What I Bought 2/26/2025

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

February: always finding new ways to mess with me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transistors Can Do Most Anything

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things Are Muddy in May

May's solicitations were a bit strange, mostly for what I didn't see. Certain companies (Scout and Mad Cave) didn't show up at all on the Previews site, so I don't know if that's them going under, them having an entirely fallow month, or them breaking things off with Diamond. But let's take a look at what I did find.

What's new that's coming out? The first, and most important, thing is a new volume of Bandette! It's been so long I'd assumed Tobin and Coover were just done with it, but apparently not. Granted, it doesn't come out until July, but it was in this batch of solicitations.

Marvel's got another It's Jeff!, collecting the digital comics. Marvel's also got a new Gwenpool mini-series, but from what I gather, it's Gwenpool Classic teaming up with Spider-Man because someone's brought back Gwen Stacy and made her into a grim Gwenpool. Something like that. I can't see myself buying it, but maybe subsequent solicits will make it sound better. 

Cosmic Lion has the first issue, volume, something, of Bone Grinder by Raymar Brunson. The solicitation says, 'A vengeful rebel and a violent cyborg must team up to save the last city on earth,' and that's all. Appreciate the brevity. Anyway, the cover was striking enough I lingered, so it merited mention.

What's ending? The final issue of The Surgeon is solicited, although the book is about a month behind, so I expect issue 6 won't show up until June.

And the rest: Fantastic Four is still in tie-in hell. Hopefully I'm not sick of that by then, considering One World Under Doom will still have 5 months to go. Moon Knight's in more trouble, Deadpool's trying to settle scores with Death Grip, Laura Kinney Wolverine, well, I started this post last Friday, but having read issue 3, I'm done with that mess. That Thing mini-series resolicited issue 1, which is not encouraging.

Metamorpho's got to explore another dimension to fix some major problems, while Batgirl is giving us some new history of Lady Shiva's past. Not sure anyone was crying out for that. I decided I'm not going to bother with Secret Six after all, but Resurrection Man: Quantum Karma will be up to issue 2.

Bronze Faces and Mine is a Long, Lonesome Grave will both be on issue 4 in May. I still have no idea how long the latter of those is, though the solicit makes it sound like it's nearing a conclusion. Great British Bump Off is on issue 3, and I guess we're really going to see if John Allison and Max Sarin can make even quilting entertaining to me. Nothing like giving themselves a challenge.

And that's it. Image's solicits weren't on the Previews page, but I did find them, and there was nothing about Dust to Dust. Although issue 2 apparently came out at some point without me noticing until last weekend. This disintegration of the distribution system is becoming a real pain in the ass. Like I said, no Mad Cave, so no Dark Pyramid or Past Time. Although I just went and checked last month's solicits, and neither of those books is listed any longer, so I don't know what the hell is going on.

Bird (1988)

In my continuing attempts to, I don't know, understand or appreciate jazz, the Charlie Parker (as played by Forrest Whitaker) biopic directed by Clint Eastwood. Probably futile on my part; I couldn't really discern anything wrong when Buster Franklin (Keith David) was playing nothing but B-flats in the scene where Charlie gets a glimpse of what rock n' roll is going to be like. And there were times I wondered if Charlie was playing off-key notes when he was clearly supposed to be killing it. Tone deaf, I guess.

The movie is set near the end of Charlie's life, starting with his attempted suicide by drinking iodine, with flashbacks to earlier parts of his career throughout. Eastwood doesn't spend much time on Parker's life prior to being a success. The opening shot is Parker as a child, blowing on a whistle as an older sibling tows him on a tricycle. A few shots of him practicing on the porch in the same neighborhood. His first encounter of Buster Franklin, where Charlie doesn't play too well and gets "gonged", and run off the stage.

But mostly it's the steady decline of Charlie Parker's career, set alongside his relationship with and his wife, Chan (Diane Verona.) Their meeting in clubs in New York, arguments, his health problems, his drug problems, the death of their daughter. Perhaps appropriately for a movie about a jazz musician, Chan and Charlie's relationship seems all about the things they don't say. Especially on Chan's end. Verona always seems like she's on the verge of saying something, but never does. And I don't mean something angry or hurtful necessarily. When he leaves the house in the countryside where they're staying to head into town for a possible recording gig, Verona looks like it's on her lips to tell him to be careful, to come back, maybe to not leave at all, because she's afraid he won't come back. But she doesn't. She hugs him while trying not to cry, and he drives off into a very different landscape from what he remembers.

There's a conversation between Chan and a psychiatrist at Bellevue, where Charlie ends up after the iodine drinking incident, where Chan refuses the suggestion of shock therapy because of Charlie's gift. That she isn't willing to sacrifice the musician for a husband. I don't think it's money concerns, so much as the musician is part of what she loves about him. But, again, that isn't said outright.

(Chan Parker gets thanked at the end of the film, I guess for providing a lot of information or acting as consultant, but it does make me wonder how accurate some of this is. Not like Charlie Parker was alive to give his side of things.)

Eastwood keeps Whitaker's face in a circle of light most of the time. When he's on-stage playing, the great musician people want to hear and meet, and when he's at home, having another tense conversation. In contrast, Verona's face is often in shadows, especially during those conversations with Whitaker. Like her life's been eclipsed by his, and so she's trying to keep him together so her life doesn't disintegrate along with him.

Whitaker plays Parker as this guy who is talented and witty and confident, but also so certain he's doomed that it sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. He's shown a body in the morgue of a guy who used heroin and ultimately died, and told that'll be him, but sooner because he started even younger. And he always seems to come back to that mindset. That his sand is running out, so he tries to push now. Make the folks in California appreciate bebop, make the tour, make the recording, make it now. And when it feels like he's stymied, his frustration boils over and he sinks back into drugs, or alcohol if he's trying to stay off the drugs.

The scene where he learns his daughter died and he spends an entire night, just calling Western Union to send telegrams to Chan, then hanging up, dialing again and ordering another telegram. Even after he's gotten strung out, he keeps making calls, keeps ordering telegrams that are alternately formal, personal, desperate. The part where there's a lady he picked up at a party that evening apparently there watching this the whole time, to the point she's crying at the sight of this guy wrecking himself physically to match how wrecked he is emotionally, gave it an element of the surreal I'm not sure was intended.

What I Bought 2/21/2025

The snow last week was not considerate. It waited until the long weekend was over and I had to go to work. I ended up taking Wednesday off just because the roads were getting worse all day Tuesday and I did not feel like messing with that.

And now it's 60 degrees outside. February, everybody!

Laura Kinney: Wolverine #3, by Erica Schultz (writer), Giada Belviso (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - What did those poor pallbearers ever do to you, Laura?

Laura survived the explosion, though it blew the flesh off her hands and part of her face. Not sure how she's lifting and manipulating her hands given there's no muscle of circulatory system visible, but whatever. Bomb's been taken to a hospital, under O*N*E supervision, but Laura, still healing, sneaks in with Elektra to speak to him.

They get just enough information to track down the guy that sent the kid off to explode, but by the time they find him, he's holding a dead man's switch and threatening to blow up half a block. I'm not clear on if he wants them to let him go, or if he's just planning to go suicide bomber. Either way, Elektra keeps him from releasing the switch, Laura stabs him, he's arrested, the heroes go their separate ways. Then Bucky (looking a lot like Sebastian Stan) shows up at Laura's apartment. Sorry, I'm not calling him "The Revolution" unless he shows up with Prince (who hopefully is still alive in the Marvel Universe.)

This book is not working for me. It feels like it's just going through the motions. If Laura is so concerned about Bomb, why does she quietly accept he's been taken somewhere by O*N*E when she returns to the hospital? Shouldn't she be rushing recklessly after him, to rescue him from being locked up somewhere after he was abducted and used to stage a terrorist attack? That was how she handled the missing kid in issue 1, and everything else so far. If the point is she's trying to exercise patience, because rushing in like a lunatic hasn't worked very well, give us something in the writing that reflects that character beat. Because as it's presented, Laura just decided, "eh, good enough," and went home to eat Chinese takeout.

For that matter, why is Esger drawn looking regretful as he sends Bomb off to explode on page 1, but by the end of the issue he's yelling about how he was the only true believer in his group, and he's willing to die to kill two mutants (one of whom isn't a mutant, because it's Elektra?) He goes from, 'Now, I know you don't wanna. . .' to 'Mutants will be wiped from the earth!' in the span of 15 pages.

Hell, why does Bomb go along with the plan at all? Esger takes the power dampening collar off and just sends him into the crowd by himself. Even if Bomb can't control his power so an explosion was inevitable, and I don't know if that's the case, no one made him walk into the protest. There's no indication he thought, "well, if I got to explode, I might as well kill this particular bunch of assholes." He seemingly just did it because the plot demanded it.

Maybe this is all something Schultz intends to loop back to later. I'm half convinced the lady in the first issue that runs the sanctuary for mutants is actually the front for, essentially, a trap. Mutants come in expecting safety and get sold off to whoever has a need. (Not unlike how Genosha was presented in the '90s cartoon.) But that's me guessing, because there's, at best, vague hints in the book so far. And that's something that might play out. Eventually. At some point. In the here and now, there's really nothing in the comic - writing or art - that makes me feel like I've gotta know what happens next.

Sunday Splash Page #363

"Moon Doggie", in Mooncop, by Tom Gauld

Mooncop is about a cop, on the moon. Shit, I used that line to open myreview of this book 6 years ago. Eh, it's a good line. It stays.

Whatever the unnamed officer's dreams about the moon were, the reality is that his life is very dull. Gauld includes a lot of silent panels of the cop moving across the lunar surface in his aircar. Most of the buildings are dark. If he passes a lunarbus, there's at most one passenger. The story introduces characters: a girl playing in an area she's not supposed to, an elderly woman with a dog, the curator of the museum.

One by one, those characters leave and the officer is left questioning the point of his presence. The sole exception is a young lady assigned to the doughnut shop. (Neither she or the cop are ever named, though most of the other characters are, curiously.) The shop was previously an automated kiosk, but somehow, amid the exodus, got upgraded. It's a disconnection between the people living on the Moon and those on Earth. Gauld draws everything in profile, discouraging us from getting too involved with the officer's growing feeling that nothing he's doing matters and nothing is really working out right. We're spectators, sitting back and watching it all play out.

But life on the moon, as presented here, feels very isolated. Most of the officer's time is spent in a sealed spacesuit, whether on patrol in his car or on foot. He can lose the helmet at least inside buildings and talk with others more readily, but those scenes are always brief. Soon enough, he's sealed up and sealed off again, unable to reach anyone as all these people he knows keep leaving him behind.

The book ends on a hopeful note, that someone with a fresh perspective can help you appreciate your situation.

Saturday Splash Page #165

"Restroom Condition: Poor", in She Bites #1, by Hedwig Hale (writer), Alberto Hernandez R. (artist), Dave Lanphear (letterer)

Set in 1997 Pittsburgh, She Bites is about Elsie, a 134-year-old vampire that needs an adult to buy smokes and booze for her, and Brenda, the teenager willing to take the job so she can earn enough money to fly someplace scenic to kill herself.

Issue 2 and half of issue 3 are spent at the local mall, buying Elsie as many of the things she wanted as one could get in the mall. So Hale and Hernandez have a lot of humor centered on what appears to be a small girl wanting to look at porn, or calling people 'a slag,' among other terms. Hernandez gets to draw Elsie scowling or leering at people. But that's part of the fun, Elsie gleefully saying or doing whatever she likes, and for a time, getting Brenda to enjoy herself and join in, rather than worrying about if other people are watching or what they think.

This is also where Brenda is confronted with her arch-nemesis, a "mean girl" type named Amber. Which also, via the medium of taunting and bullying, is how we get a better picture of some of Brenda's family issues. Outside that outburst, Hernandez draws Brenda as someone who tries to make herself as small as possible. Slumped shoulders, eyes averted. The brief confidence she shows during her job interview with Elsie evaporates as soon as she goes into the bathroom.

With only 3 issues to work with, Hale and Hernandez have to speed-run things. So Elsie has to have a couple of conversations with Brenda about the value of life, from the perspective of someone who has ended lots of them. Brenda has to reach her limit and chew Amber out, which creates a whole mess she and Elsie have to clean up. It seems unlikely for Elsie, who is prickly, impatient and petty, to grow to care that quickly about Brenda wanting to kill herself, but Hale words the advice in such away that you can believe Elsie just really wants Brenda to stop whining so they can get on with Elsie watching Brenda eat something from Sinnabon.

The story was left with enough things open-ended that there could be more, but I don't know if Hale and Hernandez have any interest in following up on it, or if sales were good enough to justify it, and that's without getting into the part where this was published by Scout Comics, so who knows if that messes things up.

Random Back Issues #147 - Spectacular Spider-Man #160

We'll check back in on these two later.

We looked at the previous issue 4.5 years ago, but today, Spidey's problem isn't random villains attacking him. At least not yet. Today, it's villains - Rhino, Hydro-Man and Shocker - fighting each other in what Spidey describes as beef over guys stepping on each other's turf. Probably shouldn't have used 3 villains primarily associated with the same hero, then. Especially since two of them were in the Sinister Syndicate together. Spidey drops the trio with one blast from his new powers, only to have onlookers start throwing crap and claiming 'super-creeps' like Spidey are 'worse than muties.'

Scumbag paparazzo Nick Katzenberg loves what he sees, hightailing it to Jameson's apartment. Jonah, his wife Marla, and Robbie Robertson's attorney (in prison over something involving Tombstone), Cynthia Bernhammer, are watching Congressional hearings on the proposed Super-Human Registration Act. Jonah is, of course, grousing that he's been telling people for years these costumed types were menaces, only now he doesn't have a paper to crow about it (because Thomas Fireheart, aka the Puma, bought the Bugle out from under him.) In a few months he'll have a new magazine running, but for now, he can only seethe. Katzenberg offers the photos, but wants a salaried position as staff photographer. His other condition? Jonah has to blackball Peter Parker. Oh no, Peter won't be able to work for a skinflint yellow journalist responsible for 20% of Spider-Man's rogue's gallery?

While all this is going on, Dr. Doom's got some guys pulling the TESS-ONE robot out of the muck off New Jersey. One of the guys nearly lets the (adamantium-coated) robot fall (into seafloor mud) due to not properly securing a secondary clamp. Doom considers letting it go, then kills the guy anyway, by shooting his air tank and letting him suffocate, all while lamenting incompetent help. That's what you get for not hiring union labor, Doc.

When Doom brushes off a summons from the other head villains, Loki (in his businessman disguise) and Kingpin pay a visit. Doom's not holding up his end of these acts of vengeance. Doom argues that he's got them a perfect weapon to destroy Spider-Man and has TESS identify Spidey as a super-soldier and smash a big-screen TV with his image. Doom brushes off Kingpin's concerns the robot might turn on them by saying it's under his complete control. Loki astutely, and quietly, notes that's the problem.

Peter returns home, but when MJ makes a comment that his new powers do make him look kind of menacing, he flips out, accusing her of siding with 'creeps and proto-fascists,' then jumps out the skylight before she can get him to calm down. Swinging across the city, Peter reflects he needs to apologize, and that he's still having a hard time not over-reacting to his heightened senses. Which is about when his spider-sense starts screaming, as TESS tears through the building he's clinging to.

Peter monologues how annoying these attacks are getting as he saves an officer worker from falling to his death and keeps onlookers from being hit by debris when TESS smashes what I assume is a statue of Columbus. The onlookers, of course, blame Spider-Man, which brings us back to the image at the top of the post, as Spidey encourages the robot to step into the ring for a few rounds. Let's see how that turned out.

TESS gets knocked clear across town into the Queensboro Bridge, where it begins to repair itself by drawing on the bridge. A new device Doom built into it, with the notion TESS would eventually draw on Spidey's new energy to rebuild itself. For now, the 'bot's content to throw cars. Spidey catches the first, the driver asking him to be careful of the paint. The next, the driver pleads for Spider-Man not to hurt her, even after the robot threw her. Fed up, Spidey unloads with enough energy to blow TESS to bits, shouting, 'I've Got Your Menace Right Here!' Which might be the most New York thing he's ever done, though points deduction for not gesturing to his crotch at the time.

All the drivers decide that, this time, they're better off spitting hate from the safety in letters to the editor and the local bars. Look, it's barely 1990, internet message boards aren't widely available yet (thank goodness.) That evening, Doom plucks what's left of TESS-ONE's head from the river bottom. It couldn't gather enough of Spidey's power to rebuild itself, but it still got a sample, so Doom figures he's made in the shade.

(Note: He is not, in fact, made in the shade.)

{10th longbox, 9th comic. Spectacular Spider-Man #160, by Gerry Conway (writer), Sal Buscema (artist), Bob Sharen (colorist), Rick Parker (letterer)}

Mirrored Heavens - Rebecca Roanhorse

The third and final book of Roanhorse's series finds Serapio in control of the city of Tova, dealing with people who feign obedience while plotting behind him, and enemies lurking beyond the borders ready to strike. Naranpa has journeyed to the far north, seeking to understand and wield the powers of the Sun God that exist within her. Xiala makes an uneasy return to her homeland, only to realize it was ill-prepared for what involvement in war brings.

Each of three has been touched or selected by a god to act as an avatar, and so each has to make their own attempt to come to grips with that, and to try and hold onto their own desires in the face of their god's will. Xiala seems to fare best, but she's also the one whose god isn't locked in a struggle with its opposite. It feels significant that Serapio was forced on this path as a child by adults too wrapped up in their own desire for revenge, and Naranpa had high ideals of how she could reform Tova and the Watchers' role in it once she became Sun Priest, Xiala fits into neither case. Whatever role her mother, the queen, tried to impose on her Xiala escaped it for years, and she never sought a position of leadership, but uneasily bore it when the situation demanded it.

And then there's Balam, who started all this when he hired Xiala to captain a boat taking Serapio to Tova. He has his own dreams of becoming a great ruler, but he's always acting in the background. He taught himself blood sorcery, which requires someone pay, but he's very good at getting other people to do the paying. Whatever claims he makes about loving Serapio's mother, he's ultimately in this not for love or not duty or even revenge. He just has an inflated image of himself.

With this being the homestretch of the story, characters start dying, and Roanhorse's writing is a little frustrating to deal with there. Sometimes she'll give the initial impression, via one character's perspective, that another character died, leaving me impressed she opted to kill that character then, rather than wait for the climax. Except we find out a few chapters later that they survived. Then later in the book we're again given a situation where one character is certainly confident that they've killed another, enough they don't watch to make sure. This time we're apparently meant to take it that, yes, the character in question really did die. But it's hard for me to do that given the earlier surprise.

To be fair, I think it annoyed me because she had Lord Tuun somehow survive when Xiala called up a freaking kraken to attack Tuun's boat. Especially since the only explanation we're given is Tuun survived by sheer luck (Tuun's words), which is not much of an answer. Tuun does meet a bad end, but I'm rarely satisfied by one scumbag getting it in the neck from another.

Still, the book is easy to keep reading, fast-paced and with a nice mix of tension and calmer scenes. Roanhorse is good about choosing when to switch between plot threads, as sometimes she'll stick with one character or another for a few chapters in a row, while other times she switches between them each chapter. There are a lot of moving parts, but she keeps the characters largely distinct and with their own arcs or conflicts, their own decisions that can impact what the main characters do.

'Men crumbled, blood erupting from their ears as they vomited. Others flopped and jerked on the ground. The remaining spearmaiden staggered to her feet and cocked back her arm, ready to launch her spear.

Xiala modulated her voice, reaching for a minor note, and hurled it at the maiden. The woman shattered. There was no other way to explain it, as her body burst into pieces.'

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Now well on in years, to say nothing of the mileage, Indy gets roped into looking for the famed "Archimedes Dial", which is being sought by his goddaughter (played by Phoebe Waller-Bridges), and a Nazi scientist (Mads Mikkelsen) that helped the U.S. put men on the Moon.

It's, fine, I guess. Didn't need to be 2.5 hours. The last act, the whole thing on the plane and the time travel, that all goes too long. Why is Boyd Holbrook's character machine-gunning Roman trimeres? I guess so he's not involved in the fight in the back of the plan between Harrison Ford, Mikkelsen and Waller-Bridges, and because he's an idiot whose first response to anything that mildly inconveniences him is, "shoot it." But it felt unnecessary. Just do the bomb bay doors bit earlier and have him fall through, too. Nobody was going to be sorry about fewer scenes with that character.

Of course, I'm not sure how Mikkelsen's character survived getting knocked off the Nazi train in 1945 by colliding with one of those mail bag hook things. Not just survived, the guy doesn't even look like it scratched him. I expected them to at least give him a disfigured face when he popped up again in the 1960s.

There's a few set good pieces. Indy's escape on horseback through the parade. The chase in Tangiers, complete with Waller-Bridges' jilted mobster fiance as an added complication. Mangold seems to take the same approach to those that Mel Brooks takes with jokes: If you didn't like one, just wait a moment and there'll be another.

Ford gives Indy a proper amount of weary, sour old man energy The gripe about how going to the Moon is like going to Reno, except no blackjack, cracked me up. His students aren't distracted because they want to bone him, they're just bored. Their eyes are on the future, while his are on the past and what he's lost. He doesn't ever really seem excited until the end, when it looks like he's going to stay in the past, in a literal sense. Mikkelsen's not much different, except he's certain he can change the past.

(I appreciate the movie did not do a thing where Indy has to decide whether to let Mikkelsen kill Hitler or not. I was very concerned that was the direction they were going for a minute.)

It falls to Waller-Bridges to bring a little spark of joy to the proceedings, which she does fairly ably. She's a bit of early - Temple of Doom/Raiders of the Lost Ark - Indiana Jones. "Fortune and glory," though it's more "fortune and excitement" for her. Or maybe just fortune. She talks fast, with a quick wit, keeps her cool even when Tangiers cops are trying to keep her in one spot until said-jilted mobster fiance arrives. She's tried to wall off her heart from people she's lost, or who disappointed her (Indy's been remiss in his godfather duties), treat people as tools to get herself out of trouble. But she can't quite manage it entirely. For a good chunk of the film, you're left wondering (I was, anyway) if she's just waiting for the right moment to betray Indy, which is a nice bit of ambiguity.

A Match Made in a Nightmare

Leave that kind of information for your anonymous tumblr.

Yakuza Fiance is about Yoshino Somei, the granddaughter of the head of a Osakan crime family, and Kirishima Miyama, the grand-nephew of the head of a Tokyo crime family, considering getting engaged, as a sort of peace accord between eastern and western Yakuza.

In the first volume, Yoshino a year in Tokyo as sort of a "get-to-know-you" thing with Kirishima, even attending the same school, leaving her in an unusual position. On the one hand, people here don't avoid her like they did back home, because none of the students know she's essentially a mafia princess. But it also means the girls that swoon over Kirishima feel free to bully and gossip about the new girl that everyone apparently thinks has call girl, or 'divorced mom'(?) looks. And Yoshino is in enemy territory, so to speak, with no friends or family, no one to rely on but Kirishima. And while he smiles pleasantly a lot, every so often she catches a glimpse of something that makes her wonder.

In those scenes, writer/artist Asuka Konishi typically either shades Kirishima differently, or replaces his typical, closed-eye smile with one where his eyes or narrowed. Or, once he reveals his true colors after saving Yoshino from some creeps, draws him with one eye narrowed more than the other, like he's either in pain or nuts (see the image at the top of the post.)

Shaken by what she's learned and been told - Kirishima explains he's bored of her already, because she's not the vicious bitch he hoped for, and suggests she sell her body to be useful - but ordered by her grandfather to hang in there for a year, Yoshino finally shows her own true colors. Konishi's kept her being extremely polite with Kirishima and everyone else, but the scenes of her with her grandfather showed she's prone to dramatic reactions. Still, with no choice but to meet Kirishima's crazy with her own, Yoshino responds with a move that made me stop and go, "Oh shit." Unfortunately, that only convinces Kirishima she really is the kind of girl he hoped for, and now he's infatuated.

(Konishi will undercut Yoshino's big moment in a couple of volumes, which was disappointing, but probably a wise decision in the long run.)

Yoshino hasn't exactly leveled the playing field, her internal narration and behavior still shows she's extremely nervous around this lunatic masochist, but she's not holding herself back out of fear of disgracing herself. Konishi has her slip into less formal speak - the word "youse", for example - as a sign of her Kansai dialect, or shorten words by leaving off the "g", which is what Kiyohiko Azuma used for Yotsuba's grandmother. (The English dub of Azumanga Daioh gave the character from Osaka a Texas accent to distinguish her speech from the other characters.) Konishi also adds either a dark aura around Yoshino, or covers the background in shadows that seem to bleed down the panel.

The story's concept is interesting, although Kirishima is so off-putting, even after he's smitten, that it's hard to want to see he and Yoshino interact. Putting a tracker in her electronic dictionary is just creepy, and since Yoshino yelling at him doesn't seem to produce any noticeable change in behavior, it's not exactly satisfying. But I do like Yoshino, who seems kind, but with a stubborn and contrary nature that makes her fun to read about.

Sunday Splash Page #362

"Sea Monkees," in The Monkees #9, by Jose Delbo (artist), writer, colorist, letterer unknown

These wider splash pages are always a pain, but you can click on the image it you want to see it without it being cut off.

Anyway, courtesy of my dad's collection, this is the only issue I have of the 17 the book ran, but I assume it's fairly typical. Three short stories where the band gets involved in hijinks that allow the creative team to do a montage of gags based around one theme or the other. Like the Monkees using all the communication possibilities of the late-1960s to spread the word about a hot dog stand to help its business.

I covered this comic in greater depth in Random Back Issues #44, so you can check that out if you're dying for more info. I compared it to Family Guy, but honestly, the attempts at humor here at least relate to the plot of the stories. It's just the plots are wafer-thin.

Saturday Splash Page #164

"Jungle Idol," in Sheena: Queen of the Jungle #2, by Marguerite Bennett and Christina Trujillo (writers), Moritat and Dimi Macheras (artists), Moritat and Casey Silver (colorists), Thomas Napolitano (letterer)

I never really got into the whole "jungle hero" genre. Even beyond superheroes, I gravitated to Westerns or detective stories (as you've no doubt surmised if you've read this blog for any period of time.) Tarzan didn't interest me, and while the Savage Land is a cool setting, I always more interested in seeing characters that didn't normally hang out there get thrown in the deep end. If Ka-Zar or Shanna show up, that's fine, but I'm not doing cartwheels about it. 

But, what the hell, give it a try. Dynamite does so many variant covers, it's not hard to find a copy of a given back issue cheap, put together a run of a series that only went 11 issues, counting the 0 issue. I don't know how much of what Bennett and Trujillo are doing here is well-established lore and what's new stuff they came up with, but it's definitely a lot weirder than I expected. Like, a ruthless corporation flouting the law to try and exploit natural resources? Trouble with the local wildlife? Yeah, I expected that stuff.

Temples that have doorways to other realms, realms full of beings that attempt to copy and replace whatever they encounter? Sheena's dagger is made of some special metal that can hurt them and/or seal the doorways? That I wasn't expecting.

Bennett and Trujillo also have Sheena encounter one grandparent from each side of her family, and neither meeting goes well. Her paternal grandfather is the head of the evil company, and doesn't realize the odd young woman he derides as a 'violent primitive,' and uses a shock collar on, is actually the daughter of his son, who died in a plane crash in the mountains. Her maternal grandmother, on the other hand, understands who Sheena is straight off, or at least that she's a descendant. But Grandma - who has aged very gently - is of the opinion all outsiders ("Cowodi") need to die. Which includes the goober on the ground up there, who became a determined, if not competent, ally for Sheena. In both cases, the grandparent is too blinded by their own pain and loss to recognize or appreciate who's in front of them, refusing to accept anything other than someone who thinks exactly like them.

The series also brings up - and again, I don't know if this is established lore or something new - that Sheena's parents met because her mother was forcibly removed from her tribe in the Amazon and put in one of those school like they have here in the U.S. where they wanted to sever any connection between Native American kids and their own culture. It makes me wonder about the nature of the relationship Sheena's parents had, something she either doesn't know or just doesn't think about.

Moritat last about 4 issues as artist, and then is replaced by Maria Sanapo (with the occasional assist from other artists.) Sanopo's a bit more consistent on figures, faces less exaggerated. Feels like there's a strong element of Frank Cho in her work, albeit with 90% fewer panels focused on a woman's ass than you'd get with Cho. Moritat tends to treat proportions and whatnot as suggestions or vague guidelines. The looser approach works well for the more monstrous or inhuman elements than Sanopo's steadier art. Unfortunately, the Face-Stealers and Death Blossoms and whatnot don't really become prominent until after Moritat's departed.

There's been at least one more Sheena series from Dynamite since, but I don't know if it's following up from this one, or just kind of its own thing.

What I Bought 2/12/2025

The snow we got this week was kind enough to fall on the day I had off. That's not sarcasm, I would rather it fall on a day I don't have to go anywhere. I can just sit and watch it, or take a leisurely stroll (or a brisk run, because I'm like that sometimes), rather than risk being on the road with people who don't know how to drive in crap weather.

Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu #5, by Jed MacKay (writer), Devmalya Pramanik (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Are we letting Vermin be a fist of Khonshu now? Standards are dropping all over the place.

While Marc was fighting Vermins last issue, the rest of the cast were out trying to do the work. So he didn't send them away to run the risk of being caught, he was just being a sulky baby and they got tired of waiting for him to snap out of it.

Badr and Soldier tried to pay a visit to a woman with a sick kid, only for her husband to refuse the medicine because the news says they're bad guys. Tigra, Reese and 8-Ball were fighting a gang of Frankensteins that come around to cause trouble every year. Although it looks like the real fight is about to be between Tigra, who is ticked at Marc, and Reese, who can't stop putting her two cents' worth of psychoanalysis into everyone else's business. Kind of want to see Tigra haul off an bust her one in the chops.

By the time they get back to the underground lair, they find one Vermin (who looks like a white guy, did people forget Edward was black, or did that change at some point?) handcuffed to a pipe. Marc, meanwhile, is fighting the drug dealer. And it's interesting that, after he seemed at odds with Steven and Jake in the previous issue, they're all on board with this fight. Or maybe the other two just figure that if Marc's gonna do this, they want him to do it right.

Which he doesn't, because it turns out this Achilles dude is an Asgardian. And I guess Marc either doesn't get boosts in strength based on phases of the moon any longer, or that's not enough to cut the mustard here. Pramanik occasionally switches from basic rectangular panels to these arced panels that bend over or around one larger panel. I thought initially it was to signify a shift in the fight's momentum, like one style when Marc's got the upper hand, the other for Achilles, but I don't think that's the case.

It's more that it switches to curved panels when one of the voices in his head is putting in their two cents. So the perception of the fight is being filtered through their way of seeing it, maybe? The last time it gets used is when Khonshu's pointing out Marc hasn't paid enough attention, or done enough research on what he's fighting, and draws attention to the fact this big goon doesn't have any scars. I guess a gold tooth doesn't count.

Good Enough to Dream - Roger Kahn

Roger Kahn had written several other books on baseball, most notably The Boys of Summer, about the Dodgers and Jackie Robinson, but in this one, he's focused on the minor leagues. Specifically, the 1983 Class A (meaning, at least three levels below the majors), independent (meaning, unaffiliated with any major league franchise) Utica Blue Sox.

Kahn's writing about them because he, in a series of events that are largely not interesting enough for the amount of pages devoted to it, becomes president of the team. So, in addition to talking about the players and managers, and the fights with umpires and the grind of a season with no off-days for over two months, he also talks about the challenges of running a minor league team that doesn't have any financial backing from a big league club.

Kahn has to pay off the $3,500 debt the team's previous owners owed the power company, has to arrange for a bus service to get the players to road games, has to devise promotions to bring in more fans, sell advertising, on and on. The people helping him are varying degrees of competent and relatively new to running a ball team, so the lack of knowledge factors in.

During a critical game late in the season, Kahn is informed by his general manager that she didn't purchase enough baseballs, and the team may risk forfeiting if they run out. Which leads to Kahn calling sporting goods stores until they locate a guy willing to drive back to his store and sell them more baseballs, all the while the game is still playing. Or the attempt to honor one of their players on his birthday by turning off the field lights and having the fans hold candles and sing "Happy Birthday", runs a-cropper because nobody thought about the fact the field lights have to cool off after being shut down before they can be turned back on. Leading to a nearly 20-minute delay which nearly made the Blue Sox forfeit.

Kahn's an engaging writer, witty at times - the kangaroo court sequence on the bus is hilarious - thoughtful at others, willing to poke fun at himself when his big ideas (like the birthday stunt) fail. He captures the interpersonal forces at work on the team. The players whose nerves get to them, or who worry about how being so far from home could end their marriage. The players' frustration with the manager, Jim Gattis, who is never satisfied and constantly haranguing them about something. Is that driving them to play better in the hopes he'll shut up, or does it cause them to burn out? If he's giving them grief when they win 80% of their games, how much worse can he be when they go on a losing streak? Kahn, at least as he presents himself here, is trying to walk the line of supporting his manager and not pulling rank, but also trying to get the man to ease off for the good of the team. Of course, as he presents himself here, I'm not sure how effective he is, especially at reining Gattis in.

One bit on a purely baseball note that interested me, was the sense the Blue Sox had that the rest of the teams resented them for making the other teams look bad. After all, the Blue Sox's roster was full of players those same franchises had either discarded or never considered at all. For the castoffs to beat the ones deemed worthwhile made all the guys whose business was to recognize talent look bad. It's not so much the pride aspect that intrigues me, but that the other teams wouldn't jump at the chance to grab a guy one of their opponents discarded, especially once he showed he had a little juice. Maybe things were different in the '80s, less analytically cutthroat. Or maybe it's just the difference between getting outsmarted by someone you regard as a peer (a guy with the same job as you, but for a different big league club), versus someone you think is a piker compared to you (an independent team.)

I wonder how much of that was real versus perceived by the Blue Sox. Gattis is presented as clearly believing the league is conspiring to keep them from winning the pennant, and Kahn relates a few occasions where he tries to talk up some of his players to people in the offices of those other teams, only to be blown off. But Gattis seems perpetually aggrieved, and most of the Blue Sox are old for the level of competition. Maybe only by a year or two, but that is regarded as significant sometimes.

'Barry Moss found himself in a perplexing role. Gattis wanted to show the other players that he indulged no favorites. Even though Moss had grown up with him and even though Moss was his confidant and coach, Moss, the player, was a favorite target. Sometimes, in one of Gattis' daily sermons, he paused and turned to Moss and said, "Barry, in the fourth inning you looked real horseshit chasing that low inside pitch." Pause. Inhale. "Real horseshit."'

What I Bought 2/5/2025 - Part 2

I had Weird Al's "Your Horoscope for Today" stuck in my head most of last week. 'The position of Jupiter says you should spend the rest of the week facedown in the mud,' seemed particularly resonant, and I'm not even a Cancer. As to whether I'm a cancer, that's a different question entirely.

Batgirl #4, by Tate Brombal (writer), Takeshi Miyazawa (artist), Wayne Faucher (inker), Mike Spicer (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - The guy at the store asked if Cass was using those throwing stars or if they were thrown at her. I asserted it was probably the second option.

So Cassandra trusts basically none of the people Shiva's thrown in with, but while they argue, the Unburied launch a surprise attack on the train. In the form of one of their guys blowing himself up while inside the train. Brombal introduces two more "grandmasters" to go with that Kalden guy. Chodak's a big guy whose voice balloons have thicker-than-normal lines, suggesting a deep voice. Nergui speaks in whisper and carries giant golden (magic?) scissors. The designs are distinct from each other, while sticking to the general pattern the Unburied followed, but nothing wildly creative.

That's about all we get on them, besides the fact they can fight pretty well. Shiva tries to withdraw with Batgirl, and it turns out Shiva has a few of those special flower petals. What a shock, he said insincerely. But she does confide in Cassandra that she thinks everything that was "soft" in her went into Cassandra, and not wanting to acknowledge that part of herself may be why she left her daughter to David Cain. Before that conversation can go anywhere, the grandmasters catch up, Cass gets KO'ed in one hit by Kalden, and Shiva's a prisoner. Cass used to be able to take more of a punch than that.

One thing Brombal keeps coming back to, either in Cassandra's captions boxes or Shiva's comments, is who is Cassandra, really? In this issue, she keeps trying to think of what Batman (who she calls her father, and I don't love that, given how much of a controlling dickhead he was back in her first ongoing series) would do. But it doesn't seem to be working well for her. Either she can't come up with a plan fast enough, or the "plan" is just "beat everyone up." Cassandra's been defining herself as being different aspects of the people who matter to her, or by rejecting others, but it's like trying to map a territory via negative space. You might get the boundaries, but the specifics are lost.

I have no clue what conclusion Brombal will have Cassandra reach, but I guess that'll come when this arc concludes.

Rough Night in Jericho (1967)

Dean Martin plays a former lawman turned mob boss, basically. Oh, he plays outwardly nice, that Dean Martin charm as he explains that he only owns 51% of the hotel, 51% of the casino, the saloon, this thing that thing. But when one of his men is killed by a shopkeeper that decides to stand up for himself, Martin shows up with a mob of guys and cows the deputy into letting the shopkeeper be dragged out and lynched in the town square.

One of the few people in town that hasn't sold out is the local stagecoach business, but it's hard to make money when your stages keep getting bushwhacked. But the owner (played by Jean Simmons), has made a partnership with an old marshal and his deputy (John McIntire and George Peppard, respectively.) But the marshal was wounded on the way in, so while he's laid up, Peppard gets a good look at the situation and decides he wants no part of this fight. Of course, he has an 11th hour change of heart, and he and McIntire get enough people to back them to bring down Martin's operation.

This is one of those movies that highlights the dangers of playing by the rules or showing mercy and decency when your opponent ignores all that. Martin has maybe 30 guys on his side, but they're all brainless thugs (including Slim Pickens, wearing what looks like a 19th Century burgundy tracksuit under a vest much too small for his big gut.) None of them could have kept the operation running in his absence, because they aren't tough enough, and definitely aren't smart enough. During the climax, Peppard and McIntire take out a dozen guys in the casino, just the two of them. The whole operation is Martin's character, and he could have died 3 times in the first 30 minutes.

The deputy was locked up tight in the office with the shopkeeper, until Martin had a man climb the roof and promised to dump TNT down the chimney if the deputy didn't back down. The deputy could have killed Martin, who was standing there in the open at the front of his mob. Clear shot, but the deputy was too scared to take it. A minute later, Jean Simmons has the drop on them with a rifle, but wasted her time on warning shots until Pickens got the rifle away from her with his whip.

OK, murder's not that easy, even of a piece of shit. Fine, too bad for that shopkeeper that got lynched because he defended himself, but fine. Peppard fancies himself a gambler, so he's in the casino having a drink with Martin when a couple of trappers come in and refuse to check their guns. Martin's fighting both of them, and one is about to knife him in the back. Peppard, who has a clear sense of how things work by now, shouts a warning, giving Martin a chance to disarm the guy. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut and viola! Problem solved, and with no risk of him being killed like the other two faced

So it's a frustrating viewing experience, especially with how much time the movie spends waiting for Peppard to get angry enough to decide he actually wants to get involved, when you know that eventually, he is going to get involved.

What I Bought 2/5/2025 - Part 1

I bought some baby carrots last week with the idea I'd use them to cut down on my chip intake. When I'm in the mood for something with crunch, eat the carrots instead of walking down to the store and buying chips. In reality, it's played out that I think about wanting chips, remind myself of the carrots, and decide I'm not hungry after all.

Success!

Deadpool #10, by Cody Ziglar (writer), Roge Antonio (artist), Guru-eFX (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - Synchronized bullet chopping is going to be the big new event in the Los Angeles Olympics. Assuming L.A. hasn't burned to the ground or fallen into the ocean before then.

Ellie and Deadpool are still adjusting to sharing a healing factor. Deadpool in particular was growing overly reliant on just tanking damage until he kills whoever he's fighting. When Taskmaster decides him beating their asses isn't producing fast enough results, he sends them after the goober with the big gun Ellie and Princess took down a few issues ago.

Antonio uses some odd postures for Wade when he's moving. Less so for Eleanor, which I assume is meant to be her copying other people's moves, while her dad just does whatever he wants. He's also inconsistent about the blisters/sores/tumors? on Wade's face. For a while, I thought he was deliberately drawing fewer of them on the left side of Wade's face, but I think he just changes the amount depending on what angle he's drawing Wade from. With Wade only having access to half of a healing factor weaker than his usual, he probably ought to look worse now. The various cancers should be gaining the upper hand, or at least stressing his healing factor even further.

Also, ditch the '90s-style pixie boots. Not even Liefeld draws him wearing those anymore.

Anyway, confident that's enough practice, and in need of money, Deadpool agrees to a job killing Spider-Man (Miles Morales edition.) He didn't tell Eleanor that's what they'd be doing before they started, however, which seems likely to cause some issues. Especially with the fact Wade is trying to commit to being a good dad (I'm still wondering where Preston is in all this. She's not concerned her foster daughter just up and vanished?), and while Eleanor isn't sure what else she gave up in the deal to save her father's life.

That has potential. Ellie's only ever witnessed Deadpool killing people that could be broadly categorized as "bad guys." Flag-Smasher and his ULTIMATUM losers. And those were the types of jobs he was sticking to so far in this run. But that's not always how he operates. Wade Wilson does a lot of shitty things, and Eleanor may not have really faced that up to now. And if she backs away, the way Ziglar's set things up now, Wade's going to cling tighter, trying not to screw things up and fail to be there for her. It could also drive a wedge between her and Princess. I doubt the symbiote dog is going to be bothered about varying definitions of "good" and "bad". 

Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu #4, by Jed MacKay (writer), Devmalya Pramanik (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Jostling a cop's doughnuts? That's a felony.

The drug dealer's dirty cop tries and fails to intimidate Dr. Sterman. At least someone's showing some spine, because Marc's sitting in that underground lair, sulking in his tent like a guy from Chile. Jake and Steven wants answers, in a sequence where Premanik draws the panels as mirroring each other in their shapes, interlocking or pushing against each other. Rosenberg colors Jake's panels heavily in red/pink, while Steven's are dominated by green. Marc's got that red-orange and black combo that I tend to associate with him burning something.

Vermin shows up, looking for a rematch after Marc set him running way back at the beginning of MacKay's run. Marc refuses to retreat from an enemy that is his own army. As he fights and is buried under bodies, Premanik has a page of a bunch of curving rows of panels, set against a negative space outline of Vermin, intercut by close-ups on Moon Knight's various personalities.

Marc fights his way through, but in doing so, rejects the notion he can have anyone around him. Premanik draws that like Marc's being torn apart from the crown of his head down, with a dozen little, irregular-shaped panels in the rip. I didn't include the entire page below, but enough to get the gist. So he's doing the Batman-style "I have to go it alone," thing now. Though I was wondering where Reese, Soldier and the rest were. Their faces got plastered on the news, too, so they likely aren't up top, just wandering around. But nobody showed during this entire battle. 

Whatever, Marc confronts the dirty cop in her apartment, considering killing her. But instead, he has her call the drug dealer, so Marc can challenge him to a one-on-one fight. Well, I'm sure a boxer-turned-drug lord will fight entirely on the up-and-up. Then again, Marc may rig the location of the fight with plastique to blow both of them up.

Sunday Splash Page #361

"Parachute Optional," in Molly Danger, by Jamal Igle (writer/penciler), Juan Castro (inker), Romulo Fajardo Jr. (colorist), Frank Cvetkovic (letterer)

I bought this from Jamal Igle at the comic con I went to in Knoxville back in 2015. I think Greg Hatcher had mentioned it in one of his columns on the old Comics Should Be Good blog, so when I saw it, I figured, "why not?"

Molly's an alien whose family was on an exploration mission, only to crash land on Earth, where she developed super-powers, which she now uses to help fight various super-powered criminals that emerged from. . .somewhere. While she's very popular, she's also kept isolated from almost everyone, something she's growing increasingly frustrated with.

Igle sets up a lot in less than 50 pages. Molly likes protecting people, but even if she's actually over 30, in a lot of ways she's still the 10-year-old she looks like. She's lonely, that the group she works with are less co-workers (and certainly not friends or family), and more like zookeepers, with her as the exhibit. Her various arch-enemies are connected, even if they don't all realize it, and there's probably some things about Molly's arrival on Earth that aren't what she thinks.

He also introduces a guy who's going to be her new pilot, who doesn't play by the rules. Especially the rule about not being a friend to Molly. And Briggs, that's the pilot, has a stepson he would really like to have like him, who happens to be a huge fan of Molly's. And Molly's excited at the idea of having a friend. Excited enough she snuck into the kid's room at night just to talk.

It's one of the nice touches Igle adds to Molly's character, that she can be a little rebellious, a little sneaky. She definitely uses sad eyes on Briggs to get him to do things a couple of times. That she's so eager to have contact with other people she's not great at boundaries. Keeps her from seeming too perfectly sweet, while still being understandable actions when you see how boss tries to keep her life locked down.

I never saw any more of it. It looks like there was a mini-series called Actionverse, that combined several different characters from books published through Action Lab, and Molly was in there, but that's all I could find.

Saturday Splash Page #163

"Appeal Denied," in She-Hulk (vol. 3) #3, by Charles Soule (writer), Javier Pulido (artist), Muntsa Vicente (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer)

As part of Marvel Now!, aka, "Marvel tries the novel notion of giving talented creative teams room to do their thing," She-Hulk got another ongoing series, this time written by Charles Soule, with Javier Pulido as lead artist.

Soule sends Jennifer Walters back to lawyering, after Peter David's curious decision to make her a bounty hunter. However, while Dan Slott had Walters working specifically in "superhuman law," Soule starts with Walters being denied a bonus by her current employers specifically because she's not bringing them any work from her pals in the costume set. Why aren't they handling Reed Richards' patent applications? That sort of thing.

So she breaks their expensive conference table with one finger and starts her own firm, setting up in a little commercial office space in Jersey, where all the other tenants are also variously super-powered or whatnot. The supporting cast boils down to Patsy Walker, who She-Hulk hires as an investigator after feeling Patsy's at a low point (Soule implies Patsy slept with Eric O'Grady, the shittiest Ant-Man, and I'm just going to say, "no," to that. Or maybe "NO!"), and also Angie, a mysterious woman who applies to be Jennifer's secretary even before Jennifer's thought of hiring anyone. Angie's very mysterious, and has a monkey named Hei Hei.

Most of the cases cover an issue or two, and start with some legal issue before punching is required. Kristoff seeks asylum in the U.S. to avoid being forced to take the Latverian throne if Doom is unavailable. Doom objects to this independent thinking and hauls Kristoff back home. Steve Rogers is accused of murdering someone, back before he got the super-soldier serum treatment. Hank Pym's trying to buy someone else's shrinking invention, but one of the two creators has gone missing. I think Soule has a law degree, though I heard mixed things about how accurate the courtroom proceedings he depicted were. They were interesting enough for me.

Javier Pulido is the artist for 10 of the 12 issues. Pulido tends towards simple character designs and layouts. He tends to draw scenes in profile, so we sit off to the side and watch Jennifer and Kristoff discuss his situation across her desk. He's also fond of having the story run across pages, only to switch to splitting up further down. So on the top half of the page, you finish the right-most panel on the left page then keep going onto the right page. Until you get to the bottom half of the page and now need to read vertically through 3 or 4 panels on the left page, and then switch to the right page.

It's frustrating and drags me out of the story, though I think Pulido tries to signal which you're supposed to do based on whether there's a panel gutter along the spine of the page. If there is, it's like a wall and you stay on the page you're on until it goes away or you reach the end of the page. Then you can jump to the next page. No panel gutter, no wall. It would be better to just pick one for a given pair of pages and stick with it. He could always do it the other way on the next pair of facing pages.

The big mystery of the series is a mysterious "blue file." A suit filed in South Dakota against Jennifer Walters, several other heroes, and a few villains. Jennifer has no memory of what it could be about, or when it came into her possession, and neither do the others.

Unfortunately, the first time it really becomes prominent in the story is during the two issues Ron Wimberley draws, and the shift in art to him from Pulido is staggering. Odd perspectives within panels, distorted proportions. Rico Renzi opts for colors that lean more towards the neon side of things than Muntsa Vicente. I think Mike Sterling noted those issues hurt the book's sales at his store, as people dropped it and wouldn't come back, even once Pulido returned.

I definitely didn't love Wimberley's art, though maybe I'd have dug it on a book that established a similar look to begin with, but I kept buying. It wasn't a deep book, but I enjoyed it. Soule doesn't bother with any real conflicts between Jennifer and She-Hulk. She's usually big and green, but she's smart and composed and professional, allowing for some ragged clothes when she has to trash a bunch of Doombots.

The book was canceled after a year in early 2015, in the run up to Hickman's Secret Wars. I'm getting tired of typing some variation of that, but there's still a couple more books where it'll apply.

What I Bought 2/1/2025 - Part 2

Every week feels 10 days long now. I get to Tuesday and think it should be Thursday already. I don't know if that's the weather, the current situation at work, the current situation in the world, or just my brain chemistry. But it's Friday now. Wednesday we looked at second and third issues. Today we've got fourth and fifth issues.

Red Before Black #4, by Stephanie Phillips (writer), Goran Sudzuka (artist), Ive Svorcina (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - Val seems less bothered by the veins (vines?) than she did on the last cover. Or maybe she's tired from all the screaming she was doing on that cover.

Leo brings Val to a gator ranch run by a guy who is related to her in, some manner. Whoever he is, he knows enough about the people Leo worked with to recognize the name of the idiot Val killed last issue. Which means he has no moral compunctions about helping them dispose of a car, but also means he has no compunctions about letting Miles know where to find the drug dealer he wanted killed, and the old friend that was supposed to kill her.

We get another flashback to Leo's past, this time to her being confined to a mental hospital because she attempted suicide. Given her family apparently insists there's nothing to Leo's claims of her father molesting her, I'm not sure we can take any of that at face value. But maybe we're supposed to take from this that Leo's grasp on things in loose. Not really sure.

The most significant thing in the issue is a brief - 3 pages - conversation between Leo and Val. As Leo talks in general terms about parts of her past, that she tried to leave Florida a couple of times, but always returned home, those same of veins or vines sprout from Val's chest and begin to entwine Leo. Until Val suggests they split up and the vines withdraw. So it's something to do with Val's emotions. The fact that sometimes it's an entire jungle (and that Leo can see it, though she doesn't comment here) is the confusing part to me, unless it's the representation of Val feeling lost while also seeking a connection.

Babs #5, by Garth Ennis (writer), Jacen Burrows (artist), Andy Troy (colorist), Rob Steen (letterer) - I'm trying to imagine the music, and my brain keeps refusing. Where did that sense of self-preservation come from?

Mork's buddies have finally figured out they're never going to actually benefit from helping Tiberius. Plus that possibly all the people he shipped off to his diamond mine were useful members of their society who helped things run smoothly. Right about the time Tiberius has taken the locals for all he can get and is packing up to leave. Boy, it'd be nice if assholes like this actually moved on. Now they you're never rid of them, like some infected boil.

Meanwhile, Babs and her friends stage an escape from Tiberius' diamond mine, although poor Culpepper's virtue may never be the same. Unfortunately, the other escapees aren't up for helping Babs stomp a mudhole in Tiberius, and her attempt to call in the skeleton army from a few issues ago doesn't quite work out. The army shows up, but they're less skeletons and more ghosts. Ghosts who don't know how to interact with physical objects, so no stabbing.

Ennis and Burrows play that scene pretty well. Babs with a profane and insulting speech when it seems to be just her and two others. Then the skeleton ghosts rise from the earth around them, Tiberius about shits himself, Mork and his dorks think Babs is super-cool. The first skeleton lunges and stabs Tiberius. Then you turn the page and find out it didn't do anything. It's a real *sad trombone* moment, but excellently laid out and paced.

Oh well, hopefully Babs will get to have the fun of murdering all of them herself in the final issue. She won't get rich that way, but it'll be good for a laugh.