Dead Standstill in Summer

July's solicits weren't the worst I've seen since starting this monthly feature. Heck, last July had a total of 3 measly books I ended up buying. But even then, there were 5 others I noted but didn't buy for various reasons (some just didn't show up.) I know my handwriting is small, but I shouldn't be able to fit everything on one line in a spiral notebook.

What's new? Cosmic Lion has two issues of something called Ghostman, who can walk through walls (sure) and conjure weapons at will (???) The new Fantastic Four volume is starting, still written by Ryan North, but drawn by, sigh, Humberto Ramos. Ramos' art has never grown on me, so unless it changed drastically from what I remember when he was drawing Amazing Spider-Man or Champions, that's going to make for some tough sledding.

Guess I can always hope he doesn't last any longer than most artists Marvel announces for new series.

There's another Jeff the Land Shark one-shot, but it's by Jason Loo, and I've sworn him off after Dazzler and Werewolf by Night were such duds.

What's ending? Past Time, and even though it was in last month's solicits, the last issue of Great British Bump-Off. Also, apparently the oversized anniversary issue of Deadpool in June was the end of that book, too. Replaced by Deadpools and Wolverines. Yeesh.

And the rest: Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu is celebrating Moonie's 250th issue. Hopefully that doesn't mean a cancellation like with Deadpool. The Runaways mini-series will be on issue 2, The Thing on issue 3, Resurrection Man: Quantum Karma on issue 4, Dark Pyramid on issue 5. Sadly, nothing releasing its sixth issue I want, but Batgirl will be up to issue 9. That's like a 6, if you stand on your head!

And that's it. I checked Image's website, still nothing on Dust to Dust past last week's issue. Can't find anything on more Bronze Faces on Boom!'s site, either. No manga caught my eye. Guess I'll have to find something else to do in July. Good thing it's such a pleasant month, weather-wise.

Manhunter (1986)

Will Graham (William Petersen) is a retired FBI profiler, coaxed (or manipulated) out of retirement by a fed buddy (Dennis Farina) to help catch the "Tooth Fairy" killer. The longer the case goes, the more involved Graham becomes, setting himself (and a tabloid reporter) up as targets, and consulting with an old acquaintance, Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox.)

I did not realize going in this was an earlier adaptation of the same book as the Ed Norton/Ralph Fiennes Red Dragon. I guess it doesn't make much difference; I've never watched Red Dragon, and I've only seen scattered bits of Silence of the Lambs, so at least I'm not really comparing it to anything.

Cox seems fine as Lektor; there are places where he seems more relaxed, or maybe casual, than I envision Lektor. A part during his face-to-face with Graham where he's in bed with his feet up on the wall in particular, caught my attention. It's not bad, it simply didn't match my impression of the character. And later we get additional context where it makes more sense, that Lektor knows things Graham doesn't, that he's enjoying this for more reasons than we suspect initially.

Petersen's approach to his character, I don't get as much. The talking to himself as he wanders the crime scene, which usually turns to him cursing the unknown killer, calling him a son of a bitch, that I get. He's getting too invested. His promise to just examine evidence is falling to pieces. The part late, where he blows up at Farina for telling him to accept they won't be able to stop the next killing, that made perfect sense. Farina knew him well enough to know how to suck him in, got what he wanted, put Graham's family in danger, and now he's telling Graham to pull back?

What I was curious about was, after learning that Lektor has not only been in contact with this other killer, but has advised him to kill Graham, and hidden Graham's home address in a message run in the tabloid paper, Graham speaks with Lektor on the phone. And he's not angry. He's not even hostile or frustrated, and it just seemed bizarre. For a guy that seems to get so intense so easily, nothing towards Lektor? The guy is locked up, can only use a phone with no dial pad, and still got your address and passed it to a guy who specifically kills families. I'd be at least a little angry, call him a few names, maybe have all his books taken away and burned in front of him, just to be petty.

The movie (and I don't know if this is consistent with the book, or a choice director Michael Mann made) surprised me with how it handled that move by Lektor. It happened about halfway through the movie, and so I expected the second half was going to be Graham waiting at home for the killer to come to him. Instead, he gets his family moved to a secure location, and the movie continues with Graham trying to figure out the killer's mindset. The killer never makes a move towards Graham, we never even see that he considers it. Which was interesting, and frankly, appreciated.

The whole movie revolves around Graham trying to understand the thinking of the serial killer, about what he's doing to himself trying to anticipate the killer and stop him from hurting anyone else. If you make it so he knows the target already, you lose that element. Now Graham can just sit back and wait for the killer to come to him. So, kudos on not going that route.

Come On, Ride That Train

This fucking guy. A coward, a moron, but also a sadist with a massive ego and a huge sense of entitlement. Sure hope he's not going to be a major part of the next 7 volumes!

OK, recap going into One Piece, volume 38: The Straw Hats got their asses beat by government assassins. Robin's turned against them, Usopp (no longer on the crew) and the Going Merry were taken hostage by Franky. Franky, in turn, has been captured by the government assassins, who want the plans to ancient battleship he supposedly has.

The volume wraps up Franky's flashback, showing he somehow survived being run over by a train, and somehow rebuilt himself into a cyborg. When he returned to Water 7, Iceberg gave him the plans for the battleship and told him to change his name and scram. He did the first, but not the second, and now he's a prisoner. Worse, the guy commanding CP9 is the same dickhead that got Franky's mentor arrested in the first place.

Back at Galley-La HQ, Chopper gets himself, Nami, Iceberg and Paulie out of the burning building, and Iceberg explains that Robin is working with CP9 in exchange for the Straw Hats' safety. Leaving two of them to die in a burning building would suggest the promise isn't being kept, but at any rate, Robin's entirely willing to sacrifice herself (and possibly the rest of the world) for this little crew. This is great, because it means the Straw Hats can activate the Power of Friendship to go with the Power of Overcoming Odds! John Cena has nothing on shonen protagonists when it comes to overcoming odds!

But first they've got to find Luffy and Zoro, who were sent flying into the city by Rob Lucci, and do it before the Aqua Laguna inundates most of the city. Nami and Chopper manage it, barely, but the Sea Train's already departed to the Government judicial island, Ennies Lobby. So they've got to find another ship or train and pursue. A train that can't be stopped once it starts is perfect for Luffy.

But Robin has at least one friend aboard, as Sanji snuck aboard, and starts making his way to the front of the train. He finds Franky and Usopp, the latter of whom appears unwilling to help. But Usopp might just put in a call to the mysterious hero, the Sniper King, and see what he can do. . .

Sunday Splash Page #372

"Meltdown," in Ms. Marvel: Mutant Menace #4, by Iman Vellani and Sabir Pirzada (writers), Scott Godlewski (artist), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)

Released last year, but still during the stretch when Krakoa had fallen and the X-Men were back underground (literally, they're hanging out in the sewers like ninja turtles) trying to stop ORCHIS, Mutant Menace takes Kamala back to her Jersey City roots.

Except it's a Jersey City no longer so friendly to Ms. Marvel. Not because HYDRA's using her image to cover for gentrification and a hipster influx, but because she's a mutant. Which feels contrary to how the community was presented in G. Willow Wilson's second volume when the fascists did a takeover of the city and were rounding up anyone with an unusual appearance, but it's a different era. And since Bruno's the only one who knows Kamala a) is Ms. Marvel, and b) died and was resurrected, she has to deal with her other friends calling Ms. Marvel a traitor.

Granted, Nakia was already doing that back in the HYDRA gentrification scheme (and we never got any sort of resolution between her and Kamala over that, nor will we have any sort of revelation/conversation here), so maybe Nakia is just one of those folks who loves to judge others. Actually, I'm pretty sure she's definitely one of those folks. To be fair, it's fun to be judgemental.

So as Kamala tries to spend time with her friends and family, and protect a Jersey City that (mostly) hates and fears her, she's having weird seizures, which former Copperhead artist Scott Godlewski initially draws like someone is exploding her from the inside. Eventually it gets to the mess you see up there.

(The cure ultimately hinges on the fact Krakoa neglected a particular ingredient when they brought her back from the dead. Because they weren't big on working with others.)

The other, more external, problem is Dr. Nitika, still interested in Ms. Marvel for reasons that are finally revealed. She also got ORCHIS to ship her some X-Men corpses, which she reanimates and has attack Jersey City. This culminates in using Kamala's original body, but with the mutant (and MCU-compliant) powers activated, in addition to Kamala's abilities, to prove some point about how Kamala should let Nitika use the mutant ability to "help" people. Honestly, the goal and method of approach don't mesh at all, which Kamala points out, but it's still a weak point. And because people in the Marvel Universe are dumbasses, the Ms. Marvel in the X-Men outfit protecting them from the shambling undead in the classic outfit means no Ms. Marvel can be trusted.

Still and all, Vellani and Pirzada have the character down. Kamala wants to help people, to the point it frustrates her when the X-Men encourage her to go to school and not put herself at risk going on missions with them (Deadpool says they should let her fight, but he's Deadpool. Do not take child raising advice from him.) When she catches a mutant robbing a jewelry store, she first offers to help him hide from ORCHIS if he just returns the jewels, and when he gets targeted by the Hordeculture, she helps him escape, but puts herself at risk. That her friends and family unknowingly hate her, that people got hurt because a crazy scientist targeted her, it hurts her.

Godlewski draws issues 1, 3, and 4. His work is much smoother here than it was in Copperhead, but this is a much smoother, brighter book, even with the reanimated corpses and whatnot. I like his hodgepodge design for "The Planter", there's a nifty couple of pages when Kamala and the Red Dagger fight a trio of re-animated X-Men.

The one weak point is the second issue, where Kamala is abruptly pulled away from fighting the Hordeculture to hep Lila Cheney rescue some of her fans from some weird set-up Mojo's got running. Kamala gets to play distraction by letting Mojo put her in all sorts of commercials and goofy shit, and when it's over, she's back in Jersey City and hey! Red Dagger is here! I guess he caught a commercial flight? It really doesn't feel like it has anything to do with the other 3 issues, beyond the notion Kamala was briefly, superficially, popular while pretending to be something, while people seem to hate her the more she embraces all the parts of herself (i.e., not hiding her mutant heritage.)

Even allowing for that, it felt pointless and irritating (and I'm not even a person that necessarily hates Mojo, though most writers sand his edges off too much from Nocenti's more vicious conception) and just a page-filler until, I don't know, Godlewski could get enough lead time to finish the remaining two issues.

Saturday Splash Page #174

"Solid Brass," in Seven Soldiers: Bulleteer #1, by Grant Morrison (writer), Yanick Paquette (penciler), Michael Bair (inker), Alex Sinclair (colorist), Phil Balsman (letterer)

Seven Soldiers of Spring wants to know if you believe you can fly? No? That's OK, neither can the lead of this week's entry.

Alex Harrower taught autistic kids, while her husband was a scientist trying to perfect a super-hard alloy, a "smartskin" that would make a subject indestructible. More critical from his perspective, it would make that person a superhero, so they could hang out with other (hot) superheroes, and it would keep them young forever.

Alex didn't see the appeal, but in one of life's curious twists, Lance testing the alloy on himself kills him, but when he infects Alex, she comes out of it fine. At least, that's how Lance and everyone else sees it. Alex sees she lost her husband (and learns he was spending a lot of time on x-rated sites with "teen" superheroines), lost her job (the kids freaked out because they thought she was a robot), and is stuck with this skin that she can't take off, hide or be otherwise rid of, which prevents her from killing herself (her attempt ends with her saving a bunch of people from a trainwreck instead.)

After that, it's Alex trying to pay bills and find her footing within the strange world of superheroics. It's almost an isekai manga, the character from "our" world dying and landing in some fantasy world. Except a lot of those involve people who understand the rules of the fantasy world and can exploit their special gifts to break the game, so to speak. Alex is the person who gets dumped into a fictional world she knows nothing about.

She turns down an offer she sees in a paper to join a group of superheroes for a mission out west. This turns out to be Vigilante's attempt to recruit a team to finish what he and the 1940s Seven Soldiers started (meaning Alex gained her powers prior to Seven Soldiers of Victory #0.) Instead, in issue 2 Alex acts as muscle for an FBI agent investigating Saunders' subsequent death out there. Agent Helligan was also the one brought in to question Sir Justin in Shining Knight #3, after she surrendered to the cops. Helligan is dying from the bite she received from the Sheeda-Queen at that point, but has Alex carry her to her sister's wedding to stop it. Turns out the groom is a werewolf.

(Helligan mentioned in Shining Knight the wedding was 'tomorrow', so this takes place the day after, yet the world Paquette draws does not appear to have descended into chaos. I mean, there's traffic, but it's not, "oh my god, run from the monsters emerging from the flying castle" terrified traffic, so it must be before the final issue of Manhattan Guardian. Helligan also used something she lifted from a museum of superhero memorabilia in an interrogation, and mentions the stealing of a subterranean digging machine gave her cover to do it. The theft was by Klarion and the other "Deviants" in issue 3 of his mini-series.)

Issue 3 finds Alex at a convention, populated by z-list heroes (and Booster Gold), acting as bodyguard for a mermaid. There's a panel of women heroes that includes original Newsboy Army member Lil' Hollywood, who learns from one of the attendees about Vincenzo (Lil' Scarface's) death at the end of Shining Knight, so we're somewhere past issue 4 of that. Alex is targeted by the newest Spyder, who was also recruited by Vigilante (possibly to give the family name a chance at redemption after the 1940s version betrayed them in their battle with Nebulon?), but has apparently changed sides.

Except the guy misses. Some archer. Also, Paquette's version of Nebulon must have the least amount of stars of any version we see across these mini-series. He's mostly a big purple guy with curling goat horns and three ellipsoid red eyes, and a few stars peeking through in the shadows of his body. Not impressive, but if you took it as us seeing the footage through Alex's perspective, maybe she's not immersed deeply enough in superheroics to see the true nature of the beast, so to speak.

Alex also took in a young art student as a renter to help pay bills, but this turns out to be "Sally Sonic," teen superhero turned super-villain (by some vengeful British criminal) turned x-rated camera girl. She was the one carrying on a virtual affair with Lance, and didn't appreciate Alex trying to track her down. They fight, but Alex really wants no part of it. She doesn't want revenge, doesn't want to hear Sally's "sob story", doesn't want to have a knockdown, drag-out super-brawl like all the boys love to see two girls do. She never wanted in the costumed world, never wanted the "immortality" that seems to come with being a superhero like Lance did. She tried to make the best of the hand she was dealt. And now she wants out.

The vice pretty clearly seems to be Lust, though not strictly in the sense of wanting to fuck or whatever. Though there's plenty of that. Practically everyone in costume except Alex seems perpetually horny. Morrison has Mind-Grabber Kid (from this issue of Justice League of America) at the same convention as Alex in issue 3, hoping to win "Comeback Hero of the Year" (he loses to Aquaman, who shaved his beard.) Mind-Grabber Kid plays the helpful veteran to Alex, but he also seems pretty clearly to be trying to get with her, when he isn't encouraging her to open her bustier as fans swarm her or whining about how he could totally use his powers to make girls sleep with him, but doesn't.

But it seems to really be a lust for youth, or fear of mortality/aging. Alex is only 27, but Lance mentions she has lines on her face she didn't used to. He's frequenting sites of teen heroes, who will supposedly be young and hot forever. As it turns out, Sally Sonic is actually decades old, but her body stopped aging as a teen (in the superhero comic version of a teen, who looks like a supermodel.) So that's what everyone treated her as, and it seems she never learned not to trust people until it was too late. Falls in with an older guy pretending to be a hero, he encourages her to give him what he wants, when she balks, he uses 'Doctor Hyde's Evil Serum,' to get her personality more in line with his interests.

Paquette leans into the cheesecake. The very first page is Alex standing in front of a mirror is lacy underwear, positioned so we can see her chest and her ass simultaneously. She spends a lot of time walking around her apartment in a t-shirt that stops above the navel and underwear that rides high. Her shirt does not survive her saving people from the train. When she and Sally fight, it sure seems like their movements and the POV are set so butts are in the center of focus, and things are shaded or colored so that it might seem like they're wearing less than they really are.

I mean, without even getting into the phallic aspect of that helmet, there's no reason for Bulleteer to be up on her toes in the splash page, right? She's not actually wearing heels, but it shows her off. Here she is, perfect as polished steel. No blemishes, no defects, can't be harmed, scarred, altered from how she is. Untouched by aging forever more. It's what people want to be - the first issue mentions there are lots of cases of people admitted to hospitals after trying to give themselves powers, and the medical staff hate dealing with it - or want to have.

But not Alex. The bullet that didn't ask to be cast, and refuses to be fired. The opposing virtue to Lust is Chastity. As mentioned, Alex isn't interested in fucking anyone, but chastity can also mean purity in conduct and intention. Alex tries to help people, tries to understand. As the Spyder notes from his observations, she listens. She doesn't succumb to Mind-Grabber Kid's come-ons, but she'll encourage him to help her track down the woman her husband was talking to online. They can have a "team-up", a real one like superheroes do. She helps Agent Helligan keep her sister from marrying that werewolf, even though that probably wasn't what she was paid to do, and it pains her that Helligan dies after. The fact 'monster hunters' showed up to corral the groom-to-be hardly registers with her. It's the person who died that concerns her.

She doesn't want revenge on Sally, just to ask why she went after Lance, and once the fight is over, she calls the ambulances to get medical help for both of them. She's not acting out of revenge, or spite, or ego. She does certain work to pay the bills, but she tries to protect people when they're in danger. Which sounds like purity of conduct to me.

Random Back Issues #150 - Scout #8

Nobody likes a know-it-all chipmunk.

Scout, aka Emilio Santana, has killed the 4 spirits he was tasked to kill. Unfortunately, the last one was President of what passes for the United States. So he's spent the last six months laying low in the desert Southwest, accompanied by a gahn (a guiding spirit) in the form of a chipmunk. But Scout's tired of living on roots, sorrel and seeds, and healed up enough to hunt.

Gahn guarantees they'll find something today, though Scout's dubious they're going to locate any food scaling a mesa. Well, he finds two figures waiting for him, but I'm not sure you'd want to eat either of 'em. One he calls "The Clown," the other "The Godeh." The Godeh reminds Santana when he stoned the kitten of a little girl as a child. The girl's mother promised they'd get him some day. Certainly took their asses long enough.

But Scout's got guns, and that seems to be enough, although Gahn remarks they're only dead, 'if you want them to be, Santana.' Out of bullets, or at least needing time to reload, Scout's attacked by a sort of wolf creature that flings him around while speaking in riddles. It hates him, it loves him. It wouldn't be there if he didn't know what it was. It hurt him most when he couldn't see it, but when he can't see it, it won't be a danger to him any longer.

They seem to merge, it takes Santana's form, then vanishes. Gahn explains Scout needed to see the next monster he'll have to kill: the one inside himself. I don't think Scout has much luck with that, but maybe I'm remembering the plot wrong. Either, he'll have to handle it alone, as Gahn's job is now done. It departs, telling Santana he's a lousy cook but that there's a jackrabbit in the rocks below that'll make a good dinner. Also, he'll have company in the morning.

The company is Doody, a blind young man Santana met earlier in his quest. Doody has, in the span of 4 months, become a prophet, traveling and speaking the word of the good books. By which I mean the Lord of the Rings. Thanking Santana for sharing his breakfast and the location of a water source, Doody and his large horde of followers continue on their way.

There's also a couple of pages of a subplot where an Israeli special ambassador briefly meets with the newly-elected President Carver about Israel offering aid to the U.S. Carver's intrigued, but her vice-president (and religious wackjob who worked for the previous president, who Santana killed) Bill Loper is against it. The U.S. doesn't need any help! Certainly not in digging its own grave. Either way, Ambassador Glanzman isn't bothered by the tirade and says the offer still stands. He'll pop up a lot in later issues.

{9th longbox, 54th comic. Scout #8, by Tim Truman (writer/artist), Sam Parsons (painter), Tim Harkins (letterer)}

Voyagers - Nicholas Thomas

This is about how the Pacific islands were settled over the course of several thousand years. Sort of. At times, Thomas seems more intent discussing theories than actual evidence, or spending lots of pages on what Europeans in the 18th Century thought.

That's not meant to be funny; the first chapter after the introduction is largely about conclusions various sailors and scientists drew about the relationships between the different island chains in the first several decades after Europeans actually started sailing there regularly. Captain Cook gets the assistance of Tupaia, a priest from the Society Islands, when he's supposed to take precise observations of Venus' transit across the Sun in Tahiti. During their subsequent travels to other islands, including New Zealand, it turns out Tupaia can converse fairly well with the Maori, despite never having been to New Zealand, because the languages shared many similarities. Then Thomas discusses what people made of that.

Maybe that helps set the table for later chapters that actually discuss the archaeological evidence for the dispersal and colonization of Pacific islands by Polynesian ancestors, but it's the overarching story of that dispersal I was interested in. So when Thomas gets to that the book picks up. The discussion of two different waves of human settlement, one far earlier than the other, the evidence for a particular style of pottery dating back well over 2500 years, the shift in pollen records implying deforestation in a particular area, likely due to humans clearing said area. That was very interesting to me, not just what it says, but the different kinds of evidence used to piece things together.

There's still a lot uncertain, or at least not covered in this book (though Thomas helpfully mentions other, more expansive books on archaeology, so I've got something to track down.) Questions of how community is defined when a people are scattered across islands that are sometimes hundreds of miles apart, even though there's evidence of continuing trade between them. (Knives have been found made from rock that was quarried those kinds of distances away.)

The one that intrigues me the most is, the Lapita people seemed to reach Fiji and Western Polynesia prior to 1000 B.C., and then, didn't really expand further until around 1000 A.D. Nobody seems sure why the expansion stopped, or why it suddenly took off again, reaching Rapa Nui (Easter Island) by 1100 A.D., and New Zealand maybe a century later. Thomas keeps making the point that when people theorize about what drives an ancient people to do something, it says more about the mindset of the one doing the theorizing, so he refuses to offer any possible explanations. At least he's consistent on that.

It's not as in-depth as I was hoping for, but it's not a bad place to start, and find some sources that might have the kind of information I'm curious about.

'But the settlement of Manus, at the northeastern extremity of the Bismarck Archipelago, was a challenge of an entirely different order. The shortest sea crossing, successfully made by twenty-five thousand years ago, was some 140 miles. For around a third of the voyage, both the land behind and the land ahead would have been out of view. So this was a speculative venture, towards islands that might not have existed, undertaken by people presumably confident in their capacity to explore and return home in the event that they encountered nothing by open water.'

What I Bought 4/18/2025 - Part 2

The guy unhappy with the guy he let operate under his permit is now unhappy with how I'm attempting to resolve his problem. I mean, I knew he would be, but he's also been griping about wanting the guy gone for over a year, and I've been telling him for over a year I can't break the contract between the two of them, but he keeps griping, so I've taken the one option I am allowed by regulation to take. And he could avert it if he really wanted, but he doesn't.

Resurrection Man: Quantum Karma #1, by Ram V (writer), Anand RK and Jackson Guice (artists), Mike Spicer (colorist), Aditya Bidikar (letterer) - Mitch Shelly's found himself in a Spirograph dimension.

In reality, Mitch has tried to step away from a life of heroics, settling in with a family and living out his remaining years. He sneaks off his deathbed to die in the woods, and resurrects as a young man again, with the same symbol he's got on his back on the cover.

He's got some power pertaining to time, and that means he's about to get sucked into something big. Someone claiming to be another Mitch Shelly arrives to prepare this Mitch to face some creature that will end the universe. RK draws it as almost angelic in shape, but with a hole in the middle and made of seemingly a bunch of intestines and scaffolding.

Turns out, Mitch is responsible for this, and we're flung into a flashback to 1945, where he was a prisoner of the Japanese army. (Ram V uses the old bit about Hitler using the Spear of Destiny to keep superheroes at bay, so much can be killed and return, but he doesn't get any powers. Which seems inconsistent, without even getting into the notion the Spear is extending its power to the opposite side of the globe.) It looks like, with the war winding down, the commandant of the camp called for a feast, which included killing and eating soldiers. Like Mitch.

Basically, Hitler died and the Spear stopped working as Mitch's corpse was both being immolated, and his organs being eaten by that commandant, and so the guy got some kind of ability. Enough to survive Mitch resurrecting with flame powers and burning Rabaul to the ground, anyway.

I don't know, I thought the deal with Mitch Shelly was, everybody kept thinking he was Vandal Savage's foe, the Immortal Man, but he was actually something entirely different. But I haven't read the first series in years, and aside from having the artist, Jackson Guice, draw the intro page, I have no idea how much Ram V's following that versus the New 52 version, or something else entirely. Or if he's using anything beyond the basic concept of "guy gets new power every time he dies."

The Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt #1, by John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Sammy Borras (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - I thought the English were supposed to be good at boats.

Shauna's getting to borrow her uncles narrowboat to travel the English canals. She gets as far as Barton-on-Wendle, before a shoddy job of mooring, results in extensive - and expensive - damage. Now she needs the job to gets the moneys to fix the boat, or she's sunk.

After the requisite nervous breakdown, rendered beautifully by Sarin, a local poet - sporting Leon Kennedy in Resident Evil 4 hair, true sign of a goober - helps her out. His mother owns a quilting supply shop, and needs someone who can make tea, make change, and put stuff in a bag, presumably without burning down the store. Shauna can almost certainly do those things!

I especially like that, when the confidence fades and desperation sets in, Sarin goes back to Shauna turning into a drippy, massive tear, as she did during her earlier breakdown. She's one road hazard away from complete mental collapse at all times, just like me!

The issue ends with someone lighting the car of the shop owner on fire. Or perhaps cars in England spontaneously combust often. Did England embrace the Ford Pinto as the peak of automotive design? I certainly hope not, they could at least go for a tempo. There's an '80s car that can. . .almost certainly get you up a small hill faster than a walking pace!

As you can see, the appearance of more Allison/Sarin comics has put me in a fine mood. Until that next road hazard, then I'm down like an old factory being demolished for hipster coffee bars and overpriced loft apartments.

Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

Burke's (Ed Begley) a bitter ex-cop with a plan to make a big score, and even knows the two guys he thinks can help him pull it off. But Ingram (Harry Belafonte) doesn't want any part of that kind of danger, content to keep betting the horses in the hopes he breaks his losing streak before the bookie he's 7 grand in the hole to starts breaking fingers. Meanwhile, Slater (Robert Ryan) is trying to stay straight and narrow. Plus, he doesn't want to work with a black man.

The movie focuses on Ingram and Slater, on what ultimately brings both of them around to the bank job. Both of them are struggling against their vices; Ingram his gambling and inability to walk away from a losing skid, Slater his anger (or maybe the war left him an adrenaline junkie, where he thrives off pushing people or limits). Both are dealing with not feeling like men. Slater's unemployed, watching his girlfriend (wife?) go off to work and make promises to their upstairs neighbor that Slater will babysit for her. Ingram's got an ex-wife and a daughter he only gets to see on court-mandated visitations, because the life of a club singer/musician isn't what his ex wanted.

Slater deals with feeling emasculated by being cruel, asking his lady whether she'll want him around when he gets old and his looks fade. It drives her out so he can flirt with the upstairs neighbor. Something new to keep his attention. Ingram tries to give his daughter fun days at the zoo, while accusing his ex of trying to play "white" with her PTA friends. He can't do the day-in, day-out, and frames his unwillingness to change as being authentic, as opposed to his sellout ex-wife.

(He also uses the word "ofay", which is (or was) a derogatory term for a white person, which I don't think I'd ever heard. Learn something new every day.)

The heist is largely confined to the last half-hour, and a lot of that is the three of them making their way to the town via different routes, and Slater jabbing at Ingram constantly. Like he'd rather have a fistfight with this guy than successfully steal 200 grand. Burke's trying to play peacemaker, but you can see Ingram steadily losing his cool as this cracker attacks him just for being black. As is typical, the heist goes well, until it doesn't. Which is when I think the movie's desire to Make A Point kinds of wrecks it. 

So, spoilers for a 65+ year old movie. A series of unfortunate events have cops drive by the (closed) bank as Burke's leaving with the money. It was supposed to be Ingram who got the car, but Slater wouldn't give him the keys, and in all the squabbling, someone hit the alarm. Burke dies, Slater runs, and Ingram. . .chases after him. He's trying to kill Slater while the cops are chasing them both, all so they can die in a way that so disfigures their corpses that the orderlies can't tell which corpse was black and which was white. Ooooh, symbolism!

Maybe Ingram knows he's fucked anyway, because he blew the last of his bookie's patience. Now there's no chance he gets the money, all because of Slater. So what the hell, kill the guy. It still felt like such a stupid decision from a character that had been nervous and sweating the entire heist, and now suddenly he's all Bronson in Death Wish.

What I Bought 4/18/2025 - Part 1

As readers of the blog know, I'm not big on self-promotion. (Did I just self-promote my lack of self-promotion?) That doesn't mean I won't hype other people's stuff. With that in mind, I announce Alex's second album, The Catalogue (featuring Requiem) is available on most (all? He said Saturday he hadn't seen it on Spotify yet) digital music, um, sellers? Distributors? The places you can go online to listen to music, will have the album to listen to!

It's lo-fi jazz hip-hop, so mostly very chill. I'm particularly fond of "Sunflower Sam" and "Lofi Moomba" myself!

Batgirl #6, by Tate Brombal (writer), Takeshi Miyazawa (artist), Mike Spicer (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - Don't worry, I'm sure he's just using the sword to cut through the giant rubber band you're caught in.

Cassandra's rescue plan kind of isn't working, but she does learn why the Unburied are after Shiva. She cam to their underground world, seeking a challenge, and took the blue flowers. The Unburied realized hiding away wasn't letting them live in peace, and so they decided to seek and destroy.

Jayesh gets them free, then promptly dies at the blades of Neguri. Shiva wants to burn the flowers, Cassandra is determined to just get her to safety, and then be done with her. She takes a page from Batman's book and uses a colony of bats as cover to get through the Unburied, even briefly kicking Kalden's ass. Outside, Shiva tells Cass to find Bronze Tiger, then apparently falls covering Cassandra's retreat.

I say "apparently", because this really feels like a set-up. Kalden mentions the Unburied have a 'sublime leader.' Shiva says she doesn't know who it is, only that, if they're strong enough to defeat Kalden, they're someone she hopes Cass never faces until she's ready. And she sends Cass to find Bronze Tiger to 'help' her. When Batgirl carries the two of them out of the cave, after knocking Kalden on his ass in 5 strikes (the same number he needed to beat her in their first encounter), Shiva's looking at Cassandra with an approving smile.

When Cass asks Shiva why she bothered the Unburied, it's the "I am Lady Shiva. I am what I am." that Cassandra reads as truth. The rest is 'pain' and 'avoidance.' Shiva knows how Cass "sees", helped her regain it once. If David Cain knew how to obscure that, why wouldn't Shiva? So I really think Shiva is trying to improve her daughter, unfortunately in the way she defines that. Which seems to be making her a better fighter/warrior/weapon.

Random observation: I like how, after they pull themselves from the underground river, Miyazawa draws both of them with that similar strand of dark hair plastered across their face. Initially it's even running across the bridge of both their noses, though Shiva apparently quickly pushes her to the side, where it sticks to her cheek.

Red Before Black #5, by Stephanie Phillips (writer), Goran Sudzuka (artist), Ive Svorcina (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - People in the backcountry will build giant statues to anything.

At least some of Val's PTSD issues stem from an incident in Iraq, where she tried to get a pregnant woman, whose husband had been killed for aiding the U.S. forces, to give up the true name of the guy responsible. She did this by promising Sarah she and her family could come to the U.S., which base don Miles's reaction, was something she absolutely did NOT have authority to do. Quite possibly irrelevant, as they came under fire and Sarah got a piece of glass through the neck.

Interspersed with that is the present day, where Miles is about to kill Val. But first he has to complain about how he felt guilty, too, and betrayed by Val, and that he didn't sell her out in military court. Who knows if any of that is true. Obviously beside the part about Val betraying him, because that's what she's done. It's also largely irrelevant, because Agent Lamb shows up and shoots Miles through the back. Hilariously, he says Miles will get medical attention.

Dude, you almost certainly hit him in the heart. He's dead. Anyway, Val convinces Lamb to help her rescue Leo, except Leo already escaped and kicked her step-brother's ass. Then Lamb lets Val leave, calling him a bleeding heart as that weird jungle fills the room (though unlike Leo, Lamb doesn't appear able to see it.) Leo helps Val escape the cops, and then there's a couple of old ladies, who will apparently be important next issue.

The 'bleeding heart' comment was interesting, especially given where Miles was shot (the gunshot seems too low to perfectly mirror where Sarah's wound was located, but that doesn't mean Val wouldn't draw connections.) She thinks Lamb wants to bring her in, but in a way that gives her some respect. And she uses that apparent weakness to escape. The same way she used Miles' apparent guilt and camaraderie to get her foot in the door with his organization. The same way she used Sarah's hope of getting her family someplace, well, I hesitate to safe "safer" given the state of the U.S. at present, but that seems like the basic idea.

Use them up, get them killed, though in Lamb's case it's probably just his career that died. But Val got used by the U.S. government and military, then cast aside (see the flashback in the earlier issue where she's not allowed to sit in on a support group for veterans because she's a woman.) Don't know the circumstances that led her to enlist, but it seems likely she saw a chance for better prospects and took it. Then got used up and spit out.

How all that ties in with what's going on between her and Leo, I don't know. Other than she called Lamb a bleeding heart because like recognizes like, and she's trying to save Leo. Whether Leo wants or needs that is another matter.

Sunday Splash Page #371

"Composite Defender," in Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant #1, by Iman Vellani and Sabir Pirzada (writers), Carlos Gomez and Adam Gorham (artists), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Joe Carmagna (letterer)

After Magnificent Ms. Marvel was canceled at 18 issues, Kamala kind of slid into the background for a few years. She got a Disney+ show, which I watched two episodes of and which also completely changed her powers. Then she was added as a supporting cast member to Zeb Wells' Amazing Spider-Man run, seemingly so she could be killed off perfunctorily for the purposes of having a "shocking" death in the story.

I think she was dead for two months, maybe three, in our time, before being resurrected by the mutant nation of Krakoa. Apparently Kamala was a mutant all along, albeit one whose x-gene never activated. And she got resurrected just in time for the whole Krakoa thing to fall apart and mutants to be forced back into hiding. Kamala's advised to just lay low, but refuses to stand by and do nothing.

Which brings us to this mini-series, where Kamala accepts admission to a summer program at a big university. . .which is actually a front for ORCHIS. While Kamala tries to deal with the fact that her attempts to show mutants are not worthy of hate just for existing aren't working, there's a doctor in ORCHIS' basement lab trying to use Kamala to basically destroy all the telepathic mutants. Something about a Trojan horse implanted in her brain by a drone that can access the telepathic network the X-Men communicate with, if Kamala can be tricked into letting it in. The virus appears in her dreams as her mutation, (depicted as a lavender glowy version of herself) trying to making Kamala feel as though the X-Men won't accept her without it. I was surprised they didn't go ahead and give her the MCU powers right then.

(I feel like it's odd that Dr. Gaiha's plan is to attack the X-Men via telepathic communication, but we never see Kamala communicate with them through telepathy, just communicator earpieces. But I guess ORCHIS doesn't necessarily know that, while they do know the X-Men have a crapload of telepaths.)

This isn't a mini-series about Kamala trying to juggle school with helping the X-Men in a world that now hates and fears her. It's outright mentioned she hasn't been to any of her classes yet. It's mostly Kamala struggling with the unresolved issues of her having died and been resurrected (none of her friends or family remembering this, thanks to Emma Frost, though she tells Bruno everything), and feeling like she needs to be too many things to too many people. Part of the reason Dr. Gaiha's virus almost works is because Kamala's been having the same dream about who she really is for 10 consecutive weeks (the entire time she's been resurrected.) The virus initially just feels like an extension of the dream.

Vellani and Pirzada do a good job capturing Kamala's hopeful, determined, slightly goofy, personality. That she'll rush to meet a threat without worrying that people might react badly to someone with an "X" on their costume showing up. That she'll critique the attacker on their poor punching form as she knocks them down, but then hold off on attacking any further until it's needed.

That said, I find it hard to believe the negative public reaction to her being a mutant would stun Kamala that much. Granting she was a big X-Men fan from the beginning, she's been hunted by the government, she's been accused of working with gentrifiers (who were actually HYDRA) by her friends, she's been pulled out of line by the TSA just because her last name is "Khan", and they got a security warning about a "Khan." As she notes more than once, she's a lot of different things rolled into one, and many of those things have gotten her hated or viewed suspiciously for no good reason. So why people disliking mutants so much is shocking, I don't know.

Bruno's the only member of her supporting cast that gets any real page space, and he's pretty much as usual. Dedicated to helping her with hastily conceived super-science, supportive of her desire to help others, but worried about her getting hurt. The both of them firmly insisting they're just friends, and not a couple. Bruno also shows no signs of the injuries he sustained trying to stage a jailbreak in the Civil War II tie-ins. He was supposed to eventually lose the ability to walk, but I don't know when that got erased. I can't remember it being a factor in the few issues of Magnificent Ms. Marvel I read.

I think, having seen his art on Fantastic Four, that Carlos Gomez mostly draws Kamala's waking hours, while Gorham draws the dream sequences. Gorham's work (seen above) is rougher and looser than Gomez's, and if he doesn't play with the weird physics of dreams in how things look, he does capture Kamala's frustration and confusion, and how ragged she feels.

Gomez's art is slicker, and at times the expressions feel like they fall in the uncanny valley, or like I'm seeing actors trying to hold a pose that suggests they're doing something, rather than feeling natural as it would if they were actually doing it. Gorham's version of Kamala is closer to how she originally was drawn by Alphona or Miyazawa, while Gomez kind of generics her appearance (her nose is significantly smaller, for one thing.) Gorham also draws her in her classic costume, while Gomez draws the new X-themed outfit, where the lightning bolt is reduced to a tiny thing on her left shoulder. And it's not like they put anything on her torso in its place; it's just blank yellow space.

Saturday Splash Page #173

"Fleeting Glory," in Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle #4, by Grant Morrison (writer), Freddie E. Williams II (artist), Dave McCaig (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

Not even a Mother Box can help you escape Seven Soldiers of Spring, though the continual progress of time will take care of it if you can wait a few more weeks.

Shilo Norman is Mister Miracle, the World's Greatest Escape Artist, one of the Seven Celebrity Wonders of the World. With Motherboxxx, he escaped the Second Dimension. Escaped the Center of the Earth. But when he seeks to escape a black hole itself, he's greeted by Metron, who explains Shilo's needed to free the Gods.

His return to the world afterward is not easy. He sees gods from both sides of some great war everywhere he looks. His doctor doesn't seem to be helping him. His best friend tries bringing him to a strange club, but the women don't seem human to him. And while trying to deal with all this, there's a new escape artist on the block, Baron Bedlam. Stealing Shilo's stunts, his fans, somehow up and walking around after clearly not escaping the traps. All of it leads to Dark Side (that's how he's referred to in this, rather than the typical spelling.)

This is the mini-series most tangentially related to the others. While trapped in the Omega Sanction - which dooms Shilo to live and die again and again, never returning to the Source - Shilo lands in a life where his brother's death as a cop drove him to use his talents for escape by keeping superhumans locked up. One of those is a far-seeing god, Aurakles, who fled his responsibility after being tortured by the Sheeda. Aurakles claims Shilo's running from responsibility as well, and helps him to see the nature of the trap that he's in.

Other than that, Shilo's nearly hit by the taxi the kids Klarion was running with were driving in his mini-series, but there's no other connection I notice. This story feels more like a prelude to Final Crisis, with Dark Side and his bunch placing their souls within humans. From Dark Side's perspective, the Sheeda are just some minor nuisance. If their rampage can make it easier for him to take control, fine. He can always crush them later.

(I remember there being some discussion on comic blogs at the time about almost all of the Apokoliptians being black, while most of the New Genesis characters were white. Orion's a notable exception on the New Genesis side, Baron Bedlam seems to be the lone white guy working for Dark Side, and since he's apparently shifting his mind between fake bodies, who knows if that's even what the body he's really inhabiting looks like. I don't think Shilo's friend ZZ, and girlfriend Joelle, are meant to be Oberon and Barda, though if they were it might change the math. But I think Shilo is just supposed to be himself, a human who became like a god of escape (read: freedom), not a human housing Scott Free's spirit. Likewise, ZZ and Joelle are other humans he's known for years, who unfortunately fall prey to Dark Side.

I'm not sure why Morrison and the art crews - but probably mostly Morrison since I think this is really his show - went that route. Is it supposed to be something about Shilo, a black man, feeling he doesn't fit with other people his color? That their goals and motivations are to make him conform to what they want? Bedlam being white feels like a comment on how white audience would always prefer to get the same entertainment from a white guy. Rappers, basketball players, etc.)

This is also the only mini-series without a consistent artist. Pasqual Ferry draws the first issue, then Billy Dallas Patton draws most of issue 2 before Freddie Williams II takes it the rest of the way. At first, I thought everything after the black hole would be a hallucination, and so Williams would draw that, and Ferry would return once Shilo escaped. As it turns out, Shilo does find himself back in the black hole in issue 4, but Ferry does not return. There was also a 3-month gap between the release of issue 1 and issue 2, so I'm guessing Ferry couldn't keep the schedule and DC just rolled with Williams. And Williams is fine; he's a decent conventional superhero comic artist, but Ferry's work feels less grounded. Not ephemeral, but there's a looseness to the lines, a blurring with the surrounding colors that suggests there's more than what we can perceive going on. Would have been interesting to see Ferry draw the whole mini-series, how it would have looked.

On the vice/virtue front, I would assign this series Envy & Kindness. People want what Shilo has. His doctor, Dezzad, wants Motherboxx, obviously, but even though we don't see it, there are apparently big parties at Shilo's house after a successful escape, and all those people want to, quote, 'hang with the big dawg,' end quote. Bedlam rises to stardom rivaling Mister Miracle, despite not actually being an escape artist. It doesn't matter that he can't actually escape these traps; he can fake like he does and tell people he really did it, and they lap it up. Shilo worked and trained - he has a workout space with machines that throw knives so he can practice escaping straitjackets under duress - but people don't want to have to work to be as good as him.

But it's kindness that brings Shilo back to himself after Dark Side whispers the Anti-Life Equation to him (which is depicted as a voice balloon almost entirely filled with black ink.) Shilo is giving in to the notion everything is doomed, when he sees a couple of guys offering their coats to women caught in the rain. That act seems to snap him out of it, and he goes back to confront Dark Side (and gets beat to shit and lit on fire.) It's kindness, in the form of actually trying to speak with the trap he's in that gives them both a chance to be free (as Shilo notes, a sentient made to be a prison for others is also a prison for itself, since that's all it gets to do.)

There's also a guilt element, as Shilo's brother was a cop who was killed in the line of duty. It apparently happened after Shilo declined help to escape a straitjacket he put himself in, because Shilo wanted to do it all himself. You could see kindness as a factor there; that Shilo rejected his brother's offer (albeit out of pride), and his brother went off and got killed. And Shilo became the World's Greatest Escape Artist to atone, or to try and escape the fate that comes for everyone eventually. In-story, it's probably less about that, than Shilo keeping himself trapped with these feelings, and needed to escape that before he can free others.

Random Back Issues #149 - Power Girl #7

Well, that's one way to get yourself killed.

On the planet Valeron, Vartox fights to defend his kingdom from Yeti pirates. He routs the army, but, gasp! The pirates snuck a bomb into the Crystal City that rendered everyone sterile but, no worries! Vartox uses a Cosmosis Crystal to find potential mates to help kick-start a new genetic lineage, and one of them is Power Girl. Vartox is very impressed by the fact she survived the death of her universe, among other attributes, so it's off to Earth!

Where Power Girl is helping Dr. Mid-Nite capture an old Wonder Woman enemy, the Blue Snowman, who stole a sapphire Mid-Nite figures is worth less than the pipe that shoots icicles. Just as Power Girl gets in a groove lampshading the economic impracticality of comic book super-villainy, Vartox arrives in his head ship. It doesn't look a thing like him. Because Vartox is a man of surprising humility! Surprising in that he has any.

While Peej is not excited, Dr. Mid-nite suggests he could be nice, if eccentric. Mid-Nite has no time to revise this opinion, as he collapses once Vartox uses a 'seduction musk rifle', which Power Girl thinks smells of 'burnt armpit hair and elephant urine.' Then, as seen above, Vartox shushes Power Girl.

Well, that result is no surprise to anyone (other than Vartox, the universe proving uncooperative today.) Blue Snowman wakes up and turns out to be Blue Snowoman, and the musk worked on her. Which is too bad, because Vartox is on to his next plan in the wooing! He brings out Ix Negaspike, a creature that required an entire galaxy's worth of superwarriors to give their lives imprisoning it in a 'gravity well beneath the known universes.' Palmiotti, Gray, and Conner were clearly having fun coming up with ridiculous shit for this story, and I am here for it.

Power Girl is not here for it, or Vartox's plan to fight Ix Negaspike to demonstrate he has sufficient prowess to "take" her. Especially once Blue Snowman attacks Negaspike to protect Vartox. You see how that went. While PG flies Mid-Nite to safety, Vartox gets knocked through about 4 buildings, which doesn't hurt him (or his mustache), but does destroy the transport leash that would let him send Negaspike back home. Power Girl returns and starts to throw down, but it's not going great, so she flies the thing somewhere into the Arctic and chucks it into a mountain.

Vartox, still not reading the room, thinks Power Girl's just playing hard to get, but admits he maybe should have tried a more romantic approach. Did he mention he's a good cook? (This is a lie, he's absolutely not a good cook. Maybe his widow's peak is because his hair's growing inside and constricting his brain.) Truly fed up, Power Girl tries the old, "freeze and shatter it" approach.

Unfortunately, the Negaspike is self-replicating, so now there are a lot of them. On a positive note, Vartox did listen to her constructive criticism and stop referring to himself in the third person!

{8th longbox, 108th comic. Power Girl #7, by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti (writer), Amanda Conner (artist), Paul Mounts (colorists), John J. Hill (letterer)}

Nature Noir - Jordan Fisher Smith

Smith writes about his years as a California State Parks ranger. The curious bit is, the park where he worked is constantly on borrowed time, because it's supposed to be inundated when the construction of a massive dam is completed. Of course, the dam was originally approved over 20 years before he started working there, but everyone just sort of assumes it's going to happen.

Smith centers each chapter around a particular incident, or type of incident, he dealt with on the job. From there, he'll weave in aspects of the history of the dam or changes in the area. In one chapter, a jogger goes missing. Smith discusses how, because everyone assumes there's going to be a lake there, most major maps don't bother to show roads, and nobody sees the point in comprehensively maintaining or mapping trails. So horse-riding groups just make their own wherever they like, and it's easy to get lost.

When the jogger's body is found, apparently the victim of a mountain lion attack, Smith discusses the history of predator eradication efforts in the 19th and 20th century, as well as the eventual pushback by environmental groups starting in the 1960s. Likewise how, with the park largely being left alone (since it's expected to cease to exist in the near future) wild species are slowly re-establishing themselves after decades of human impact through mining, channelization, and the like. This means things like certain predators that might eat humans recovering their numbers and starting to clash with humans again.

(Smith doesn't advocate for resuming predator eradication. As he points out, humans are a hell of a lot more effective at killing each other, or even themselves, than pumas are.)

Smith also discusses the psychology of the people who would work at a park like this, through himself and his coworkers. That being assigned to park assumed to be on borrowed time could be seen as a career dead end, and so each person has to find things to help themselves get up and go to work. One guy organized a union for the rangers to get better pay and medical benefits. When their union was absorbed into a larger state employee union, he turned to compiling information on the history of park rangers in the state.

Smith himself, arriving early in his career and full of zest to prove himself and make a difference, took a more hardline approach to enforcing regulations about visitors carrying firearms or mining illegally than his senior co-workers. He pushed more training for the rangers on self-defense. That was how he made himself feel like his work had value.

The book is alternately informative, reflective, and literary. Smith doesn't shy away from florid imagery to describe the water rushing through a narrow canyon, but it not only gives a sense of the park as a place, it offers a glimpse into how he saw it, and his time there. Even if it was supposed to be a temporary place, he found meaning in the years he spent there and the work he did.

'When I came to the American River, I thought a ranger's job was to save something, or someone. Sometimes it is, when you hear about a bad situation early enough to stop it before it happens. But so often - as in the case of Ricky Marks and Mary Murphy - the whole story unfolds one step ahead of you. Or it's all over and done with before you even hear about it, as it was in the matter of Barbara Schoener. Then all you can do is try to memorize the details and give a good account of them in your report.'

What I Bought 4/12/2025

I am currently the unfortunate dope caught in between one of the people we regulate and the guy he stupidly agreed to let operate under his permit. And they're 3+ hours away, so I spent most of today on the road. Fortunately, last weekend I found two books from earlier this month over the weekend.

Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu #7, by Jed MacKay (writer), Domenico Carbone (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Man, if Khonshu was pissed about Marc's showing against Fairchild a couple issues ago. . .

Moon Knight's decided their best place to start bringing down Fairchild's operation is by developing something that will let people stop taking Glitter without dying. For that they need a bio-chemist, specifically Hank Pym, who is apparently hiding in Sub-Atomica, but also keeping an eye on his daughter. So Marc takes 8-Ball's comment about how villains do things as a suggestion, and gets his squad to dress up as villains and attack Nadia van Dyne, attack the Unstoppable Wasp.

This actually works in drawing out Pym, which means Tigra gets to have a conversation with him. Meaning she yells at him, but I'm mostly here for the flashbacks where 8-Ball is getting excited about outfitting Reese and Hunter's Moon as villains. Especially Reese, who ends up as "The Chalk."

It's that thing Krusty explained to Sideshow Bob's brother. Nobody wants to see a person get hit by a pie that's begging for it. They want it to be someone with dignity; meaning someone who hates it. And MacKay consistently writes Reese as clearly thinking she's much more worldly and mature than everyone else in the book. Even in this issue, when Pym starts making excuses, Reese's contribution is, 'She sure has a type.' This from the lady who got herself turned into a vampire by some fucking yuppies, which I think disbars you from opining on other people's bad life decisions (and to be clear, Tigra dating Pym was a terrible idea, even setting aside the part where it was a Skrull infiltrator.)

In other words, Reese's misery at this entire experience makes her perfect for it. I was dying laughing all through the fight scene.

Deadpool #13, by Cody Ziglar (writer), Roge Antonio (artist), Guru-eFX (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - That cover is way too busy.

Now that the crossover is safely concluded, the Deadpools want to find Death Grip, and they figure the guy who gave him the magic sword he killed Wade with is the one to ask. After a two-page Wolverine cameo, which establishes only that Solem had his own Muramasa Blade he gave to Death Grip (and which involves Deadpool wearing a parka and earmuffs in July for reasons that are not explained), they go confront Solem.

I was gonna call him "the Arakko guy," because I can't be driven to care about him, but it's too many words. Apparently he's a hedonist? Or something. Is that an established character trait? I thought all the Arakko folks cared about was fighting and killing, but this guy has a Pleasuredome and a Pleasuretorium, if the point wasn't being driven in quite heavily enough. He agrees to the old "beat me and I'll tell you," gambit. Because he's got Adamantium skin?

Well, whatever. Somehow, trying to kill Miles Morales got the Deadpools a different magic sword, so they cut Solem enough he gives them the info. And he writes it in his own blood, because Eleanor suggested it, which did make me chuckle. Ziglar lets her be more than a little shocked and freaked out by everything going on in the Pleasuredome, which actually seems to annoy Solem. It's a fairly decent bit of character interaction.

Next issue they face Death Grip, who has apparently started resurrecting people to learn what exists on the other side of death. Seems like there's enough people out there with that experience he could have just asked, rather than killing and reviving all his followers. Control freak.

Bottle Rocket (1996)

Anthony (Luke Wilson), fresh off a stint in a mental hospital for "exhaustion", gets roped into his friend Dignan's (Owen Wilson) plan to become robbers, who will eventually join up with a crew led by Mr. Henry, the guy who fired Dignan from his landscaping job. Dignan and Anthony are joined by their friend Bob, because he has a car, but the heady rush of successfully robbing a large bookstore soon fades when Bob leaves and Anthony becomes infatuated with one of the motel housekeepers, Inez (Lumi Cavazos.)

I'm not sure I ever really get Wes Anderson movies. All these socially awkward characters who sort of bumble about in half-formed lives, am I supposed to laugh at them or pity them? Bob, Anthony and Dignan all seem dissatisfied with their lives for one reason or another. Bob's trying to grow weed in the backyard of his parents' house, while taking crap from his older brother.

Anthony just seems to be drifting, then latches onto Inez from the moment he sees her, in a way I found pretty creepy. The whole scene where she shows him the locket she keeps with a picture of her sister, and he asks if he can keep it, and does so despite her obviously being uncomfortable with it? I was supposed to root for this guy to get the girl? I'll root for someone to throw his ass in the hotel dryer and set it to High Heat. I really hoped, late in the movie when he called the motel, that Inez was long gone. On to someplace better, already having forgotten the strange, self-absorbed guy with boundary issues. Sadly, that was not the case.

Dignan, who sees becoming a successful criminal as a way to, respect, maybe. Excitement? Like a kid playing pretend, he talks about needing to use aliases and get their hair cut or dyed (though not until after the robbery), but he carries out these conversations by shouting to Anthony (seated at the pool) from the second floor hallway outside their room. It feels like a vacation he's taking much too seriously. 

The push-and-pull between he and the other two, who get sidetracked with infatuation or their brother being arrested, those are the better parts. They way they fall into this petty squabbling, with Dignan trying to pull a rank he doesn't have, because Bob and Anthony are really just using his dream as a temporary escape from their own shit. But those parts feel more like a Coen brothers movie, with the weird criminals turning on each other in stupid and hilarious ways. Maybe that's why I enjoy them more.

I was not expecting James Caan to show up as Mr. Henry, and at first he seems like as much a goofball as the others. I expected, after him dumping water on Dignan from the roof, or practicing his martial arts, that he was full of crap, and Dignan had simply swallowed it. As it turns out, Mr. Henry is full of crap, but he's also the closest thing to an actual adult in the entire movie. He knows what he wants out of life, he sets out to get it, and he does it. No deviating from the plan, no allowing sentiment to interfere or having his plan fall apart because one of his lookouts got lonely. Basically, it's like a character Caan played in some other crime flick wandered into this one, assessed it as full of rubes and said, "Sure, I'll set up shop here for a while." 

I guess I don't know that Mr. Henry is happy. Maybe he's deeply unfulfilled, and this is the best he can do to ignore that feeling. But it seems like he's the one taking real steps to make what he wants of life, rather than drifting along, waiting to see if something good comes into his orbit (Bob), or just blundering vaguely in the direction of an idea (Dignan).

Regrets? Sure, He's Got a Few.

Most Annoying Guy You Know Thinks You Just Need To, "Hug It Out, Bro."

The Straw Hats are face-to-face with the ones responsible for the attack on Iceberg, which they took the blame for, as well as their former crewmate, Nico Robin. The confrontation goes poorly, as Robin seems to have fully broken with the crew. Worse, the two strongest Straw Hats, Luffy and Zoro, are easily trounced by the government assassins, who have trained in the art of "Six Powers", turning their very bodies into weapons.

The agents are also ruthless and more than a little sadistic. When their leader, Rob Lucci, is confronted by one of the shipwrights he's worked with for years now as part of his cover, Lucci says he knows this must be difficult to accept. Instead of following with a bland justification about it not being personal, Lucci's asks if smashing Iceberg's face in would help drive the point home.

With the Straw Hats down and the Galley-La HQ burning, the remainder of volume 37 turns to Franky, leader of the local criminal underworld. He's got Usopp and the Going Merry as hostages to lure out Luffy for a rematch. But, upon learning Usopp left the Straw Hats, Franky offers him a place in his gang. Usopp declines, dead set on finishing repairing Merry and sailing back home to the East Blue. Which is when Franky intervenes, echoing the assessment of the Galley-La shipwrights that Merry's done as a sailing vessel.

The surprise here is that Usopp admits he's known all about it since the crew's adventure to the sky islands. He saw a child repairing Merry one night, and was certain somehow it actually was the ship. (The spirit of a ship that's loved enough by its crew to manifest is apparently a real thing in One Piece, according to Franky.)

Even knowing this, Usopp's unwilling to just give up and let the Merry go. If Merry is going to work so hard to keep sailing for them, then he doesn't see how he can do any less for the ship. There's probably a lot tied into the fact Usopp's mother died of an illness when he was 7. All he could do was assure her his father (the sniper of Red-Haired Shanks' crew, the guy who gave Luffy his hat) was coming back soon, and watch her slowly waste away.

(There's a fair amount of division in the fandom about whether Yasopp's a shit dad or not. Supposedly the text says Banchina encouraged him to join Shanks and go to sea, because she knew it was something he loved. So he didn't abandon them, the "not a shit dad" contingent argues. But Banchina's been dead 10 years by the time Usopp meets Luffy, and Yasopp apparently didn't come back to visit once in that entire time. Even Cyclops only took like a year to go back to look in on Maddy Pryor and his kid. When you're more delinquent than Scott Summers, I think we can safely rule you're a Shit Dad.)

That's about the point Lucci and the others find Franky, because he's the one hiding the blueprints of the ancient warship they want. Franky gets as effortlessly trounced by Lucci as everyone else, so Oda can instead dive into his tragic backstory. Basically, Franky's selfishness and casual discarding of the warships he was building ended up getting his and Iceberg's mentor arrested by the World Government, and Franky feels guilty about it. To the extent he got run over by the Sea Train trying to stop it from taking away said mentor (who also built the ship of the previous Pirate King, so I guess Oda's going for symmetry when Franky ultimately builds Luffy's new ship). Yes, the cyborg's face turn is in full swing!

Sunday Splash Page #370

"Kamala Corps Unite," in Ms. Marvel (vol. 4) #28, by G. Willow Wilson (writer), Nico Leon (artist), Ian Herring (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)

So Secret Wars canceled everything, and then (before it had even ended, because delays and/or Hickman's inability to properly pace the mini-series meant it required an extra issue), Ms. Marvel was back. G. Willow Wilson uses the undefined timeskip to change a few things. Kamala is part of the Avengers now (with Jane Foster Thor, Sam Wilson Captain America, Sam Alexander Nova, and Miles Morales Spider-Man), and at some point in the intervening months, her best friend Bruno has begun dating Mike, a pleasant and intelligent young woman.

This volume ran 38 issues, and I tend to break it up into 3 broad, yearlong arcs. Year 1, Kamala learns the downsides of a reputation. Not just it makes her a target, that word's gotten around electricity neutralizes her powers. A reputation means people grow to rely on you, expect more of you, will view you through their beliefs. And Kamala, who is helpful, conscientious, and (in the case of dealing with the Avengers or Captain Marvel) starstruck, has a difficult time turning people down and a harder time feeling hated. Especially when the hatred is coming from her friends.

Dr. Faustus unleashes a mind control scheme under cover of a gentrification plan that co-opted Ms. Marvel's image for their campaign. Kamala's unaware of any of this until she sees the billboards. Just like she wasn't aware Bruno was dating Mike (or even who Mike was), because she's too caught up in being an Avenger. Trying to handle that, plus Avengers stuff, plus her brother's impending marriage leads to a disastrous plan to 3-D print (with a printer gifted to the school by Stark) extra Kamalas to handle the mundane, civilian stuff for her. Which does lead to a bizarre scene where an army of Kamalas (including a King Kong-sized one) rampage through Jersey City, fighting Loki and the storm guardians he left to protect the high school after he messed with the Valentine's Day dance in the previous volume. Nico Leon and Ian Herring really capture the farcical nature of that whole thing.

Then Kamala is too swept up in her hero worship of Carol Danvers entrusting her with a special squad to utilize "predictive justice" (Civil War II tie-in alert!) to recognize the dangers until it hits close to home. That ends with her on the outs with Captain Sparkle Fists, and Bruno badly injured and moving to Wakanda (because he might, technically, have committed domestic terrorism.) Kamala goes on a trip to visit family in Pakistan for an issue, where Wilson introduces the local hero Red Dagger, who becomes more prominent around the end of year 2.

At least Wilson and Takeshi Miyazawa give us a gang of Canadian ninjas, who roll through Jersey City in a tank at one point. I absolutely loved the random weird stuff in this book.

Year 2 doesn't start off great; the one-shot where Kamala gets out the vote to stop HYDRA from taking over the city government feels like being lectured, and the 4-parter about fighting a sentient program that's basically an internet troll falls flat.

After that, it picks up as HYDRA, plus a particular fascist that was part of Kamala's little special squad, illegally seize power in the city and start rounding up people with powers. Including Kamala's brother, marking the only time the weird powers he got in the previous volume are remarked upon.

The critical part here, Kamala's handling most of this on her own. Year 2 is the grind of dealing with everything with no support network, and how quickly people can turn on you. She and Danvers are on the outs. Bruno's gone. None of her other friends know her secret identity. Nakia in particular has been down on Ms. Marvel since Faustus used her image. Kamala can usually rally some help in a pinch, but it's mostly the people of Jersey City caring enough to get themselves involved. Red Dagger shows up late in Year 2, so he and Ms. Marvel renew acquaintances while trying to stop a runaway train. But even with that, Kamala finds everyone fawns over the new guy, while she starts getting the Spider-Man treatment of being mocked and unflatteringly portrayed by the news media.

(When it turns out Nakia knows Kamala is Ms. Marvel, her earlier attitude is not addressed or even commented on. Wilson has a tendency to set up potential interesting character conflicts and then just, not do anything with them. Likewise, Kamala's mother knowing she's a superhero, while her father doesn't, comes to nothing.)

Year 3 is Kamala finding balance, after initially going to the other extreme. The "Teenage Wasteland" arc, she's missing. Her friends try to step in as Ms. Marvel-lettes, but there's limits to what they can handle. Ms. Marvel eventually gets back in the game, having seen how people are trying to fill her shoes. She and Carol reconcile, Bruno returns, which creates some awkwardness with him and Mike and Red Dagger and Kamala, but she's got her support network back and she's willing to keep lines of communication open. Things find an equilibrium.

The artists vary a lot more on this volume. Most of the first year and a half (through the Doc.X story) is drawn by Takeshi Miyazawa, but Nico Leon, Adrian Alphona, and Mirka Andolfo draw issues as well. Miyazawa's art, with a greater manga influence, tends to look prettier than the other artists. Kamala doesn't look as distinctive as under Alphona's pencils (although none of the others artists give Kamala the same prominent nose as Alphona.)

Leon, who takes over as primary artist in Year 3, is closest to Alphona in terms of the sheer amount of silly details he'll add to the margins and backgrounds of panels. I don't know if he or Wilson came up with the idea of Kamala's friends doing Power Rangers-esque poses when they're acting as Ms. Marvel, but I love it.

But let's talk about Ian Herring. Herring is the color artist throughout volumes 3 and 4. Across something like 9 different artists (not counting the ones who drew a brief story in one of the couple of anthology-style issues), Herring is the one who gives the book it's consistent feel. Kamala's appearance may vary, the city itself may vary (Leon gives it skyscrapers, which I don't think any of the other artists do, and Diego Orlotegui's two issues are mostly spent viewing a sparsely populated countryside on the top of a train), but the feel of Ms. Marvel's world remains the same.

I think the aspect that always catches my eye is this particular shade of golden yellow he likes.The subtle variations in it, even within a single panel, make it look water-colored. Maybe it is. How he uses it varies with the story and artist. In the issue above, it's mostly a solid color he uses as a background when the focus is meant to be on the character. When Zoe and Mike are fighting some of the reptile-bots, it's just that color (and some speed lines) in the background. When Kamala's friend Naftali finally finds her in a snooty private academy on a hill, and makes the point that her friends need her, the background is a that color.

It other situations, he uses it differently. It's a sunset color a lot, either when the scene is actually near sunset, or when a confrontation is reaching its climax. When Kamala and Danvers are crossing the city during their team-up in the previous volume, all the rooftops they pass above have that shade. Whether Kamala knows it or not, things are coming to an end. With Miyazawa's art, Herring uses a slightly lighter shade of it to coat Kamala when she "embiggens," and it may almost suffuse the room she's in, a sign of power and her being the focus in the scene. It's a color I instantly associate with this book, and this character, so credit to Herring.

The book ended at 38 issues, in early 2019. Marvel started up Magnificent Ms. Marvel, written by Saladin Ahmed, but I dropped that after 6 issues. It's finally revealed Kamala's dad knows her secret identity, courtesy of her mother telling him at some point, but Ahmed then has helpful aliens wipe it from the minds. There was something with a sentient suit, and Minkyu Jung's art didn't fit what I was used to for the character, even with Herring handling the color art duties. Josh, who had seemingly reconsidered working with fascists after his one storyline being an embittered white boy, was back working with the redhead again, and bleh.

But maybe that was for lack of recurring villains. Kamala didn't get an extensive rogue's gallery. The Inventor (Edison-bird version) died. The Inventor (human who created Edison-bird) was still around, and maybe you could keep doing things with a guy whose shtick was sacrificing people society didn't value to "save the world", but it'd be hard to keep coming up with new approaches. Plus, you need Wilson and the various artists' aesthetics to keep his creations from looking generic. Kamran kind of failed once Kamala saw through the pretty boy facade, plus the Inhumans were on the outs again, so Kamala doesn't interact with them much (hardly at all) in volume 4.

Doc.X, the sentient, evolving, hate-filled computer virus/program? Maybe, though you almost have to make him stupid enough to keep creating physical bodies for Kamala to punch, because her powers don't really interact well with him otherwise. Lockdown, as an authoritarian tool of whoever will let her bully people. OK, always useful to have someone the hero can punch without qualms. One of the last stories involved the Shocker moving to jersey City, figuring with only one hero - a kid a that - he could be king of the mountain and indulge his inner mad scientist. I really enjoyed that story, especially after years of Nick Spencer and other writers treating him as a joke. You could do worse for an established villain to switch over to a newbie's foes. Not like Spider-Man is at a shortage.