Random Back Issues #146 - The Comet #12

The issue starts with Rob, aka the Comet, having a nightmare about a snowy wilderness. He finds his parents, who went missing around the time he gained his powers, but they're scared of him. There's someone he can't make out with them, but when he tries to move closer the ground opens beneath him and he sees some awful truth.

Which he promptly forgets on waking up and realizing he's late for breakfast with his TV reporter friend, Victoria. He gets a sarcastic greeting, and hits to his pride keep coming, as Victoria called detective Ben Lee to help fix her car's flat, because, 'she knew she could count on him.' While Ben retrieves aerosol fix-a-flat, Rob tries to use his powers to seal the puncture and expand the air in the tire.

So while Victoria goes to breakfast with Ben (who has both car and steady employment, oooh-la-la), Rob's in search of a new tire. He stops to watch the broadcast launch of a weather satellite co-engineered by the U.S. and U.S.S.R. on a store-window TV, but the broadcast is hijacked by a hyper-patriotic armored nutjob. Inferno's seized control of Strategic Air Command to decry this attempt to weaken America by sharing technology with its enemies, which he suspects is a deliberate conspiracy. So he's altered its course, and will intercept and destroy it.

Rob rushes home, gets in costume, gets the location of S.A.C. from Victoria and rushes off to stop Inferno. He even grabs a camera to take some photos of the fight, as a thank you to Victoria. Too bad the speed he flies at melted the camera. He takes a few hits but looks to have the upper hand, except Inferno's been gaining altitude the whole time and they just hit the jet stream. Inferno's armor guides him out, but Rob's struggling to tell up from down and running low on power in the process. By the time he gets his bearings, he's outside the atmosphere. Oops.

Or maybe not. Turns out he doesn't need air (concerning), and being beyond the ozone layer means he's soaking up more solar power than ever. One blast is enough to make Inferno bail, but the satellite's falling back to Earth. When Rob goes to retrieve it, Inferno triggers its engines remotely and sends it and Rob on a collision course with the Sun!

Which ought to take months at minimum, but turns out to be irrelevant as Rob overloads on solar energy and explodes! Destroying the satellite in the process. Not a great showing for the Comet, and from here, things only get worse for him.

{3rd longbox, 12th comic. The Comet #12, by Mark Waid (writer), Kevin West (penciler), Jeff Albrecht (inker), Tom Ziuko (colorist), Tim Harkins (letterer)}

A Light Most Hateful - Hailey Piper

Olivia ran away from her home in Connecticut 3 years ago, eventually ending up in a town in Pennsylvania called Chapel Hill. There's not much to the town for her, other than Sunflower, her best friend, who she's also in love with.

One night, weird shit starts happening. A very tall, very sarcastic person named Christmas emerges from the employee bathroom at the drive-in where Olivia works. What looks like a random homeless woman the jocks have chosen to harass, turns out instead to be a very large lizard woman named Lizzie, who swallows one of the jocks whole before turning her attention on Olivia. Rain falls from the sky that makes people mindless drones who fly into murderous fury if you touch them. Unless the rain that falls causes glass to spread over everything like ice.

And in the midst of all that, Olivia just wants to make sure Sunflower's safe and get out of town. The explanation, at least the first part of it, comes in the first third of the book. The rest is how the characters adjust to this information. Piper stays primarily focused on Olivia's thoughts, though we get Olivia's observations or guesses about what's going on in Christmas' mind. Piper also uses aspects of the strange rain to do a flashback/info-dump to explain what's happening and how it all relates to Sunflower.

Which is one of the big things of the story, how much of Olivia's focus on Sunflower is because she really does care, and how much is because that's what she was created to be? Where is the line between those two things, if it even exists? Olivia still, even seeing how the truth (or part of it) changes Sunflower, still wants to help her. Doesn't seem able to be angry at her. How much of that is her, and how much of that's the intent of her creator?

I think Piper would argue the source of Olivia's character doesn't matter so much as what she does with it. If she's kind, if she takes on burdens for others, fine. What is it she's trying to accomplish, what's her goal?

'Sunflower needed to hear it. Optimism would keep her going. Christmas didn't understand because they had probably never had a best friend before, someone both difficult to love and yet impossible to do otherwise. Likely Christmas took up the difficult side of their relationships.'

A Spring Deluge

Maybe "deluge" is too strong a word, but April certainly has the potential to be a busier month for comics than any I've had in a while, even if it's just a couple of possible additions to the holdovers from the month before. Plus, Deadpool's done crossing over with other books for at least a second, so I welcome it back to the fold as well.

What's new that's coming out? DC has Resurrection Man: Quantum Karma, a mini-series by Ram V, Anand RK and Butch Guice about Mitch Shelley dealing with a threat his powers somehow created. The New 52 volume of Resurrection Man was ultimately a big disappointment, though maybe I could remove the specific title and leave the statement's truth unchanged, but this might be worth at least a look-see.

The other book was Past Time, by Joe Harris and Dave Chisholm, about a vampire hoping the advent of night-time baseball will let him live out his big-league dreams. That could go several ways, but Chisholm drew (and wrote) Canopus, which I enjoyed a lot, so it's probably worth a look.

Is anything ending? No, not yet, although the solicit for Secret Six #2 has me less enthused for that book by the minute. I may be done with it before it even starts.

And all the rest: Marvel's got Fantastic Four 31, still in tie-ins to the big Doom event. Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu teases a return to villainy for 8-Ball, Laura Kinney and Winter Soldier are still having a team-up, and The Thing has Ben Grimm trying to protect his pal from Bullseye? That should be a short fight, like that Marvel Adventures story where Bullseye turns around to find Hulk looming over him, demanding he, "pay taxes."

Bullseye: *Throws something pointy that bounces off Ben."

Thing: Knock that off.

Bullseye: Yes sir.

Al Ewing and Steve Lieber are going to have Metamorpho franchise, which is never a good idea, and it sounds like Batgirl is going to take six issues to explain why Cass and Shiva are being hunted, which doesn't thrill me.

Dust to Dust is supposed to be past the halfway mark in April, although I didn't see it show up this month. Hardly encouraging if the book is behind schedule after 1 issue. Bronze Faces is at the stage where people learn shocking truths at inopportune moments. The next iteration of Great British Bump-Off is up to issue 2, and The Surgeon will be at issue 5. Mine is a Long, Lonesome Grave is up to issue 3 and promising the person behind the curse is close to being revealed, but there's no indication how long this series is, so skepticism seems warranted. And wrapping it up, Dark Pyramid will be at issue 2.

Lotta unknowns in the mix there. Books could be late, books could be disappointing, but hopefully there's enough of them to keep April from getting too dull.

Prey (2022)

A Predator gets dropped off by its buddies in the Northern great Plains in the early 1700s, and encounters both a bunch of French trappers and a group of Comanche. In particular, one girl, Naru (Amber Midthunder), figures out early on there's something in the forest they've never encountered before, but struggles to get anyone in the tribe to take her seriously.

The movie flips the formula somewhat from earlier Predator movies, in that the human protagonist is aware of the Predator before it's aware of her. This isn't Arnold or Danny Glover getting blindsided by an alien hunter. Even if Naru doesn't know what it is that's in the woods, she knows there's something out there that has to be confronted. And when the Predator does cross paths with her, it dismisses her, more than once.

The movie parallels the two characters. On the one side, the Predator gradually levels up the things it kills. Rattlesnake to wolf to bear to humans to a lot of humans. It gets wounded repeatedly - seriously this thing is a tank when it comes to shrugging off damage, which does make for some fun battles - but it also lets the movie slowly reveal some of the arsenal and the alien's strength. It straight up knocking a bear the fuck out with a punch was pretty impressive.

Especially contrasted with Naru's journey. Her attempts involve a lot more failure. The deer escapes her, and while her plan to take out the mountain lion is a good one, she doesn't stand her ground when the moment comes and it falls to her older brother to finish the job (though he's slow to give her credit for that, which made me initially mistrust my eyes when they told me she at least got her spear into the puma's side.) Her confrontation with the bear goes considerably worse than the Predator's.

In that sense, the movie feels almost leisurely at times. I started to wonder if they were ever going to have Naru and the Predator actually face off. But as the Predator's working its way through potential challenges, the movie's building her up into a challenge, while seeding in the signs of all the skills that are going to make it happen. Her ingenuity, the knowledge of medicine, her tracking skills, just how observant she is in general, really. Midthunder's able to give Naru a full range. The stubborness to prove herself and the fear when the moment comes and she's not ready. The bickering with her brother. I really like the sort of dejected slump when someone nudges her shoulder with a boot to make her wake up for another day of harvesting breadroot, something she despises. The way it takes her longer to get up after the battle against her not-great showing against the puma than it did earlier in the movie.

Some of the callbacks to earlier movies feel more shoehorned in than others, though I like how it plays with expectations in regards to them sometimes. The part where she is nearly sucked into the bog and crawls out, covered in mud, so you figure that's when the Predator catches up and can't see her. But no, it's not chasing her because it doesn't care about her. And, "if it bleeds, we can kill it," is always good.

I also really liked the parallel at the end between Naru's return to her people, with proof of two different threats, and her brother's earlier return after defeating the puma. Both returning with a severed head, both scenes having the voices off the people fade out as they react. In one case, the warrior's return signals a return to status quo. The threat's been dealt with, everything can continue as usual. In the other, it signals that things are changing and they're going to have to think differently to survive.

What I Bought 1/22/2025

Feels like it's been one person after another wanting something, all week long. Making it difficult to make any progress on anything, or even keep track of what I need to be making progress on.

Fantastic Four #28, by Ryan North (writer), Steve Cummings (penciler), Wayne Faucher (inker), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Rats, mud, incessant shelling, a freakishly stretched out man in bright clothing. Just another day in the trenches.

Reed is getting nowhere trying to understand magic in his attempts to prepare for Doom's next move. Between Cummings drawing the costumes as fitting loosing - the fabric actually bunches in places! - the lines either Cummings or Faucher add to his face, and the fact Arbutov colors two-thirds of Reed's hair white, the man is showing his age. Which at least plays to the notion he's been grinding himself to dust trying to understand magic for 6 months, and failing utterly.

Sue has an idea! Speak with a physicist who also knows magic. Preferably one with a special sword that cuts through anything. But the Black Knight melted the sword down to make his special chair, which I vaguely remember from that mini-series I bought 2 years ago. And the formula he presents Reed, that allegedly merges physics and magic, is total junk. Oh Dane, I thought you got off the booze when you stopped using the sword that messed with your head.

Still, Dane Whitman wants to help, and sends his, Reed and Sue's spirits back to World War I, the last time there was a chance to locate a different magic sword. This one cut through anything, up to and including time, so the cuts never healed. Which doesn't sound like the sort of thing the FF would want to use, a sword that permanently damages time, but what the hell. Sue puts her archaeology degree to use and figures out where the sword is buried.

At which point it turns out Doom was possessing Whitman the entire time - via the magic chair - to use Sue to find the sword so he could destroy it as a possible threat. That's bad, but the formula Dane gave them was actually hiding a message in the errors. A spell Reed is just able to use so he and Sue escape - to Times Square, where Doom's conquest of the world is already being announced. Gotta, while the Cloak of Levitation doesn't look too bad on Doom (though the red clashes with the green of his tunic), the cross-looking thing on his chest is not an improvement. Makes him look like a knight on his way to the Crusades. As though Doom would ever stoop to trudging through deserts for such a menial result!

Doom tricking Reed and Sue into helping him, then remarking that it 'almost' puts him in their debt, is a nice touch. I do feel like it's strange Reed's worrying so much about Doom using magic. Doom's known magic for a long time. Maybe not at this level of power, but it's been something he had in his back pocket for a while. But I guess it makes for a stumbling block for Reed, an area he can't pull apart and grasp intuitively (I suspect if he does manage to use magic more effectively later, it'll be because he operates by feel, rather than trying to map it out with equations, but we'll see.)

Sunday Splash Page #359

"Swing Shift," in Mini-Marvels Ultimate Collection, by Chris Giarrusso

In the mid-90s, the Bullpen Bulletins page in Marvel comics started running a 3-to-4-panel strip of kid versions of various Marvel characters. So they have their powers or whatever, but certain aspects are scaled down for a younger age. Spider-Man works as a delivery boy, and has to deal with the hassle of delivering papers to Norman Osborn's house, Silver Surfer trying to help Thanos impress that one girl by doing something besides destroying the universe. Eventually the strips would expand to a page or sometimes several, running as back-ups features in the titles designated "All-Ages," such as the various 2000s Power Pack mini-series or the Marvel Adventures' line.

It's interesting to follow trends at Marvel based on what designs or stories Chris Giarrusso (who is typically writer, artist, colorist and letterer all in one) references in the strips. "Cereal Quest", where Wolverine faces many challenges in his attempt to just have some damn cereal, uses character designs from the X-Men Evolution cartoon. When all the newspaper ink stains his costume, Spidey ends up with his black costume look and becomes really popular with girls (though the costume eventually ends up with rival paperboy Eddie Brock.) In his own attempts to get a date, Hawkeye changes his look, but goes with his terrible armored outfit from the Avengers: United They Stand cartoon, and takes an appropriate amount of grief for it.

Later on, Giarrusso would incorporate Civil War into a story about Spidey trying to babysit the Power kids, and a version of World War Hulk with haikus, pro-wrestling, and TV prank shows. Also, none of the other heroes were stupid enough to get between Hulk and the Illuminati. Except the Sentry, but nerts to that guy. In fact, the other heroes pointed out precisely how stupid it would be for them to get involved in a fight they had nothing to do with, making it at least 3 times better than the actual World War Hulk. His version of Thor's return post-Civil War involves Thor using Don Blake's knowledge of science and biology to take revenge on Iron Man, Reed Richards and Hank Pym for the "Clone Thor" debacle, though it also involves a lot of jokes about one character assuming another character doesn't know what a word means, and then explaining it, only for the first character to respond, "I know what (blank) means." Multiple jokes in that vein per page. Obviously like any attempt at humor, there's hits and misses.

There are few longer stories that are just their own thing, mostly involving Hawkeye. Hawkeye attempts to get super-powers to be even more awesome, and after an incident involving magic beans and Iron Man, Hawkeye briefly becomes Herald of Galactus. Or Hawkeye saves the other Avengers from an evil sorcerer - who appears thanks to the stupidity of Iron Man - while getting no credit or acknowledgement from anyone. The latter story was the result of Hawkeye winning a fan vote for which characters would get stories in an anthology. Really, these stories are worth it just for the constant dunking on Iron Man Giarrusso does.

Saturday Splash Page #161

"Gamma Roulette," in She-Hulks #1, by Ryan Wilcox (writer), Ryan Stegman (penciler), Michael Babinski (inker), Guru eFX (colorist), Ed Dukeshire (letterer)

At one point there was a Marvel Event based on a bunch of super-science villains teaming up to try and take over the, either the U.S. or the entire world, I don't know which. They targeted the various gamma-powered characters for. . .reasons I am unclear on. Look, Jeph Loeb was heavily involved with the Hulk books at this time and I wasn't going near his stuff with a 10-foot-pole and a hazmat suit.

Anyway, the "Intellegencia" lost, but escaped, and this book (which was originally an ongoing, but apparently pre-orders were so bad it got turned into a 4-issue mini-series by the time issue 2 shipped) was about two She-Hulks trying to track them down and probably illegally detain them (I know The Trapster asks for his lawyer, but we never see him get one.)

Betty Ross was Red She-Hulk by this point but, possibly to have the mentor/apprentice dynamic, Wilcox went with Jennifer Walters and Lyra, the teenaged She-Hulk from Thundra's timeline, that is a combination of Thundra and the Hulk's DNA. Wikipedia says Thundra was captured by scientists and impregnated by cells they swiped from the Hulk, but the Official Handbook-esque entry for Lyra in the back of the above issue says Thundra traveled back in time specifically to get the Hulk's DNA, which fits the vague recollection I have of the comic.

I am pretty sure the version of the Hulk Thundra encountered was not aware enough to consent to giving up any DNA, which is almost as much a yikes as the Handbook entry saying Lyra was sent to the present day to get pregnant from Norman Osborn. Didn't Marvel learn their lesson from Sins Past? Nobody wants to think about Norman Osborn procreating. Red flags all over the damn place.

Anyway, Wilcox uses Lyra growing up in a militaristic society as an excuse to send her to high school to learn to be human and interact with people. There's the clique of mean girls that target the naive newcomer, especially once she strikes up a friendship with a popular guy. There's some fish out of water stuff, where Lyra can't understand social norms, or she dismisses two jocks hitting on her by telling them they'll have to fight to the death to decide which one takes her to a party. Oh, and the winner needs to bring the loser's ears as proof.

Lyra mostly hates school and would rather be out punching villains. Mostly she just hates being in her human form. It makes a certain amount of sense, coming from a place where her power as a Hulk was probably praised and a real asset, although that Handbook entry says the green skin helped mark her as an outsider (because she had a father, or genetic donor at least, while all the other women didn't). So you'd think she might be glad to ditch the evidence of that heritage.

Either way, it's an interesting choice by Wilcox to have Jennifer Walters, who has mostly preferred being green to not, be the one trying to show Lyra the benefits of not being a Hulk all the time. But as Bruce Banner notes, Jennifer has been much more successful living among people as a Hulk than he has, so she's certainly a better option than him, and there aren't many others. Red Hulk? Fuck no. Doc Samson? Eh, kind of sketchy. Skaar? He's not even housebroken.

That the book was reduced to 4 issues meant Wilcox had to speed-run a friendship between Lyra and Amelia, the leader of the clique. And there's at least one super-villain fight every issue, which also cuts down the time to develop any of those subplots, but Wilcox and Stegman presumably knew what people wanted to see. Stegman's very good with fight scenes, kind of a slimmed down Ed McGuinness look to the art, and solid enough when the book requires a more humorous touch (mostly in the school scenes.) The book ends on a requisite super-villain disaster at prom, and I'm not sure Lyra's been in anything since. Maybe she popped up in Avengers Academy after I dropped that book. Another teen character that failed to carve out a niche.

2024 Comics in Review - Part 5

Last day is, as always, devoted to rankings. That's what everyone's on the Internet for, right? To shout their opinions about which things are better than which other things?

Favorite Ongoing Series (min. 6 issues):

1. Fantastic Four

2. Deadpool

3. Vengeance of the Moon Knight

That's it, that's the 3 options. Of those, FF was the pretty clear winner. I didn't love every issue, but there were a couple - Reed & Johnny's Halloween adventure, Ben & Johnny's grocery store competition - that I liked much more than any issue of the other two books. The other two books were probably a tie. If you asked me tomorrow, I might flip their order.

Favorite Mini-Series (>50% shipped in 2024):

1. Blood and Fire

2. Babs

3. Deer Editor

All told, there were 18 mini-series. Eliminate the ones that I didn't finish - Body Trade, Dazzler, Power Pack, Morning Star, Jackpot and Black Cat - that leaves 13. Eliminate the ones that shipped half their issues of less - Coda, Red Before Black, Calavera P.I., Midnight Western Theatre: Witch Trial, Dust to Dust - we're down to 8. Black Widow and Hawkeye isn't moving to the permanent collection, neither is Night Thrasher. 6 candidates remaining.

Avengers Assemble doesn't match up with the others on the art, and Ms. Marvel: Mutant Menace had that dud of a 2nd issue. And I just didn't enjoy Blow Away as much as the other 3. Sami Kivela's art is excellent, but Deer Editor's story doesn't totally hold together in places. Then Blood and Fire has the advantage of having finished, so I know it stuck the landing. Whereas with Babs, that remains to be seen.

There were no one-shots, so moving right along to -

Favorite Trade Paperback/Graphic Novel (anything purchased in 2024):

1. Star Power and the Mystery of the Zel Gux Dynasty by Michael Terracciano and Garth Graham

2. Kid Eternity book one by Ann Nocenti and Sean Phillips

3. Total Suplex of the Heart by Joanne Starer and Ornella Greco

I didn't buy many TPBs or GNs last year, but these were my favorites of what I did get. Star Power volume 3 might be my favorite in the series, as it's sort of an Indiana Jones-style quest involving figuring out puzzles and passing trials to unlock an old secret. I didn't even know Nocenti wrote a Kid Eternity book until Googum reviewed an issue of Random Happenstance. There is a lot going on in that book, as usual for Nocenti's writing, but that makes it fun to try and dig through. Total Suplex of the Heart was a more personal book about someone trying to figure out what they really wanted and then trying to get it, while also coming to some sort of peace with themselves, but it pretty heartfelt and messy in good ways.

Favorite Manga (anything purchased in 2024):

1. Cross Game volume 7, by Mitsuru Adachi

2. The Crater, by Osamu Tezuka

3. One Piece vol. 43, by Eiichiro Oda

In contrast, I bought a lot of manga in 2024. Some of it better than others, some of it I'm withholding judgment until I see how things play out. For example, the first volume of Yakuza Fiance had a really cool moment that the book then undercut a few volumes later, which diminished my feelings somewhat.

But the 7th volume of Cross Game had plenty of the baseball action that reminded me what I like about the series, and The Crater offers a lot of different sorts of stories by Tezuka. I definitely don't understand all the historical context that informs a lot of them, but the stories still work even from my much-different temporal and cultural perspective. Volume 43 of One Piece is a major turning point in the Ennies Lobby arc, when it looks like the Straw Hats, having beaten what looked like the major antagonists, find out their troubles are really just getting going.

Favorite Writer:

1. Ann Nocenti

2. Eiichiro Oda

3. Ryan North

I would say think of these less as rankings, and more as me just selecting one writer each from new comics (North), manga (Oda), and the tpb/back issue stuff (Nocenti). North's very good at coming up with clever problems for his characters to confront and solve, Nocenti's work always has a lot of things going on with it to dig through, so even if I can't follow some of it, there's still plenty to hold onto. And Oda, for all that it's a story about a bunch of kids deciding to be pirates, can put a lot of heart into it about despair and the abuse of power and how sometimes you have to decide to break unjust laws to do the right thing.

Favorite Artist (min. 110 pages):

1. Mitsuru Adachi

2. Kevin Maguire

3. Adam Warren

I considered ditching the 110 page restriction, but deciding to simply stop restricting it to new comics. So any artist that I bought 110 pages worth of their stuff this year was fair game. With Warren, I've been tracking down his various Dirty Pair mini-series. I mostly got the earliest stuff, but it's nice to watch the progression of his art over time as the lines get thicker, things get more exaggerated and frenetic, the panels full of all sort of machinery and speed lines and everything else. Maguire is courtesy of all those Justice League International issues I grabbed at that convention last January. It's all about the expressiveness of his art and the comedic timing. As for Adachi, I love the way the action on the field is portrayed, the small panels focused on specific moments, while also being able to sell quiet moments and the funny parts.

OK, that's it. We're done with last year. Forward, to a most likely horrifying future!

2024 Comics in Review - Part 4

Only five artists made it to 110 pages this year. There were a few others with a shot - one more issue of Babs and Jacen Burrows was in -  but close doesn't cut the mustard here! Niccola Izzo (Blow Away) and Marco Finnegan (Morning Star, Calavera P.I.) each reached 110 pages. Roge Antonio was somewhere between 110 and 130, because I don't know how to divide up issue 4 of Deadpool between he and Eric Gapstur.

In the end, it came down to either Carlos Gomez (Fantastic Four) or Alessandro Cappuccio (assorted Moon Knight stuff.) Gomez had 150 pages, but thanks to the first issue of Fist of Khonshu being 25 pages, Cappuccio just edged past him with 155 pages, making this two of the last three years Cappuccio's been the most prolific artist in pagecount.

Night Thrasher #1-4: Dwayne Taylor's back from the dead (courtesy Secret Wars), but has decided the best thing to do is close the Taylor Foundation's doors and start fresh somewhere new. Unfortunately, there's a lot of stuff going on in the old neighborhood he might have to address first. J. Holtham writes, Nelson Daniel draws, Matt Milla's the color artist.

High Point: I think Holtham's sets up a nice internal conflict for Dwayne. He thinks he's better off going some place without the baggage, that he can still help people, but without feeling dirty for using a Foundation that started from something ugly. But the "baggage" includes people who relied on him, or looked up to him, like Elvin (aka, Rage.) Dwayne ultimately can't walk away from them, so he can't walk away from the neighborhood.

Low Point: The end, where Dwayne is able to convince the local councilman (concerned with preserving the neighborhood, including the locals and their lives) and the heavy-handed cop (concerned with protecting the gentrifying upscale businesses) that, really, they want the same thing and should work together. That was the least believable part of the mini-series, and possibly the least believable thing I read in a comic the entire year.

The Pedestrian #1-4: Joey Esposito and Sean von Gorman's story about a town that seems to drag you down. But there's a mysterious stranger looking out for people, even as there's another presence encouraging others to give in to their worst impulses and just rage and destroy.

High Point: I like that they introduced a handful of regular folks, each of whom are in some sort of frustration with their life, and then have them react in different ways. The scene in issue 3 where the "Don't Walk" sign is flashing and each time it flashes, another of the creepy guys appears around. That was some effectively ominous build-up.

Low Point: I still don't really get what's going on with the dimension with the enormous stoplight, other than it seems to possess someone to get them to act as its avatar. The whys and wherefores have not been explained so far.

Power Pack - Into the Storm #1-3: Louise Simonson and June Brigman with a story of the Power kids and Franklin Richards getting caught up in a struggle with a Snark princess out to reclaim her ship, and a Brood Queen out for revenge. The theme of all the kids, regardless of species, struggling to meet their parents' expectations while still being themselves had some legs, but there was too much other stuff in the mix.

Red Before Black #1-3: A former soldier tries to bring down a drug lord to get out of prison, only to end up on the run with the lady she was supposed to kill to prove her bonafides. At least so far, I'm enjoying this better than anything else of Stephanie Phillips' I've read.

High Point: The odd jungle Val descends into when she gets too stressed/has a PTSD episode is well-rendered by Goran Sudzuka (artist) and Ive Scorcina (color artist). And the notion Leo can see it for some reason could be interesting. I'm also curious if Phillips has the two main characters become friends, or remain unwilling allies against all the people breathing down their necks.

Low Point: There hasn't really been anything too bad yet. Um, I wish Leo was listening to a different book on tape in issue 3?

Rogues #1, 2: I think this was El Torres bringing back some characters he'd published at a different company previously. Bram and Weasel do different stuff for money, and it usually doesn't work out too well for them from what I can tell. And speaking of things not going well, Scout solicited 6 issues of the book, but only managed to ship 2!

Vengeance of the Moon Knight #1-5, 8, 9: So after MacKay killed Moon Knight off at the end of the previous volume, he did this, where the rest of the cast try to continue the work. Except there's an imposter Moon Knight running around. Then Blood Hunt got going. Alessandro Cappuccio drew the first five issues, Devamlya Pramanik the final two, Rachelle Rosenberg did the color work on all of them.

High Point: I was pretty pleased with myself for guessing the Shroud was the phony Moon Knight after issue 2. Look, I don't get many predictions right, let me have this one. I mentioned Rosenberg's color work yesterday. I like the version of his costume Pramanik uses, where most of the bodysuit is black once you get past the chest and the guards on the shins and forearms. I think it looks a little cooler than the all-white costume.

Low Point: That said, I didn't love the Shroud getting used as the unhinged, second-rate antagonist good guy here any more than I did when Mark Waid and Chris Samnee did it in Daredevil. Poor dude's a punching bag every time he pops up for the last decade. Also, I refused to buy the Blood Hunt tie-ins, so they go here by default.

Werewolf by Night #1: Jason Loo and Sergio Davila with what seemed like a Werewolf by Night/Elsa Bloodstone team-up book, where Jack thinks he's lost control of his wolf side, but there's probably more to the story. But Loo brought the Hood into the mix, and Davila makes Jack's werewolf form look more like a were-gorilla and I just wasn't having it.

Alright, tomorrow, the ranking of things against other, arbitrarily similar things!

2024 Comics In Review - Part 3

After a couple of years of buying from 13 different publishers, it was down to 10 this year. If certain things had shown up as solicited, it might have gotten to 12, but that's not how it worked out. With Diamond filing for bankruptcy, I wonder if the downward trend is going to reverse. Only 3 publishers - Marvel, Boom!, Mad Cave - got more than 5% of the total, and Marvel was the only one that broke 10%. And obviously, all the other publishers combined didn't come close to adding up to Marvel's total.

Jackpot and the Black Cat #1: Mary Jane's doing the superhero thing, but in trying to help the Black Cat (who is being blackmailed via app), ends up blackmailed herself. I figured the app had become sentient, which Fantastic Four had done literally two months earlier, so I didn't want to deal with that again, and didn't care enough to hang around and see if it was something different (I think it turned out Felicia's new girlfriend was the one behind it all.) But at least Celeste Bronfman and Emilio Laiso got a little more creative with MJ's powers than MacKay was during that lousy Dark Web tie-in.

Laura Kinney - Wolverine #1: We just reviewed this last week, but writer Erica Schultz seems to be having Laura Kinney respond to Krakoa's fall by trying to protect any mutants in the most ham-handed, counterproductive manners possible. Giada Belviso's art works better in the quieter scenes. Postures and proportions start to get weird during the action. Still, I'm curious to see how long Laura can keep just charging into problems and attacking everyone that tries to help.

Metamorpho - The Element Man #1: Only one issue to work from, but Al Ewing and Steve Lieber seem to going for the same vibe as the original Haney-written series, right down to the happenin' lingo and oddball villains. I'm far from the biggest Ewing fan, but if he can avoid turning this into another story about stories or myths or whatever, I'll probably hang around a bit.

Midnight Western Theatre - Witch Trial #3, 5: One of these issues actually shipped in '23, but I couldn't get it until 2024. Ortensia loses her adoptive mother figure at the same time she learns said mother figure had been keeping things from her all along. Ortensia decides to embrace her alleged destiny in a way where she's at lest setting the terms, although she still needs outside interference to actually get the bad guy. I don't know if Louis Southard will ever get the third mini-series published, or if Butch Mapa will be the artist if he does, but they make a good creative team.

Moon Knight - Fist of Khonshu #1-3: We'll get to the series that preceded this tomorrow, but at any rate, Marc Spector's back and Jed MacKay's got him trying to bring down a drug dealer. Not having much success so far. Lost his house, got the cops on his ass, Tigra's pissed he didn't tell her Hank Pym's not dead. Alessandro Cappuccio was back as artist for the first two issues, but Domenico Carbone drew issue 3, so I wonder if Cappuccio's moving on.

High Point: Rachelle Rosenberg's color work is aces. She's helped keep a consistent feel to all these Moon Knight books Mackay's written, even as the artists keep changing. Domenico's art is at lot rounder, the lines less sharp than Cappuccio's, but the book still feels the same. On another note, he's not a major part of the book, but I like that 8-Ball sticks around. That Moon Knight didn't throw him out, but let's the guy stay and work. And 8-Ball is presumably smart enough to figure he gets beat up less this way.

Low Point: As always, MacKay's pacing is not something that really works with me. Stories seem to move very slowly, then accelerate suddenly all at once for the conclusion.

Morning Star #1-3: By writers David Andry and Tim Daniel, plus artist Marco Finnegan and colorist Jason Wordie, a mother and her two children travel to the forest where her firefighter husband died, to scatter his ashes. Then one of the kids goes missing, and there's all kinds of weird shit in the forest.

High Point: The different ways the members of the family had adjusted to the guy's death was interesting, at least in theory. The older daughter who tries to take over as protector, but doesn't get to be much of a kid. The younger brother who retreats into imagination. That kind of stuff.

Low Point: I don't feel like Finnegan's art was a good match for a series that needed things to look weird. It works on Calavera P.I., because even as a skeleton, Calavera basically acts and dresses like a human, and everyone else appears to be human. It sort of ignores the weird until it's relevant. But here, the weirdness seemed like a big part of the point, and while there were some panels that were ominous, on the whole it differentiate the weird stuff from the normal people caught in it.

Ms. Marvel - The New Mutant #1-4: Kamala tries to resume her life as Ms. Marvel now that everyone hates and fears her as a mutant. Including all her friends and family who were mindwiped of her death. Meanwhile, that one ORCHIS scientist is still messing with Kamala, via reanimated corpses of various X-Men. And her powers are acting up. Iman Vellani and Sabir Pirzada were the writers, Scott Godlewski drew 3 issues, but Rob Di Salvo drew issue 2.

High Point: Kamala fighting her own reanimated corpse, complete with the mutant (movie-esque) powers that haven't activated yet. And winning via essentially hugging her other self felt appropriate for someone who only occasionally wins with punching. That it turns out her powers are freaking out because the X-Men were so arrogant as to resurrect her with her powers, without considering the role the Terrigen Mists played in them. Excellent work, X-Morons! Great hustle!

Low Point: Issue 2, where Kamala gets roped into helping Lila Cheney rescue a bunch of her fans from Mojo, by making Ms. Marvel (pretending to be Lila's drummer) into a viral sensation. Except it seemed to have nothing to do with the rest of the mini-series - beyond maybe the notion she could only become as popular as she once was by being someone else entirely. Except it isn't like she was popular with her old friends, it was just a bunch of goobers watching Mojo TV that liked her.

I should have described this as the day where subtitles run amok. Anyway, tomorrow covers the entire back half of the alphabet.

2024 Comics in Review - Part 2

Only 94 new comics this year. Which is down 25 from last year, and the lowest non-2020 year by 13 comics (2021's 107 comics). Couple of causes. One, I dropped several books after 1 or 2 issues (one of which we'll look at in a minute.) Two, a lot of stuff didn't ship, or didn't ship as often. Scout Comics alone had around 13 books I expected to see sometime in 2024 that just, didn't materialize.

All that being the case, Marvel went way up in percentage from 2023 (59.57% vs. 49.58%), despite having 3 fewer books (56 vs. 59.) It's Marvel's biggest piece of the pie since 2017. DC did drop a little, from 9 books to 3 (7.56% down to 3.19%), though there wasn't much room to drop. It was the other publishers that took the real hit, from 51 comics to 35 (though that's only a drop from 42.86% to 37.23%.) Either way, it's the other publishers worst year since. . .2017. Why can't I get anything good to revert to 2017? I'd like to be 7 years younger right about now.

Coda #5: The conclusion to Si Spurrier and Matias Bergara's return to the adventures of Hum and Serka, as they try to stop two different forces, each with a following that want to surrender control of their life to something or someone that promises to make it all make sense. It's not a perfect ending, but that's part of the point of the story: perfect doesn't exist, but you do the best you can.

Dazzler #1, 2: And here's a mini-series I abandoned after two issues. I wasn't invested enough in the mystery of who was staging these attacks on Dazzler, and some of the characters' decisions didn't make a lot of sense, or were immediately contradicted. Domino agrees Dazzler shouldn't use her powers in an offensive (meaning, to attack) way if she's attacked, and Dazzler agrees, only to ditch this at the end of her fight with Scorpia at the end of issue 1. Also, the lyrics for her songs are awful. So I wasn't digging Jason Loo's writing on any level, and Rafael Louriero's art wasn't bad, but also wasn't going to keep me buying the book.

Deadpool #1-9: Cody Ziglar puts Deadpool initially on his own, save his symbiote-dog daughter, Princess. But he's targeted by the leader of a strange cult and needs money to find him, so he brings in Taskmaster and becomes a full-fledged merc business, until his other daughter Eleanor shows up. Then Deadpool dies. Then, by which point Ziglar's sharing writing credits with Alexis Quasarano, Deadpool comes back to life. Roge Antonio draws most of the issues, albeit one with Eric Gapstir, and Andrea Di Vito draws the other 3.

High Point: The friendship between Eleanor and Princess is alternately sweet and funny. It was nice to see the book avoids having the two in some rivalry for their dad's affection. Likewise, that we learn in issue 8 that Deadpool and Valentine's relationship failed because the two of them couldn't find work-life balance, rather than the sort of disasters that usually mark Deadpool's relationships.

Low Point: I'm still not sure what Death Grip's fascination with Deadpool was (is?). Also, I'm not sure about Eleanor's inherited healing factor giving her aspects of Taskmaster's ability (at a much slower rate.) Mostly though, I'm wondering where the heck Preston is? Her adopted daughter just up and vanishes, now there's a girl Deadpool running around and Preston is, apparently, doing nothing about it?

Deer Editor #1-3: Ryan Lindsay and Sami Kivela, who teamed up on Everfrost, team-up again in a story about a newspaper editor (who is a deer that walks on two legs and talks) who starts digging into some weird stuff about the mayor and finds vampires.

High Point: Kivela's art is excellent, and finds a balance in drawing Bucky moving like a human, and the times where he moves or acts more like a deer. I don't know why the character's like that, as Lindsay doesn't go into it (not explaining things seems to be a trait of his.) The ending leaves certain things unresolved, but I think Lindsay makes that work within the context of the story. Bucky's not a cop, or even a private eye. He broke open a particular story. Now he's on to the next lead, even if it's for something else.

Low Point: There are some things that happen or are revealed in the third issue that feel rushed or kind of cheap. A character not only isn't dead, he's been acting as a mole for months, which we'd seen none of.

Doctor Strange #13, 14: Dr. Strange needs to get his hands on a sentient D&D book, and recruits a bunch of other characters Jed MacKay's written recently to help. Mordo gets involved, it's a whole thing. I really would have liked more time on them navigating the game aspects of the situation they were in, but MacKay treated it more as everyone being in a generic swords n' sorcery setting, like Kulan Gath showed up again.

Dust to Dust #1: It's only been one issue so far, but there's a rich guy throwing his weight around, a sheriff with a jaw bone he's got no answers for, a photographer in from Chicago, and a bunch of people looking for greener pastures elsewhere. I have no idea how all of that is going to combine.

Fantastic Four #15-20, 23-27: Let's see, with Ryan North writing, Steven Cummings drew an issue about Ben and Alicia's daughter trying to prove shapeshifter are good and cool. Francesco Martarino drew the issue about Val and Franklin nearly dooming the world with a universal solvent. Ivan Fiorelli drew the conclusion of the story about an app gaining sentience, plus Reed and Johnny's Halloween adventure. Carlos Gomez drew all the other issues, involving time travel, alternate universes, Trapster getting everyone stuck in a noir. You know, the usual stuff.

High Point: Nicki's impression of her dad in issue 27 was pretty funny. So was the Halloween issue, as Johnny's boredom gets him to egg Reed into indulging his curiosity in bad ways. The skull with it's little top hat that says "bleh" while it spews blood cracked me up. I think I liked issue 20 the best, though. Ben and johnny competing for Employee of the Month at the grocery store. Gomez drawing Ben with a pencil taped to his finger to act as a stylus or to punch buttons was a thoughtful touch. cash registers are not built for fingers like The Thing's.

Low Point: I guess I could default to the two Blood Hunt tie-in issues, since I just skipped them. As far as issues I bought, the one where Doom's magic shield sends them back in time. Not that the notion of an Earth where the Moon never formed isn't intriguing, but how easily Reed tosses off a solution kind of diminished the scale.

Tomorrow, a bunch of stuff I, for a variety of reasons, bought 3 or fewer issues of!

2024 Comics in Review - Part 1

OK, here we go! I was a little annoyed the weather delayed the post office getting me those last 3 comics. Then I remembered how in 2014 and 2015, I couldn't do this until February because of that useless guy that was running the store I used to buy from. Third week in January doesn't look so bad now. Same format I've used since 2009, so I'm not going to waste time explaining it.

Avengers Assemble #1-4: First four issues of a 5-issue mini-series about a special "emergency response squad" version of the Avengers, where whoever's at the mansion responds. Steve Orlando's writing it, but with a different artist in each issue (Cory Smith, Scot Eaton, Marcelo Ferreira, and Valentina Pinti, respectively), though Sonia Oback's been the primary colorist for each issue.

High Point: The mix of done-in-one missions, with the Serpent Society scheme building in the backdrop is a nice idea. The Red Ghost being hunted by the ghosts of all the apes he experimented on that didn't get powers was a cool idea. I like that Orlando brought in a few unusual choices like Night Thrasher and Lightspeed to go with old stand-bys like Captain America and Hawkeye. Having the same colorist helps the book maintain a similar feel from issue-to-issue (though none of the artists are so wildly different as to be distracting.)

Low Point: This thing really needs more than five issues. Orlando and the artists are trying to show the characters interacting at the mansion, but it's got to be confined to just a couple of pages. Because there's still that issue's mission to explain and confront, plus devoting pages to the Serpent Society plot. So there's not really time to build any sort of subplots out of those character interactions. Also, the fact that character voice balloons keep showing, "AVENG.E.R.S." How would they even say it like that? Just call yourselves Avengers and be done with it.

Babs #1-4: Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows with a story about a warrior lady, trying and mostly failing to make a buck in your sort of generic medieval fantasy world (albeit one filtered through Ennis' sense of humor.)

High Point: The backstory for Babs the group of angry nerds managed to piece together in issue 3 was pretty funny. For the range of things she's apparently gotten tangled up in, and how often they've terribly for her. It's a lot of those smaller bits that I enjoy, like Babs' harmless encounter with the cursed group of undead warriors needing directions to the next town they need to haunt. With little gags like the futility of even enchanted hair care products when you're a cursed, shuffling corpse.

Low Point: As far as the larger plot, with the knight vowing to expel all the "weird" creatures from the lands, when he's really just putting them into slavery, I'm just waiting for the point when Babs hopefully kills the guy in some suitably humiliating and painful way. Until then, Tiberius Toledo and his Make This Generic Fantasy World Great Again stuff is just irritating noise.

Batgirl #1, 2: Tate Brombal and Takeshi Miyazawa are trying to explore Cassandra Cain's relationship with her mother. With the added difficulty of super-powered ninjas trying to kill them both for reasons that haven't been explained yet, but I hope are not going to annoy me.

Black Widow and Hawkeye #1-4: Stephanie Phillips and Paolo Villanelli with a story where Hawkeye's on the run for killing a Russian diplomat, and the Black Widow's trying to help him, but neither of them is really listening to the other. Also, the Black Widow has a symbiote now, and Damon Dran's involved.

High Point: I like the flashback parts that seem to be set during the '60s era, even though I don't think the continuity lines up. But there's no symbiotes, which is a definite plus. The conceit behind the series, that Clint and Natasha's friendship has become reduced to each of them dropping everything to help the other whenever their in danger, and that not being a great basis for friendship isn't a bad notion, though I have no idea if it actually holds up to scrutiny if you actually check their recent comic history.

Low Point: I mentioned the symbiote, right? Neither character needs one, but they both end up using it at some point.

Blood and Fire #1-3: A samurai accompanies his lord to the death of his elder brother, only for them to fall prey to an ambush by the other brother. The samurai attempts to return to his wife and child, only to end up on a quest for revenge. Aaron Wroblewski writes it, with Ezequiel Rubio Lancho as the artist.

High Point: The art is mostly in black-and-white, save the blood that gets splashed around from all the swords (plus all the arrows to the throat.) But makes it eye-catching, and Lancho's very good at using his shadows as things take a turn towards supernatural horror in the third issue. I was very sure I knew how things were going to go after the first few pages in issue 1, and they took a route I didn't expect, but in a way I really enjoyed.

Low Point: I didn't really have any complaints with it. Wroblewski and Lancho seemed to have a pretty straightforward goal with the story they wanted to tell, and they did it.

Blow Away #1-5: A photographer tries to rebuild her career by capturing proof a rare bird is nesting high up on a frozen mountain. Instead, she captures video evidence of a murder. Or does she? Zac Thompson's the writer, with Niccola Izzo as artist and Francesco Segala and Gloria Martinelli as the color artists.

High Point: Thompson, Izzo, and the colorists really work well together to make the audience question whether anything nefarious took place. Thompson gives Brynne a backstory where she kept digging when people told her to stop, and it ended in blood, but keeps the specifics hidden for a few issues. So you can wonder if she's overzealous, or desperate for a story. And Izzo keeps the characters distant enough, even in the video playbacks Brynne's scouring, that they aren't much more than stick figures Segala and Martinelli apply a splash of color to. So Brynne sees a shove, but do we see that? It's nicely done.

Low Point: The fifth and final issue didn't really clear up as many things as I would have liked. We know whether Brynne saw what she thought she did, and some people who were involved. The way the sheriff was acting doesn't really make a lot of sense, and I'm still only halfway confident I understand what the hunter guy's role was.

The Body Trade #1, 2: Zac Thompson again, this time paired with Jok as his artist. A man who is complicit in the death of his own son, finds out a company offered to pay the kid's medical bills in exchange for getting his body after death. But the man wants his son's body to bury, so he's gonna get violent about it. But I didn't really care about him, and while the art may fit with how twisted and broken everyone in the story is, I didn't like looking at it either, so I stopped buying it.

Calavera P.I. #1, 2: Marco Finnegan with a story about a private investigator who returns from the dead for one night to help an old friend locate her missing son. The person who orchestrated the kidnapping wanted him brought back, though the whys haven't revealed themselves. Honestly, the characters didn't seem to be showing much urgency in issue 2, given  Calavera's got just the one night to crack this case. Maybe he'll get the lead out in issue 3.

That's Day 1 (and a crapload of mini-series) out of the way.

Sunday Splash Page #358

"Career Counseling," in Midnight Western Theatre: Witch Trial #4, by Louis Southard (writer), Butch Mapa (artist), Sean Peacock (colorist), Buddy Beaudoin (letterer)

Released in late-2023, Witch Trial is set mostly in 1857, 9 years after Ortensia Thomas died (and six years before Ortensia meets Alexander), only to live again. She's been traveling with Sarah Bishop, a witch that happened to find her in the woods, ever since. Learning how to deal with supernatural threats, but growing tired of a life of constant killing and death and weird magic rituals involving her horse (which Ortensia named "Horse"). And so, when a charming (and older) man named Jamie Corson shows up, treating her like a lady and buying her dresses, Ortensia starts to wonder if maybe she can have a different life.

As it turns out, Corson is nothing so benign as your run-of-the-mill creep, any more than it was coincidence Sarah found Ortensia to begin with. Ortensia learns some rough news about herself, as well as that people have been trying to manipulate her for years to what they think are best ends. Then she has to decide what to do with that knowledge.

I think it suffers a bit from the common issue of prequels, that we have some idea how things are going to turn out. Ortensia isn't going to die, or at least won't stay dead any more than she did last time. Neither is the Plague Doctor up there, since he appeared in issue 3 of the first mini-series. But the first mini-series left enough things unanswered that there's a fair amount of ground to cover, especially in regards to how Ortensia became the mostly-hardened badass she is by the 1860s. It's a situation where she has to grow up very fast, all at once, and learn to judge things for herself. She had mostly just followed Sarah's lessons, and then it wasn't clear how much she really liked frilly white dresses, so much as Corson told her she looked good in them and should wear things like that. After, she won't take others' word on things, and tends to set the rules for how things will be (deciding not to kill Alexander, but on her terms, for example.)

Mapa's art isn't more realistic than Hahn's was, but is a little more detailed. Corson's true nature, as something very different from anything Ortensia and Alexander faced in the first mini-series, allows Mapa and Peacock to be a bit wilder with the designs. Corson sometimes just looks like a bright, jagged outline or crackling blue-white, with teeth and eyes that hint at a face, but don't remain in one place. Peacock's color work is more of a gradation than Ryan Cody's was. Lots of shading and gradually shifting to black rather than sharp delineations as the lines as Ortensia thought she understood them in her life begin to blur and smear. That they become rigid once more by the time she meets Alexander I guess means she's settled on a new definition of right and wrong when she decided to seize her own destiny.

There was an ad on the back cover of the last issue promising at least one more mini-series. But given the way Scout Comics has fallen apart - and especially given that Southard was pretty outspoken in the ways Scout didn't honor their contracts - I doubt it'll ever see the light of day, unless at another publisher.

Saturday Splash Page #160

"Masquerade", in Showcase #73, by Steve Ditko (writer/artist), Don Segall (writer), Charlotte Jetter (letterer), colorist unknown

As a general rule, if I have an issue of a series courtesy of my dad's comics, I use that issue. Problem being, of the two issues of Showcase he had, issue 75 (Hawk and the Dove) didn't have a splash page, and issue 79 (Dolphin) only had one, of two guys in scuba gear looking in shock at something off-panel. So I ended up using a different Ditko issue at least, courtesy of DC's The Creeper by Steve Ditko collection.

I think the book often acted as a test flight for new characters and concepts. Do the origin bit, the powers, a bit of the personality, some sort of conflict that can be resolved, but with a nod to how there could be more adventures later. That way, if fans like it, it's easy enough to do more. The Silver Age Flash is probably the biggest success story, So in The Creeper's case, Ditko and Segall show he's an outspoken and unapologetic TV host, who gets himself in enough hot water with the sponsors he's shifted to "network security", investigating threats to the station.

Except his first gig is taking over for a reporter that got roughed up trying to track down a professor who escaped the Iron Curtain, but is in danger of being taken back, courtesy of some crooks working with those dirty Commies. What that has to do with network security I can only guess, unless we're counting Jack Ryder getting shot so a valuable reporter doesn't. Or, since the station is doing the job for the CIA, maybe it's to keep the CIA from tarring the station as un-American.

Anyway, Ryder gets shot, but finds the scientist, who saves him by injecting a serum into him, while also hiding a device that allows a person to disguise their clothes in Ryder's bullet wound (which seals up shortly after the serum injection, so Ryder can't take it out.) Ryder clobbers the crooks and the Reds, while playing at being kind of nuts by laughing constantly, which freaks out his foes, but doesn't help his image with the cops. So he's considered an enemy of both crooks and the public at large, with powers and a presto-chango costume gimmick the side effects or longevity of which he doesn't know. All of which can act as drivers or conflict if people want to see more.

Hawk and Dove left it open-ended if the teens would even want to keep using their powers, not the least of which because their hardass judge of a father declared that these vigilantes who saved his life should turn themselves in. Dolphin. . .decided she didn't fit in with surface people after all and went back beneath the waves. Which is not as great a hook, but it kind of feels like the hook there was, "cute girl in cut-off jeans and a tight sleeveless shirt."

I don't know what the success rate was for characters taking off with the fans. The Creeper got a series, that died in 6 issues. I guess Phantom Stranger and Spectre got runs in books they shared with other features, if not headliner status. But Dolphin never got above maybe C-list, and I'm not sure characters like Manhunter 2070 or Firehair even got that far. Still, it only takes a couple of successes to make it worthwhile from the company's standpoint.

What I Bought 1/15/2025

Diamond filed for bankruptcy apparently. I know that doesn't automatically mean death in business, but it doesn't seem like a good sign. It isn't the worst thing for the distributors to have competition, rather than a monopoly. But I did like being able to go to one place and check out all the comic publishers and what they were offering. Found a lot of books I probably wouldn't have otherwise. Oh well, it's out of my control, unless I get stinking rich and suddenly decide I want to be a businessman (the latter is far more improbable than the former.)

Laura Kinney: Wolverine #2, by Erica Schultz (writer), Giada Belviso (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - I guess the back of the claw can't cut.

Elektra asks Laura to let her handle the transfer of a mutant kid. Laura declines. The buyer escapes with the kid, who has the mutant ability to explode, so that's not good. Elektra and Laura alert Mayor Luke Cage (that's weird to type, but preferable to Mayor Wilson Fisk or Jonah Jameson) that the kid is going to be used in the middle of a protest against Cage repealing Fisk's anti-vigilante laws. Cage asks Laura not to get involved. Laura declines. Then she nearly starts a fight with a bunch of protestors, and the kid blows up. Great hustle, Laura.

So, in a continuation of last issue, Laura's very angry and taking it out and everyone. Especially anyone advising her to exhibit patience, caution, good judgement, you name it. It's funny to watch her complain that people think she heals instantly, but gunshots take time to heal (and still hurt), without considering that maybe the way she's fighting is why her healing factor is having so much trouble keeping up. Laura knows how to be silent and sneaky, I've seen it in other stories. She's the one choosing to leap into every fight yelling and hacking away like she's in a particularly lucid berserker fury. She jumps on top the getaway car instead of maybe slashing through the tires to slow it down.

And now it's literally blown up in her face - assuming that last page wasn't some sort of fakeout - so we'll see if that prompts some sort of reflection or adjustment. Or maybe she'll just keep barging ahead, trying to help people to escape her frustration with how Krakoa fell apart. Either/or.

Avengers Assemble #5, by Steve Orlando (writer), Jose Luis (penciler), Oren Junior (inker), Sonia Oback (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Cap-Snake, he's gonna get you! Cap-Snake, he's. . .I don't know where I was going with that.

It's the Avengers against the Serpent Society (plus Cap-Snake.) That's it, that's the issue. The key seems to be the Avengers do demonstrate teamwork and cooperation, where each member of the Society fights on their own. Anaconda's clearly not going to be able to hold Hercules, but no one leaps in to try and blind him or poison him for the time he is caught. Meanwhile, because Hawkeye's holding back against Cap-Snake, Night Thrasher steps in to get Cap-Snake off his back. Which frees up Hawkeye to give She-Hulk some back-up against Titanoboa.

This feels like a place where the mini-series needed more space, because as unfamiliar as some of these characters ought to be with each other, you'd expect teamwork not to come so easily without practice. Also, speaking of Titanoboa, I kept expecting a surprise reveal on that guy's identity. He's strong and large, and able to shrug off punches from She-Hulk and attacks from the Wasp and Photon. But he also keeps boasting about how well he knows the Avengers and their tendencies. Which made me think it was some typically more cerebral villain who ganked Pym Particles or something. But if it's supposed to be anyone we've ever heard of, Orlando's not telling.

Wonder Man deals with the Serpent's Tears by. . .inhaling the lot of it, reasoning that he's not really flesh and blood, so it might not affect him. Given Pit Viper claimed it would affect the soul as well, the fact Simon's gamble works out would seem to imply certain things about his existence. I guess all the dying and returning has to have some drawbacks, depending on how critical you think a soul is.

Maybe Pit Viper can expound on it, if he's in any state after the one-two punch of feeling shocked that Mephisto might have sold him a bill of goods (shocked Pikachu face), and getting his body crushed by Lightspeed's rainbow trail. I though that trail was just light, immaterial, not solid like the trails that follow the bikes in TRON. Learn something everyday, too bad so much of it is of little use.

Past Time - Jules Tygiel

The book is a series of essays about baseball and the U.S. Not how baseball shaped the country's culture, especially given that the team owners are so often reluctant to embrace new things. More how the sport's changes reflect the attitudes of a given time.

So Tygiel might have an essay about Bobby Thompson's game-winning home run against the Dodgers in 1951, and how more people than ever were experiencing the game via radio and even the newer medium of television. Then he'll discuss the challenges faced in trying to adapt to a new way of describing a game to fans, and how many of the team owners resisted broadcasting games, as they many resisted airing them over radio, because they believed fans wouldn't come spend money at the ballpark if they could just listen (or watch) at home.

Which is a far cry from the state of things today, where it's all about TV (or streaming) money, and once teams have that guaranteed money locked in, a lot of them don't see any need to, you know, put together a team that would bring fans to the park by being good enough to compete for a championship.

Some of the essays are more interesting to me than others. Chapter 6, "Unreconciled Strivings," was a brief, but informative look at the Negro Leagues and the various challenges they faced. The push to have more of the teams owned by black people rather than white, and how hard it was to get a stadium of their own, rather than being stuck renting say, the Yankees' stadium when they were on road trips. At the same time, the teams were often trying to encourage white fans to come to the games (mostly without success), to get bigger turnouts. That Sunday games were the only ones that tended to draw big crowds, because that was the only day most black Americans had free to go to games. So teams scheduled a lot of double-headers on Sundays, and unofficially encouraged teams to make sure their best pitchers were available for Sunday games. The push-and-pull between wanting baseball to be integrated, but also not wanting to lose these leagues that were uniquely theirs.

In contrast, I didn't find Chapter 3, "Incarnations of Success," useful or persuasive. It details the rise of four players: Charles Comiskey, Connie Mack, John McGraw, and Clark Griffith. Each later became a manager, and still later, owned their own teams. Each of the four during their playing careers joined various movements to get better pay for the players, or break the reserve clause that meant one team held their rights for as long as it wanted, only to start pushing to reduce player salaries once they were on the management side of things. But that wasn't terribly surprising, and I'm not sure it really highlights anything specific about the United States in the first decades of the 20th Century that wasn't true in lots of other places across the globe and at different times.

I'm not sure the book would be of any interest to a non-baseball fan. It probably isn't in-depth enough about broader history to entice someone in that regard, and the writing can be fairly dry. The amount of humor or energy is reliant on the quotes or anecdotes Tygiel pulls from for each essay.

'Baseball did not appeal to Americans, as many have suggested, because it took less time to play than cricket or townball. The architects of the game deliberately adopted an out and inning structure designed to compress play into the time available for games.'

What I Bought 1/11/2025 - Part 2

Last Friday, once I got through a nerve-wracking drive to work in the snow that had me (not for the first time) questioning my life choices, I took a break for a walk at mid-morning. I got about two steps out the back door before being reminded that the frozen precip the previous weekend never melted back there. Slipped on the ice beneath the fresh snow and got to test the structural integrity of the back of my skull against the ice. Results: inconclusive.

In the meantime, here it is: The last comic from 2024. A first issue, no less. Oooh-la-la. We'll start up the Year in Review posts next Monday.

Laura Kinney: Wolverine #1, by Erica Schultz (writer), Giada Belviso (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - If you're not going to kick too, why even bother extending the toe claws?

Laura is not really settling into life after Krakoa. When she finds a place in the tree base the X-Men had in New York where people have been leaving letters asking for help, she decides to focus on that. So, that's the basic plot: have Laura try to help mutants now that there's no safe island nation. In this case, she's looking for a boy with the ability to give people different emotions, who was taken away from his sister. 

Laura finds the boy, but also finds the ones controlling him are mutants, too, which really pisses her off. I had pictured her as too jaded to be surprised by the notion of mutants exploiting each other for personal gain. But I wasn't keeping track of what she got up to on Krakoa, so maybe she really bought into the notion of mutant solidarity and is angry to see that fall apart.

Angry enough she's just bulling ahead into everything like the Juggernaut. She gets torn up and tossed around a fair bit, because she's fighting stupid. She didn't make any attempt to figure out what she was up against, just charged in and started slashing. She accuses a mutant who created a small safe space for mutants in Dubai of doing so out of guilty conscience. Guilty over not moving to Krakoa? Probably worked out all right for her. Laura does apologize later, though the vague way Polly uses the term "benefactor" makes me think that's going to be a big reveal at some point. By the end of the issue Laura's pursing another letter right into a fight with Elektra.

It all makes it look like Laura's just trying to keep moving so she doesn't have to deal with what losing Krakoa meant to her. Keep busy, do concrete things like helping specific people. Don't think about the people she couldn't protect from ORCHIS. (I'm honestly afraid to ask about Gabby/Honey Badger/Scout's current status.)

Belviso's art reminds of Humberto Ramos'. Mostly in the elongated faces (especially the mouths), and the elongated and angular limbs. The people Belviso draws aren't nearly as oddly proportioned as Ramos' would get, but it has that same sort of feel. I'm not sure if that's a good thing; I was never a Ramos fan (going from Mark Buckingham to him on Peter Parker: Spider-Man gave me whiplash worse than cracking my head on the ice did.) But he clearly has his fans, and Belviso's can handle the quieter moments fine from what I saw here. I'm less sure about the action sequences, which could be a problem if Schultz is going to keep having Laura pick fights.

Three Strangers (1946)

A lady (Geraldine Fitzgerald) approaches two strangers (Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet) separately, and asks them to try a ritual where if 3 strangers ask a favor of an idol of Kwan Yin (goddess of fortune and destiny) at the start of Chinese New Year, she will grant it. In this case, it's a sweepstakes ticket related to a highly-touted horse that will run in a big race later that year. Fitzgerald hopes the money would show her husband she can stand on her own, which will convince him to return from Canada. Greenstreet thinks the money would help him get a spot in an exclusive club for lawyers. Lorre just wants to buy his favorite pub.

They take part, agreeing to split the winnings if their ticket is chosen and the horse wins, but it will be some time until any of that happens. So in the meanwhile, the movie moves between what each of the three get up to in the interim. Fitzgerald's husband returns, but only to request a divorce, as he met someone else in Canada. What seemed like a sort of flight of fancy takes an uglier glint as you see how fixated she is on her goals. Fitzgerald gives her an increasing hint of mania as she tries to make what she wants a reality.

Greenstreet returns to his practice, especially handling the funds of a wealthy widow, who communes with her husband's spirit. He plays it as a skeptic with high regard for himself, and little for anyone else beyond their opinion of him. Lorre gets mixed up in a warehouse robbery that ends in the murder of a police officer and has to go into hiding with one of the other culprits while the ringleader is on trial. He's very relaxed, in a pickled haze that enables him to remain unconcerned, and in a bit of surprise, clear-headed in bad situations.

The movie is similarly structured to On Our Merry Way, although the three stories are slightly more interconnected. Only slightly, as Fitzgerald, Lorre and Greenstreet don't overlap or interact outside the beginning and end of the film. But there is the connection of the legend and the sweepstakes ticket, and how the characters try to get their desires even before they know if the ticket will work out. The movie had a chance to at least tie the thread of Fitzgerald's husband more neatly into the conclusion, and passed it up. Missed opportunity.

As it is, two of the characters are undone by their particular obsessions, and their inability to cope with the reality they won't get what they want. Meanwhile the third shows more fortitude and integrity than anyone would suspect, and is, in a way, rewarded for it.