kids that will lose a mom if they get arrested - but a fair amount of the humor is around Jane maybe not being in the right mindset for all this. She's going to do it, but she's got a lot of other stuff on her mind, where the other two are more locked in. 

What I Bought 12/3/2025 - Part 2

Thursday last week, my car wouldn't start. And I was supposed to meet my coworkers at one of our work vehicles at a specific time. Not being certain they'd check their office phones beforehand, I was left to bike to work. Which I've done before, but not when it's 15 degrees (-9 Celsius). And then there was still the mess of trying to get home, get a new battery, install the new battery, which resulted in my losing two hex nuts somewhere underneath the engine. Just an exhausting day.

Batgirl #14, by Tate Brombal (writer), Stephen Segovia (artist), Rain Beredo (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - Fighting ninjas under the stars with a woman you unsuccessfully tried to blow up once. How. . .inconvenient?

The attack is kind of a mess, as everyone seems to have their own irons in the fire. Cass' attempt to kill Kalden is interrupted by Tenji, Kalden somehow unaware of all this when the art makes it look like Cass was already on the downward arc of her leap, sword drawn, when deflected. Then Cassandra veers off again, because she spots their shapeshifter ally trying to steal the holy seed pods of the blue poppies for Nyssa. Again, how shocking the al'Ghul was not open about her plans. Then Tenji spots something down a dark tunnel (we aren't shown what) that spooks him, but he gets spotted.

End result? Angel Breaker does manage to blow up a supply of the blue flowers, though I'm dubious it's all of them, and Cass cuts up the seed pods so Nysssa won't get those. But there's a mole in the ranks, and the Unburied still have some big plan they'll get to eventually.

Amid all this, Cassandra is being hounded by a vision of her mother. Encouraging her to take revenge, to abandon her brother when he's overwhelmed. And as they flee, with chaos on their heels and the folks just carving out an existence in this cave system, Shiva calls Cass a Destroyer. I would think Cass knows about hallucinations, but she keeps acting like this is actually Shiva. Getting surprised when she decides to respond, and Shiva's not around. So I don't know if this is guilt, or something one of the Unburied is doing to her.

If it is an attack, what's the goal? Wreck her confidence, drive her nuts, make her a truly lethal weapon Either way, she is definitely drawing a lot of blood with that sword of Shiva's, which is not encouraging.

Fantastic Four #6, by Ryan North (writer), Humberto Ramos (penciler), Victor Olazaba (inker), Edgar Delgado (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Another day, another batch of tentacles swarming from a hole in the air.

As per the solicitation, aliens show up with a device to stop Earth's rotations, creating extreme environmental conditions they love. The Invisible Woman handles that in 6 pages by tricking them into retreating by making it look like she can do the same thing, easily, with her powers. This brings Maria Hill - 

BOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Sorry about that, reflex. She has an offer for the FF to help build a new version of SHIELD, focused on helping people with superpowers figure out how to use them to make the world a better place. Which, as everyone in the conversation notes, sounds a lot less like SHIELD, and more like Hickman's "Future Foundation." Also, not clear on why the FF need any help to start that up again.

Around the dinner table, the FF for some reason debate whether to trust Maria Hill - BOOOOOOOOO! - who has never had an idea that actually worked or, for that matter, one that was worth a damn. Thankfully, the Wizard breaks into their lab, freeing us from Ryan North's attempts to get me to take M - that character seriously. Even having hacked all Reed's stuff, the Wizard barely lasts any longer than the aliens. Because he's a loser. Reed can't figure out how the Wizard could break his encryptions, as they're somehow based on cosmic background radiation to generate truly random numbers.

Yeah, man, I don't know. Might as well say a sorcerer generates the numbers. Point being, the radiation is somehow not random any longer, and there's a message in it. From Galactus. About Sue.

Not a great issue for Ben. He can't clobber the aliens' machine. Hill - BOOOOOOO! - dismisses him as the only member of the Four that couldn't end all life on the planet. Excuse you, the Thing could definitely punch a dormant super-volcano hard enough to make it erupt, causing a mass extinction event! And then he gets sucker-punched by the FF's old robot receptionist, which Ramos depicts as having knocked off a chunk of Ben's rocky hide. Based on where she punched him, I thought she's knocked off part of his jaw, but apparently not, so I have no idea where it came from. 

Sunday Splash Page #404

"Hellcats and Dogs," in Patsy Walker: Hellcat #3, by Kathryn Immonen (writer), David Lafuente (artist), John Rauch (color artist), Dave and Natalie Lanphear (letterer)

Patsy Walker gets sent to Alaska as part of the Initiative. Proving what a genius Tony Stark is, he only sends one hero to the biggest state in the U.S., and it's one who can't fly, teleport, or run fast. At least Patsy didn't have to worry about a having a Skrull infiltrator as a teammate!

What Patsy does have is an ability to sense magic and a nose for trouble. She's quickly on the trail of some suspicious bears, who lead her to a group of shamen (sha-women? Google says "shamaness," assuming I can trust it, which I probably can't), who task Patsy (or as they dub her, "Double-clawed Cat Full of Red Hellfire with Her Head Against the Wind and Comes Not Quietly from the Great Sea Road") with recovering their daughter, Ssangyong, from the terrible beast that has taken her.

It's a quest then, complete with an assortment of allies and an irritating guide that, like Navi in Ocarina of Time, Patsy just wishes would shut the hell up. With magic involved there are rules and traditions, but Immonen writes a Patsy Walker who is both well aware of these things, and confident/flighty enough to interpret those rules as she sees fit. At one point, to draw out an ally she requires but pissed off earlier, Patsy is told to 'lie by a grave.' Once the grave is located, Patsy stands atop it and announces that everyone loves her. Which is, of course, a lie, and the angry, antlered bear appears.

Things are not what they seem, the young girl (whose parents named her after a car, ouch) less an abductee and more a runaway. In a way, this makes Patsy even more qualified to help, as she's well-acquainted with an overbearing parent who tries to control your life. Two, if you count Moondragon's "mentoring," which mostly took the form of berating Patsy, if what I saw in Defenders was any indication. So she can try to reach Ssangyong through some oblique references to her own poor life choices and, when that fails, get frustrated, slug the girl, and haul her out like a sack of potatoes.

This was my favorite mini-series of 2008 (though the last issue got delayed and didn't come out until January '09.) It was funny and absurd. Crossing a chasm via a bridge made of little white rabbits, or Patsy arguing with herself about Iron Man blaming her for burning down Alaska. Lafuente's art is exaggerated without getting too loose or uncontrolled. You can tell who you're looking at or that Patsy's dealing with, even if circumstances alter them. He's got a good eye for detail in the clothes or the settings - Ssangyong's living in the wreck of an old sailing ship at the base of some frozen tower, with a Sasquatch who wears plaid pants and suspenders. (Phil's a real sweetie.)

Immonen's Patsy Walker is so many things, though I think most of all she simply follows her whims. If some creepy guy in a bar is bothering her, and dares her to chuck her mug at him, she'll do it without blinking. If the local guide is reluctant to help, she slides a big wad of SHIELD's cash at him to change the attitude.

She's able to adapt quickly or brush off disappointments. When Iron Man calls, she asks if she'll be assigned to Miami. He corrects her that it would be Florida, which causes her to shriek ecstatically until he tells her she's going to Alaska. One panel of a devastated Patsy, staring into space in a dress she's modeling for her neighbor, and then she's over it, asking who else is on the team and envisioning her and Beast skiing together in a daydream where Lafuente exaggerates his art a bit more for imagination effect. Did she want to apologize to the antlered bear, or track down the water lemming that kept smacking her in the face? No, but she needed them for the quest so she got over it.

(And when the bear demands she properly bury the dead body she lied beside, she tricks the wolf into attacking the bear to create the grave via impact crater. Again, she knows how things work, and knows how to bend the rules to her advantage without breaking them.)

The mini-series ended with Patsy's managing to broker a truce between Ssangyong and her mothers, and Ssangyong warning Patsy that she's got more magic inside her than she realizes. Immonen never got the opportunity to explore that, but another writer would. 

Saturday Splash Page #206

"Descent Into Danger," in The Rocketeer Adventure Magazine #3, by Dave Stevens (writer/artist), Laura Martin (color artist), Carrie Spiegle (letterer)

Over the years, Dave Stevens' The Rocketeer bounced through a lot of different titles and publishers. It started as a back-up feature in 2 issues of Starslayer (but I used an example from Ostrander and Truman's GrimJack back-ups for Saturday Splash Page #127.) Then there were a couple of chapters - but no splash pages - in Pacific Presents. The Rocketeer Special Edition, published through Eclipse, did have a splash page, of Cliff Secord's girlfriend Betty (who Stevens based on Bettie Page) in the near-buff, which I didn't feel entirely comfortable using for an entry.

Which brings us, finally, to The Rocketeer Adventure Magazine, a total of 3 issues published across two companies (Comico and Dark Horse) and 7 years. By this point, hotshot pilot Cliff Secord's kept both the experimental rocket and a new plane out of the hands of the Nazis. He's also royally brassed off Betty by sending two of the guys working for the rocket's creator on a wild goose chase to the door of the photographer "helping" Betty with her career (leading to the previously mentioned risque splash page.) Betty leaves with "Marco" for New York, with plans to fly to Europe, so Cliff hauls himself from a hospital bed, steals the rocket again, causes a big fire in the process of refueling it, and sets after her.

That's the thing about Secord as written by Stevens: He's kind of an idiot, but in a different way from how Bill Campbell played him in the movie, where he was well-meaning, but more a big lummox. Stevens' Cliff is a smaller guy, kind of a stringbean. Not the prototypical 90-pound weakling, but on the wiry side. He's jealous, insecure, petty, and short-tempered. His mouth (and his fists) tend to outrun his brain, to his detriment and others'. He doesn't trust Marco, which is smart, but expresses it in such a way as to both steamroll Betty's opinions and makes it seem like a lack of trust in her. For her part, Betty isn't shy about expressing her frustration with Cliff, though she usually ends up having to talk to herself or Cliff's mechanic, Peevy. (Cliff has a knack for making himself scarce when he's pissed her off.)

That said, Cliff also, when people are in trouble, doesn't hesitate to throw the rocket on his back and go save someone. Admittedly, most of the problems he deals with in Stevens' stories are those of his own creation. People after the rocket, people after him for stuff he did in his younger days with a traveling circus. Still, he tries to help! He's just not, you know, terribly good at it, which is how he gets beat up all the time. Betty does ultimately care about Cliff and not want to see him hurt, when she can get a chance to tell him. So it's not a constant state of war between the two.

Stevens, having created a character and setting out of the pulp era, uses other pulp characters, albeit without ever calling them by name. The creator of the rocket is Doc Savage, (though Peevy is convinced the two guys after the rocket, who are in Savage's Circle of Associates or whatever, actually work for Howard Hughes.) In New York, Cliff crashes with an old pilot friend of his, who works for a mysterious figure named "Jonas." Jonas tends to appear from nowhere, knows all kinds of things he shouldn't about what lurks in the hearts of men (including evil), seems to change appearance in the blink of an eye, and likes to carry two automatic pistols. Again, never mentioned by name, but come on, even if I don't know doodley-squat about Doc Savage, I know the Shadow when I see him.

What I Bought 12/3/2025 - Part 1

I actually ordered these books two weeks ago, but the package spent a solid week going from Kansas City to. . . Kansas City. Then it dicked around who knows where for another three days before finally showing up here. But at least it arrived, and we can close out the last of November's books.

Bronze Faces #6, by Shobo and Shof (writers), Alexandre Tefenkgi (artist), Lee Loughridge (color artist), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letterer) - The rose in the damaged eye is a nice touch. 

A lot of the issue is focused on Sango returning to Nigeria for a big exhibition of the bronzes at a museum. So she sees the way Ogiso was seized on by seemingly everyone. Everyone singing Timi's song, everyone talking about Ogiso and what they accomplished. And Gbonka's used it to launch a greater political career. The Scotland Yard detective obviously let Gbonka and her crew take Timi's body, and then retired, because she's hanging around just, chilling at the exhibition.

Sango and Gbonka try and have one last conversation, and it goes miserably. Sango admits she should have been there for Timi's burial, and Gbonka agrees, for him and for her, and this somehow sets Sango off. It feels like that thing where people project what they know about themselves on others. Sango tends to put her desires and interests above everyone else. If she wants something she goes for it. If she doesn't want to deal with someone, she just shoves them aside. We get a flashback to what seems to have caused the rift and it's a case where something bad happened and Sango basically said, "fuck this, I'm out of here."

So maybe Sango takes Gbonka's words as proof she's doing the same. That Sango let down Gbonka, and that was just not acceptable, because it's all about what Gbonka, with her big plans to build up Nigeria, that are important. It's acceptable to use Timi's song as a rallying cry, even after his death, or borrow Sango's designs for the museum, because Gbonka's higher purpose makes it so.

In Sango's eyes, it's justifications for selfishness, but I guess we're not meant to agree with that, as she's shown repeatedly losing her temper at all sorts of people. Tefenkgi draws her at various times as a giant, who towers over a cab driver she's berating, or as spitting fire at Gbonka (who calmly walks through it and tells her she can never come back.)

I think the fact Sango's not from Nigeria originally factors in somehow, but I'm not clear enough on ethnic divisions in West African societies to grasp it. I was under the impression a lot of African nations are made of many different groups that got told they were a country when whatever European country colonized that area departed, regardless of the sometimes centuries-old tensions that existed. But maybe the idea is that, through the Benin Bronzes, Gbonka is creating a national identity for Nigeria that transcends those barriers. So Sango's unwillingness to buy in or get with the program means she has no place in it? Taking back the bronzes was never about anything like that for her.

Hector Plasm: Hunt for Bigfoot #2, by Benito Cereno (writer), Derek Hunter (artist/letterer), Spencer Holt (colorist) - I feel like the living, warthog skin cloak is actually more terrifying than the Bigfoot. 

Hector manages to convince the sheriff he didn't kill the new victim, and the victim's spirit says Bigfoot did it. They find a bloody footprint, but only one. A search in the woods reveals no trail, but a strange stone arrangement that Hector says gives off bad vibes. Hunter and Holt illustrate this with, jagged, crown-shaped panels that arc over and around the arrangement, spanning the panels Hector and Lip are in.

Hector starts to suspect Lip is behind this to raise the profile of their museum, but this would seem to be blown out of the water when the Bigfoot attacks Lip that night, and nearly tears their arm off. And this is a spot where the way Image printed the book entirely fucks it up, because pages 11 and 12 are laid out so you read the top row of panels across the two pages, as Bigfoot closes on Lip and grabs their arm, then the bottom row, as Bigfoot starts to swing Lip around and Hector rushes to the rescue.

Except the comic is set up where you have to turn the page to get from 11 to 12, completely breaking the flow of the book. I read page 11, flipped to page 12, paused, muttered, "what the hell?" Flipped back to 11, then back to 12, focusing on the top half. Then repeating the process for the bottom half. Feels like something that could have been avoided. (The issue is also only 17 pages, but the first issue was 24, so they're still averaging 20.5 pages per issue.)

Also, Bigfoot's a ghost, which is actually probably a relief for Hector, since he's got more experience dealing with those. 

The Only Way Out of the Nightmare is Through

In Among the Sleep, you play as a toddler who receives a teddy bear for his birthday. The bear comes to life, at least when no one else is around. Which means you aren't alone when you wake up that night and your crib is tipped over. Making your way downstairs through a dark house to your mother's room, you find she's missing.

From there, the game sends you to a peculiar cabin where you feed items that represent memories of your mother into a machine to open a door that takes you to different, nightmarish realms. The goal is always to find another memory and get closer to finding your mother. Sometimes it's a matter of finding your way where you need to go. Others it's about finding something you need to proceed. Maybe there's a sealed door and you have to find the item that acts as the key. Or you have to manipulate the environment to reach a higher path. Find some stuff to put on one end of a seesaw to raise the other end. Very late in the game, like, final level late, it adds the ability to throw stuff so you can knock over jars that hold things you need.

As you move through the game, there are towering, shadowy beings that will appear from time to time. Sometimes you just hear an inarticulate bellow, but on other occasions, you can see them roaming about. One part of a level, you're in some sort of library in a swamp. (In a nice touch, the words on the spines of the books are unintelligible because the kid can't read yet.) The shadow is roaming the aisles, and so you have to pick your spots, ducking from beneath one bookcase to the next without being spotted. (The toddler is significantly faster when he crawls than toddles.)

Later, you're moving through twisted hallways filled with bottles. When you knock one down, and despite my best efforts, I did knock some down, the shadow will emerge, raging. You have to get to one of the cubbyholes or hiding spots that are too small for the shadow to enter. Sometimes, the presence of the shadow frightens the kid badly enough his vision starts to blur and shake. You can press a button to hug Teddy, but while that casts a glow on your surroundings, I'm not sure it does much to alleviate the fear. But I'm also not sure the fear does much to inhibit your movements, though I usually tried to stay hidden and still when those moments happened.

It's pretty clear, even before the search for mama begins, there's something going on here. Your house is full of boxes, there are scribblings of the kids you find as you progress, and it's always just the kid and his mom. Eventually, there are half-photographs of a guy. Ominous! For a while, I thought Teddy was going to turn out to be some evil thing, considering he kept encouraging me to chuck these memories into the machine. It turns out to be more mundane, and more disturbing. Yeah, the end of the game is a real kick in the head I did not see coming. And then it's over, and I was left sitting there thinking, 'Did that just happen? Is that it?' Very abrupt.

Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

Alex had us watch Thunderbolts* as a precursor to this, due to the post-credits scene. I don't really think that was necessary, but it wasn't like T'bolts was a slog to watch, so why not? As for this, set in its own universe (and in the '60s) four years after the FF received their powers, they've become beloved heroes and celebrities. Now Sue (Vanessa Kirby) and Reed (Pedro Pascal) are expecting their first kid! Which is when the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) shows up to tell Earth, Galactus will be coming to eat their planet soon.

So, I like the visual aesthetic of the movie, even if the '60s aren't an era I have some massive fondness for. It looks different, distinctive, from all the other Marvel stuff, and that's nice. Let the creative talent's styles and influences show through. (Also, I suspect Reed likes to write things out on a chalkboard anyway, but being in an era before ubiquitous computers means it's not that strange he's doing a lot of calculations by hand.) 

I like they dispensed with the origin, trusting us to understand enough from the TV show intro. I like that the team went into space to try and stop Galactus before he got close, and the whole faster-than-light chase, escape around the neutron star, sequence. It felt right for the Fantastic Four, not winning by overpowering their opponent, but outsmarting them and leveraging their group's individual skills (Ben's piloting, Johnny's adjusting to shooting in a wormhole.)

I was expecting Ben Grimm's voice to be gruffer, but Ebon Moss-Bachrach is also playing a Ben who seems content with his circumstances. He's not wandering rainy streets in a trenchcoat bemoaning his fate, and even tells Reed not to beat himself up about what happened. This version is in a much better headspace than any of the prior film versions, though maybe that's why it feels like he got the least focus. (The rock beard thing was freaky however, and I did not like it.)

A lot of the film is, naturally, focused on Reed and Sue, as new parents of a child that's going to be far more than they thought, and who might be able to save the world, if they're willing to give him up. Reed having to learn to deal with the uncertainty and unknowable parts of raising a tiny human. Sue, probably putting that experience at the UN to good use, keeping the others focused and working to some sort of solution. Don't let Reed get too far into the impossibilities of things, take the time to listen to Johnny when he thinks he's on to something, even if it isn't clear what.

(I sort of like Reed and Sue's big fight isn't because Reed actually suggests giving up Franklin to save the world, but because Sue can tell he's at least run the math on the idea before rejecting it, instead of just categorically concluding, "No way." Reed of course presents it as how his brain works, assessing potential threats and vectors, then trying to devise countermeasures.) 

But Johnny (Joseph Quinn) gets this whole thread about deciphering the Surfer's native language. Instead of just being a shallow attempt to more successfully flirt with the shiny alien, it's ultimately a way to understand her, to reach her, and maybe turn her to their side. Admittedly, turn her with guilt over all the worlds that died because she brought Galactus there, but they were already going far afield from the Surfer switching sides because the nobility or kindness of Earthlings touches their soul, so why not? Given that, it does feel like The Thing doesn't get much time.

Reed's initial solution on how to, if not defeat Galactus, at least escape him, caught me by complete surprise. I'm not sure how he was going to account for the loss of tides when the Moon presumably got left behind, but they were on a tight schedule. Certain corners had to be cut. I also wasn't expecting the film's take on Galactus' ship or how he devoured worlds. It was a little more Darkseid than I would have figured. Maybe that was just the giant, burning maw in the center of the drill. So I don't know if I loved it as visualization for Galactus' process, but it was definitely an effective visual. That whole part where Reed detects the Surfer within the alien world and then boom! Here's a massive ship tunneling out like a worm from an apple. It really depicts the scale at which this threat is operating and how different this is from Mole Man, or Red Ghost and the Super-Apes.

What I Bought 11/26/2025

Back to work after most of a week off. Hooray. At least the snow they were calling for a week ago seems like it's mostly going to miss us. Especially since it's cold enough for it to hang around a while.

Black Cat #4, by G. Willow Wilson (writer), Gleb Melnikov (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - The way things are going for her in this book, I suspect she got halfway through the room when a security guard wandered by and remembered he forgot to turn the security system on.

The Cat and Tombstone have a discussion about why she's playing hero, which Felicia describes as a desire to calm things down so she can get back to business, but also because sometimes even a crook would like a pat on the head. Tombstone allows for that, but still has her locked up by Sandman, who somehow found everything she had hidden on her. Then he and Tombstone have a discussion, right next to her cell, about how the fake Spider-Man is shaking them down, but they found where he hides the money.

The vampire Felicia confronted a couple issues ago arrives, looking for recompense for her interference, and Felicia convinces him to get Night Nurse to come see him, so she can escape and get him the money to pay back her debt. She even agrees she'll stand before this Court of Whatever he wants to bring he to at some point, which at least feels glib in a way that's sort of true to the character. The Nurse brings a lockpick set, Felicia escapes (after a particularly unconvincing act by Night Nurse of being overpowered), and runs to the address Tombstone mentioned. Where she finds a bunch of cash, right before a SWAT team finds her.

This is a particularly incompetent depiction of Felicia. She can't hide something where Sandman can't find it? Flint Marko was no genius even before he spent years getting punched by Spider-Man and the Thing. He was on the 10 Most Wanted List, but as an armed gunman type, not some brilliant thief. Tombstone has Sandman take her away, then follows along separately to have a conversation right outside her door, and she thinks nothing of it? It doesn't scream "TRICK!!!!!" in massive letters?

It would be one thing if it was written where she's too angry at Tombstone over past history to think clearly, or if he'd given her the address as part of a deal. Steal the "extortion" money back, and we're square, or I'll rip your face off. That kind of thing. This? This is just Felicia being the most gullible dope in her own book.

Sigh. Wilson needs a big turnaround in this book, or I'm going to have to memory hole it.

Sunday Splash Page #403

"Who's President in 1857?," in Pariah Missouri by Andres Salazar (writer/inker/colorist/letterer), Jose Luis Pescador (penciler)

Set in the late-1850s, in a small town along the Missouri River in northwestern Missouri, Pariah Missouri is a sort of supernatural horror-mystery. There are lots of things going on in this bustling river town, new arrivals from all directions. Native American bounty hunters from the west, free black men from New Orleans, a pair of entertainers from the east. Of course, there are people leaving as well. Maybe "disappearing" would be more accurate. The town marshal for one, and a few teen boys vanish as well. 

Nobody is quite what they seem at first glance. The louche gambler, Hiram Buchanan, isn't just in town to throw dice and talk about how his suit came from Chicago. The man from New Orleans, Jean Lafitte, isn't much of a trapper, but he's got some other skills. And the entertainers have far more going for them than a Punch and Judy show and some fancy fireworks.

I think I bought this after Greg Hatcher touted it in one of his columns, probably back when he was still writing on CBR's Comics Should Be Good blog. There are two GNs, though I've only read the first. Can't find the second volume on its own, and I hate to double-buy things, which has held me back from buying the collected edition. Salazar sets the scene and several of the major players early on, then gradually peels back the layers. This also helps to establish why some characters would help Hiram, besides money. Even as one, obvious threat is dealt with, Salazar is setting up something bigger in the background that would threaten the entire town, and goes into its roots.

So there are characters that don't do much in this first story, that I imagine become critical in the second. Like a survivor of a band of Artful Dodgers that has a "peep stone" that guides him to buried things. Or another marshal, friend of the departed town marshal, who decides to stick around until he learns what happened to his friend. With a name like "Kane", I expect his response won't be pleasant.

Salazar tends to have certain colors dominate the pages. Mostly orange or blue, where everything is colored some shade of those. Occasionally, he'll go against the grain for effect, such as a casino that's most in orange and red, except for one lady, whose dress is a deep blue that really pops against the surroundings.

Pescado has a busy line, detailing every ruffle in the cuffs and train of an upper-class lady's dress, or scratching in the deep lines and stubble on the face of another drunken layabout gambler. He gets a lot of variety in the characters, either by clothing or facial hair or build, so you learn to recognize them, even if you aren't sure what their significance is yet. 

Pariah seems large, not in terms of having a lot of people or buildings, but everything seems spread out. The rooms and lobby of a hotel, the streets. The deck of the steamboat seems to stretch forever into the background. Except on rare occasions where there's a crowd, rooms seems empty. Like everything has been built to accommodate growth that hasn't started yet. Or, like the town was built for more people, and it subsequently depopulated, like it's all that remains of some ancient capital whose builders long since abandoned it. I'm sure it's more the former, a town whose founders have big plans, but given the circumstances, the latter doesn't seem out of the question.

Saturday Splash Page #205

"Prison Break," in Rocket Raccoon (vol. 2) #2, by Skottie Young (writer/artist), Jean-Francois Beaulieu (color artist), Jeff Eckleberry (letterer)

After his mini-series and escape from Halfworld, nobody much used Rocket Raccoon for the next 20+ years. I've heard Peter David had a panel in one of his Captain Marvel runs where Rocket's pelt was a rug on someone's floor, because, well, I assume he thought that was funny. As with all Peter David's humor, your mileage will vary. Then came Annihilation: Conquest, and Rocket is drafted into Star-Lord's Dirty Half-Dozen. He was a regular in the Abnett/Lanning Guardians of the Galaxy. Probably Bendis' version, too, though I didn't touch that with a ten-foot pole.

Then Rocket shot to super-stardom, courtesy of the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, and that, more or less, brings us to this solo book, with Skottie Young as writer and sometimes artist. Young leans into the movie portrayal, with Rocket as a merc who does essentially anything for money. Rescuing kidnapped princesses, stealing stuff, blowing up giant undersea monsters.

I was never totally drawn into this book, in no small part because I found this Rocket Raccoon a scumbag. Part of the initial story is Rocket, under suspicion of murder, also being hunted by an army of angry princesses he wooed and then scammed out of money to pay off his gambling debts before vanishing into the night. In other words, Young's Rocket is one of those people who dates you to steal your bank info. This did not make me inclined to see Rocket escape the princesses' vengeance, or even really to see him beat the rap for a murder he didn't commit.

(He is, eventually, ordered to pay back all the money he swiped or go to prison.)

When I wrote a Favorite Characters post about Rocket Raccoon, I said that if Mantlo's version was an Errol Flynn swashbuckler, Abnett and Lanning's was more in the line of Bruce Willis, the wise-cracking cynic. Young's version is basically Deadpool, a violent lunatic who occasionally does good things while leaving a trail of ruined lives. Innocent of that particular murder, Rocket still killed a lot of other people, though he argues they're all justified. And the killing is largely a joke, as he even has a catchphrase, assuming "BLAM! Murdered you!" qualifies. When he pleads his innocence to Quill, Star-Lord correctly guesses that Rocket is in the middle of murdering someone right that moment. Movie Rocket was no saint, always focused on a payday or at least protecting his and Groot's hides, but this version seems tipped even further towards, if not villainy, close enough to shake hands with it.

This Rocket also doesn't know anything about his past. The last two issues are him breaking the terms of his probation to pursue a lead on the mysterious "Book of Halfworld," and learning that he is possibly not the only one of his kind in the universe, as he apparently tells everyone. The climax is played as a joke. None of the answers the book provides are satisfactory, and Rocket decides it's stupid to worry about where you came from. Life is somewhere ahead of you.

Eh, it's not the worst lesson I've seen in a comic book.

Young's artwork is fantastic, however. Wild and expressive and exaggerated. His aliens, if still broadly bipedal, can look weird or gross as the situation requires. There are motorcycles that transform into rocketpacks, all manners of spacecraft and weird monsters to blow up (though some of that was drawn by Jake Parker, artist in the back half of the series.) Rocket is far more expressive than a raccoon is likely capable of, and that's put to good use. He's alternately charming, pitiable, or homicidal, depending on what he thinks he needs from one moment to the next.

Mignola and the various GotG artists stuck closer to a raccoon's true body type in their renditions. Chubby body with short, stubby limbs, Rocket walking on the pads of his toes. Young goes leaner, with stick-figure arms and legs, what look like regular feet, and a scruffier fur coat. Past Rockets looked like they put some care into their appearance, but this version actually looks like he spends most of his time one step ahead of angry creditors/cops/ex-girlfriends. His eyes are just red-orange orbs, which also lends a feral air.

I don't think this was ever one of my favorites during it's 11-issue run, not with the Duggan Deadpool, Waid and Samnee's Daredevil, G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel, or the Soule/Pulido She-Hulk run going concurrently. But it was the ongoing series that got me back up to buying 10 titles from Marvel in Summer 2014, for the first time in 7 years. Of course, that only lasted 3 months before Avengers Undercover ended, and Rocket Raccoon itself was canceled by the following summer during Hickman's Secret Wars. But if I didn't necessarily enjoy reading it, the art was always fun to look at.

It's Time to Get Stuffed

Narrator: ON A CHILLY MORNING, MEAL PREPARATIONS CONTINUE IN CALVIN'S APARTMENT!

Calvin: *stirring a big pot* He's right, it's definitely a "chili" morning.

Clever Adolescent Panda: I don't think your recipe is spicy enough to be chili.

Calvin: *gasps* How dare you insult my father's recipe. *raises the oversize wooden spoon* En garde!

CAP: *backs away* Wait, get a weapon that isn't covered in food! I don't want stains in my fur!

Calvin: *jabs the spoon towards the panda* Renounce your heresy first! 

Rhodez: *chilling on the couch* I like his dad's chili.

Calvin: Thank you. *still jabbing the spoon at the retreating panda*

Cassanee: *staring out the sliding door* Spilling chili on the floor.

*Calvin shrieks and grabs paper towels, in the process dripping more chili on the linoleum. Meanwhile, a knock at the door.*

Rhodez: *answering the door* Yo, Pollock.

Pollock: I heard a scream, don't tell me one of you decided to kill Calvin when I wasn't here to see it?

Rhodez: Nah, they're just arguing about Calvin's chili and it got messy. 

Cassanee: Play-fighting. 

Pollock: Don't be so sure. Disputes about chili can turn violent. *casts a hopeful glance towards the kitchen* Did it? Turn violent? Is that why Calvin's on the floor?

CAP: I wouldn't hit Calvin -

*The panda notices Calvin looking at him with an extremely unimpressed stare, and remembers various Bonks to the Head delivered over the years*

CAP: That hard.

Calvin: Yeah, Panda Claus only brings gifts to good little CEOs, if such a thing exists.

Cassanee: Panda Claus?

Calvin: Sure! Big, jolly, hairy chin and jowls, doesn't take crap from evildoers?

Rhodez: *looks at CAP* Is he talking about you?

CAP: Maybe. I don't take crap from evildoers.

Calvin: Anyway, the chili *glares at CAP* is ready, and I managed to actually make some decent home fries. And, I remembered I have the extra sleeve for the table, so we can all fit around it like semi-civilized people!

CAP: I brought a salad, and those potato-flour doughnuts you told me about. Isn't that too many potatoes?

Calvin, Rhodez, Cassanee: No such thing.

CAP: *a little stunned* Ohhhhhhhh. . .kay.

Pollock: *scoffs* If it's starches they want, I brought a fine alfredo pasta, and a white bean puree. Also wine, but that's just for me.

Cassanee: Cornbread and deer steaks.

Rhodez: Taco pizza! So much taco pizza!

*Everyone eyes the stack of 10 pizza boxes, as well as Rhodez's feral expression* 

Calvin: Is any of it for us, or are you planning to take it all back to America's Cro - America's Elbow?

Rhodez: Sure, you guys can have one.

CAP: One pizza, or one slice?

Rhodez: *shrugs* I don't know, man, we'll see. I brought some good soda, too, since Calvin buys Pepsi.

Calvin: Not this year! I've embraced being a Wine Bachelor! *extends his glass* Top me off, Pollock!

Pollock: *clutches the bottle fearfully* Not a chance! This is for when you start giving thanks!

Cassanee: Wine Bachelor?

Rhodez: Is that a thing?

Calvin: If there can be Wine Moms, why not Wine Bachelors? 

Pollock: *eyes Calvin speculatively* You know what? Fine. I want to see this.

*Pollock pours Calvin some wine. Calvin swirls the liquid ostentatiously, then sniffs at it a few times. Then swirls it some more. Another sniff. more swirling.* 

Pollock: Well? Go ahead, "wine bachelor."

Calvin: Wooo! *He downs the entire glass in one gulp. His body convulses, head twisting slowly to the side like it's on a spring. His face twists into a grimace* That is vile.

*Clever Adolescent Panda snickers. Pollock extends the bottle.*

Pollock: More for the wine bachelor?

Calvin: *expression still pinched* Sure, just *exhales loudly* haaah, gotta cut it with something. Can I get one of those sodas, Rhodez? Gonna see if I can make a "wine-and-root beer" the new trendy drink.

*The 4 guests recoil. Pollock corks the bottle.*

Pollock: I will feed you another cake that makes you capable of vibrating through the walls of reality, thereby killing us all, before I let you make such a liquid abomination.

Narrator: AFTER EATING!

Calvin: *sprawled on the floor* I'm glad I ran til I puked this morning, 'cause I got a hunch I ain't moving for a while.

Pollock: *slumped in her chair* You. . .just lack impulse. . .control.

CAP: *seated in the corner of the room, only upright thanks to the walls* I saw you undo your belt halfway through.

Pollock: *embarrassed* Calvin's suggestion to mix soda with wine just broke my will for a few minutes, that's all! When i returned to myself, I'd already eaten - 

Cassanee: *curled in the camp chair* 4 donuts.

Rhodez: And one of my pizzas *pulls herself off the couch long enough to glare, then falls back again*

Calvin: So, are we doing the thanks bit this year?

CAP: Of course!

Pollock: But Calvin can't go yet. I need to room in my stomach for the wine I'll need. 

Calvin: *staring at the ceiling* Whatever. Rhodez, you want to kick it off?

Rhodez: Huh? Uh, OK. I got a bigger, better apartment this year, and a cat. He's really cool. I got a big bonus for extending my contract, even if taxes took a stupid big chunk of it - 

Pollock: *sits up, looking alarmed* Taxes? Are we still paying those?

Calvin: Not you, oh mighty job creator.

Pollock: Whew. *slides back down in the chair*

Rhodez: Yeah, I still gotta pay taxes, but maybe by the time this contract runs out, the job market will be better. And my truck didn't wrecked this year, so you know, that's cool.

Calvin: Because you were smart enough not to drive when Florida got snow.

Rhodez: Damn right. *brief pause* That's what I got.

Calvin: Am I going now?

Pollock: No. Let the Cassanee regale us with the high point of her social calendar, the big hoedown by the outhouse.

CAP: *growls* Don't be mean. . .

Cassanee: No hoedown. No outhouses, either.

Pollock: My goodness, you just go right out in the - THWACK! *a tennis ball hits Pollock in the head* 

CAP: Thanks, Calvin!

Calvin: *still on his back, offers a thumbs up*

Cassanee: *smiles* Too much rain earlier in the year, none later, but we controlled the flood damage. Did have a lot of canoe trips. Beat up an ogre that emerged from the Dark Caves.

Calvin: Aren't all caves kinda dark?

Cassanee: Not like this.

CAP: It's a supernatural thing, right? Bad experiences that manifest as a force that eats light?

Cassanee: *shrugs* Probably. Two friends got married. Nice ceremony, but raccoons tried to steal the cake. Big mess, but fun. 

CAP: Neat. Not the raccoons trying to steal the cake, but the rest of it sounded good. I had a quiet year. I helped five lost spirits find peace, beat up two angry ones that were terrorizing people. Although one of them was haunting the person who killed them, but I proved it and got them arrested, so that counts as helping a lost spirit, too. I came up with a recipe for bamboo croquets that my family really loved! I don't think they're edible for humans, though, sorry.

Pollock: Perhaps Calvin could invite Deadpool next year as a test dummy.

Calvin: His next ongoing is being written by Benjamin Percy, so there's not a chance in hell of that. Keep going, panda pal.

CAP: I almost have wall jumps figured out, so I can scale buildings that way.

Calvin: Can't you just climb them using your claws?

CAP: Yeah, but that's not as cool-looking.

Rhodez: I don't know, it'd be pretty cool, you hauling yourself up a building like that. Bad ass.

CAP: I guess, but it's also slower. I want to be fast!

Calvin: A fast panda. Sonic the Panda.

Pollock: Hmm, I smell marketing opportunities.

CAP: *huffs* More like trademark infringement. Which of you is next?

Calvin: Well, you got room for wine now?

Pollock: *picks up the bottle and eyes it* . . .Yes. Go ahead and depress us. *Takes a long drink*

Calvin: Uh, well, work's been a pain in the ass for a variety of reasons, but I'm hoping things are coming together so I won't have to carry such a big load next year. Between the new guy being trained, fewer issues with the software, and one of my coworkers hopefully no longer teaching 2 days a week, other people might actually do some inspections!

CAP: This is an awful angry start.

Calvin: Right, yeah. OK, moving on. There haven't been any real bad things at home, so it's remained a peaceful refuge. I went on a trip with Alex across the eastern U.S. and onto the Atlantic Ocean, which was fun. Boston was much better to walk through than drive, but interesting to see. I would have liked to see more of Portland, and I learned 3 days on a cruise ship is probably my max, but it was a really good experience all around, and it seemed to pick up Alex's spirits. And we each got some art prints out of it, which Alex will probably at least get his framed and up on the wall at some point. Let's leave it there.

Pollock: That was. . .surprisingly positive.

Calvin: It's just your wine goggles.

CAP: No, it was. I'm proud of you. I knew you could be positive if you tried!

Calvin: Don't hug me or I might throw up again after all. Pollock.

Pollock: It has been a challenging economic climate, with the inconsistent tariffs and inconsistent economic messaging. Fortunately, we've made some real breakthroughs on perpetual motion as it relates to generating power for railguns.

CAP: Really?

Pollock: Indeed. We've even miniaturized them into handheld units suitable for riot control and, *becoming evasive* things of that nature.

Calvin: Pollock, are you seriously selling weapons to a wannabe dictator?

Rhodez: That's pretty shitty, even for you. 

Pollock: Relax, the weapons don't actually work at all. Quality control is very poor with this administration, as is any concept of physics or any other science. I could sell them a Super-Soaker filled with the fluid from glowsticks and convince them it was a magnet gun or some sort of neural disruptor. I'm just getting in on the grift while the getting is good! No one is getting hurt!

THWACK! *the tennis ball hits Pollock in the head again* 

Just A-Driftin' Along, In the Vacuum of Space

In ADR1FT (yes, the game uses "1" in place of "I"), you are Alex Oshima, commander of the crew aboard a space station built by Hardiman Aerospace. You wake up in the middle of chaos. Something has happened and the station is shattered the pieces drifting together. Thankfully, the orbit doesn't seem to be degrading, but if you're going to make it home, you have to repair some mainframes first.

What that involves is repeatedly going to the central spire of the station, which tells you a particular mainframe isn't responding. You have to make it to the section of the station related to that mainframe and acquire a new central processor or something like that, then bring it back. It's always the same error message, the part you grab is always the same (save the color.) Once you reach the right spot, it's a matter of pushing a button to initiate the sequence that gets you the part you need.

So the challenge is in making there. Alex is inside a spacesuit, and it has some mobility capability where you can direct your course, speed up or slow down. If you hit stuff, your suit starts to get damaged, cracks appearing in the visor. The jets that provide thrust and maneuverability are a shared resource with your air supply, so you have to keep an eye on that. There's still some equipment producing live currents that, if you hit them, do a considerable amount of damage to your air supply. Also, any time you move outside the confines of the station, the rate of air loss speeds up.

The suit is not at 100% when you begin, so there are some leaks even after you get it repaired. But the station is broken into pieces. You aren't accessing space by passing through airlocks or decompression procedures. You drift down a hallway and whoops, the part at the other end is no longer connected. Or you enter a room and one of the windows is blown out. So there's rarely a point where I would say the station is providing any sort of protection that ought to diminish the air loss.

Each time you reach one of the computer stations to retrieve a part you need, the computer there also upgrades some aspect of your suit. Oxygen capacity, suit integrity, thrust speed and something else I forget. Unfortunately, it doesn't let you pick, so suit integrity is the last thing that gets improved, while it's the first thing I'd have augmented if given the choice, since that would reduce the air loss. The game provides a lot of opportunities to replenish your air supply, either by bottles floating around (all of which flash green to help you find them) or dedicated stations on the interior walls. So it isn't too hard to find more air, and you can get most anywhere with minimal thrust if you're willing to wait for Alex to drift there, but that's more complicated if the suit is constantly leaking air like a sieve.

The one time I died in the game, it was because I tried to reach a satellite the suit's scanner told me had something. The satellite was a ways out, it was very early in the game, and I didn't use my limited oxygen (which I also didn't replenish before floating into the void) wisely. After that, I settled for drifting slowly when I was out in the open, focusing thrust use on course corrections, letting inertia carry me where I needed to go. There's no time limit, so there's no reason to rush, save impatience. And if you float, you can watch the Earth below you, and that's pretty neat.

Once you have the four mainframes up and running again, you can board the escape pod at any time. But there are other things to seek out, if you care. The company wants you to recover things like a special camera and a hard drive. There are 25 solid-state drives floating around. You might also, you know, want to figure out what happened to your crew. (Spoiler alert: They're all dead.) The scanner will help you find things like that, although the crew's suits have a flashing red light you can see from far off. I do wish the scanner didn't think it was necessary to tell me about locked doors. Most of them can be unlocked simply by holding "X" as you float closer, so they're really just, doors. I don't need to know that, and it would significantly declutter the screen.

As you go along, you can also access audio logs of yours and the crew that shed some light into what was going on. Alex granted one crew member a transfer home, but not in time. She was also putting a lot of pressure on the crew to hit the marks in whatever it was we were trying to accomplish, and probably disregarding safety protocols in the process. Which certainly makes it seem like Alex is to blame, but there were things here and there that made me wonder if it wasn't the guy on the crew that this was his last mission. He'd been in space so much, he had incurable cancer, and was not happy about spending the remainder of his days on Earth.

If there was an ending that provided resolution, I never unlocked it. I reached a point where I had certain uplinks working again, but they couldn't transmit because some debris severed a cable. I could find the damage easily enough, but I could never get any guidance as to what to do to fix it. I checked every Youtube playthrough I could find, and none of those helped, though I'm also not inclined to sit there 2+ hours sifting through the videos. Eventually, I gave up and decided to send Alex back to Earth, leaving it at everything being her fault.

An Unexpected Reversal of Trends

So, the most recent batch of solicits. Quite a surprise. I used almost two full lines of my spiral notebook to write everything down, which hadn't happened since the solicits for October. Of course, a bunch of the stuff I wrote down for October I either didn't buy - all that Age of Revelation stuff - or it never showed up - Tuatha. So who knows what things will look like when February actually arrives.

What's new? Marvel's still spitting out more X-related books, and setting aside the terrible mistake handing Deadpool to Benjamin Percy is likely to be, this includes Generation X-23, written by Jody Houser, with Jacopo Camagni as artist. At least Houser is going to use Gabby as part of the cast right from the start, but the last time I bought a book with Laura Kinney, it didn't go great (see my dropping Laura Kinney: Wolverine after 3 issues.) I have better success when I wait until the book ends and I hear positive word of mouth. Still, my luck's got to turn eventually, right? Right?

Besides that, Jed MacKay's latest Moon Knight reboot is here, Marc Spector: Moon Knight. Is MacKay just determined to run through all historical Moon Knight titles before he calls it quits? At least Devmalya Pramanik is listed as artist. Hopefully he'll draw more issues this time around. And Kelly Thompson and Gurihiru are bringing another Jeff adventure with It's Jeff Meets Daredevil. Unless Matt Murdock's gotten real kinky, Jeff is safe from the Daredevil girlfriend curse.

IDW's releasing another Rocketeer mini-series, Rocketeer: The Island. The solicitation said it was from Dave Stevens, which quite confused me, since he's been dead for 15 years. But apparently the script idea - Cliff rescues Amelia Earhart - was from an outline of Stevens', but John Layman and Jacob Edgar are the writer/artist team bringing it to life. I don't know that I'll buy it, but it, along with Muppets Noir by Roger Langridge and Declan Shalvey (from Dynamite) seemed worth mentioning regardless.

Image has Brett Bean's D'Orc, about a half-orc, half-dwarf and some weird shield, that are somehow going to destroy the world, if the world doesn't destroy them first. It sounds like kind of dark comedy, but maybe not? Mad Cave has Is Ted OK? about an extremely neurotic and isolated guy who starts to have a breakdown, but a woman's attempt to help makes things worse. The description didn't really light my world on fire, but it's supposedly by Dave Chisholm, who wrote and drew Canopus, which I really liked, so, again, maybe?

What's ending? Nothing, unless I want to be a smart ass and list It's Jeff Meets Daredevil, since that's a one-shot.

Everything else: Batgirl appears to finally, after 16 issues, be wrapping up this War of Shadows. Thank Shiva, or whoever is responsible for that. Fantastic Four is still on the story about the Invisible Woman being some dire threat. Nova got his ship stolen. It'll probably be returned when the thief gets annoyed with Pip's constant calls. In Black Cat, Felicia is teaming up with Mary Jane. Who is Venom, if you were luckier than me and unaware of that particularly stupid development.

I saw someone in the House to Astonish comments section months ago refer to Kamala Khan as Poochie, because Marvel keeps trying to make her a big deal in the X-books. While I won't disagree with the wrongheadedness of making Kamala a mutant, rather than leaving her as the One Cool Inhuman, I would argue symbiotes are Poochie because Marvel is pushing those fucking things everywhere. They are in way more books, and seem to be a constant focus in one damn event or another. This is all Donny Cates' fault.

Babs: The Long Road South, and Spirit of the Shadows are both on issue 2, the latter now listed as a 5-issue mini-series. I wasn't sure what it was last month, so I appreciate knowing the potential commitment. It won't come out until March, but it was in this round of solicits so, Touched by a Demon will be at issue 2 then as well.