What I Bought 6/30/2025 - Part 1

With the 4th of July coming up, this is the last short work week I get for a couple of months. Unless I want to burn some leave. Which might not be a bad idea if I could get to a point I wasn't going to dread all the shit waiting when I returned.

Alright, jumping right into the remainder of last month's books, starting with two final issues.

Fantastic Four #33, by Ryan North (writer), Cory Smith (penciler), Wayne Faucher (inker), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Reed's already the tallest character on the cover, but he's just gotta emphasize the point, doesn't he?

The FF build a time machine to go back to the creation of the universe, where there were a lot of cosmic rays, so Ben can get dosed and become the Thing again. Except it's an extremely hostile environment, and their powers are fading, and they need someone quick to control the ship. Which requires upgrading HERBIE to do the job, and he's happy to do it, even if the panel where he confirms it makes the FF and their kids all look vaguely sinister.

I assume it's just the layout of the panel, the extreme upward angle designed to make HERBIE the prominent focus while surrounded by all these taller characters, but it does look a bit like a scene from a horror film, where the clueless outsider accepts the offer of a place of honor at the big festival "dinner", and it turns out they're on the menu.

Anyway, they make it to the dawn of time, Ben gets dosed, but the ship falls apart too fast. With his upgrades, HERBIE's able to try and recalculate to just send himself and the FF back, sans ship, watch the energy levels fall too fast for that, and recalculate to send them back without him. Resulting in his getting torn apart in a storm of antimatter and heated plasma. But the upgrades were apparently enough for him to decide he loves the FF, which he takes to mean he's really alive. Which means he's really dying, but he's OK dying to help the FF.

I'm dubious, considering he was programmed to help them, but I guess the idea is the upgrades have made him sentient enough to make the conscious decision now. Either way, it worked. The FF are back home, everyone's got their powers again. Reed restores HERBIE to an earlier version, and he and Valeria discuss whether their going back to that time tipped the balance between matter and antimatter just enough towards the matter side for the universe to unspool as it did.

So, that's the end of that volume. Not a great last arc, just big loop, but that's event tie-ins for you. Mixed bag at best.

The Surgeon #6, by John Pence (writer), Omar Zaldivar (artist), Hedwin Zaldivar (color artist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - Looks like it's time for some elective surgery. Hanover elects you to lose an eyeball.

The doctor is pursuing Little Bird, for stealing her horse and her sword. She gets duped and drugged by a seemingly helpful bartender (Zaldivar does a nice job shifting her from a kindly smiling old lady to a schemer across two panels), who intends to sell her to the Tunnel Rats.

Meanwhile, the First United Nations guys are getting ready to attack the Tunnel Rats, and the boss man isn't impressed with Little Bird's stunt. Neither is Hanover's horse, which is fighting non-stop, so Little Bird lets it go. Can't be dealing with that while pulling a stealth rescue/assault on the Tunnel Rats. The rescue goes well, although there's a weird panel as they're riding in an elevator where all the guys except the boss are laughing and acting kind of giddy. For a second, I thought they'd stumbled into a trap and were getting dosed with laughing gas or something, but I think they're just trying to ease the tension?

The rescue goes smoothly enough, until they get back to the surface, where the rest of their forces are fighting some of the Hot Animal Machines. Little Bird rescues a couple of prisoners, except it's the grandma and Hanover. The doctor proceeds to take a chunk out of Little Bird's neck (though it looks like Zaldivar just showed the same panel twice, but zoomed in and added some blood on the second one.) The Chief is oddly willing to let that go, especially considering Hanover promised to help with this raid and then bailed, but maybe he figures he's got bigger problems.

Her horse shows up, but as she rides off, Little Bird gets her in the hip with knife, which leaves her in pretty bad shape by the time she returns to the peaceful little fort. Where the guy she trained in medicine refuses to treat her, and the chief scientist guy basically says, "to hell with her." I guess because she didn't decide to stick around forever?

Well, maybe if Abner and the other guys had gotten back to the fort to treat the soldier dying of poisoned opium, instead of sitting around drinking with the First Nations guys while she was a prisoner, she'd be more kindly disposed. Just a lot of people making choices that seem strange in this last issue. Not the blacksmith, who takes the advice of how to treat her and builds a sort mobile brace to help her move after she gets better, he's been in her corner throughout. But then Hanover rides off, only to change her mind and apparently set up a little clinic just outside the fort's walls.

So I don't get what Pence was going for there. She thinks she owes them? She wants to prove she's not, 'biting every hand that tries to help'? Let's not forget, her original agreement with these folks was apparently written up while she was drunk as a skunk, and she fulfilled her side of the deal. Maybe she's tired of wandering, maybe she thinks they've got something going that's worth protecting, even if most of the people are assholes, I don't know. It feels like the situation where, if this were a FallOut game, I'd strongly consider destroying the town, but at bare minimum, I'd leave and not look back.

Overall, it was a fairly interesting mini-series. I don't know if Pence plans to return to it. It feels like he was laying out signs the world was changing. Certainly the Tunnel Rats had a much more advanced set-up than everyone else (though I guess they were using an underground missile complex.) I liked the touch of the First Nations crew, I think combining a Geiger counter with a tablet to look for wifi networks as a signal. I don't know what the wifi would be for; maybe they're leftover from the before times, but it was worth a chuckle.