Saturday Splash Page #179

"New Model," in Sentinel (vol. 2) #2, by Sean McKeever (writer), Joe Vriens (penciler/inker), Kevin Yan and Udon Coloring (colorists), Joe Caramagna (letterer)

The first Sentinel book had a few unanswered mysteries. One, and probably most important to the reader, what was a damaged Sentinel doing in rural Wisconsin? Two, and definitely more important to Justin Seyfert, what happened to his mother? He and his brother Chris live with their dad. Their mom is never seen, and never mentioned by anyone save his brother, who asks at one point if his unexplained headaches were the reason she went away.

So, borrowing a hairbrush his mother left behind, Juston's got the Sentinel scanning for DNA matches as he travels the countryside, ignoring the fact that the boy who "saved" his school from a giant robot attack suddenly vanishing without a word is going to create a news frenzy, not to mention a lot of panic among his friends and family.

But part of the reason he bailed is the guilt over all these people praising him for a heroic act that he orchestrated. At this point, Juston is just trying to fix something, because he doesn't know how to fix that mistake. Well, he does, but he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life in prison, which, fair enough.

There's a scene in the first issue when Juston, seemingly having decided he'll give up the Sentinel, is trying to figure out how much evidence there is of what he did. Turns out the Sentinel's been recording almost everything, so the answer is, "a lot." This continues the theme from the first series, that Juston really doesn't understand much about this machine, or what it can really do. It tells him it can't self-repair, but later on, it repairs its eyes when they've been damaged. He eventually gives it an order to protect him, and it seems to comply, but who knows how long that's going to last. 

Reviewing the recordings is a gut punch for Juston, as he's confronted with how close some of those attacks came to hurting his friends. Desperate to get away from the guilt, he stumbles onto a recording of the Sentinel dropping some guy into a lake. It's not anything Juston recognizes, so what's the deal?

The deal is, an officer involved with the Sentinel program did a favor for an old school chum-turned Senator. Kill his opposition, secure his election, get a nice promotion. The Sentinel was supposed to self-destruct, but it apparently didn't destruct entirely, because here we are, with those two trying to cover their tracks by unleashing an experimental Sentinel.

Juston, not getting the answers he hoped for, eventually returns home where he has to actually talk with his dad and protect his town from the other Sentinel (not necessarily in that order.) He's still hiding the Sentinel's existence from his family and friends, and any hard feelings his friends or little brother have about his vanishing act are not dealt with (although McKeever consistently wrote them as just worried about him, so that tracks.) There was also a subplot about Jessie, the cool older girl Juston had a crush on, getting annoyed with Ashleigh, who had latched onto Juston when he became a celebrity. It seems like there was a whole lot of history between the two of them that was only hinted at as well. But the book only had five issues to work with, so some stuff was just going to be cut out.

After this, I'm not sure Juston appeared until midway through Avengers Academy (right about the time I dropped the book.) Then he got killed in Avengers Arena, though I understand he was shown as alive again recently in some X-book. I think one issue for him being active in the Marvel Universe (besides Sentinel's history as genocide-abetting machines, which makes team-ups awkward) is he's not bad at mechanical things, but he's not an inventor on par with Tony Stark or Moon Girl, or probably even the Tinkerer.

The Sentinel is a pre-existing weapon Juston found, and it does a lot of repairs itself. Maybe if he had more resources than hand tools and a scrap yard he could do more, but up to the end of this mini-series, he hasn't exactly demonstrated the level of know-how non-powered scientist type characters need to survive in a super-powered world. He can make a Battlebot the size of a medium-sized dog, but an exo-suit or a giant robot seem like they're beyond his capabilities.

If he continues to rely on the Sentinel, you can use bigger threats, and maybe continue to expand (or develop) the Sentinel's personality, but you have to show what Juston is bringing to the partnership beyond just ordering the Sentinel around. If you ditch the Sentinel, you probably have to keep Juston facings smaller-scale threats he has the mechanical know-how to cobble together a counter for. Which you could probably do, if you left him in his hometown in its own little bubble. Which gives you the advantage of his supporting cast for non-crimefighting stuff, but that kind of stuff seems to have limited appeal among the Marvel comics' readers. They want BIG and IMPORTANT. And I don't think the occasional team-up with the Great Lakes Avengers (or maybe Alpha Flight if he's close enough to the border, although that could be trick given current tensions) would offer enough of a boost.

Random Back Issues #153 - Sentinel #4

Hey, we were just talking about you guys!

At this point, Juston's withdrawn and surly with everyone. He tried asking out Jessie, the cool upperclassman, to the dance, but she's got a boyfriend in college. Ouch. On the plus side, he kicked one of the varsity dickheads in the junk when the guy tried to stuff him in a locker.

Unfortunately, Josh is out for revenge beyond merely a beatdown, though it won't fully manifest for another issue. For now, though, one of his buddies notices Juston and Jessie talking it out and gets a troubling look on his face. Then Josh and his boys jump Alex, Juston's best friend, while he's out on a date, and give a message to pass along.

Seems like you could call the cops in at that point. Get them on hate crime charges, assault against a minor, something. This is, beyond being cruel, ill-advised. Juston is still working on getting the Sentinel up and running. He can't buy circuitry, or liquid nitrogen for the freeze ray, but he was able to make a new knee joint support in shop class! Which means the Sentinel can walk again. Which means it might leave, so Juston tells it to add a new prime directive: that it will not leave Juston, ever.

How well that's going to work, when the Sentinel is steadily restoring its memory banks while Juston's not around, is up in the air. For now, it's time for a test drive. Juston rigged a platform and some hand grips on the Sentinel's back, and they go tearing through the woods, eventually stopping at a cliff (as seen in last weekend's Saturday Splash Page!)  So it can run, and its repulsor rays, pulse blasts, whatever it's firing from its palms work, too. Let's hope some asshole jocks don't give Juston a reason to want to use those weapons on anybody. Like beating up his friend, or making the girl he likes think he's spreading stories about scoring with her. That could end badly. . .

{9th longbox, 156th comic. Sentinel (vol. 1) #4, by Sean McKeever (writer), Joe Vriens, Sacha Heilig, Scott Hepburn, Eric Vedder (artists), Andrew Hou, Kevin Yan, Simon Young (colorists), Cory Petit (letterer)}

So Close, Yet so Far

In gameplay, Three-Fourths Home is very simple. You hold down the right trigger and the car goes "vroom" across the screen. If you take your finger off the trigger, the game effectively pauses until you start moving again.

Your character, Kelly, is on the phone with her family as she drives home. A storm (which gets steadily worse, until there are multiple tornadoes around) rolls in. You're in no danger from that; the game isn't throwing cows or silos in the road and making you swerve. Your focus is the conversations. They say something, and the game gives you options on how Kelly responds. No more than three options, sometimes only one (the dialogue trees inevitably lead to certain points.)

That's really it. This was the extended edition, so there's an epilogue where Kelly reflects on a day months earlier, when she was away at college and thought about calling her mother, but didn't. You can choose to make the call and have a conversation Kelly wishes she had, or not. If you do, you can walk on the sidewalk (by pushing the right or left trigger) as you talk, or just stand there. You don't really see a lot if you walk, the game has a very simple visual style, but it's there if you don't want to just watch buses pull up and leave.

The game's really more about the circumstances. Kelly went away to college, but now she's back at what feels like Square One, but everyone else is different. Kelly's still caught up in the fallout of what caused her retreat to her childhood home, the feeling it wasn't supposed to go like this, she isn't supposed to be back here, what's wrong with her. That is a feeling I'm well familiar with, for about a solid decade after college.

Kelly's apparently just now, while on the phone, twigging to a lot of what's been happening with her family. She hasn't realized her dad doesn't take any meds for the pain after he lost a leg in an accident at the factory (unless you count beer, at least he's not combining the two), or that her brother stopped playing the guitar after she left (he's into writing now.)

Given the specific points the conversations have to hit, I don't know how much of a difference it makes which dialogue options you pick. You can get more information about certain topics if you ask questions versus sticking to monosyllabic answers. The third time through (the game takes maybe 30 minutes to play), I tried to pick the response with the fewest words (in the event of a tie, the fewest letters.) Or you can be cryptic or even a jerk. Your brother gets irritated if you call him "Benji," and reminds you that you promised two weeks ago not to do that. Then the game gives you an option to do it again a few minutes later. I refrained, but maybe as an only child I don't understand the fun of needling at siblings.

Or maybe I saw my friends' siblings stab them with forks too often to want any part of that smoke.

The "conversation" with her mother at the bus stop adds an additional wrinkle that there will sometimes be dialogue options in brackets, which symbolize the moment Kelly breaks her own illusion. The moments where she knows she's lying to this imaginary version of her mother, or the moments where she thinks her mother wouldn't have reacted like that. The background also shifts during those moments, and so does the background music if you get far enough into the conversation.

It took me until the third time through to really get the hang of that. The first time, I just had Kelly stand there as a couple of buses stopped and departed, then finally had her get on one. Second time, I had her make the call, but I interpreted the bracket options as a sign I was messing up, like when you step on the wrong square in Dance Dance Revolution. Breaking the rhythm, dragging her back to the truth of the situation. The third time, I started like that, but partway through decided to see what would happen if I just pursued those threads.

Steady Cooking in Summer Heat

The main thing I noticed in August's solicits was two companies seemed to change their names. At least, there were two Valiant titles listed under "Alien Books", and nothing listed as Valiant Comics. I also saw titles I remember being solicited through Scout Comics, now listed under various "Amp Comics" headings. If it is Scout, they've only partially learned from past mistakes. 4 books solicited, but spread across 3 different imprints: Amp Comics, Amp Comics - Chispa, Amp Comics LLC. What sense does that make?

What's new? Marvel's got a couple of things, only 1 of which I'm likely to get immediately. That's the new Black Cat series, written by G. Willow Wilson. It's spinning out of something happening in Amazing Spider-Man, and Felicia's going to be a hero, but maintain the facade of being a thief. As long as there's some cool heists in this thing, we'll get along fine.

August also brings Marvel All-on-One, a 64-page, all splash page story where the Thing returns from some outer space jaunt and finds everyone trying to kick his ass. I'm not sure an all splash page book works to the strengths of Ryan North's writing, but it probably does play to Ed McGuinness' strengths as an artist. It's also $8, so, yeah, probably not buying that any time soon.

I was initially intrigued by the Event Horizon mini-series IDW solicited, but it's a prequel telling what happened to the crew that first tested the jump drive. I mean, we know what happened, they were driven insane and tore each other apart like rabid animals. Why do we need five issues for that?

What's ending? It isn't listed on Mad Cave's website as I type this (last Friday), but I'm assuming the last issue of Dark Pyramid will arrive in August.

And the rest: Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu is on issue 11, while Batgirl's on issue 10 with the Unburied gunning for her again.

Apparently Image solicited issue 6 of Dust to Dust at some point in the last couple of months, because issue 7 is listed for August. Resurrection Man: Quantum Karma is on its 5th issue, and Mitch must have screwed something up, because the solicit says he's fleeing a former ally. Bronze Faces is supposed to be on issue 5, as well, which means a lot of books are lining up to end in September.

The Thing puts the Idol of Millions up against the Juggernaut. I'm actually pretty excited to see that fight, so hopefully they creative team can live up to my entirely reasonable, sky-high expectations. The Runaways mini-series is on issue 3, because One World Under Doom will still be 3 months from ending 3 months from now. Ugh!

*slams face against table*

*nearly spills soda on his laptop*

The 12th volume of Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General is listed by Seven Seas Entertainment, although it won't be out until the beginning of October. It'll be a while before I get to reviewing volume 11 (or even volume 10 at the rate I'm going), but I loved volume 11, so I'm stoked for the possibility of the RX Organization against an alien invasion!

Oh yeah, and the new volume of Fantastic Four's on issue 2.

The Marvels (2023)

Dar-Ben (Zawe Ashton), who took over as Supremor after Captain Sparkle-fists (Brie Larson) killed the Supreme Intelligence in the first Captain Marvel movie (I forgot that happened, along with most of what happened in that movie), is looking for a couple of wristbands that will give her incredible power. But she only finds one, because the other is on Kamala Khan's (Iman Vellani) wrist.

Oh well, enough energy and one bangle (or Quantum Band) is enough to open jump gates enabling Dar-Ben to steal resources from worlds that important to Captain Marvel to revitalize Hala. Yeah, she uses the scheme from Spaceballs, except she actually succeeds in stealing a planet's fresh air, and another's water. Meaning Carol Danvers is less competent than Lone Star and Barf. Ouch.

With only one Band, the gates are steadily tearing apart spacetime, and have also caused Carol, Kamala, and Monica Rambeau's (Teyonah Parris) powers to somehow get "entangled", so if two or more of them use their powers simultaneously, they switch places. Leading to a lot of confusion when Carol, say, abruptly swaps with Kamala (drawing comics about team-ups with Danvers) during a fight with the Kree, or Kamala and Monica get swapped when Monica's on a spacewalk. But it provides an excuse to not send the teenager or the scientist home (since they'd likely just get dragged back in at the worst possible moment), and they have to work together to try and stop Dar-Ben.

I figured that if Dar-Ben kept managing to open gates with one bangle by supercharging it with her Universal Weapon, the solution was going to be Kamala closing the gates (or rift) with her bangle after getting it supercharged by Carol. Probably with some help controlling the energy from Monica, what with her ability to shift between different parts of electromagnetic spectrum. Teamwork makes the dream work, and there was the whole bit about Carol having been on her own in space a lot and being used to handling everything solo, and Monica being reluctant to get involved in this kind of stuff and needing to embrace her powers, and Kamala getting to live out her dream of a team-up on an Avengers-level danger, while having a better sense what that actually entails.

It seemed like an obvious reason to need both bands to create stable gates. One opens, the other closes, they regulate each other, something like that. Plus, you've got Kamala using her power to turn energy into solid barriers or shields or whatever. At least have her try to make a giant plug or patch or something. But they had to do the Multiverse thing, so there you go.

The three leads play off each other well. Vellani's got Kamala's starstruck and eager attitude down cold, and it gives the movie energy and excitement that helped carry it along. Because otherwise, Danvers is really serious and guarded, and Monica is nervous and trying to sort out her feelings about "Aunt Carol." But Larson and Parris let their characters gradually get swept up in the enthusiasm a bit. The training montage sequence was fun, although I'm a sucker for "Intergalactic" (up there with "Body Movin'" and "Eggman" for my favorite Beastie song.)

As generally repulsed by choreographed singing and dancing as I am in movies, the visit to Andala was interesting - I laughed at, "we have two newcomers - although one of them could be more cheerful" - although Carol's Princess Dress Outfit really did drive home that she needs something brighter on the lower half of her costume to break up all that muddy dark blue. If not the classic red sash, at least a bright red or yellow belt or something.

The gags with the Flerkens and the space station were amusing, though it felt weird to be worrying about that when Dar-Ben is about to steal the Sun to reignite Hala's. But the movie was emphasizing home and family, and all 3 of the leads had connections to the people on the station, so it wouldn't make a lot of sense to abandon them to die when the station blows up, implodes, falls into the atmosphere, whatever it was going to do (I wasn't clear on that beyond it wasn't working well.)

Overall, I had a pretty good 95 minutes watching this.

What I Bought 5/23/2025

Well, I tried to get the 4 comics that came out last week. The shop in town was a bust, no big surprise. The one I like to try in the next town over was closed for the holiday weekend. Well, can't argue with people taking time off. The other store in that town had one of the books, so we work with what we've got.

Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu #8, by Jed MacKay (writer), Devmalya Pramanik (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - That's pretty graphic, but I'm sure Moon Knight won't actually get impaled.

Moon Knight wakes up in a void, bound in chains. His soul is trapped within Carver's soul, after she impaled him with it. Well hush my mouth. So Moonie gets a rundown on Carver's backstory, as well as the swords. She was on a gig for Roxxon in Vanaheim, things were going bad, the sword made an offer, and she took it. Now she has to feed the sword souls, or it takes hers. Fairchild promised he could free her, but that's a lie.

Rosenberg uses a yellow-gold for the flashbacks to Carver's past, an unearthly color that makes a nice contrast to the stark black void Moon Knight's chained up in, but keeps the tone muddy enough that it's not shining fairy-tale world. For Carver, Vanaheim was an ugly, terrifying place of stuff she wasn't ready to deal with, least of all a sword forged by a mad dwarf who immediately killed a dragon with it.

The sword took the dragon's soul, and with it, its desire to hoard. Moon Knight calls on the dragon-sword to surrender, as we see he let Carver run him through. Because his soul is already claimed, and Khonshu's kind of a jealous bitch about this kind of thing. Pramanik had been using chains for panel borders as Moon Knight spoke with Ginnarr, but those are replaced with a wavy white border as Moon Knight breaks free and Khonshu forces his way into the conversation, the chains now appearing around Ginnarr instead.

Moon Knight talks the Bird-God out of killing the dragon, and now Moon Knight has a soul-stealing sword and Carver owes him for freeing her. I'm not sure the sword makes up for killing the Midnight Mission. Can't keep a coffee maker inside a cursed sword, or speak with travelers requiring help there. But if Pym comes through on the antidote for the drug, Moon Knight will have taken everything Fairchild's got, save his life. I guess the sword could come in handy for that.

Sunday Splash Page #376

"Heads of the Board," in Namor the Sub-Mariner #8, by John Byrne (writer/artist/letterer), Glynis Oliver (colorist)

In 1990, when the first issue of Namor the Sub-Mariner shipped, Namor hadn't had his own ongoing series since Sub-Mariner wrapped back in 1974. There was a 4-issue mini-series in 1984 about Namor trying to make peace between Atlantis and the surface world, and in '88, Roy Thomas wrote Saga of the Sub-Mariner, a 12-issue continuity recap. But no ongoing series until John Byrne took this shot. I'm a little surprised, since it apparently meant Byrne left Sensational She-Hulk, which seemed like a passion project for him. Plus, Namor had been presumed dead following the Atlantis Attacks! summer event.

First thing Byrne does is try to explain why Namor swings between being reasonable and aggressive, which he pins on Namor's hybrid nature. Basically, the ocean deep has too little oxygen for him, and the surface world has too much, so he either suffers oxygen deprivation or, essentially, is oxygen drunk. Feels like it would be easier to just say Namor can be a reasonable, level-headed guy, but he's also very proud and tends to overreact to perceived slights to him or his people. Or, he knows some surface-worlders are good, honorable people and tries to work with them, but when he watches how casually we dump toxic waste on his territories, he tends to get a little pissed off.

Anyway, Byrne adds a father-daughter pair to Namor's supporting cast, Caleb and Carrie Alexander. Namor apparently saved Caleb from drowning when he was a boy, and Caleb has been a fan ever since. It's he who puts forth the oxygen imbalance idea, and constructed a machine to treat Namor's blood to address it. Namor flirts a bit with Carrie, but she's not ready for that kind of thing. Still, she stays around, being suspicious of the other women who show interest in Namor for at least the first two years of the book.

Byrne doesn't spend time on Namor as monarch, opting instead for Namor as businessman. Namor uses salvaged treasure from sunken galleons to buy out a company and build Oracle Inc. into something more eco-friendly. Byrne also adds the Marrs siblings, Desmond and Phoebe, as rivals, with Phoebe trying to seduce Namor before actually falling for him. Desmond, well, I covered what happened with him earlier this month in Random Back Issues #151. 

Maybe Byrne just wanted a book to do continuity "fixes." Besides the thing about Namor's mood swings, he's also the one who establishes Namorita is a clone of her mother, and that Iron Fist didn't really die. A throwdown with the Super-Skrull ultimately leads to K'un-Lun, where it turns out Danny Rand was captured and replaced by the plant-people H'ylthri when he returned home for help dealing with radiation poisoning. It was one of the H'ylthri, impersonating Iron Fist, who got killed years ago. Namor saving Iron Fist puts him in the crosshairs of Master Khan, who wipes Namor's memories and teleports him somewhere.

Which is as far as my collection goes. Byrne returned to Sensational She-Hulk as writer/artist about 9 months earlier. I imagine writing and drawing two books was too much, and Jae Lee came on as artist after that, and I haven't dug the look of the issues I've seen over the years. Byrne left entirely after issue 34, though the book continued up to issue 62. Namor was apparently tricked into sleeping with Lyrra (disguised as Sue Richards) in issue 50, and they conceived a child. Strange how the writers didn't apply Byrne's, "hybrids can't conceive" thing to the Avenging Son.

I run hot and cold on the fixes. I'm fine with bringing Iron Fist back, but the blood oxygen level thing feels over-complicated, and making Namorita as a clone resulted in people shifting her appearance and abilities all over the place for at least the next 15 years, which didn't do the character any favors. Plus, with Namor being the star, Namorita gets played as deferring to him, and is more of a "plucky sidekick" he has to protect from herself. I definitely prefer Niceza's Namorita to Byrne's. Byrne also took Namor's ankle wings and flight capability in issue 7, which, whatever man. Namor wasn't doing a lot of aerial combat up to that point anyway, it just meant he had to use elevators sometimes and couldn't always chase after enemies.

I picked up Byrne's run as writer/artist up in the early years of this blog. One of the other comics bloggers at the time, Zombie Mallet, was doing a lot of posts about it. Mostly about how Namor fought better when he didn't wear a shirt. Shirt on, Namor gets knocked out by one punch to the back of the skull. Shirt off, he's immediately busting loose. I'd read a couple of issues when they first came out, so when Marvels and Legends had a back issues sale, I pounced.

One thing a quick scan of covers and issue summaries for the whole series drives home is Byrne avoided Namor's typical enemies, something later writers didn't. Byrne leaves and here comes Tiger Shark, here comes Attuma, here comes Lyrra. Is it better to have Namor contending with eco-terrorists who sabotage his company's new oil tanker, or Headhunter (a businesswoman with hypnotic eyes), or old Iron Fist enemies? I don't know.

It feels like Byrne trying to emphasize his new direction for the character, now making inroads in the surface world via business instead of politics. But, again, he didn't necessarily do a lot with that. Namor is either too impatient or too honorable to resort to boardroom skullduggery to triumph. Not when he can punch things instead. So Byrne has Namor initially try to remain in the shadows, letting the world think he's dead, and certainly not connected to Oracle Inc. That falls apart by issue 3, when Namor rides the Griffin through Roxxon's boardroom skylight because he thinks they sent it to attack him.

Likewise, Namor doesn't spend much time actually running his company, always giving someone else "temporary" control. Caleb Alexander, Desmond Marrs, Jacqueline Crichton (aka Spitfire, who Byrne de-ages from a 60+ year old to probably early 20s. Another attractive woman for him to draw, what a harsh fate.) I think it's mostly just a means to confront him with different threats.

For part of his run as writer/artist, Byrne inks himself, through the magic of duotone paper. Later, other people take over inking (Bob Wiacek in issue #23, for example.) The duotone gives the art a different texture. Rough, but not in a way that muddies Byrne's lines, as the inking tends to fade near the edges. The art, or the characters at least, don't look as busy when Byrne's handling it all, versus having a separate inker.

Either way, he keeps his layouts straightforward here. Mostly 4-6 panels a page, sometimes laid out in rows, other times stacked vertically. There's no joke issues about fighting in a snowstorm, or people breaking the 4th wall by stepping out of the panel. That kind of stuff doesn't fit the character. Namor's pretty straightforward, handling things in a manner that's quick and to the point.

Saturday Splash Page #178

"Non-ferrous Alloy Colossus," in Sentinel (vol. 1) #4, by Sean McKeever (writer), Joe Vriens, Sacha Heilig, Scott Hepburn, Eric Vedder (artists), Andrew Hou, Kevin Yan, Simon Young (colorists), Cory Petit (letterer)

A kid living with one parent in a small town in a rural, heavily wooded area finds a damaged giant robot whose origin he doesn't know, and decides to keep it. So, yeah, the concept behind 2003's Sentinel series sounds a lot like Iron Giant. In a later issue, a random bystander even comments on the similarity.

Series writer Sean McKeever changes the focus and structure somewhat. Juston Seyfert's a bit of a mechanical whiz, so he cobbles together a few replacement parts his robot needs, as the Sentinel can't pull all its parts back together. And Juston does (eventually) research what it actually is, and tries to tease apart its programming and add new commands. Unfortunately, both of those actions are limited to him asking it questions (which it typically doesn't or can't answer) and trying to give it new directives about not ever abandoning him.

At school, Juston's an undersized freshman with a couple of equally nerdy friends. All of them are targeted by the senior jocks, and McKeever uses the fear of school shootings that had really kicked into national attention a few years prior. This was a few years after the shootings at Columbine High School, back when the idea of kids bringing guns to school to enact revenge or nihilistic fantasies was still almost novel. So here's a kid, picked on and humiliated by the bigger, more popular kids, and now he's got a walking weapon of mass destruction at his command. And one of his best friends has been talking about wanting to get back at those guys.

Nothing comes of Matt's comments. As far as Juston's friends go, McKeever focuses on Alex, who has a girl he likes that he actually works up the nerve to ask out, and get beaten up by the jocks to send a message to Juston. But, after a particularly cruel and humiliating prank, Juston has the Sentinel attack the school. Nobody is physically harmed, because Juston uses it to look like a big hero, "defeating" "Balazar" by ramming it with a jeep. (He also wants to terrify his bullies, but doesn't seem intent on killing or injuring them. He does remark later that Greg, one of said bullies, is in, 'the loony bin,' so he fucked them up more than a little regardless.)

Juston feels guilty about being called a hero for something he staged, but too little, too late. People notice things like a giant robot attacking a little town in Wisconsin. Government-type people. Add in that Juston is, in an attempt at penance, or at least to deserve to be called a hero, using the Sentinel to help rescue people from car crashes and plane crashes, it's hard to keep a low profile.

The Udon team draw one of the survivors of the crash, named John, to look like Bruce Willis. I assume because John McClane hates flying.

The art sometimes makes the Sentinel look less threatening. It spends most of the early issues flat on its back in a shed, missing limbs. Even once it's up and moving, the repairs give it a cobbled together feel. Huge, rounded, shoulder pauldrons and hands don't exactly make it cuddly, but it definitely looks more like a supersized toy than a genocide weapon.

Of course, at other times, they use its bulk, height, and glowing eyes to good effect. Especially as Juston begins to realize how little he actually understands about how it works. When he orders it to help someone, and it instead begins attacking a perceived threat, or describes his commands as "supplemental protocols" and overrides them, the art tends to show the Sentinel from an extreme upward angle. Juston, barely coming up to the Sentinel's ankle, staring up at this thing he doesn't control. Its face is often in shadow at those points, if it can even really be seen. Sometimes we're looking up into two big palms with glowing energy about to erupt. Which are the times Juston starts to realize it may very well kill him if he's in the way.

Random Back Issues #152 - The Spectre #5

Remarkably, this terrifying experience is brought to you someone besides the Spectre.

The kid is Bill Hoffman. He's been kidnapped and buried in a graveyard, with only a measly pipe to provide air, and carry his cries for his parents to the surface. Unfortunately, once it starts to rain, the pipe also allows water to flow into the box!

The ones responsible, Billy's babysitter, her twin brother Eddie, and their stepdad, are currently fleeing the cops. Stepdad's yelling at Eddie, who insists it wasn't his fault he didn't see the cop when he ran a red light. Eddie tries to cut onto the freeway in front of a truck, hydroplanes, and they get broadsided, then blown up. This is bad, since they were supposed to call in Billy's location after they picked up the ransom. No one told the cops in the patrol car and now no one knows where the kid's buried. No one living, at any rate.

Turns out, one of the Hoffmans' friends is Amy Beitermann, and she knows someone who might be able to speak with the dead. Thinking about Jim Corrigan calls him to the hospital. Eddie clung to life the longest, so Corrigan enters his body to find his soul. He asks Amy to keep thinking of him, to act as an anchor. Eddie's soul has already moved past the land of the recently dead (where Deadman is just, hanging out, for some reason), so the Spectre descends into Hell.

He passes Louis Snipe, who betrayed and murdered Corrigan in the '40s. Snipe curses him, but Spectre says Snipe got what he deserved (being devoured by giant leeches.) Then Jim's dad appears (tied to a swastika with barbed wire) asking if the same is true of him, and if so, isn't it true of Corrigan as well, as written in some verse of the Bible blah blah. Spectre knows a trick when he sees it and calls out Shathan, Lord of Lies, still torn up from a previous fight they had.

Shathan's got Eddie's soul inside his body, like a heart. Eddie still protests nothing was his fault, but nobody's listening. Spectre claims Shathan is only trying to keep the Spectre from helping a child. Shathan fires back the Spectre is only here because he didn't get to punish Eddie himself. Spectre throws the first punch, but this is Shathan's realm, and he hits the Spectre with a buffet of the tortures Ol' Moonface inflicted on others. Cut up by giant scissors, trapped in a mirror and shattered, all that good stuff.

Spectre ultimately shakes it off, reaches into Shathan's chest and tears out Eddie. As he walks away, Shathan mentions a legend of a devil that repented his rebellion and merged with a human soul to walk the Earth. Is the Spectre that devil? Spectre dismisses it as another trick, but Shathan admits he would even stoop to the truth if it caused doubt in the Spectre's heart. (The answer, fyi, is yes.) The Spectre orders the gates of Hell to open, Eddie explains where the kid is buried, but before he can get too far into excuses, the Spectre chucks him back through the gates.

Back on Earth, Amy and Lt. Nate Kane get a rude surprise as Eddie's corpse sits up and reveals the kid is buried in a cemetery under the name Krause. Nate barrels off with two cops and Billy's dad, while Amy stays behind, trying to help Corrigan get out of Eddie's dead body. It's pouring rain, so the coffin is rapidly filling with water, but they manage to dig it up in time to save the kid. Now if Nate could only figure out how Corrigan got that info, and how Amy knows the "psycho detective."

{10th longbox, 24th comic. The Spectre (vol. 3) #5, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Digital Chameleon (colorist), Todd Klein (letterer)}

The Two-Bear Mambo - Joe R. Lansdale

It's Christmastime, which Leonard Pine is celebrating by burning down the crack house next door for the 3rd time. At least one of those prior times, his buddy Hap Collins helped him with, so they both get hauled in by a local cop acquaintance. But one of the cop's is (or was) dating Hap's ex-girlfriend, Florida, and she went missing in Grovestown, an extremely racist town a couple of hours away. Hap and Leonard can go investigate, or they can spend some time in jail. They choose to investigate.

All told, they'd have been better off in jail.

I think Lansdale's written several of these "Hap & Leonard" stories. Enough it had a 3 season (18 episodes) TV show on, Sundance Channel. I caught a few episodes via some streaming service Alex let me bum off him, but I couldn't quite get in the flow of it.

I'm not sure I did much better with the book. Two-Bear Mambo isn't so much about Florida being missing, so much as it feels like it's Hap and Leonard needing to recognize their self-destructive tendencies. They agree to investigate, even though Hap is quite aware neither of them are anything like a detective. But Leonard owns a lot of guns, and the two of them have kicked a lot of ass, and they figure that'll be enough.

It's not. They only finally get anywhere on locating Florida after most of the people who would give them trouble have fled the town, expecting the dam upstream to fail. Previously, they'd gotten the shit kicked out of them, and Leonard nearly castrated, by a mob of racists they decided to rile up. Because they'd always gotten away with it before, so there's no reason to even consider whether discretion is the better part of valor. Leonard's arsenal never even had a chance to come into play, and they spent weeks recuperating at home.

Hap is continually thinking the sheriff is some dumb racist, and while Cantuck is indeed somewhat racist (on the mild end for Grovestown, however), he's not stupid. One black man that lets them recover from the beating at his house ends up tarred. They can't do a thing for him but offer useless "sorry"s. They find Florida far too late, and it seems like she was just on some get-rich scheme to use some dead musician's rep, anyway.

It all has the feel of the end of an era. Hap needs to actually find a job, some kind of job, and pay some bills, and stop moping over Florida leaving him. Leonard needs to stop being so hellbent on trying to fistfight the entire world, and pissing away potential chances at happiness. They sort of dance around it near the end, when they're sitting in a shitty pickup truck in a nearly-flooded town, with no idea what they're doing, and Leonard remarks he could have been at home, having dinner with his boyfriend, and maybe getting a little that night. Whether these two are actually capable of learning a lesson, that I'm less sure of.

Having only read this one Lansdale story, I don't know if it's typical, but he uses the word "nigger" so heavily I expect Taratino would have advised him to dial it down. It is a story about some really racist people, and they're the ones who mostly use it. The remainder being mostly Leonard, who as a black man, seems to be using it to throw it back in their face, or show that they aren't going to cow him in submission with it. I don't know educational standards in East Texas in the late-80s, but I'm thinking they need more vocabulary quizzes.

Beyond that, there's a lot of metaphors for the size of a person of their anatomy, or a lot of time spent describing how beat to hell a character is. The one bit I think might be a Lansdale recurring thing is the character in an existential quandary where they ask themselves a bunch of questions they don't know the answer to (or won't admit.) Elvis did it partway through Bubba Ho-Tep, wondering if he'd take the money and the fame back if he could, and Hap does something similar here. A certain similarity in the phrasing, the cadence of the questions in this story, that echoed the movie.

This book didn't exactly sell me on Lansdale's writing, but it didn't put me off him entirely, either. I think I'd try a book with different characters next time, though. 

'When the laughter slowed, Leonard said, "You know, every one of us, when you think about it, just missed about this much," Leonard held up his hand and made a C with his thumb and forefinger, "being a turd. Every one of us. I mean, there's only about this much space between one hole and the other. And we all missed the shithole by this much." Leonard lowered his hand, looked at Gray Suit, and smiled, "Except you, mister. You made it. Your mama shit a turd, put a suit on it, and named it you."'

The Late Show (1977)

Ira Wells (Art Carney) was a hotshot private detective, but now he's an aging man renting a room in an elderly widow's home, when his old partner shows up, gutshot. At said friend's funeral, Ira's approached by an old acquaintance. With him is a Margo (Lily Tomlin), who wants to hire Ira to rescue her cat from a guy who is threatening to kill it if she doesn't pay him the $500 she owes.

She offers Ira $25, though he's more annoyed she's hitting him up for this at a funeral. Ira's more interested in digging into what his pal was investigating when he was shot, but finds that thread leads, at least partially, to the cat-murderer. Which means he keeps having to interact with Tomlin.

Carney would have been near 60 when the film came out, but Ira looks a lot older, the result of three decades' worth of shamusing. Essentially, he's supposed to be what your typical '40s noir private dick becomes if he lives into the 1970s. Myriad of health issues. Still able to take a punch or give one, but not for nearly as long. Still calls women, "doll," to Margo's annoyance. Most of his old contacts on the police or his snitches have died or moved away.

There's an element of frailty to the performance, but Carney plays Ira as someone who hides weakness beneath annoyance or anger. When Margo asks why he doesn't chase a guy who shot at them that's fleeing on foot, Ira barks at her that it'd be a good way for him to fall over dead, and how far did she think he'd get with this leg? He limps, presumably from a old wound or injury, but tries to use it as a weapon to keep people at bay.

Tomlin plays Margo as flighty, focus shifting from one thing to another in a heartbeat. She says she didn't get anywhere as an actress because she's not good a pushing herself out there, but I think it's meant to be more she didn't really want to be an actress. It didn't mean enough to her to really try. Neither does the dressmaking and designing, or selling weed, or delivering goods that are probably stolen but she doesn't care because they're just material possessions.

But for as freaked out as she gets about all the shooting and the dead bodies that start cropping up, she seems to get into digging into this case with Ira. Even after she gets her cat back, she wants to stick with it, and him. I don't really see the chemistry, and even Margo points out at the end Ira rarely says anything to her (though it might be hard to get a word in edgewise around her.)

I was grateful Ira explains everything in the last few minutes, because I had very little sense of why all these people were turning up dead. It doesn't help that most of them die before we ever see them. You don't get to see what these people were doing previously, what their personalities were like, which made it difficult for me to have a sense of how they might connect to one another. Most everything is Ira finding another corpse and making guesses, but I don't think the mystery was the important part, even to Ira. He's only really pursuing it at the start to learn why his pal got killed.

Find a Higher Gear

Volume 40 of One Piece is essentially one long, running battle through Ennies Lobby by the Straw Hats and their allies. The Franky Family's efforts to open the main gate are stymied by a pair of actual giants. By the time they get past them and open the gate, the Straw Hats (still in the Rocketman train) are too close.

So the pirates use the iron fence as a ramp and Dukes of Hazzard right over the gate, which has the added bonus of the train delivering a big metal kidney punch to one of the giants. From there, the invasion force tries to make their way to the Courthouse and the Tower of Law, but run into stiff resistance in the literal thousands of Marines and government agents stationed there.

The Straw Hats (minus Luffy, who we'll get to) aren't really the focus. At this point, the enemies are relative small fry, and everyone understands the pirates are the ones who'll have to take down CP9. So it's more an opportunity for the shipwrights and the Franky Family to show their stuff. Oda even takes time to give a little backstory to the two enormous "king bulls" (basically whale-sized, intelligent sea horses) that are carrying everyone. Franky saved them when they were young, but claimed he was just keeping them around in case he got hungry later. Obviously he never got around to eating them, and they became part of the family. Now they're determined to carry the people who can rescue their "big bro" as far as possible.

When the Straw Hats do act, they alternate between demonstrating terrible strength, and a complete lack of any cohesion. Nami tests out her new weapon and fries a bunch of Marines, but also most of her friends. Sanji is casually knocking out a member of the "Guilty Jury" (former pirates that act as enforcers for the Government now), and in the next moment, attacking his own friends to make sure he's the one leading the charge to rescue or Robin. Zoro defeats over a dozen Marines with one attack, then somehow gets lost going up a flight of stairs.

Think of all those comics where the superheroes get trounced because they're disorganized and lacking in communication. The Straw Hats are somehow worse than that. Thank goodness most of their opponents aren't any better!

Interspersed with that, Luffy reached the top of the Courthouse, where he runs into a member of CP9. Unlike their Spandam, who is so busy bragging and taunting Robin he can't envision any pirate getting near here, the actual field agents are more on the ball. So Bluneo and his weird "Door-Door Fruit" power are waiting.

And even though Luffy does much better this time around - certainly Bluneo isn't prepared for his punches to actually hurt - he decides it isn't enough. Which is when he introduces "Gear Two." It's essentially Oda's variation on Goku's Kaio-ken, where the hero's speed and strength are increased dramatically at a physical cost. For Goku, it was that the increased energy and force pushed his body beyond its limits, until his muscles were pulling off the bone.

That's less of a concern for someone made of rubber, but the way Luffy makes it work means it puts a lot of strain on him, and burns up his energy. Still, with Bluneo trounced, Luffy's almost to Robin. His crew haven't quite caught up yet, but at least CP9 is down to 6 agents (plus Spandam.)

Sunday Splash Page #375

"Evac," in Mystery Men #2, by David Liss (writer), Patrick Zircher (artist), Andy Troy (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

David Liss mostly writes mysteries set in different historical time periods, but in the early 2010s, he wrote a couple of things for Marvel. A stint on Daredevil where Black Panther took over as protector of Hell's Kitchen was the main one, but there was also this 5-issue mini-series.

Set in 1932, it involves Dennis Piper, reporter turned thief and vigilante, finding himself wanted by the cops for the murder of his girlfriend. As Piper (aka the Operative) follows the trail back to a desiccated-looking "General", he gains some allies.

Liss uses historical and societal trends to build most of the different heroes. The Operative was trained by his father to be a weapon, but chooses to use those skills to pull a Robin Hood to help out people struggling to pay rent in the Depression. His costume is a mask of the lower half of his face, while wearing his regular duds. The Revenant learned stage magic, but wasn't allowed to be the star because he's black, and wound up with the cops pinning an assault on him, even when the victim insists the  The Aviatrix (also the sister of Piper's dead girlfriend) loved the idea of flying, but was barred from flying a plane after she stole and wrecked one. The Surgeon was a small town doc who went against the mine bosses by treating injured striking workers. His home was burned down with he and his family in it, so now he uses his medical knowledge to inflict pain on criminals.

So most of the book feels like it's a pulp heroes book, rather than superheroes. Zircher keeps most of the character designs to regular clothes, or at least those appropriate to the person's job. The Surgeon wears a red cloak, but hospital scrubs and gloves underneath. The Aviatrix has got the flight jacket and goggles thing going. Andy Troy doesn't make the colors too bright. It's not a happy era, and so things are grim and difficult. The General (Piper's dad) runs a mysterious "Board" of influential rich people that make decisions that ruin thousands or millions of lives like they're deciding what wine to have with the fish. Child abductions are fine, as long as the profit margins are big enough. It feels grounded in that way, everything driven by basic, petty human foibles.

But then you have the General working for "Nox", some sort of supernatural being that needs sacrifices - specifically ones that cause great despair - to reach their world. (The main sacrifice is to be the child of Charles Lindbergh, so Liss is working that historical disappearance into the story, but they also stole "the son of Stark", which I'm guessing means Tony's dad.) The General is supposed to get an amulet that supposedly gifted Achilles the power of the gods (in exchange for a year of his life for each day worn, though he can regain the year by killing someone.) Rather than just let the nerdy archaeologist hand it over, the General blathers on before trying to kill said archaeologist, prompting him to access the power in desperation instead.

(Even there, Zircher doesn't deck "Achilles" out in Greek warrior armor or anything. He gets a sword and shield, but he's wearing boots and jeans and a red sweater with a sword and shield emblem on the chest. Looks like the local college football star out on a brisk fall day. Again, very grounded, everyday sort of appearance.)

Minus the amulet, Nox gives the General a bracelet that. . .turns him into a werewolf. Maybe that kind of thing is normal for pulp stories. I never got much into the Shadow or Doc Savage. It feels like a big shift midway through from fistfights with bent cops and goons, to a guy with a magic amulet decapitating werewolves.

And with that, for the first time in over a year, we've finished a letter.

Saturday Splash Page #177

"Bridge Between Worlds," in Sera and the Royal Stars #5, by Jon Tsuei (writer), Audrey Mok (artist), Raul Angelo (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer)

During an eclipse, Sera, oldest daughter of the royal family of Parsa, is visited by the deity Mitra, who tells Sera it's her job to find and free the "Royal Stars", who are bound to the physical realm. Apparently this is messing with time and preventing the proper course of the seasons, causing droughts, famines and whatnot.

Still, Sera's family is in the midst of a war against their uncle's attempt to overthrow them, so she's reluctant to leave. Mithra, being a god, and therefore an asshole, ignores Sera's objections, yanks out her heart, and replaces it with a glowing gem. Which turns out to be a prison containing Regulus, one of the Royal Stars, though Sera won't learn that for several issues. All she knows is that now she's got a voice in her head, trying to boss her around and periodically seize control of her body. From there, it's a matter of trying to find the Royal Stars, learn the cause of their imprisonment and how to reverse it, all without getting killed. 

This was something I picked up on a whim, I think because Audrey Mok and Raul Angelo's cover was eye-catching, and the story Tsuei presented got my interest early. Even if I run hot and cold on "chosen ones", I like stories where the person pushed into a quest by higher powers rebels or struggles against it. And even if Sera does go on the quest, she pushes back against it at times. She resists Regulus' attempts to control or command her. A few pages after the above image, she tells the Royal Stars she has to return home. It was a mistake to abandon her family. Her brother's dead and her uncle won the war in her absence, leaving her father and sister as prisoners. Yeah, yeah, greater good, sacrifices must be made. Easy for the magical star beings to say, right?

Another bit I like is that, even if the stars created the world, they aren't the only deities. There are the various ones humans created, and they guard their domains jealously. They aren't inclined to offer assistance, and it's dangerous for Sera and the others to pass through the realm of dreams uninvited.

It also lets Mok draw a variety of different sorts of beings. The Royal Stars are all variations of animals with human physiology. Aldebaran, the 'old bull', has horns and a small ring through his nose, but also flowing white hair and a beard. The deities created by humans lack the animal traits, but then you get weird things like orchids that can turn their petals into insectile legs and chase a person's spirit through a dream realm.

Or the story of how one star forged a giant, anime-style blade from the core of a star to kill its spirit, which warped her own being and turned her into a giant, dark serpent-woman, with a crown of cold blue flames. It's a very cool visual, much love to Mok, and to Raul Angelo, who uses brighter shades and tones that jump off the page. We're not doing some street-level espionage story, this is god-level stuff. Nothing muddy or dull here!

The book ran for 10 issues, 5 in 2019, 5 in 2020. I think Tsuei and Mok told the complete story they wanted to tell (though they left the possibility of more adventures), but I wouldn't have minded a couple more issues. It felt like big reveals came fast and furious in the last 3-4 issues, and some of them didn't get enough time to sink in or be explored properly. A character appears, and they're dead before the reader can really care much one way or the other. Minor quibble, though. Overall, I enjoyed it a lot. A big adventure in bright color, with interesting designs, and enough humor to keep it from getting too grim.

What I Bought 5/8/2025 - Part 2

Today marks the last day people at my job get to work from home, thanks to our dickhead governor. I rarely took advantage of it, because I preferred to keep work at work and out of my home, but it was a real boon to several of my coworkers who have kids or pets or mobility issues.

Now, the new directive says people can still use alternative work locations on a "temporary" and "infrequent" basis, so I have been trying to convince my coworkers that short of a specific definition of those words, they could still work from home 1-2 days a week (infrequent). Do that for a few months (temporary), but then, darn, there are circumstances that mean you need to keep going for another few months (temporary). If circumstances keep colluding to make infrequent work from home necessary, well, what can you do?

I don't think our boss will care, and I'd rather my coworkers were happy and wanted to stay around (because I like most of them, and because if they leave it means even more work for me.) I guess we'll see if any of them take my suggestion and run with it.

Resurrection Man: Quantum Karma #2, by Ram V (writer), Anand RK and Jackson Guice (artists), Mike Spicer (colorist), Aditya Bidikar (letterer) - I feel as though the Ouroboros in the skull's eye doesn't bode well for Mitch fixing all this.

So, even though Kagawa was burned up like most of Rabaul when Mitch's power returned in 1945, that little bit of Mitch he ate is somehow keeping him alive. As a hideous, gooey pink corpse-thing, but he can still talk! All his speech balloons are wobbly-lined and the words colored red, so I imagine his voice is an awful thing to hear.

Meanwhile, Mitch (as Mark Seivers) is trying to get to safety, with another new power. He died in a trap of spikes and barbed wire, and now can project those things into and through objects via touch. I gotta say, Ram V is doing a much better job of making Mitch's new powers reflect his previous method of demise than I remember Abnett and Lanning doing. Most of the soldiers escaping with him are afraid, but one, Ashar Singh, extends an offer to Mitch to come home with him.

Mitch goes off alone instead, and the other escapees are found and killed by the Japanese Army shortly after. In the special place with all the gears, the other Mitch tells him that with his new power, he exists in all moments of his life simultaneously, and can go back to change them. Our Mitch doesn't see much point, but remembers how he met his wife, Alize, by the both of them taking a chance they normally wouldn't. So Mitch returns to when he hears the shooting. Still too late to save them, but in time for Ashar to ask him to deliver a letter to his family.

OK, if Mitch can return and change any moment in his life, why didn't he go back a few hours earlier and not head out alone? Then he could have been there to try and protect the escapees. For that matter, why not go back and avoid going to war and being taken prisoner entirely? OK, it doesn't seem like he's twigged to the cause of the problem, but you can't say, "he can step into any moment of his life and change it," and then ignore the obvious ones. Unless we aren't supposed to trust Other Mitch, since he's the one who nudges Our Mitch to make that particular change. Guess we'll see.

Batgirl #7, by Tate Brombal (writer), Isaac Goodhart (artist), Mike Spicer (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) -  Superheroes ridin' a train, guess Batman's outta money again. Or it's a character-building exercise.

The entire issue is Cassandra riding a train, reading a book Shiva wrote of her life while listening to a recording Shiva made of the book (since she wasn't sure how well Cassandra can read.) Basically, Shiva (then Ming-Yue), and her sister Mei-Xing lived their early years on the run with their parents, for reasons the kids were not clear on. They were ambushed in the mountains, the kids fled and reached a monastery, while the parents died fighting.

Flash forward ten years, Shiva's studying martial arts, but doesn't do well controlling her temper or instinct to attack. She also idolizes her older sister. But after Shiva beats up a couple of thugs hassling an old lady (who may be selling blue flower petals clandestinely), the village comes under attack by the same guys that killed their parents. The leader of that group recognizes the girls, says a bunch of cryptic shit about "daughters born of forbidden love", then claims to be their uncle. He's also able to make weapons out of his own blood, which is just unsanitary. The lead monk buys the girls time to escape, they do, and that's where the issue leaves off.

I'm sticking with my theory Shiva's really the one behind the Unburied. One of her allies on the train in issue 4 was a guy who makes weapons and stuff from his blood. Which makes him current leader of the same group that attacked the village in this issue. Which, if the guy leading the Blood in this flashback is to be believed, means Shiva is also a part of that group by heredity. Which certainly makes the fact the current "Bloodmaster" got killed seem like either a bit of delayed revenge, or a clearing of an obstacle.

Goodhart's got a heavier line than Miyazawa, tends to soften and round the faces. But Cassandra's not fighting and the moment, and this is a younger Shiva we're seeing, not the hardened warrior of later years, so it works. And Goodhart makes good use of shadows to make the Blood leader seem more imposing (to the extent a scarred wall of muscle needs that), or to hint at what's boiling beneath the surface inside Shiva.

Extinction - Douglas H. Erwin

The specific extinction being discussed in the end Permian version, the largest mass extinction event we're aware of in the planet's history. Erwin takes a methodical approach, breaking down the scale of the extinction based on fossil evidence. From there, he spends a chapter laying out the major hypotheses, ranging from meteorite impact to volcanism, to anoxic oceans, to sea level drop and several others besides. In an approach I really appreciated, he discusses what kinds of evidence scientists would need to find to support each hypothesis.

After that, there's chapters spent on what's actually been discovered. Some of this is more interesting than others. The part about their managing to get a fairly brief timespan for the extinction - brief in geologic time, we're still talking maybe a half-million years - was kind of cool. So were the parts about the difficulty in doing comparative ages between marine and land rock formations, because you may not be able to age them by radioactive decay, and their fossil records rarely overlap. However, Chapter 7 focuses on the levels of various minerals in the oceans around the end-Permian, and when Erwin got deep into carbonate levels and what the different levels tell them about where the carbonate was at a given time, I was struggling not to fall asleep. I didn't really retain any of that chapter.

Still, the evidence laid out - and this is what they had available when the book was published in 2006 - Erwin returns to the hypotheses described earlier and goes through them, discussing which ones lack evidence, or which ones appear outright refuted by the evidence. For example, the oceans apparently rose during the Permian mass extinction, which kind of chucks the notion sea level drop caused the problem out the window.

He also acknowledges the spots where they just don't have enough evidence, or are working with too small a data set. So far, no one had found an iridium layer in the rocks like the one that marks the meteor that hit near the end of the dinosaurs. Or any of the shocked quartz or other geologic markers they think distinguish such impacts. But Erwin points out that those may just have been unique to that particular meteor, that if a meteor did hit near the end of the Permian (and there are some possibilities, but no definite impact site as of 2006), there's no reason to assume it was also high in iridium.

(He does, if you're wondering, offer his own perspective on what he think caused the extinction. It's not quite what he calls his "Murder on the Orient Express" hypothesis, but it's not a simple, one cause thing, either.)

For the most part, Erwin tries to keep things from getting too technical. He includes graphs and charts to highlight things like the extent of the basalt floods that appear to be evidence for massive volcanism (albeit the cause is unclear), so the book only sometimes falls into a wall of text. He describes the part he's taken in the research, and the times he was wrong (he apparently jumped with both feet onto the "sea level drop" bandwagon when it was first proposed.) I don't think he's slanted towards one hypothesis or another in his presentation, but I don't know all the data, so I don't know what he's not saying. He mentions some of his colleagues may feel he's giving their sides short shrift, but it at least feels like he's laying the data out for the reader, but also discussing what it doesn't say for certain. There may be a huge drop in sedimentation for a brief period, but the cause of it could be many things.

'This may seem paradoxical, but the destruction of brachipods or ammonoids was so complete that it makes it difficult to say anything useful about the actual cause of the extinction. The essence of solving the problem of differential extinction is being able to compare similar winners and losers. A clade where all species survived is not particularly edifying; nor is a group that almost completely disappeared.'

What I Bought 5/8/2025 - Part 1

I've eased off recently on playing video games and reading books. To focus on other things, but also because I've got Thursday posts done out to July 17th. Let's hear it for short games and easy-reading books!

It's Jeff! Jeff Week, by Kelly Thompson, Gurihiru and Gustavo Duarte - Jeff has mastered mystic portals. No one's snacks are safe!

You know by now what the deal is with the It's Jeff stuff. Thompson and Gurihiru do a lot of 1-2 pages stories about Jeff getting into hijinks with various heroes. Jeff is disappointed Kate Bishop won't take him on a trip with her, but wait! He snuck inside her suitcase. That must have surprised the security people. Jeff struggles to ice skate, but saves a dog who falls through thin ice.

Jeff steals Hulk's portal technology (which looks kind of like my Roku TV remote) and uses it to rampage through the kitchen, stealing everyone's food, until Hulk gets the idea of hiding Captain America's shield within a pizza. Good thing sharks constantly grow new teeth. It is, as usual very adorable.

Duarte is the writer/artist for the Jeff Week story, which takes up the last 15 pages, and seems to involve Marvel characters playing hot potato taking care of Jeff while Kate's in Japan. Mostly because Jeff eats all their food (X-Men), wakes them up after a long night fighting crime (Spider-Man), or encourages their dinosaur friend to cause property damage (Moon Girl). Duarte's Jeff is longer (especially in the tail) than Gurihiru's, and on the whole, has a lot more cat energy. He doesn't get flustered or spooked so much as he demands everyone else adjust to his needs.

Duarte tends to use fewer panels, and likes the eschew panel borders entirely. Hulk may be in charge of looking after Jeff, until Jeff contacts Lockjaw and the 'port away, and then there's a couple shots of Hulk's face and then one of him walking away whistling with no borders between them, just white space. The Gurihiru team ditch the borders for the final, punchline panel, but all the ones around it have their own borders and gutter space helping to delineate it.

Deadpool #14, by Cody Ziglar (writer), Roge Antonio (artist), Guru-eFX (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - Wade, you're supposed to be shielding your daughter from this brutal violence. The audience is already inured to it. 

Deadpool, Deadpool, Princess, and Taskmaster fight Death Grip and his resurrected minions. Who promptly blow themselves up at their master's command. Guess they didn't teach him anything useful about what exists beyond death. For all the talk about Wade's reduced healing factor, being thrown backfirst into a stone pillar by an explosion slows him down for approximately 5 panels.

A couple of Death grip's minions, plus the portal guy Deadpool was trying to kill in issue 1, attack DP's HQ (a rapidly decaying basement by the looks of it), and Doug only escapes because "Water Cooler Rat" helps him. So I'm guessing there's something up with the rat?

Deadpool finally busts out the mystic sword, but Death Grip seems to be increasingly losing it, given how he struggles to say every other word. Not that it's affecting whatever language he uses for his spells, or that the sword can actually kill him. Despite being slashed with it several times, Death Grip shrugs it off and. . .rips his own chest open, showing an oddly-colored heart in a void, while more spectral arms emerge from his torso?

Boy, I imagine Ziglar has one hell of an explanation for all this planned for next month. Too bad Marvel's gonna stick inside an oversized, more expensive issue I won't buy for months, if ever.

Kid Glove Killer (1942)

The town of Chattsburg is under the thumb of mob bosses and police corruption, but a new mayor and D.A. were just elected vowing to give the crooks the bum's rush. The guy who worked the airwaves in their support, Gerald Ladimer (Lee Bowman), is in the mob's pocket, and upon realizing these guys are actually serious, alerts the mobs.

The D.A. shortly turns up dead in a lake, and Ladimer is tabbed as "special investigator" into the crime. It's really police forensic scientist George MacKay (Van Heflin), and his assistant Jane (Marsha Hunt) who pull together the evidence to find the (fall) guy responsible. In the aftermath, when the mayor tells Ladimer he got a call from an insurance company about a policy Ladimer took out, which involved a down payment the guy shouldn't have, Ladimer plants a bomb under the mayor's car.

My dad pointed out it's bizarre Ladimer is supposed to be a lawyer, but was apparently a) broke when he started stumping for the mayor, and b) not only can make bombs, but can successfully wire them into a car's starter. Clearly he went into the wrong line of work. Should have been either a campaign manager or a demolitions expert.

Most of the movie is a cat-and-mouse of MacKay and Jane trying to use the forensic evidence to help find the killer, while Ladimer romances Jane as a way to keep track of what they're trying. So she mentions they used a spectrograph on the bomb parts to conclude the killer used gunpowder from .38 bullets, and MacKay's going to check under the fingernails of every person the company has record of buying them over the last 6 months. Cue a scene of Ladimer furiously scrubbing under his nails.

My big takeaway from the movie was hygiene was at premium in the '40s. One of the other tests was for fibers from the burlap sack the killer laid on while attaching the bomb, in people's hairs. This is at least several days after the killing, but apparently people aren't washing their hair much. Also, it's funny to watch people handle evidence with no regard for fingerprints or contamination. Nobody wears gloves, and George and Jane both smoke all the time in their lab.

Jane is established as a scientist in her own right, with a Master's degree in Chemistry. She runs tests of her own, and ultimately concludes Ladimer is the killer separately from MacKay, based on a possible lead she'd been pursuing. Hunt plays Jane as smart, but struggling with whether she really wants to do this or not. Which I think is society telling her its not a proper job for a woman, though no one in the movie ever says that. While she's happy to go on dates with Ladimer, or even consider marriage, she insists she couldn't consider until she helps solve this case, so clearly the work (and MacKay) mean a lot to her.

Heflin makes MacKay playful in a way that tries to maintain distance between he and Jane. He always bums cigs off her, and always expects her to light his. It's banter, but maybe a little dickish? He's the uptight scientist type, bad with feelings and all that.

What I Bought 5/5/2025 - Part 3

Last week's day off gave me a chance to make a longer trip to take care of some business. The drive itself was miserable, because it poured rain all morning, but the actual business was no sweat, and then I had time to nose around a couple of stores. Found all of last week's books, which we'll get to later this week, and a couple of the digest collections of John Allison's Bad Machinery Oni Press released.

Today is still for April comics, however.

Fantastic Four #31, by Ryan North (writer), Cory Smith (penciler), Oren Junior (inker), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Sue and Alternate-Universe Johnny choosing to settle things with a good old fashioned, "who can open their mouth wider" contest.

OK, at some point since Hickman's Secret Wars, it was established that if one member of the Fantastic Four loses their powers, they all start losing their powers. I know, I thought it was stupid, too, but the editorial box cites Marvel-Two-in-One, which I think means the series, was it Dan Slott and Jim Cheung did post-Secret Wars? Anyway, North's playing off something previously established rather than just making this shit up himself.

Johnny's powers cut out next, so Reed and Valeria (who is narrating the issue) devise a plan to build a multiverse-hopping device into the Fantasticar and go to another universe so Ben can be exposed to the cosmic rays that will bombard that universe's Fantastic Four. It doesn't work, probably because he's from a different universe. Vibrational frequency is off, or something, but North and Smith spend multiple pages on it, in what really feels like padding since we just keep getting small panels of different quartets getting the FF box set of powers.

Eventually Ben, without telling anyone else (though Valeria notices and says nothing) sets the coordinates for the past in their universe, and gets a dose of the same set of rays that transformed him originally. Which means his body, his, regular, human-sized body, somehow shields Reed's spaceship cockpit enough they don't get superpowers, thus wiping the FF from existence entirely.

Doom has to be laughing his ass off. Or at least chortling under his breath, if guffawing is too undignified. On the other hand, Doom may have to actually do something about it, since this would seem to doom the Earth to being eaten by Galactus. I don't know; it's not a great issue. I guess the point is desperate people make bad choices, but it feels really dumb.

The Surgeon #4, by John Pence (writer), Omar Zaldivar (artist), Eve Orozco (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - Looks like a bunch of people I'd have run over while playing Mad Max.

So the remaining marauders want the doc to take some of the (poisoned) opium first, to prove it's the real deal. Instead, it's a fight, and while Colonel Rogers is dying because he took a big slug from one of those poisoned bottles, he's still able to snipe enough guys Hanover can get inside the fort. Where she gives up a lot of blood in a transfusion to try and save Rogers' life.

There's one panel, I thought they'd buried Rogers or sealed him up in a wall, but left his face uncovered. I was trying to figure out what the hell part of a transfusion after taking poisoned dope that was, before I realized an earlier page showed him lying face down on a table or bed, and they'd just hacked some rough hole in it so he could breathe without turning his head. Look, this is a post-apocalypse, there's no telling how medical treatments have been twisted or confused.

Also, we're on our 3rd penciler in 4 issues. Zaldivar continues Yak's trend of making Hanover look younger. He tends to use a lot more hatch marks for the men, but abandons them entirely for the doc. I think the scars on her face are less prominently defined, too. Suppose there's always a chance that settling in one place reduces her stress and her past experiences aren't having such a hold on her, thus the scars fade. But I doubt it.

The rest of the Hot Animal Machines came to see what happened to their buddies, and find the opium vials. Which they take back to camp and enjoy. Hanover assembles the fort's forces to go try and finish the job, not realizing it's already done. Partially from the drugs, and partially from some guys from the First Nations United. They catch Hanover by complete surprise, and when she says so, the Chief replies, "Well. . .we were hiding. You're not supposed to see us when we hide!" I laughed. I can't tell if he's saying it to be funny, or like he's talking to an idiot.

Either way, Chief Long wants to talk to this doctor about whether she really gave out a bad box of drugs. So I figure Hanover's rep is going to be destroyed because she'll either take full blame for giving out bad painkillers, or the townspeople in the fort will say it was all her idea and hang her out to dry.