What I Bought 7/26/2025

Last summer, we usually only had 3-4 really shitty summer days in a row. Not this year. It's been a hot, humid, miserable mess - heat indexes over 100 - for 10 days straight now, with at least one more to go, maybe two. Like a damn steam room fell from the sky and squashed me, ala Wizard of Oz. Don't even want to try going outside for anything.

In other news, I really hoped my visit to the comic shop in the next town over would have netted a few more of the 8 books out so far this month, but no. Two books is what they had, so that's what we've got to work with for now.

Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu #10, by Jed MacKay (writer), Devmalya Pramanik (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Out of the fog of the past, Moon Knight.

Moon Knight and his crew storm Fairchild's high-rise. Fairchild tries to get some mysterious person to give him a hand, but the person says no. Still, Fairchild brought in a group of guys who fought Moon Knight in the past - Zaran the Weapons Master, Killer Shrike, Cubist (who already beat up Moon Knight once in this run), the Jester, and Deadzone (who I only know from his Marvel Universe Series 4 trading card) - to help him out. 

So this is basically one big fight scene, as different characters square off. Moon Knight takes Deadzone, and at one point, Pramanik uses the way Deadzone's whips lash across the page to function as panel borders, which was an approach I really liked. Hunter's Moon gets Killer Shrike, because Tigra figures anyone still wearing a topknot is a creep, and she's not fighting a creep. Except then she ends up with Zaran, and he's got something similar, so, as she puts it, this is a pervert convention.

You'd think being a superhot cat-lady, almost every day would be a pervert convention for her. Either way, she beats up a guy who survives fighting Shang-Chi, so that's nice. MacKay and Pramanik even let her tank some damage to show off her superhuman toughness, which is not something Tigra gets to do much, I dig that.

8-Ball gets the Jester, who tries giving him grief about switching sides, but it's preferable to having Moon Knight cut your face off. Reese and Soldier find Cubist who - opts not to fight. He already got paid and there's Magnum P.I. episodes to stream. Can't argue with that, even if it's kind of an odd way to handle the guy you already had humiliate Moon Knight and Hunter's Moon once. I guess it does demonstrate Fairchild's muscle are just hired guns with no loyalty, whereas Moon Knight's a got a crew that's ride or die for him.

And it goes both ways, because Fairchild's using all the confusion to try and run. Moon Knight probably could have just dropped from the sky without warning and impaled the Asgardian with the possessed sword, but he had to make a show of it, and Fairchild runs through a door and escapes somehow. My guess is, the person he was talking to on the phone, who we see at the end of the issue, has their own Midnight Mission now, and keeps it moving around. But we'll see, eventually, I imagine.

Runaways #2, by Rainbow Rowell (writer), Elena Casagrande and Roberta Ingranata (artists), Dee Cunniffe (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) -  Remarkable that Chase returned from the future with facial hair straight out of the worst of the late-90s.

Chase is back - from the future! And he's kind of a dick! Swell. He does help drive off the Doombots, with some help from Gert with a car. What is Doom making these things out of? She didn't even hit it hard enough to trigger the airbag. One Doombot leaves to get reinforcements - what kind of Doombots are these, DOOM needs no reinforcing! - so the team flees back to Gert's old family home. What's left after the feds and the wildfires got done with it.

Chase is, as Future People do, being hostile and bossy while explaining nothing. He's harsh towards Gert because of whatever future things happened, not respecting their Doombot's bodily autonomy, yelling at Nico for not using magic (to be fair, he was in the future by the time she gave Karolina the Staff of One.) When Gert uses the time machine to return to their hideout the day before and grab the Pride's journals for possible ideas, Chase then blows up the time machine.

I have to admit, it's a little hard for me to feel bad for Gert, who is always so judgmental about other people's actions, but can say with a straight face they don't have time for ethics whenever she decides the situation is dire enough. She and Victor are never going to last, if only because he's going to get sick of her crushing his idealism, or she's going to get too frustrated with it. Maybe that's why he killed her originally? Couple fight?

So, Chase is a dick, Gert's sad and angry, Nico's angry and feeling useless, Molly's unconscious, Victor's damaged, and more Doombots will no doubt soon locate them. But Karolina's returned home just in time to find no one but Alex, cosplaying as Doc Justice. I forgot about that plot thread. Rowell's really trying to tie up all her loose ends, isn't she?

Casagrande is replaced as artist halfway through the issue by Ingranata. The latter's work is less detailed, with a heavier line. I feel like Ingranata minimizes some of the body type differences between the cast. Not a lot, but Gert seems to get abruptly taller and slimmer.