What I Bought 8/4/2025 - Part 1

Let's jump into the books from July. Today we've got two mini-series that are wrapping up, each with an ending that makes a certain amount of sense, but neither that I loved.

Red Before Black #6, by Stephanie Phillips (writer), Goran Sudzuka (artist), Ive Svorcina (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - Awww, they look so peaceful. Maybe too peaceful. . .

Leo brings Val to Cassadaga, the largest community of spiritualists and psychics in the world, where Leo stayed for an unmentioned period of time. She's not exactly welcomed, but these are the ladies that were expecting them at the end of the previous issue, and one of them has a message for Val. She's been hearing from the ghost of the woman Val made false promises to when she was in the Army.

While the seance drives Val into her mind jungle, Sarah doesn't appear, so it's not as though Val has a conversation with the dead woman she's so guilty over. Leo shows up again, with some notion that because she almost killed her sexually abusive father, she can see this weird place. They each carry guilt and a feeling they're alone, OK, that I follow. It seems like Leo should have her own "mind jungle" she would retreat to, rather than being able to enter Val's.

Either way, the key part seems to be each one offers the other some semblance of understanding they can't get from the people they feel guilt over, just in time for the feds to catch up to them. Then Leo's gator ranch-owning stepbrother shows up (having eluded the feds), and Val takes a bullet for Leo.

Like I said in the intro, the ending makes a certain amount of sense. Val's been on a downward spiral for a long time over her failure to save someone, and here's a chance to save a different someone. Save her for a most likely long stretch in prison, unless Leo can give the feds the information they wanted on that drug operation (doubtful.) But it didn't seem like there was going to be a happy ending for both of them, depending on how happy an ending you'd consider them doing a Thelma and Louise into the Gulf of Mexico to be.

Still, it feels like an ending that left a bunch of things unresolved. But, if I look at it from the perspective that Val was the main character - as the story started with her - then having it end with her makes sense. Maybe it just felt too abrupt, coming a scant 2.5 pages after Val and Leo are hugging it out in the mind jungle. A whirlwind of events.

Dark Pyramid #5, by Paul Tobin (writer), PJ Holden (artist), Sara Colella (color artist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - In every stampede, there's someone who trips, slips or twists their ankle, and it looks like it's gonna be Becca.

Hooky's not dead, and he sneaks aboard the truck Becca and Shailene are in during an attack by "wet hawks." I'm not sure what I would have expected based on the name, but Tobin and Holden went weird with it. Starts out looking like a hawk, turns into something like a purple bat made out of purple tissue paper you use to stuff gift bags.

Hooky survived his fall and found the Dark Pyramid. He found the hoats, and he found a naked lady that taught him at least some of the language. Enough to recognize when a stone has a warning about wet hawks, anyway. During all this backstory, Becca's led them to an entrance to the pyramid. Which seems like a terrible place to hide, especially since there are dead soldiers there, and Eve.

Except Eve is the naked lady that taught Hooky, and boy I figured Tobin was going for a twist that Hooky had been mind-warped by Eve, or one of the "mistake" creatures was a shapeshifter. In my defense, 'Yeah, I might have exaggerated or totally misled you or whatever, but she's really nice,' is the sort of statement that typically precedes the brutal death of someone almost too disillusioned to care.

Instead, Becca agrees this was a terrible place to hide, but that was never her intent. She wants to make a deal with General Cho. She, Shailene, and Hooky have done a much better job surviving these creatures than most of Cho's soldiers, so why not hire them to help keep things covered up? As Becca notes, they could never elude Cho forever, even if they got off the mountain and out of Alaska. Best way to survive, makes themselves useful. The whole sales pitch comes over two, 9-panel grid pages, and we rarely see Becca's face and that of anyone she's talking to in the same panel. If the panel's focused on Cho, we're standing behind Becca, looking over the top of her head.

Again, this makes a certain amount of sense for an ending. They probably couldn't stay ahead of a guy with the kind of resources Cho has to keep this hidden. And it's not like Hooky or Becca were some principled explorers, who would insist the world should know the truth. They have a travel Youtube channel or whatever. It's clicks and thrills and personal survival. And Becca seems like the one who kept things rolling, while Hooky was the guy on camera doing stupid crap, so not too surprising she'd take command. Although Hooky doesn't seem that excited even a week later, as Holden draws him not looking at Becca, his face in shadow. We never see or hear Shailene's thoughts.

Actually, while Becca asks both Hooky and Cho to hear her out, she doesn't make the same request of Shailene, who did save her ass more than once. I assume she's glad not to die, but she was disappointed she couldn't stay to watch the wet hawks kill the soldiers - entirely fair, the soldiers used her and Becca as bait, then shot at monsters without making an effort to not hit the bait - and would probably like to see Eve rip Cho's head off and spike it.