Foul Play (1978)

Gloria (Goldie Hawn), in an attempt to break out of a rut, picks up a man whose car broke down. They make plans to meet at a movie later that night, and he leaves his cigarettes with her before leaving. When he shows up at the movies, late, he dies, after warning her to 'beware the dwarf.' When Gloria alerts the theater manager that there's a dead man in the audience, the body is missing.

Soon, she finds herself pursued by a man with a scar, an albino, and a black limo. People keep dying around her, then vanishing when the police show up. Despite Gloria's inability to describe the events in a way that doesn't make her sound like she's either stoned or a ditz (Hawn does a very good job playing someone trying to convince people she's sincere and failing utterly), she eventually convinces Lieutenant Carlson (Chevy Chase) that she really is caught up in something, though his partner (played by Brian Dennehy) remains skeptical.

The "something" turns out to be an assassination, although the movie isn't concerned with a mystery, so there's not much progress in terms of the characters figuring that out. They're ultimately told who the target is once the bad guys capture them. The photographs that would give away the target, hidden in the cigarette pack, get burned by Hawn's landlord (Burgess Meredith) to keep his pet python from eating the smokes. No one ever actually finds the photos, which is kind of nuts.

Also, when the pack burns up in the fireplace, the camera lingers on the python, who is watching and snickers. That is what the captions said, "snickers." Why does the snake think that's funny? I have no idea.

It's not a thriller, with Hawn being pursued for reasons she can't understand, by people no one can find, because two of her escapes involve her meeting up a twitchy, desperately horny conductor played by Dudley Moore (it feels like Mike Myers based a lot of Austin Powers on this guy) and embarrassing him terribly. Those scenes kind of swing between sad, creepy, or funny, depending on what second you're watching.

Hawn and Chase don't have much romantic chemistry - no doubt difficult to fit into the picture with Chase's ego taking up so much space - though the movie keeps trying to impress us that it exists. Mostly via phone conversations between Hawn and her coworker friend at the library, who is constantly encouraging her to beware of men with only one thing on their mind, and to carry a weapon (she loans out hers, and they do enable Hawn to escape once when she's abducted.) The movie probably should have leaned into the fact Chase is very good playing a guy who thinks he is terribly clever and charming, but who most people found obnoxious or tedious. It's when he's trying to be cool and fails - like when he warns Hawn to be careful getting aboard his houseboat because the walkway is slick, then promptly falls in the water - that he's at his best.

It's longer than it needs to be - there's a long stretch where Chase and Hawn are trying to get across San Francisco to stop the assassination and have to keep getting new cars because Chevy Chase is apparently a terrible driver and keeps wrecking their rides - but Hawn's good in this, I always like seeing Burgess Meredith, and there are a couple of funny side gags (Hawn trying desperately to get the attention of two old ladies playing Scrabble, one scoring big spelling out profanities.)

Misanthropes Unite

Think you mark that "mission accomplished." Though doesn't living in a zombie apocalypse kind of render that moot? It's like living in Road Warrior and saying you're going to fuck up society. What society?

When we Last looked at Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead, Akira brought his friends to the isolated mountain village where he grew up, both to check on on his parents and find some way to repay them, as that was another thing on his bucket list.

Volume 5 is set entirely in the village, as Akira tries to encourage his parents to rest and let him take care of the farm for them. This doesn't really work, particularly with his father, but does lead to some important conversations between father and son about dreams and not letting go of them.

The rest of the cast also find ways to pitch in. Kencho, in addition to fencing chickens and chopping a lot of firewood, tries to cheer up a young orphaned girl. Shizuka starts out helping with cooking - and fending off some grief-addled, possibly blind widow, who nonetheless has an unerring knack for grabbing boobs while wailing his wife's name - but is soon using the medical knowledge she's gleaned from reading books to act as an amateur physician. Which is probably a step towards her being a doctor like she dreamed, before her overbearing father forced her onto a different, more financially lucrative path. Beatriz, the German tourist, is introduced to the water wheel that provides power for the electric fence keeping the zombified wild boars out of the village.

(So we've seen zombified boars and a zombified shark. I would be more concerned about zombified birds. Given the living dead's bodies seem to hold together pretty well, flying zombies would be a real possibility.)

The problem is an old classmate of Akira and Kencho's, Higurashi. Higurashi's life wasn't really going anywhere when the apocalypse started, and it was everyone else's fault. He found three people in a similar frame of mind, and they started their own bucket list of things to do before becoming zombies. It is a pretty miserable list, as one of the quartet wants to "fire a gun" and "force his tongue down a pretty girl's throat." But for now, Higurashi will settle for getting revenge on Akira for being so damn cheerful and popular and buying into society.

Which means they move the cars used to block the tunnel into the village, allowing zombies to swarm in. From there, it's Akira and his friends trying to save people, but each running into a different one of Higurashi's crew. Kencho ultimately defeats his opponent, a wage slave who felt unappreciated by his wife and resented her for it, by diving into a pile of shit.

No, I'm not joking. Kotaru Tokata had drawn the pit (which is basically the village's fertilizer) by blurring it into a pixellated state. So when Kencho climbs out, he's also drawn as a bunch of blurry pixels, which is pretty funny, actually.

None of the others are doing as well come the end of the volume, and Akira in particular seems caught in a circumstance where he'll have to sacrifice himself if he wants to save his dad's life.

Sunday Splash Page #394

"Serpent's Tongue," in Nighthawk #3, by Jim Krueger (writer), Richard Case (penciler), Bob Wiacek (inker), Jason Wright (colorist), John Workman (letterer)

At some point, Nighthawk got blown up. Once a freewheeling, drinking-and-driving playboy, then a way for Daredevil to fight Batman with the serial numbers filed off, then a Defender mostly for the fun of it, now he was dead. And the angel he meets makes it clear there's no way a shallow, selfish guy like Kyle Richmond is getting into Heaven.

But! There's always a chance for redemption, the angel says, because Kyle's really just in a coma, and when he awakens, his eyes are different. They see what's to come, especially the horrible acts people are about to commit. So Nighthawk - in a new, sleeker costume with a chest emblem that reminds me of Blue Falcon - prowls the streets making sure intended victims never meet the fates he sees.

Of course, from the outside, Nighthawk just looks like a nut, running around beating the shit out of random people who haven't actually, you know, done anything. So much for "proactive" heroes. Between that and the fact he's set up shop in Hell's Kitchen, it's inevitable he comes into conflict with Daredevil.

And Kyle kills him. Chokes the life out of him, because he can't let DD stop him. This is his only chance to be saved, to use this gift and make it to the ol' Gated Community in the Sky. At which point, Mephisto rises up to drag Nighthawk and Daredevil both into Hell.

The remaining two issues of this three issue mini-series from '98 are the two heroes trapped in Hell. For most of issue 2, it's Nighthawk talking to himself, because Daredevil's still dead. Eventually, he stumbles across some demons huddled around the flame Daredevil created when he marched through Mephisto's realm in the Nocenti/Romita Jr. Daredevil run, which somehow revives Daredevil.

There's a lot of theological stuff I don't particularly care about. That Nighthawk's got to stop worrying about "saving" himself. When Kyle insists he'll get Daredevil out because he doesn't belong here, Matt responds that it's only in knowing they do belong that they have any hope of escaping. Setting aside that makes no sense, spare me your Catholic guilt, Murdock. Daredevil also insists they can't escape Hell unless someone pays. He offers to sacrifice his life for Nighthawk, Nighthawk offers the same for DD, but ultimately realizes he wasn't dead when Mephisto dragged him down. Which means he still has a chance to turn things around, do better. He doesn't have to accept Mephisto's words that he's damned. Which would seem to run contrary to Daredevil's bit about needing to know you belong there to escape.

But Daredevil also insists that because Kyle stopped those people from doing anything, they weren't guilty, whereas Kyle seems to agree with Mephisto, at least as far as his own actions, that because his eyes saw them, he is guilty, in his heart. But maybe acknowledging that guilt is supposed to be part of accepting you could be damned, but you aren't damned for certain. Because you can make the choice. 

(I went back to Nocenti's story to see who "paid." Mephisto kills the young lady, Brandy, in what boils down to a fit of pique because Daredevil's standing up to him and making a big speech, but does that qualify as paying with her life? She didn't offer it, Mephisto just took it. Or was it the Silver Surfer's 12th hour appearance to fight Mephisto? That's when the others escape.)

Case's depiction of Mephisto isn't one I think I'd ever seen before. I'd say the colors are too bright, make him too visible and easily defined, but if you figure neither Daredevil or Nighthawk are seeing in a conventional way, maybe it makes sense he can't hide in shadows. Case's characters are both blocky and kind of angular, limbs oddly long or arranged. The fight scenes aren't great, but are also really just Kyle digging a deeper hole for himself, so there isn't any reason to make him look impressive. This version of Hell definitely isn't as detailed or eerie a place as Romita Jr.'s The frozen wastes aren't given room to convey the vast emptiness, and the other environments seem sort of half-baked. Like what you see when the hero gets dosed with fear gas or hallucinogens.

I think Krueger used the special eyes he gave Nighthawk in one of those Earth X books, where Kyle's become a different sort of "3-D Man", but that's a vague memory. I got about halfway into Earth X before finding it dull - the whole conceit of viewing things through X-51 and a blind Watcher's conversation didn't help - and dropping it. Kurt Busiek and Erik Larsen's Defenders used the idea that Kyle's experiences gave him an interest in the occult and a little more maturity - he still enjoys being a superhero, but likes the Defenders because they just see a problem and step in to confront it rather than wasting time on meetings and charters like the Avengers - but he didn't demonstrate any precognitive visions.

Saturday Splash Page #196

"Burning Man," in Rurouni Kenshin chapter 145, volume 17, by Nobuhiro Watsuki

This is one of those splash pages I picked not because it best summarized the series - although, maybe? A man combusts because his desire for power overrides everything else - but because the moment I saw it, I knew the title. Also, I think it's funny Saturday Splash Page had no manga posts for the first 8 months of this year, and now 3 in 4 weeks.

Rurouni Kenshin, which came out in serialized form from 1994-1999, is set 10 years into Japan's Meiji Era, with the restoration of the Emperor's power, but also Japan's attempts to modernize and stand as equals with the Western nations. It follows a wandering swordsman (rurouni being a word for "wanderer") named Kenshin, who meets Kaoru, a young woman trying to keep her father's dojo running in the face of unscrupulous elements. Kaoru's father developed a style of swordfighting, Kamiya Kasshin-Ryu, that was meant to protect. It focuses not on killing the enemy, but on preserving the lives of the wielder and those around them. Kenshin thinks it a naive dream, that the art of the sword is to kill, but prefers the dream to the reality.

As it turns out, Kenshin would know about the reality, as he was "Hitokiri Battosai", a famous assassin for the revolutionary forces. Kenshin practices a lightning-swift style of swordsmanship, Hiten-Mitsurugi-Ryu, but in the present, carries a reverse-bladed sword, meaning the edge his strikes with is dull. He killed many, once, but has vowed not to do so again. The question is, can he protect others and still maintain that vow?

Especially because, while the new era was supposed to be one of peace, not everyone is happy with how things turned out. There are those who lost, those who were used by the winners and cast aside, those who learned the ideals espoused in pretty speeches were too easily forgotten when rubber met road. Not to mention all the opportunists, profiteers and general scumbags that always inhabit society. Though Kenshin has - by his choice - no position in the government, he's still a symbol of the revolution and bent on protecting those who can't protect themselves, so he's inevitably drawn into the conflicts.

Kenshin is a bit unusual to me, because he seems quite unlike the typical shonen manga protagonist. Dragon Ball's Son Goku became an archetype. Undersized (initially), loud, uncultured, teenager who loves to fight and loves to eat. Naruto and Luffy both lean that direction. Kenshin was a teenager when he fought in the war, but most of this series is set while he's in his late-20s. He's quiet, polite, refers to himself as 'this one', which is apparently a mark of humility, and would rather not fight if a situation can be resolved peacefully. He is undersized, as basically every opponent he faces towers over him. Kaoru, who is close to a decade his junior, is probably taller than him, too, but most of those shonen characteristics are carried by either the best friend character, my boy Sanosuke, or Kaoru's student, Yahiko.

It's a different approach, but it works. Kenshin, despite his placid or pleasant exterior, is haunted by the things he did in the war. He wanted to make a better world for people, but his attempt to make that world left a mountain of corpses in his wake. Didn't those people deserve to be in that better world? What of their loved ones who are left behind? For Kenshin, the moments when he "gets serious" are not cool so much as a type of PTSD, where he slips back into the killer's mindset he adopted during the war. It frightens and worries his friends, as well as himself, and he struggles to reconcile with his past and what it's done to his psyche throughout the entire series.

Yahiko is probably meant to be the reader identification character, as the actual young boy that grows by leaps and bounds. I mostly find him annoying, especially in how quickly he advances in roughly six months that most of the series occurs within. Two characters who hired Sanosuke late in volume 1, cross paths with him again in volume 26, and when he can barely remember them, they point out that was only six months ago. In that span, Yahiko goes from knowing fuck all about swordfighting to winning battles against seasoned warriors on his own, something Watsuki doesn't offer to either Kaoru (who has been training in swords her entire life, and is essentially at the skill of a national champion), or Misao (who has been learning to be a shinobi for at least 5 years when she's introduced.)

Unlike some manga artists, Watsuki does seem able to draw a clean and intelligible action scene. I remember reading volumes of this concurrent with Hellsing or Trigun and being astounded at how much easier it was to follow what was actually going on in RuroKen compared to those two. That said, Watsuki was also apparently a big fan of American comics, and sometimes his characters designs are heavily, heavily drawn from DC or Marvel. The "Jinchu" arc in particular, has antagonists who are heavily reminiscent of the Joker, Apocalypse, and Venom. Personality-wise, not so much - although the Joker-lookalike is really just a sadist, there for his own amusement - but it can be a little distracting when Kenshin fights a guy who sure looks a heck of a lot like Omega Red, complete with weighted chains he throws in such a way they seem to emerge from his wrists.

This was Watsuki's most successful manga by far, running 28 volumes, plus the Rurouni Kenshin: Restoration 2-volume, whatever it was (a condensed, updated version?), the lengthy anime series, some animated movies, some live-action movies in the last 10 years, all that jazz. And then he got busted for possession of child porn in 2017-2018 which, as mentioned in the post on his next serialized series after Rurouni Kenshin, Gun Blaze West, got him fined the equivalent of $1,500, although a check of Wikipedia says it's actually equivalent to $1,900. Which does not feel like enough of a difference to be significant, but in the interests of accuracy, there you go.

What I Bought 9/24/2024

I've been having a hard time all week keeping track of days. I wrote and submitted something Tuesday, and it was hours before I realized I intended to submit it Monday. Fortunately the schedule was self-imposed, so no harm, no foul beyond my disliking being late. Wednesday afternoon I kept catching myself thinking it was Thursday. Although I did leave a little early on Wednesday. Splitting headache, maybe that threw me.

At least the week is over now, and the local store had both the comics out this week I wanted. Haven't seen a copy of Bronze Faces #5 or last week's Runaways anywhere, but we'll get to them eventually, I imagine.

Black Cat #2, by G. Willow Wilson (writer), Gleb Melnikov (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - MJ's thinking, "Point those things somewhere else, Felicia." Also, when did Jonah go to a basic training haircut?

The Black Cat's first attempt at do-gooding (minus all those times she did hero stuff in the past) involves two young mafia guys who are essentially, fencing really old shit for vampires. I guess the actual crime is they're ripping off the vampires, since they describe themselves as, 'hustling the undead.' This seems like the sort of problem which inevitably solves itself, but Felicia warns/asks them to stop. 

When she sees them unloading another box from their van that night, she does the avenger of the night bit. Except the package is a coffin, with a very pale and hairless, but well-dressed and snotty, vampire inside. Daredevil shows up to help, though I can't see him being much use with a vampire. Unless he's going to win via the power of Catholicism. Or is one of those heroes who figures vampires don't count on a no killing vow and stakes him with the billy club.

It's irrelevant, because the vamp gets bothered by Felicia flirting with DD - me too, she should know better than to go anywhere near that romantic radioactive spill - and vanishes in a poof of smoke. Literally, the sound effect is POOF! Cops show up, Felicia makes a little speech about how New Yorkers have to work together to make their city safer, it gets viral, and that gets Jonah's attention.

It's definitely not noticeable when Melnikov draws Felicia, but there's a fair bit of Romita Jr. is both Jonah and Daredevil. Lines aren't as heavy, but the square jaw on DD and the nose on Jonah are definitely JRJR-style. I don't see it as much in the one page where Tombstone shows up, but maybe I was too distracted by him saying he has the, 'first little throb of a plan.' Throb? Plans are throbbing now? I didn't agree to that!

The Thing #5, by Tony Fleecs (writer), Justin Mason (artist), Alex Sinclair (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) -  There's Diamondback again, prominently featured among the defeated villains, when she never went anywhere near the Thing. Does Nick Bradshaw have something against Captain America's best girlfriend?

Ben gets Sara to her mother, after Sara's eruption apparently drove off Viper and her goons. Unfortunately, Marty's there, too. Unfortunate, because he's the one who handed Sara off to Hammerhead in the first place, trying to make some cash letting them "scrape" powers from kids. This seems like the sort of plan that would result in the X-Men blowing shit up, which seems like more smoke than the Kingpin wants, but oh well.

Hammerhead shows up, still having not figured out this is a plan better abandoned. Sara's power flares up again, this time directed at Marty, but Ben stops her from roasting the guy, telling her it's wrong what her uncle did, but strong people don't pick on weaker ones, and that it's about knowing when it's the right time to use your strength. That time? You guessed it. Clobberin' Time.

Hammerhead gets pummeled, which is good. Ben tells Sara's mom to call if she needs any help or has questions, and then he takes Marty to visit the Kingpin. Interestingly, Mason draws Ben as significantly smaller than Fisk. I know that's how it used to be, Ben was just a regular height guy (albeit shorter than Reed), who was made of rocks, but I've gotten used to him being drawn as a really big dude. After a little shouting and desk tossing, Ben leaves, telling Fisk to tell his stories to the cops. Which Fisk dismisses as he "owns the cops."

I dunno, the Thing isn't Daredevil or Spider-Man. He's actually, by Marvel Universe standards, pretty beloved and respected. I think if he goes to the cops, especially if he does it publicly, they'd have to actually dig into Fisk, because it's the Fantastic Four saying this. The group that saves the world from big purple planet-eating dudes twice a year. Fisk probably still has enough distance and clout to make Hammerhead take the fall, but I don't think this is something he'd dismiss lightly.

Puzzle Solving Machines in a Maze

In The Talos Principle, you are a newly-created machine/program placed within an artificial world by something claiming to be God, which encourages you to solve puzzles in realms it grants you access to. Except these realms are set in buildings in the middle of a frozen plain, where there's also a tower. God doesn't want you to go in the tower, but if you do, it can't stop you. 

There are computer monitors set up throughout the realms, which you can use to access a vast archive. Or what's left of it, as time has seemingly degraded many of its entries. Still, there's enough to tell humanity is probably long in the rearview, the victim of some disease or similar catastrophe. Within the archive is something else, another presence. It toys with you, asking you to prove you're alive, or define life or consciousness, or how meaning is derived. God occasionally cuts in with the booming, "BEGONE!" voice while you're typing, but you'll encounter "the serpent" again when you solve enough puzzles.

I guess it's possible, within the limited response options the game gives you, to have revealing conversations about the nature of your existence in this artificial world with the serpent. But I went so long between plays, and sometimes made little enough progress that it might be two or three times playing before the next conversation, so I'd forget our past discussions. My responses apparently came off as philosophically inconsistent or maybe just poorly thought out.

But the serpent also had the tendency to play tricks and then mock me, and when I pointed this out - one of the response options was essentially, 'Whatever I say, you're going to tell me is wrong' - it made a snide remark that I couldn't just avoid the question. This is the wrong thing to say to someone with my contrary nature. After that, I simply wouldn't give it anything. Whatever it said, whatever attempt at getting agreement or finding common ground, I denied, cutting the discussion short. You know, the proper way to deal with an argumentative dickhead, when punching them isn't an option.

The puzzles are all about getting various Tetris pieces, which you need to be able to open doors to access the other realms, or, if you choose, the different levels of the tower. Of course, once you've got them you also have to arrange them to unlock the doors, and that was sometimes more of a headache than the puzzles themselves.

I used Youtube for the puzzles quite a lot in the back half of the game. Sometimes I could see the outline of what I needed to do, but couldn't get things arranged properly. Sometimes I had no clue. Especially when it involved the recording device. There are several tools you unlock through the game, any or all of which may be present in a given puzzle. Some are a simple as a block, others are platforms, fans, or crystals on tripods that can angle or aim lights where you want them.

And there's a machine that, when you turn it on, records whatever you do. When you finish, you go back to the machine and hit play, and a hologram of your self repeats those movements. So for a while, there can be two of you, each carrying your own block or with your own crystal tripod. So the other you can depress a switch, or use a tripod to send a beam to unlock one door, while you do the same somewhere further on. I really hated those, which is probably why I won't play again to try a different approach with the serpent.

The version I bought also included Fire of Gehenna, which I think is a sequel, set after your character in the first game makes the ultimate ending choice. God's shutting things down, and tasks another machine/program to descend into a prison-realm it created and free earlier programs it placed there for one transgression or another. By solving more puzzles, naturally.

The puzzles are the same as before. This time, you interact with the inmates via a message board community they somehow built up over their time imprisoned. You can read the posts, which might be one of them doing a long-running pulp story when they only vaguely understand humans or the concepts involved, or just musings. Sometimes they ask you questions, or debate your presence among themselves. The ones running the message board have their own, private, threads where they plot to run a smear campaign against you as you tear their world down.

Even if the responses the game gave as options weren't limited to one sentence, I'm the wrong person to send. You want someone for a mission from God, call the Blues Brothers. Given the choice, I'd simply say, "I'm not making you go. Come if you want, stay if you don't, this place is toast either way." In fact, at the point when you've freed all the others, but "Admin" is reluctant to leave, the game finally offered that as a response and you better believe I used it.

I called it a day when I realized that, to free Admin, the game expected me to go back and get a bunch of the gold stars that were elsewhere within the puzzles I solved to free the prisoners. I got a handful in The Talos Principle, but didn't find it worth the hassle. I certainly didn't feel like bothering with it here, even if the one I'd be trying to save had asked to be saved.

Not Diddly-Squat in December

The solicitations for (mostly) December were pretty much a continuation of the things I'm already buying or, more frequently, ignoring. The mini-series for Age of Revelation are wrapping up, though I thought I read Marvel was extending it to February. DC is in the midst of whatever DC K.O. is supposed (Countdown Arena, minus the Countdown to Final Crisis stench?) And there just wasn't much from any other publishers out there that made me stop and take notice.

What's new? Ryan North and Vincenzo Carratu are working on Hulk Smash Everything, a 5-issue mini-series investigating if Hulk really is the strongest there is. As the solicitation questions whether Hulk is stronger than gravity, or planets, I suspect North will not be approaching this in an entirely serious manner.

Dark Horse listed their books coming out in January, but what the heck. Touched by a Demon is by Henchgirl creator Kristen Gudsnuk, about a demon who sets up a business helping mortals in the hopes of earning enough goodwill to make it back into Heaven. I did enjoy Henchgirl, even if it's mildly terrifying to realize that was a decade ago.

What's ending? Hector Plasm: Hunt for Bigfoot is wrapping up. Still no sign of the last issue of Dust to Dust.

And the rest: Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu promises things are about to take a downturn for Marc Spector. Is it that time already? Seems like just yesterday he was being blown up. Fantastic Four is dealing with aliens who want to stop Earth's rotation to make the planet more habitable for themselves. 

Black Cat's hero thing is apparently not going well, so there's going to be a red-haired guest star. It's worded in such a way I think we're meant to assume they mean Mary Jane, so I expect it's some other redhead. Fingers crossed for Arcade! Nova's going to tangle with Ravenous, who I haven't seen since Richard's brother saved him from the Shi'ar during War of Kings. I guess nobody felt like he was worth killing, until now.

Batgirl is going to try and destroy the blue flowers that give the Unburied their powers, which I feel like was what Shiva advocated 7 issues ago? We're just getting around to this now? I don't think I would mind the circuitous path if I had a better sense of where Brombal was going.

Who's Harry Crumb? (1989)

When a young heiress is kidnapped, her wealthy father turns to Crumb & Crumb for a private investigator. And lucky him, Harry Crumb (John Candy) just happens to be available to take the case! Except, well, there's a saying, the first generation builds the company, the second maintains it, and the third ruins it? Harry's a third generation Crumb in the P.I. biz.

Crumb is not quite Inspector Gadget. Sometimes he demonstrates a pretty good memory, though at other times, he will misuse a word off his word-a-day calendar, or somehow misremember the word off the calendar. He knows all sorts of random trivia about fly fishing or classic automobiles, but can't actually read lips worth a damn. His ridiculous disguises somehow work, but he apparently never looks at the clandestine photographs the disguises give him chances to take before showing them to anyone.

So maybe it's a case of having book learning, but limited ability at practical application. Except the guy has been working as an investigator for a while, so that seems more like incompetence. He really does thwart the scheme by almost a fluke of circumstance. The circumstance being there are two, independent, plots to get money out of Mr. Downing. Crumb has one set of culprits figured out, but, because he's unaware there are two plots, tied to the wrong one.

Jeffrey Jones plays Crumb's boss with as a mixture of conniving shitheel, and a whipped lickspittle. His motivations do at least explain why he would assign such a boob as Harry Crumb to work on the case of such a wealthy client. Crumb ends up with a sidekick in Downing's younger daughter (played by Shawnee Smith), and there's a decent friendship built between her and Crumb. Candy's ability to play a bumbling, but nonetheless kind and well-meaning person cuts through a teenager's suspicion of people trying to be charming, and they bond over both feeling like they don't measure up in their parents' eyes. 

Those three carry the film, the rest of the cast is not given a chance to be much more than furniture. The kidnapped daughter spends her few scenes in a cage, looking terrified of the creepy weirdo that abducted her, who spends those few scenes being creepy and brandishing a cattle prod. There's a police lieutenant around to be hostile and contemptuous of Harry, but she's there just enough to be proven wrong when it really counts. Annie Potts plays Downing's new wife, and she's very good at making her seem like a horrible person with no morals, but I could not see how she had so much power over all these guys. Even when she's trying to be alluring or pleasant, it just comes off as sleazy. Love is blind.

There are some good random jokes in there. The one about Crumb's fondness for foreign languages got a laugh. I rolled my eyes at the first mention of his 'black belt in akido, with the boots to match,' but I have to give it credit, they paid that off at the end. Jones trying to protect his prized, fossilized dinosaur egg from Crumb earned a couple of snorts. As an '80s comedy goes, it beat the hell out of Throw Momma from the Train.

The Night's Getting Complicated

(Delusional) men want to be him, (delusional) women want to be with him.

Batman '89 is set maybe a year after Batman Returns. Batman is still at it, but seems to have settled back into "urban legend" status among some people, as there is surprise when a man in a costume breaks up an attempt to steal armored cars with a heavy duty Soviet helicopter. Batman and Commissioner Gordon still work together (though they've abandoned the Bat-signal for communication), but there are forces against it. Bullock is leading a push from within the police, and Gordon's daughter Barbara, now a sergeant, is trying to help D.A. Harvey Dent oust Gordon and expose the gang of Batmen (Dent's convinced it can't be one guy.)

Sam Hamm throws a lot of stuff in here. Harvey Dent, caught between what's right and his own aspirations, between his upbringing in Burnside and the expectations the elite (white) circles have for how a black guy acts and behaves. Batman encounters a young man wearing a cloak and covering his face, who protects the historically black neighborhood of Burnside (and kicks Batman in the face when he pursues a guy who ultimately stole diapers and baby formula for his sister.) Catwoman pops up, having been busy with her own business over the last year, but eager to pick things up with Batsy where they left off. Batman's eager for that, too, but always the reservations about some moral issue or another.

Quinones' Bruce Wayne is bigger and definitely fitter than Michael Keaton, but you can see some similarities, especially in the facial expressions. Hamm writes a Batman who is really morally inconsistent. He admits he chased the diaper thief because he was bored, and has no comeback when Selina points out he never investigates the guys Bruce Wayne has lunch with (there's a whole subplot about the armored car heist really being about some subpoenaed documents, not the $31 million.) Which is strange, because Bruce clearly did research on Max Schreck in Batman Returns when they were possibly going to work on that deal for the power plant.

But this Bruce Wayne doesn't seem to do any philanthropy work, no employment programs for ex-cons or encouraging education in economically depressed until he feels guilty about the thief being killed because the National Guard tried killing Batman. It's the young man, Drake Winston, who points out he needs to give people something inspiring. Also, Bruce takes the moral high ground with Selina, that he's not a killer, but the very first issue says one of the guards of the armored car died when the cars were dropped because Batman caused the helicopter to crash. Is he just ignoring that, or blaming it on the guys who were pulling the heist?

The story revolves around choices about who you are. What do you believe in, and whether you stick to that or abandon it in favor of expediency or, well, whatever. You can always find an excuse. Gordon feels he failed because at the end of the day, he relied on a vigilante to try and preserve law and order. It cost him his daughter, and ultimately his job (although Police Commissioner feels like being a professional sports coach: You're there to be fired, eventually.) Drake believes in trying to protect his neighborhood, that cops and other people of authority can't be trusted, but ultimately is willing to work with Batman, at least temporarily, to try and save lives.

Dent? Dent talks a good game. Talks about how giving a speech back in his old neighborhood acknowledging inequality felt good, or right, while in the next breath commenting on how many doors it seems to have opened for him. He does rush into a burning building intending to save Drake, but his fever dreams are everyone praising him for it. Drake admitting he was wrong about Dent being a cop, Dent becoming Governor, Bruce Wayne admitting he funded the Batmen. It's not enough to do the right thing, he has to benefit from it. So when he doesn't, it's easy to blame everything on chance and abdicate responsibility for his actions, even when he goes against what the coin says.

Hamm uses the classic bit of Two-Face liberally interpreting the outcome of the coin flip, where he's talking to the crime bosses and when Falcone mouths out, Two-Face decides the good head means a nice thing for Gotham, and shoots Falcone. Quinones uses a lot of split panel layouts as Harvey becomes Two-Face, showing different outcomes on either side. Or he'll start a row of panels with a profile shot of the scarred side as Harvey threatens a crooked politician, and end the row with a profile shot of the unscarred side as Falcone reminds him of all the times he failed to stop the mob through the courts.

I don't know about Bruce. Like I said above, there's a lot of hypocrisy in him, a sense that sometimes this isn't even about any vow to his parents, but just him enjoying being Batman. He mentions to Alfred that he's always told himself if he was doing more harm than good, he'd stop. Is he the right person to measure that? Maybe, ultimately, it's being Batman that matters most and everything else is sacrificed on that altar.

Selina's probably the one most at peace in her own skin. She's apparently formed a one-woman company that deals with computer security, although a lot of the issues appear to be things she started that let her bug the cops' files. But she uses it to dig into the rot in Gotham, which is something that matters to her, destroying the Schrecks who grind people under their heels. She helps Batman, makes her interests clear, but she isn't willing to compromise who she is to fit into the moral framework he tries to impose. And the mini-series ends with her offering Barbara some explosive evidence, anonymously, as "Oracle", and offering the possibility of a team-up.

So I guess the next mini-series will reveal which way Barbara went, although he willingness to meet with Two-Face and try to arrest him sends a pretty clear signal what matters to her.

Sunday Splash Page #393

"Pyrrhic Victory," in Nightcrawler (vol. 4) #4, by Chris Claremont (writer), Todd Nauck (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer)

Nightcrawler waited almost a decade for another crack at an ongoing series, though he spent at least a few years of that being dead, courtesy of the "shocking death" roulette wheel landing on him for the Second Coming (Cable bringing a now-teenage Hope Summers back to the present to do. . .stuff) event. Jason Aaron brought Nightcrawler back in Amazing X-Men, through something involving Kurt's (then) father Azazel. I don't know the details, I didn't read it or care to look it up.

The book, part of Marvel's All-New Marvel Now!, handed Nightcrawler back to Chris Claremont, with Todd Nauck and Rachelle Rosenberg as the art team. Like Aguirre-Sacasa, Claremont threw Nightcrawler into stories involving magic, at least initially. Where Aguirre-Sacasa's revolved around a possible brewing war in hell dimensions, where the Soulsword might be very useful, Claremont leaned into the fact Nightcrawler had left Heaven to return to Earth, and a possible link to that realm would be of great interest to certain parties. Much as it was with GrimJack, leaving Heaven was probably a bad idea on Kurt's part.

Also, where Sacasa and Darick Robertson's stories leaned into a horror vibe with deep shadows and threats that were difficult to confront physically, Claremont leans into the mystery threat sending out big, robot-looking guys who shoot energy blasts. Which does let Nauck show off Nightcrawler's skill combining teleporting with martial arts and swordplay. 

To be clear, the book looks good; this is the best I think Nauck's work has ever looked, with less of some of the odd proportions in necks and shoulders I usually notice, and some of the angularity of the faces smoothed out. And Rosenberg colors it beautifully, especially the more ethereal or otherwordly elements. But it does result in a much different feel for the book. 4-color high fantasy, rather than supernatural horror.

Foster-sister/girlfriend Amanda Sefton is again a major part of the supporting cast, though Claremont leans harder into their past romantic history than Aguirre-Sacasa did. He also writes Amanda's mother, Margali, as much less of a concerned parent, and more of a ruthless sorceress, chasing great magical power with little regard for others. Which at least is a parental trait Kurt should be familiar with, given Mystique's general shitbaggery.

Amanda makes a great sacrifice in issue 4, which Kurt can't make with her, despite his best efforts. After that, Claremont brought in some outer space pirates he'd created during one of his later stints on the X-Books, none of whom I knew or particularly cared about. I recall him trying to at least start a flirtation between Kurt and one of them, a Bloody Bess or something like that. I could have stuck with the book for generally lighthearted and swashbuckling Nightcrawler, but then Claremont brought in Shadow King. So I cut bait at issue 10, the same month I dropped Captain Marvel volume 8. The book was canceled two issues later.

There was room to do some stuff with Nightcrawler adjusting to all the changes around him. When he died, there were only a couple hundred mutants, pretty much all living on what was left of Magneto's old asteroid base, now floating off the coast of San Francisco. Now there were thousands or millions of mutants again, but the X-Men were fractured. Cyclops with underground squad off somewhere, Wolverine running a school.

But maybe Nightcrawler had already seen too much change for that to really faze it, so Claremont addresses it during a brief conversation between Kurt and Rachel Summers, and that's it. Much as he briefly acknowledges that Wolverine's current status quo was his healing factor was gone and moves on. He seemed a little more interested in Nightcrawler coming to grips with the fact he left Heaven, which would be a pretty big deal for a religious guy, but I don't remember it getting much play after the first 4 issues. Maybe because there was nothing to be done for it, short of trying to make sure he'd get let back in the next time he died. Of course, I think the next time that happened was the Krakoa era. So much for that!

I assume it wasn't selling well, but even if it was, it would have been canceled for Secret Wars later that year. Still, it was one of the books that briefly got me back up to 10 ongoings series for Marvel, for the first time in 7 years, and the last time as of this post. Marvel was handing books to specific creative teams, and at least giving the appearance of letting them do their thing. Their thing didn't always work for me, but it got me to buy more stuff from Marvel than I had in a few years, and they haven't come close to getting me to buy that many comics in any year since.

Saturday Splash Page #195

"Odd-Colored Discharge," in The Rush #3, by Si Spurrier (writer), Nathan Gooden (artist), Addison Duke (colorist), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letterer)

Nettie Bridger is looking for her son, Caleb. His preacher father took the boy to the Klondike, ostensibly to spread the Scriptures, and came back on the sly, a drunk, broken wreck, their son left behind. So Nettie takes the money she'd earned in the interim, books passage on a steamship, finds a ragged, tattered scrap of a man named "Moonpeace Thyme", or M.P., to act as bodyguard, and goes into the Yukon, ending up at a place called Brokehoof.

Brokehoof is a bad place to be. Winter holds onto the region with an unnatural strength, and the drive for gold is under everyone's skin. Both of those statements are literal, by the way, as the only gold prospectors bring in is what they dig out from underneath their skin. Which they find on a regular basis, then immediately spend in town, before heading out for more. The exception appears to be the local Mountie, Inspector Lapointe, who is prohibited from pursuing a mining claims or things of that nature.

And there are monsters in the woods. A man called the Pale, wearing a bowler hat and suit, carrying a sawed-off shotgun and riding a giant spider. His face is a vortex, and there are scarce few he allows to leave. Another, who eventually earns the nickname "The Carrion Kid," is a dark thing with sharp teeth and wings that seem to be perpetually molting. The gold-crying moose you're already acquainted with.

Nettie cares not a bit about any of it. Which both protects her, and endangers her. She's not prey to the same demons as the prospectors, who Gooden draws as scraggly, sunken cheeked, wild-eyed men. One good cough would seem likely to break their backs, but they'd still head out the next morning to dig through the snow and chip away at the rock beneath. But that makes her an affront to those same men, and Nettie's not always careful of her words.

Spurrier gives her a sharp tongue, one she hides at times behind an air of culture she's trying to affect, but the dance hall girl comes out almost as easily as the irate mother. She tears into M.P. more than once, who, despite being maybe a half-step above the locals, is at least trying his hardest to help Nettie. A few moments of insight aside, he's not very good at it, but that serves to both make him not entirely credible to the reader, and make Nettie's harsh words feel a bit like she's kicking a dog trying to apologize for piddling on the carpet.

But that's obsession, which is what has its hooks in every person in Brokehoof, whatever form it takes. It makes them blind to anything other than the pursuit of their goal. Even if they recognize the truth on some level, they make themselves turn a blind eye. Much of the narration in each issue is letters Nettie composes to Caleb. As we eventually learn, she hasn't actually written any of them out. She won't admit that she's lost him, just as the prospectors won't admit they're locked in a cycle that's going nowhere. 

What I Bought 9/17/2025

The local store had 1 of the 2 comics from this week. I take it as a win. In other news, I picked up another on-sale game off the Playstation Store, 890B. What a pile of crap. Walk slowly through a messy office (except on the one occasion the game lets you run because it's a timed thing), listening to stilted and unnatural dialogue. Your character keeps wondering why there's a head in his office. It's his office, shouldn't he know?

This game gives you an Achievement basically as soon as you take two steps, meaning it is what The Stanley Parable was mocking. I got to a point where to progress, I had to repair an electronic door lock via a series of well, you remember that game Snakes? You could play it on graphing calculators. Where you guide the increasingly long dark line through the gameplay area, picking up items without hitting the walls or your tail? It's that, seven times in a row before you can advance.

I did not advance, and for a game this bad, I'm going back to the old school. X-Play style, I give 890B, a 0 out of 5. Even for a buck-and-a-half, it was a waste of money, and this is as much of a review as it deserves.

Fantastic Four #3, by Ryan North (writer), Humberto Ramos (penciler), Victor Olazaba (inker), Edgar Delgado (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Doom's reached critical mass.

The Time Sled reaches an earlier version of the FF chilling in Arizona, and Sue managed to use her forcefields to beat Braille into the hull explaining Doom's trick (and we see some earlier points in this whole "World Under Doom" where the heroes actually got the upper hand and Doom went back to an earlier point and countered it the next time.) They figure out where the machine Doom's using is hidden, in Antarctica, which provides time for a gag about Johnny ditching his winter gear (which Reed didn't make of unstable molecules) so he doesn't deprive whoever is around of seeing his pecs.

They try to smash the machine, it doesn't stay smashed. Doom shows up, looking kind of pudgy. Did he stuff a bunch of newspaper inside his armor for insulation? Sue and Ben try to fight him, while Reed and Johnny figure out a way around the machine being bound to time itself. Meaning, actually destroy the machine, destroy space-time. Johnny gets an idea, communicates it to Reed via Sue and fire made of hydrogen(?)

Basically, when things start to turn against Doom and he goes to load an earlier point in time, he just keeps getting the exact moment he's trying to escape. In this case, the Thing punching his iron mask off. Doom won't give up, so he keeps enduring the moment, trying to figure out a workaround, until his machine burns itself out. Which I guess circumvents the whole, "breaking time" thing. Ramos and North convey Doom's efforts through a page of the same panel, repeated again and again in increasing numbers on each row until you can't distinguish them any longer.

The thing is, Doom could just stop trying to avoid getting his mask punched off and keep fighting from that point. Deny the Accursed Four any taste of satisfaction over the indignity. But this is Doom, so he won't let it go, not even as a short-term slight he can avenge in the long-term. Although oddly enough, when North did a story a couple of years ago about Doom trying again and again to produce a better outcome via time travel, Doom eventually concluded he couldn't and stopped pursuing that thread.

Either way, no more do-overs, and I think North is finally done with tie-ins to the event and can get back to just doing the kind of stories he was doing earlier.

The Fold - Peter Clines

Mike Erikson's an English lit teacher with a really high IQ and perfect memory recall. He's got an old school chum who works with the Department of Defense that's been trying for years to get Mike to bring those talents to work for him, and thinks he's finally found the project, the Albuquerque Door.

A small group of scientist claim to have built a machine that can open doorways between two points in space, allowing for instantaneous travel between them. But they won't explain how it works, or share any of the research or data, which makes justifying funding difficult. Especially when the last guy sent to check it out is now in a psychiatric hospital after he returned home and pulled a gun on his wife, demanding to know what she did. . .with his wife.

Clearly, I've spent too much time thinking about this kind of sci-fi, because I knew what was going on by the end of the first chapter (which is written from the terrified and confused perspective of the wife when her husband's pointing a gun at her.) Fortunately, Clines only spends half the book on Mike figuring out what's going on. The remainder is spent on just how much worse it can get, and the team's desperate race to close the Door before the worst case scenario occurs.

Most of the characters other than Mike get fairly bare-bones characterization. This one likes wearing Star Trek-themed shirts. This guy is constantly a grouchy asshole. The leader of the project plays things close to the vest, but he likes Looney Tunes. Everyone is guarded to an extent around Mike, even as he insists he was sent here to assure the higher-ups the project should continue getting funding, playing up his role as outsider 

Clines uses Mike's photographic memory as a way to introduce little details to act as big clues later on. He typically sets things up so you could possibly notice those things as well, so it doesn't feel entirely out of left field when Mike comes to a conclusion or starts a line of questioning that confuses the scientists. Part of me wishes he'd done more with miscommunication and conflicts arising from the problem with the Door. It could have fed into the aspect of Mike as the outsider, people keeping secrets or giving him conflicting information, but Mike and the reader not being sure of the motive.

But, that approach would have risked revealing the answer to the problem too soon, if that was something Clines really wanted to save for the midpoint. The story would be less a race against time to save the world, and more a paranoid thriller where alliances and motives shift constantly.

It was a light read, pretty easy to burn through in a few days, but it didn't dissuade me from trying one of Clines' other books at the library. 

'"I'm sorry," interrupted another of the reviewers, the senator. "HD?"

"Oh, it's. . .uhh." Arthur examined the table. "Well, it's an unofficial term we coined for when test objects dispersed rather than reintegrated."

"What does it stand for?" This from the man with glasses.

"Well, it's. . ." he glanced at Jamie.

"Humpty Dumpty," muttered Olaf Johansson.

"What?"

Mike's mind leaped ahead and found a childhood copy of the nursery rhyme. He looked at all six pages of the picture book at once and crossed it with the topic at hand. He winced.' 

Overdue Movie Reviews #4 - Bandidas (2006)

I hesitate to call this "overdue", but I've had it for a while, so here we are. Really, I thought I had reviewed it, but I can't find the post searching via title or primary actresses. Maria (Penelope Cruz) is the daughter of a poor farmer with a loan on his farm from a Mexican bank owned by Sara's (Salma Hayek) father. Or, that's how it was. The bank is seized by an agent (Dwight Yoakum) of a U.S. bank, after he poisons Sara's father. By that time he and his guys have already killed Maria's father, not to mention most of the other subsistence farmers under the auspices of failing to pay off their loans (and the exorbitant interest rates), as part of a railroad-related land grab.

Essentially, if this were Once Upon a Time in the West, Yoakum is playing Henry Fonda's character, which is not a comparison that does Yoakum any favors, but it's the one I thought of. Although his twangy delivery reminds me of Gary Oldman in The Fifth Element (Luc Besson's got a writer credit for this film), and Yoakum does have some of that same self-assured, shit-eating salesman to his performance, minus the unhinged energy Oldman brought to that role.

Independent of each other, Maria and Sara decide to strike back by robbing the now American-controlled banks. Except they're both incompetent at it. Fortunately, the local priest took confession from a retired bank robber - 37 banks, never caught! - and they eventually get the training montage that establishes Maria is a natural with a pistol, but Sara couldn't hit the broad side of a barn because she starts hiccuping when she gets nervous. She is, however, good with knives and they successfully rob several banks.

At a certain point, the railroad tycoon - who is, of course, completely unaware of Yoakum's skullduggery, and aghast when he learns during the climax, sure, pull the other one, it plays "Yankee Doodle" - asks his future son-in-law (Steve Zahn), the 19th Century equivalent of a forensic scientist, to go down and poke around. Zahn quickly figures out Sara's father was murdered, and just as quickly gets taken hostage by the "bandidas", then starts helping them as security on the banks tightens. Which is the point when it shifts more to a heist movie, as the ladies use him to get inside banks that are looking for two women, not a young married couple, or a widow and her father.

It's a little ridiculous both women seem really into Zahn, unless you look at it as a way in which they're competing, as there's a fair amount of class tension between Maria, who dresses plainly, isn't up on global politics or finance and sometimes struggles to win tic-tac-toe against her (admittedly clever) horse, and Sara, who is just back from studying in Europe and is skilled at ice skating and archery. Sara is the one who understands if the gold is transported into the U.S., the money in the Mexican banks is worthless paper, while Maria understands how difficult life is for the people that are rallying around them, passing information, helping them escape. In the same way the stuff about gold making the paper money worth anything is just talk to Maria, the lives of most people in Mexico is just something Sara was vaguely aware of, if that. She talks about herself as being European. So Sara lost her dad, but Maria lost everything except her horse.

(I did think it was funny, during their initial meeting, Sara tells Yoakum that in Europe, 'we have learned to be wary of the American definition of friendship.' Who do you think the U.S. learned, "here's some booze, and while you're drinking, we'll take everything you have at gunpoint," from? Just because we do it better - as in, more ruthlessly - is no reason to get salty.)

Hayek and Cruz play off each other well, in the times where things go well and they're having fun, and when they get frustrated and start fighting (sometimes literally.) Zahn can easily play a strait-laced goober to be mostly pushed around by the force of their personalities, but with enough integrity to occasionally bust through the sniping about who kisses better and get them to focus.

The movie sets up certain things quietly, to pay off later - Sara's ice skating is established via one shot of a photograph on the wall of her father's office, the intelligence of Maria's horse is set up by the tic-tac-toe game at the beginning - during the last big bank heist. There's a funny bit where Zahn is crawling along a rope to get into a building and as Maria's horse gets distracted, the rope begins to sag, dropping him towards one of the guards. The guard's tuning a banjo, and as the rope sinks lower, the plucking gets more out of tune, only to start sounding better as the horse resumes its post and the rope draws taut.

It's not reaching for any great heights, but the movie knows what it wants to do, sets up what's needed to get started and then pretty much gets to it, letting the actors have some fun with their roles. 

Recruitment Drive

The Straw Hats rescued their Robin and escaped the Buster Call. Meaning the Marines only succeeded in leveling their own government's judicial island. If only the evil in our world was so stupid. But the Merry Go has sailed its last, which leaves the pirates stuck on Water Seven. They're all pretty broken up about it.

I said, they're all pretty broken up about it.

That's better. One Piece, volume 45 is a bridging volume Oda uses to offer some measure of closure between certain characters, while also introducing new things that will eventually blow up into big deals. So on the one hand, we have the famed "Hero of the Marines", Vice-Admiral Garp, showing up by barging through a wall (because it's more dramatic), yelling at Luffy for not becoming a Marine. Which is when it's also revealed that, in addition to a Marine grandpa, Luffy's father is the leader of the Revolutionary Army, and considered the most wanted criminal in the world.

While this could give Luffy another title to aspire to - no one but Pirate King should be Most Wanted! -Monkey D. Dragon is clearly not the smartest man in the world if he left his son in the care of Garp, who in turn, foisted Luffy off on a bunch of bandits. I mean, Dragon was raised by Garp, he knew how shit a parent the guy was and still handed Luffy over. I get the impression Oda doesn't think much of blood relatives as family. All the people who are actually related in this series treat each other horribly. It's the weirdos you meet along the way and choose to run around with that are cool. See also: Sanji's father and siblings, Usopp's deadbeat dad, Franky's parents who just abandoned him, Robin's mom, etc.

Robin also gets covertly approached by Admiral Aokiji, mostly to confirm he did the right thing not murdering an 8-year-old girl 20 years ago. If he really wanted to do the right thing, he could gargle with concentrated sulfuric acid. Instead, he'll eventually lose a battle to become Fleet Admiral, leave the service, and throw in with an asshole of a pirate.

One of those things that will blow up much bigger later, the guy who inspired Luffy to become a pirate, Red-Haired Shanks, pays a visit to Whitebeard, proclaimed the Strongest Man in the World, and the captain of Luffy's brother, Ace. Shanks wants Whitebeard to keep Ace from chasing after a member of Whitebeard's crew that killed a crewmate. Considering Ace was hunting the guy when he met Luffy in Alabasta over 25 volumes ago, Shanks' concern is a bit belated. Especially since, at the close of this volume, Ace finally catches up to his target, Blackbeard. that fight isn't until next volume, and will result in a huge war.

The whole conversation also serves to highlight a different side of Shanks. We mostly saw him as this cheerful guy who teases Luffy as a little kid about drinking juice, but is kind enough to lose his arm to keep said kid from being eaten by a sea beast. Although I think there's been some recent revelation that the loss of the arm wasn't entirely as it seems. Here, we see Shanks the badass. So powerful that Whitebeard's weaker crew members pass out in his presence, the start of the whole "King's Haki" thing that has steadily mutated into "Supreme King's Haki," and Supreme's King's Saiyan God Haki with a Cherry on Top."

However, the two matters of most immediate import involve Franky and Usopp. Franky reveals what he used the money his crew stole from Usopp to buy, and that he intends to use it to pursue his dream of building a great ship that can circle the globe. If he's got a dream, then Luffy's got to have him on his crew. A difficult task when dealing with someone as stubborn and impossible to shame as Franky.

(Not even the chance for another Florida Man joke will get me to post a panel of Franky running around with his bare ass exposed.)

As for Usopp, though he fought alongside them at Ennies Lobby, he's still not back on the crew. It's unclear if he'll rejoin them or not, or if he'll be accepted if he tries. Usopp is, like many of us after an ugly fight with friends, trying to come up with ways to just slide back in like nothing happened, avoiding a tough conversation about who may have said what, or who challenged whom to a fight for their ship. Which leads to a tense moment as most of the crew seem eager to play along, and Zoro's not having it. He makes his own ultimatum: If Usopp doesn't apologize first thing, he can't come back. Or else Zoro will leave, because he won't follow a Captain that would allow himself, and by extension, the crew, to be disrespected like that.

I've seen some arguments about how, well, Zoro didn't make Robin, who also left, apologize. Ditto for Franky, who attacked Luffy, stole their gold, and had his crew beat up Usopp (twice.) But Robin never officially left, so much as just took off. She didn't attack Luffy (though she did attack Usopp when he tried rescuing her on the train, rough week for the Sniper King), or defy an order. If she didn't specifically apologize, crying out she wants to live and for them to please take her with them is a pretty clear acknowledgement she was wrong.

(There's also a bit in volume 44, after she gets Luffy to safety aboard the Merry, where she covers Luffy's mouth rather than let him thank her. Which seems like a clear sign Robin didn't want thanks for helping her captain, who declared war on the World Government for her.)

As for Franky, he wasn't on the crew when he did that shit. Doesn't mean there shouldn't be some hard feelings (particularly from Usopp), but that's a different situation. And when Franky says he'll be their shipwright, he tacitly acknowledging Luffy's captain. Franky's joining a crew, so he's got to recognize who's the boss. Plus, he built his dream ship and then entrusted it to Luffy, despite the fact he saw what happened to Luffy's last ship. Putting your dream ship in the hands of someone you know is a reckless idiot is a definitely a sign of something. Respect, or maybe just poor judgment.

Sunday Splash Page #392

"Exorcist Final Exam," in Nightcrawler (vol. 3) #4, by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (writer), Darick Robertson (penciler), Wayne Faucher (inker), Matt Milla (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer)

Volume 2 was a 4-issue mini-series, part of Marvel's "Icons" subheading. Never read it, don't know if it's any good. Nightcrawler Volume 3 was an actual ongoing series, albeit lasting only 12 issues, where Aguirre-Sacasa and Darick Robertson went a more mystical route for Nightcrawler.

Not entirely out of nowhere; even if the X-Men only occasionally get involved with magic, Kurt Wagner's foster mother is a sorceress, and his foster sister and sometimes girlfriend (but not in this series) Amanda Sefton was apparently ruler of Limbo at this point in time. Plus, there's Kurt's religious beliefs and spiritual nature, and most of the stories in this volume deal with demons or restless souls.

A group of wealthy dicks who, in exchange for the sacrifice of 14 children, get 14 demons in their service. (Which seems like a bad deal on the demons' parts, but I assume they had some loophole planned.) This is after or during Morrison's run, when the X-Men are public and openly doing hero stuff, so the authorities will actually ask for their help with stuff. In this case, the one surviving child appears to be a mutant.

Later on, things loop back to Kurt having killed his foster brother in the past, after said brother appeared to lose his mind and massacre a town. Did he lose his mind though, or was he under outside control? And Aguirre-Sacasa also brings up the fact Illyana's Soulsword was hidden inside Nightcrawler (and I think had been since Ellis' Excalibur run, if not earlier), which is a big part of why this is all happening. Leading to probably the best known moment of this series, Mephisto trying to make a deal with Nightcrawler, and getting punched in the jaw. Proving Kurt Wagner is, at least, smarter than Peter Parker.

Darick Robertson pencils the entire run, which is a nice change from how Marvel typically does things in the 21st Century. His Nightcrawler is fit and attractive, but not to the extent you get when Alan Davis draws the character. Robertson draws Nightcrawler always looking a bit disheveled. Clothes are wrinkled, hair's messy, shoulders a little slumped. Like he's tired or just too out of it to worry about looking nice. Which, since the Soulsword is an invisible weight on him he doesn't even recall being there, would make sense. Aguirre-Sacasa adds Night Nurse as sort of a regular person viewpoint character, though this is before Dr. Strange: The Oath, so she looks nothing like she does there. Robertson definitely leans into "redheaded sexy nurse" for that design.

He's good at drawing monsters - lots of sharp teeth and beady eyes set deep in the sockets - but his work is maybe too clean. A little bit of oppressive shadows that, say, Tom Mandrake would use, wouldn't hurt. Hint at things that can't be fully perceived. Unless the argument would be that Kurt's spiritually in tune with himself enough he can perceive (or he's got greater perception due to the Soulsword's presence inside him.) The art works better when the threats are supernatural, but a little closer to earth. A visit to a circus in Florida where Kurt apparently spent some unpleasant days before joining the X-Men finds the locals possessed by some sort of fly demon. It's running around in whoever is handy, so it's more a matter of making those people look greasy or diseased than otherworldly. Matt Milla's colors help a lot there, too, because he casts everything in a sickly green-brown that you can almost smell just looking at it.

But the book ended at 12 issues and whatever mystical war that was hinted at never came to pass. So it goes when you're writing second or third-tier books.

Saturday Splash Page #194

"Stunt Riding," in Ryuko vol. 2, ch. 9, by Eldo Yoshimizu

Ryuko is a 2-volume crime-spy-revenge-thriller Yoshimizu originally self-published in 2010. Ryuko was forced to leave Japan with her father, leaving her mother behind, at a young age. They ended up in Afghanistan, dealing weapons to the muhjahideen for the CIA. After that went sideways, in an incident involving a Soviet major dealing opium, an airstrike, and an Afghan kid named Harim losing his eye, Ryuko and her dad move to a fictional kingdom of Forossyah, where they had close ties with the king. Until he was deposed by one of his generals. This eventually led to a falling out between Ryuko and her father over her agreeing to protect the king's infant daughter. A falling out that ended with Ryuko killing her father to protect the baby.

In the present, Ryuko is a highly-regarded Yakuza, who learns from that same general as he's being overthrown, that she is a potential heir to the "Dragon's Head." What that is, she doesn't know, but it makes her a target. Of rival gangs, and of the American government. In particular, a CIA guy that Yoshimizu draws as a dead ringer for Brian Cox's character from the Bourne movies. (Maybe Yoshimizu was doing that throughout, using real people as a visual reference for characters, but that was the only one I caught.)

As it turns out, being Dragon's Head means you're the leader of a vast shadow army, two million strong. Only women can be the Dragon's Head, and a) it requires having a small gold necklace, and b) having killed your father. As discussed, Ryuko took care of "b" a while ago, so it's a matter of people trying to get the necklace from her and get their own candidate in place. Primarily a younger girl named Situ Zi, who Yoshimizu always draws like she's wearing a domino mask, even when having dinner with her father.

The position isn't something any of the women seem to want. Rather, it's always men trying to put a woman in that position, so they can control the army from behind the throne. Heck, two-thirds of the women mentioned as possible candidates don't actually kill their fathers. Ryuko's mother says her father died in an accident that she doubts was an accident, but this apparently didn't matter and she was made Dragon's Head anyway, though the only edict she ever issued was to not interfere in her getting married. Situ Zi doesn't kill her father, who isn't involved in crime at all. A member of that Soviet corps does it on the orders of her grandfather. When she protested his ordering her to kill her father, his response was, 'Your will does not matter. The decision has been made.' It seems like, if she became Dragon's Head, she could order his death, but even assuming she was allowed to issue orders, she doesn't want to lose her father to gain that sort of power (and Ryuko doesn't want Situ Zi to experience what she did.) And, of course, all the CIA agents we see trying to make sure no one gains the title are dudes.

Yoshimizu really likes to make everything connect. Harim arrives in the present working for Brian Cox, who was Ryuko's father's supplier of the weapons he was providing in Afghanistan. As a boy, Harim spoke up to save the life of a captain in that Soviet corps who didn't participate in the attack on his village. Nikolai ends up working for Ryuko, but when they return to Japan to attack the man who took Ryuko's mother hostage, Nikolai meets the daughter of his former commanding officer, who became an exotic dancer after the USSR ruled her father's death was dishonorable. Which is funny in a sad way, since the major ordered the airstrike to eliminate all evidence of his dealing in opium, precisely so his death would be considered honorable and his daughter would receive his pension.

All of that makes the book sound pretty heavy, but Yoshimizu fills it with characters doing cool shit. At one point, Ryuko's firing dual grenade launchers. Later, she drives a motorcycle into a subway car in pursuit of a guy with information she wants. There's knife fights and gunfights and fistfights and gunfights while on motorcycles, guys getting sniped, guys getting thrown off buildings to crash on top of someone's car as they're getting in.

Heck, the scenes in the present day begin with the king's daughter and her friend trying to rob a train car full of the general's gold by faking an emergency to clear the car, then detaching it from the train so they can load the loot into a jeep. Except Ryuko then swoops in, literally, by simply stealing the entire train car with a massive helicopter. That's just a reason to bring the general into close contact with Ryuko, but also to establish her bonafides. Mission accomplished. In a particularly satisfying moment, Ryuko kills Situ Zi's grandfather by ramping her motorcycle into the open side of his chopper and essentially running him over with it. If the shot of his legs sticking out the side of the chopper and twitching, with only part of the motorcycle visible, had been a splash page I'd have gone with it.

Visually, Yoshimizu changes things up a lot. In some fights, Ryuko may be wearing an all-black outfit that almost merges with her hair and turns her into this shadowy blur. At other times, Yoshimizu dispenses with any blacks or shadows at all, the art just an outline of the person, their eyes, their clothes. Wide, short panels of people weaving on motorcycles, or extreme close-ups peering at someone over the end of the barrel of their revolver. Narrow vertical panels that slowly topple towards the far side of the page as someone's world falls apart. The occasional pull back to middle or long distance to establish a location. I reviewed both volumes about 3 years ago if you want to see some other examples of the art.