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.