Sunday Splash Page #417

"Power-less Pack," in Power Pack (2020) #4, by Ryan North (writer), Nico Leon (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

In 2020, Marvel was going to do another event about government overreach, this time targeted at teen heroes, who would have to either knock off being superheroes, or accept an adult hero as a "mentor." Called Outlawed, the event got kneecapped by the disruptions in distribution (among other things) from COVID.

There were a few tie-ins, but a lot of stuff got canceled. From what I can tell, the most notable moment was Cyclops, now able to remember the time his teenage self was brought to the future, declaring the Champions were under Krakoa's protection. But really, when the best moment in the event involves Cyclops doing something (admittedly) cool, you know it was a bum idea.

That said, besides the Champions, Power Pack were probably the perfect group to put in the crosshairs of this sort of foolishness. Ryan North does have Alex try to argue that, due to time spent traveling the new multiverse (post-Hickman's Secret Wars) with the Future Foundation, he's actually old enough to qualify as a mentor to his siblings, only to be shot down by some bureaucrat fascist on the grounds time dilation due to multiversal travel doesn't count. Although this was around the same time as Rainbow Rowell's Runaways, when Julie was dating Karolina Dean, who was a college student by that point, so it seems like Julie ought to have counted.

But it sets the tone - if the mini-series starting with another Katie-drawn intro to the Power Pack, outlining their powers and general deal didn't do that already - that North may not be taking this entirely seriously. The kids' efforts to find a mentor focus first on Frog Thor - who became a character separate from the "Thor turned into a frog" bit in Simonson's run at some point - and eventually settle on some guy we've never heard of, Agent Aether. Who encourages the kids to use their various powers to generate electricity to help people.

Except Agent Aether's the Wizard, whose machines are actually draining the kids' powers into him. Oh, and he sold the electricity they created to a multinational company to make himself money. In other words, the Wizard finally found his proper level as a villain: A schmuck who cons desperate kids and commits petty fraud. Only took him 60 years, but congrats on finally recognizing his place in the hierarchy.

There's probably something North's pointing out, about how dangerous it is to give an adult responsibility for a kid just because they were able or willing to register an identity in a government database. That's all the Wizard had to do, cook up a fake look and make a show of being helpful. Whoever was in charge of the government department didn't do any sort of vetting, either from laziness or understaffing. 'He's an adult, wears a costume, good enough. Next!'

Still, the Wizard's an idiot, so all it takes is the kids, with some help from Wolverine, pretending they actually had more power than he thought, to goad him into throwing them back in his machines, which they reversed ahead of time, so they'd drain the powers back out of him. Continuing with the notion of North not taking this seriously, Logan responds to a written request left at the Krakoan Embassy by showing up at the Powers' home, where the kids claim he's a special tutor who helps kids from early elementary to college. Their dad remarks he looks just like that X-Man, Wolverine, but is otherwise OK with "Professor Brucie Mansworth" tutoring his kids.

Maybe North's point wasn't how half-baked most attempts to "protect" children via government intervention are, but that parents are incredibly stupid and nobody should be procreating? Anyway,  to sell the notion the kids still have powers, Logan stages a battle against them as "Wolvermean", Wolverine's evil twin (which Leon and Rosenberg depict as a palette-swapped, arts-and-crafts version of Logan's costume.) The battle ends up televised, with the scroll at the bottom wondering if violent video games are helping kids be better at fighting crime? I enjoyed all of that, found it hilarious.

There is some nonsense in the fourth issue about how, when the Wizard drained their powers, some part of his selfish, misanthropic nature leached into the kids. Julie posits this because Katie is angry adults put them in this position. Plus, she tried to fry the Wizard with the last bit of power she had and nearly killed a forklift driver. But, Katie's got good reason to be pissed.

And not just at the Wizard. The intro was part of her plan to finally tell their parents about their powers (North references her previous plan to do this in the mini-series we looked at last week, which may be one of the only times I've seen those mini-series get referenced by something in-continuity, for whatever value that term has at Marvel these days), and Katie got overruled by her siblings again. Now her powers were stolen by a bad guy that only got his hooks in them because of poorly thought out nanny state bullshit, and her siblings are dismissing her feelings, telling her she doesn't really feel that way. That seems like a bird turd cherry atop a cow shit sundae.

That said, the generally lighter tone lets Leon add in a bunch of humorous touches. The Asgardians have a sign that tell visitors, no, they don't know where Frog Thor is, and are insulted you think he's an acceptable substitute for their ruler. The Wizard's HQ has hand-drawn plans for how he'll beat other villains, like Juggernaut, with his new powers. He might be a worse artist than Katie, so I guess he didn't swipe that along with her powers. The team beat Taskmaster and Jack and Katie can't resist poking him with sticks while he's down. Each issue is from a different kid's perspective, and Jack filters a lot of his perception through his dream of having a social media account dedicated to his adventures. So we get panels of Alex using his powers presented as videos to click on, with titles like, 'BLACK HOLE IN BROOKLYN??? Video footage PROVES it happened!'

Saturday Splash Page #219

"Party Down One," in Real Hero Shit, by Kendra Wells (writer/artist), Amanda Lafrenais (color artist)

Prince Eugene Edouard Emmanuel D'Pasha, heir to the Kingdom of Marble, sporting a set of horns that suggest unusual parentage on at least one side of his family, is feeling a little bored. He spies an ad from an adventuring party looking for a fighter, and joins up. 

Eugene is a good fighter, but energetic, easily distracted, and constantly horny, managing to exhaust each of Michel, Hocus, and Ani in various ways. Still, when they reach a town where people keep going missing and the local church may be involved, he doesn't shy from a fight, or from asserting his authority as Prince to make certain the guilty party will face repercussions.

Wells throws in some backstory for each party member, and has them interact as a group and in various pairs to let the personalities show through. For example, Ani is the most abrasive, but there's an ease to how Michel and Hocus react that shows they're familiar with her personality in a way Eugene is not.

Wells sets up a few things that likely would pay off in subsequent adventures - Michel having been hunted in the past, Ani's fury at how people like her who gained magic without praying to a deity were exterminated, Michel's warning to Eugene that if he rules, his hands will become bloody - but as far as I know, there hasn't been another volume released.

I posted a longer review 3.5 years ago. Doesn't feel like it was that long ago, but time flies. 

What I Bought 2/28/2026 - Part 2

I spent most of last Friday on the road. Driving to Alex's, driving to his gig 300 miles away, driving back, then driving home, on about 1 hour of sleep. To be fair, that's more than I usually manage when he drives, but I still basically flopped on my couch as soon as I got home 8 a.m. Saturday morning. Next I knew, it was noon, and I was basically useless the rest of the weekend.

I don't intend to do anything like that this weekend. In fact, maybe I'll just sleep the entire weekend. That sounds fantastic.

Babs: The Black Road South #2, by Garth Ennis (writer), Jacen Burrows (artist), Andy Troy and Lee Loughridge (colorists), Rob Steen (letterer) - I don't know what Babs and Barry are looking at, but the horse is appalled.

Babs and Izzy pursue the questing party that's got all their money with the aid of a punch-drunk dragon. Who passes the time telling about how he used to be quite the fighter, with all the riches and women that came with it, until all the blunt force trauma put his career on the downslope. Then he confused one of his ladies for a sheep, and well, look, it's awful he ate her, but I don't think it's accurately described as toxic masculinity, as the other ladies accused, and which Babs and Izzy agree. He's got CTE and no depth perception, for fuck's sake!

Also, I imagine a dragon's metabolism is a real bear to keep fed. As in, a whole bear is something they'd probably like to eat, given the chance. 

Whatever. They catch up to the questing party in the town everyone stops at before continuing on to die in Mordynn. Babs is very concerned about being recognized, and reluctant to talk about her past experience. But she offers enough, combined with a flashback at the beginning of the issue, to know Ennis is parodying Lord of the Rings. With Babs in Sean Bean's spot, I believe, since everyone else is accounted for. Babs leaves Izzy to talk the body count, I mean, party into letting the two of them join, as their only hope to get back their money is make sure these goobers actually complete the quest and return with significant loot.

Yeah, I wouldn't bet on it, either. Especially since what appears to be the only other survivor of the faux-fellowship is lurking in the shadows, and the years don't appear to have been kind to him. 

Dust to Dust #7, by JG Jones (writer/artist), Phil Bram (writer), Jackie Marzan (letterer) - Back in the mid-2000s, there were these awful TV commercials for this local church. They always ended with, "Family Worship Center, it's a church on fire!" From a marketing sense, just terrible. However, it was great for my mood, Alex and I laughed our asses off. Still do. The only good thing organized religion in the United States, quite possibly the world, has ever produced.

The masked killer is getting down to business now. The baseball player fooling around with the preacher's daughter, in the church? Dead. The preacher's daughter, too. Then it's immediately to the farmhouse where the photographer's staying. It turns into an awkward fight of her, an old man in a wheelchair, and his wife with her frying pan, all against a guy in a gas mask.

Jones uses tall, narrow panels during the struggle, usually breaking up a single setting into discrete pieces that each center on one character. A panel of the old man trying to use his cane to stand, another of the killer with his machete, holding the photographer by the hair. A third of the missus coming in hot with the skillet, concluded by the start of her swing.

A chaotic, uncoordinated and ultimately, somewhat successful, fight for both sides. The killer doesn't manage to get the photographer, but does manage to escape with some of her photos. All because the sheriff couldn't haul himself out of the bath fast enough to do anything. Jeez, this guy ain't exactly impressing me, especially as he still thinks it's the moonshiners who've been dead for a couple of issues now.

The rest of the issue is spent on the rainmaker setting up his equipment while the Mayor looks on. The Mayor's brother is helping, which puts the two prime suspects for the killer in the same place, so I thought Jones and Bram might do something to hint at a head injury for one of them, after the frying pan, but no. It's getting difficult for me to figure this story is actually going to resolve next issue. Especially after the preacher chucks a rattlesnake at the rainmaker, causing a flinch and misfire of the device, which lights the church on fire.

I at least appreciate the preacher's own self-righteousness getting his place burned down.

Feeling Shifty

Mr. Shifty involves a silent, teleporting guy who infiltrates a hi-rise tower. As you find out from his tech support, Nyx, the tower is owned by Chairman Stone, who stole MEGA Plutonium. You've got to steal it back via teleporting and punching.

Every level is a different floor in the tower (or under it.) The view is topdown, enabling you to see the layout of the halls and rooms in your vicinity. You can also move the camera a limited distance with the right thumbstick, to peek ahead. There's usually some objective you're trying to complete on each floor. Reach a security terminal to get more accurate blueprints, destroy a certain machine. Sometimes you're just trying to make it to a different elevator to take you to the next floor.

There are lots of hazards in your path. The goons ramp up from guys with handguns, to shotguns, to machine guns, to flamethrowers and grenade launchers. There are big dudes who just punch, but take an extra hit (3 instead of 2) to knock down, women with dual pistols who seem to have limited super-speed (after the first time you hit them, they do a very fast backwards dash to escape your punching range), and vaguely ninja-ish women who can zip into your face faster than you expect. There are also exploding barrels, automated machine guns and missile launchers, and laser traps. So many laser traps. Chairman Stone must have loved the first Resident Evil movie. 

All of that in a variety of configurations. However, friendly fire is a thing, so you can often get the opposition to eliminate itself. There was one particular room, in the last level, where I had my most success when I stuck to safe spots as much as possible, and the moving lasers mowed down most of the enemies. Just don't get caught in the blast radius, because Mr. Shifty is a real glass cannon. One hit and you're down. Most enemies' weapons have laser sights, so you can tell where they're aiming and, you know, not be there. But with how much ordinance is flying around sometimes, that can be difficult to track. Fortunately, the game restarts from the room you died in, rather than the start of the level, but at the same time, when you finish a level, it tells you how long it took, and how many times you died.

Seeing I died 59 times on level 16 was disheartening.

You also have a limited number of teleports you can use at one time, highlighted at the bottom of the screen as five boxes. You recharge, but it sure feels like, when you've exhausted your jumps, it takes forever for even one to recharge versus how quickly it happens if you're just recharging from 4 to 5 available teleports. The teleports are aimed with a little cursor that swivels and moves as you do. Range is limited, so some levels involve puzzles where you have to figure out how to get from A to B when the most direct hallway is separated from you by a thicker than usual wall.

Fighting fills a meter just above the teleport capacity display. When it's full, and you're about to get shot, you enter a sort of bullet time where everyone else slows down. So you can get clear and hopefully knock out several enemies in the few seconds before it drains.

Almost everything in the environment is destructible. On the one hand, this is dangerous. If you aren't careful, an enemy might have a strong enough weapon to just destroy the wall between you and keep firing. Though again, helpful in terms of friendly fire. However, this means there are all sorts of things you can use as weapons. Not guns - Mr. Shifty considers guns to be a coward's weapon, not like teleporting behind someone and punching them in the skull - but broken pipes, staffs, keyboards, the heads off marble busts, sodas from the drink machine. Chairman Stone has a lot of Greek or Roman statues with tridents or shields that you can pick up and hurl. Then pick up and hurl again. (You can't Captain America the shield, or maybe I just wasn't doing it right.)

I at least understand those as a design choice; Stone's a wealthy guy who thinks he's hot shit. I'm less sure why he has boat oars displayed on the walls everywhere, but hell, they make for good cannon fodder smacking.

Mr. Shifty is a game that, when it's going you well, you feel super-slick and accomplished. The one-hit-kill nature of the gameplay means that can vanish in an instant and, at least for me, once it was gone, it was hard to get back. One death seemed to wreck my timing. I'd start dying repeatedly in the same room. So it can be anger inducing sometimes.

What I Bought 2/28/2026 - Part 1

Had a dream early Monday morning where I was locked in an airtight room with a window in the door. I could feel myself running out of air as I managed to break the glass, at which point water started to pour in. Managed to tear the opening wider, which let in more water, but seemed to drain the hallway of the Gothic mansion I was in fast enough I didn't drown or asphyxiate. Nice when dream logic works in your favor.

I didn't find everything from January and February I missed, but I found most of it, so let's get started.

Spirit of the Shadows #1 and 2, by Daniel Ziegler (writer), Nick Cagnetti (writer/artist/colorist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - Play something lively, my man, it'll be funny. 'Cause you're in a graveyard.

Erik Leroux is dead, and finally reunited with his love, Katrina, in the Sacred Realm. Or not, because he has to pass through the Spirit Realm first and be judged. To be judged, he needs a book that documents his entire life. It'll also help him remember, since his memories are a little fuzzy. Too bad a creature grabs his book and shreds it, but Erik manages to find some pages that show him and us his life.

At first, it feels like Ziegler and Cagnetti are going for the approach of starting at the end, then flashing back to how we got there. Except Erik's time in the Spirit Realm is interrupted with activity back in the living world, where a doctor buries Erik, only to be captured by a traveler that turns out to be a witch named Helena Hextress. She's after Erik because he's responsible for her sister's death. No, her sister isn't Katrina, but Katrina's fate is tied to what happened.

Erik being dead is only a minor inconvenience to Helena, who turns the doctor into a wooden figure, then resurrects Erik with a spell she originally learned to revive her sister. But you've got to use it quick, and it took her too long to learn it. Cagnetti depicts the resurrection as a giant, ghoul-mouthed, alternate color version of Spirit of the Shadows bursting from the Spirit Realm's ground and swallowing Erik. Gotta be up there with resurrection via enormous, wish-granting dragon in terms of unique ways to do it. That's where issue 2 ends, Erik alive again (and not for the first time), but not aware what danger he's in, with the book of his life (what he collected of it) still in the Spirit Realm, with Elizabeth.

I'm curious whether Erik will remember his life now that he's alive, or if Ziegler and Cagnetti intend to flesh out the rest of his life via Elizabeth continuing the search for Erik's pages. In which case, Erik's time in the living world would be focused on him trying not to be killed by Helena. The being that explained the rules to Erik within the first few pages of issue 1 asked him a question he said was the basis of the judgement: Did you lead a moral life? Based on what we've seen in the first 2 issues, the answer is no, so Erik probably needs to stay alive long enough to reverse that trend (if he can), while Elizabeth learns things that would probably turn her against him.

Cagnetti's art feels very Kirby-influenced at times, though maybe that's just Helena's hair. But the squared off buildings and blocky protagonist has a similar vibe. The shading on the faces, narrow smudges of black here and there, has is more what I associate with '50s horror comic (or Black Jack Demon.) Which makes for a contrast with the vivid, solid block colors of the Spirit Realm scenes, which feel closer to a Ditko Dr. Strange book. Like two different stories taking place in the same book. I won't say it doesn't work, if I take it that the ultimately Earthly motivations Erik had pushed him into this supernatural situation (somehow.) It's just noticeable in a way I find distracting sometimes.

The Running Man (2025)

Ben Richards (Glen Powell) needs money for his sick kid, so he applies to appear on a Network show, and Network show, to make said money. Just as long as it's not The Running Man. He's very angry, so the producer (Josh Brolin), thinks he'd be great for The Running Man. Richards is desperate enough to accept and quickly learns TV is, gasp, fake!

Not in the sense that people are trying to kill him, or that he can make big bucks if he can stay alive. Those are both real. But in the sense the show lies about how he got to this point, and when he sends in the required daily videos, they fake them to be more incendiary. And at a certain point, the show starts working to keep him alive, at least so long as the ratings are good.

I can't decide if Powell, or maybe it's the movie in general, overplays the "angry" thing. It feels like too much, but the commercials and the other touches Edgar Wright puts in the movie - the clips of the obnoxious "Americanos" show, the videos by "The Apostle" - make the film feel like it's meant to be a satire, Robocop-style. If so, maybe having Ben Richards be a comically angry man, who responds to everything with either acerbic comments or violence, is a good choice. He tried to be a good man, it got him nowhere, now he's pissed off all the time.

Still, the performance puts me in the mind of what Robert Downey Jr. said in Tropic Thunder when watching the play version of Simple Jack. When Powell dials back on the anger throttle, it allows the audience to connect. The moments where Powell is allowed to show Richards' humanity through trying to help people, whether it's offering money to get a sick kid some medicine, or trying to talk a dementia-addled old woman out doing something that will get her killed, those make me root for the guy more than when he's screaming into the floating cameras. Even the bits where he's being funny in the daily videos he's supposed to send in convey his anger in a more relatable way. 

Brolin's excellent as this complete scumbag, who is always selling. The conversation near the end, where Powell asks if "they", meaning his wife and daughter, are OK, and Brolin legitimately can't figure out who Powell means until he spells it out. Even though Richards got into this to make money for them, even though that's what Brolin used to convince him. Because it was never anything other than a lever to get what he wanted, a promising contestant. If it didn't work, he'd have tried something else until Richards agreed.

There are some nice scenes or pieces of the film. I think the one I found most disquieting was the part with the two kids who got Laughlin. Them standing on either side of Buddy T (who I kept thinking was a CGI de-aged Ernie Hudson, sorry Colman Domingo!), stone-faced while holding the flamethrowers they used, was unsettling. They're not even happy to be on TV getting cheered for, might as well be telling them it's oatmeal for dinner tonight.

The part where Richards is in the trunk of a car, only aware of how badly things are going via the discussion he can hear and the way he's being bounced around, that was a nice bit. Michael Cera walking Richards through his secret room - 'this is where I make handmade soap, as far as you know' -  that was good. I enjoyed a lot of the cat-and-mouse between Richards and the Hunters in general, Richards mostly running for his life, taking out pursuers by sheer dumb luck as much as anything else.

The people he meets along the way were crucial for me to be pulled into the film. They living in the same world as Richards, but they've chosen different approaches to survive than "angrier than Vegeta with a permanent case of hemorrhoids." Whether it's Molie with his business selling TVs that, 'don't watch you back,' or The Apostle sharing the truth about the Network shows through underground tape distribution, or Amelia sneering at the "welfs" who watch The Running Man while insisting she's an open-minded person. Some of them try to address the problem, some put their head down and focus on the ground in front of them, some don't see a problem at all until they see a faked video of themselves leaning out a car window screaming for help.

Making Preparations to Set Sail

Wanted! is a collection of Eiichiro Oda's work prior to One Piece. Which, if this volume is comprehensive, consists of 5 stories. That's including Romance Dawn, the last entry in the book, which is kind of a dry run/first draft for One Piece, as it consists of a kid in a straw hat named Luffy with rubber powers, who wants to be a pirate. It doesn't get as far as Luffy actually recruiting a crew; he saves a young girl who was trying to protect her friend (who is a magic bird) from some creepy-looking guy with weird powers.

Yeah, that guy.

All the stories have comedic elements to varying degrees, and fall into different genres or styles. WANTED! is a Western, with a legendary gunman being haunted/annoyed by one of the bounty hunters who failed to kill him. The lead, Gill, spends most of the episode trying to run away or outsmart his pursuers, or yelling at the ghost to shut up as it plots his demise. Future Present from God is set in the modern day, about a pickpocket that God intended to kill for being a negative to society, but God fucked up and now said pickpocket has to keep a department store full of people from dying in a meteorite impact. Ikki Yako follows a cowardly monk (named Guko, and there's a monk named Ginko from a series called Mushi-shi. I don't know if Oda was spoofing that, or it's just a coincidence. He says he just thought a monk manga might be fun to do) who gets roped into trying to vanquish an evil spirit terrorizing a village.

Monsters is the closest to an entirely serious story, as it involves a swordsman who poses as a courageous hero, but actually uses a town's terror at an impending dragon attack as a cover to rob everyone's homes after they flee. There's another swordsman, Ryuma, overly serious and quick to anger, looking for the greatest swordsman in the world so he can challenge them. But he seems like an idiot, and managed to piss off the entire town because it seems like his fault the dragon's coming.

One thing the first 4 stories have in common is late surprise twists. That Gill was never actually in any real danger from the dangerous bounty hunter after him, because his skills are far greater. The thief pulling a fast one on God, Guko seeming like a talentless coward for 90% of his story, then becoming a badass at the very end. Monsters has a last page reveal about the true identity of the mysterious swordsman "King," that Ryuma's looking for. Romance Dawn's the exception, as Luffy shows off his powers about halfway through, and had already told us in a flashback he ate a mysterious fruit, albeit without telling us what it granted him.

The other thing I notice is the newer works tend to have fewer panels. WANTED! runs 6-8 panels a page, in a variety of layouts, for basically its entire length. Meanwhile Romance Dawn is almost entirely 4-6 panels, minus a handful of pages near the end with only 2 panels. Those are usually pages that involve someone getting hit, so the reduction in panels might reflect a shift towards more action-oriented stories. The 2-panel pages start to appear in Monsters, where Oda understandably seems to want more space to draw a guy leaping at the jaws of a dragon.

Sunday Splash Page #416

"Storytime," in Power Pack (vol. 3) #1, by Marc Sumerak (writer), Gurihiru (artist/color artists), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

The Power kids' ongoing ended in '91, and then, not much of anything until a 4-issue mini-series in 2000 that I haven't read. But the Nineties probably weren't the decade for a kid team at Marvel. Not x-treme or kewl enough.

In 2005, Marvel got in one of their periodic moods to make some stuff aimed towards younger readers, complete with manga-influenced art from the Gurihiru team, that really emphasizes these characters are kids, as opposed to "kids" that are built more like young adults. So, a bunch of 4-issue mini-series revolving around Power Pack, starting with this one. Katie's hand-drawn retelling of the origin over the first 4 pages aside, it's not an origin series, as the kids have already had their powers long enough to make some sort of name for themselves as crime-fighters.

(There'd be a Power Pack: Day One mini-series covering the origin later, but I don't own it.)

Each issue, Sumerak focuses on one kid, usually them dealing with the strain of being a hero. Katie wants to stop hiding, and tell the story of them getting powers from an alien horse for an assignment about what she did over the summer. Alex tries to juggle responsibility as the oldest with wanting to spend time with a girl he likes. Julie wants to focus on being a regular kid instead of a superhero. Jack, however, wants to spend as much time being a superhero as possible, whether his siblings are around or not. Whether he's able to handle the trouble he encounters or not.

The issues aren't entirely standalone, certain elements pop up more than once. Katie's frustration with her feelings being dismissed by her siblings leads to an outburst of power that leads a Snark to their home. He returns in the final issue, having recruited and empowered a masked robber that escaped earlier in the issue when Julie was being pulled in too many directions at once. Both antagonists are dealt with by letting them get pulled into another dimension by a squid-thing, via a doorway the kids' dad built in their basement.

Which is kind of a harsh resolution now that I think of it. That squid probably wasn't looking to make friends, no matter how silly Gurihiru make it look. Certainly when the portal got opened in issue 2, disrupting Alex's date, the squid was played as a serious threat, but Sumerak doesn't dwell on what happened to the bad guys. Guess we know where Stark and Richards got the idea for their Negative Zone prison.

Saturday Splash Page #218

"Conqueror," in R.E.B.E.L.S. (vol. 2) #5, by Tony Bedard (writer), Claude St. Aubin (penciler), Scott Hanna (inker), Jose Villarrubia (colorist), Swanos (letterer)

There was another DC series by this name that ran for a year-and-a-half in the '90s. For the record, and before I forget, the acronym stands for "Revolutionary Elite Brigade to Eliminate L.E.G.I.O.N.  Supremacy." Yes, Vril Dox II put an acronym inside an acronym. 11th-level intellect can't substitute for style. In this case, L.E.G.I.O.N. was a for-hire peacekeeping force Dox created, that was subsequently usurped by his kid, who was smarter than Vril from birth, but also insane.

I don't know if Dox was the offspring of the original Brainiac back then, DC continuity being what it was, but in the late-2000s, he is. He'd been a sort of lab assistant Brainiac created, and was ostracized by the Coluans for it. Dox seemed to take the approach, if he can't make people love him, make himself indispensable, then charge out the nose for his services. Except someone takes control of his robot peacekeeping force. Someone using mind-control starfish. Someone who wants to attach one of those echinoderms to Dox.

The first 14 issues are Dox avoiding capture, while trying to assemble a force to take said enemy down. He gets an assist from Brainiac 5, out to ensure his own existence by sending info back inside Supergirl's mind (from that stretch post-Infinite Crisis where she was in the Waid/Kitson Legion of Superheroes title), about how to build a team like the Legion. Dox, being a controlling dickhead with a superiority complex and little use for social niceties, takes his own spin on things. Rather than recruit Supergirl, he seizes control of a powerful, but near mindless, creature that was part of the force hunting him, because he wants power that won't buck his commands.

The big deal of this title was Bedard presenting a Starro the Conqueror who is actually an alien that managed, through force of will, to assert control over the Starros when they tried to control him. He's conquered entire galaxies, and can draw on the strength of every being controlled by the starfish. I recall the reception to this not being positive, but I look at it as a temporary thing. There were Starros as generally presented before this, and once this guy was dealt with, the Starros went back to that. A big starfish that controls people with little starfish, for some reason or another.

I started buying this after the Starro storyline was already over. I'd dropped Power Girl due to not liking the direction Winick was going, and the ongoings I was buying from Marvel were canceled or would be soon, so my pull list wasn't exactly stuffed. And Bedard was adding Starfire to the cast, and I was curious to see her away from the Teen Titans. Plus, Bedard had earned some credit with me for his Exiles' run.

By that point, the book shifted to Vril Dox playing a public relations game. He got credit for defeating "Starro," was getting all sorts of new client worlds, and was trying to get people to regard him more favorably. And stop referring to him as "Brainiac-2." His methods left something to be desired, as he's morally flexible to an extent at least parts of the cast questioned whether they could really trust his judgment or continue to follow him. 

The book was one of a handful canceled before the New 52 was even announced, I believe to make space for various Flashpoint tie-in mini-series. Probably not a surprise, since Starfire and Lobo were likely the two most popular characters, and they both showed up in the last 10 issues. Green Lanterns are involved, but mostly rookies rather than the established characters, and they're antagonists, because Dox questions the validity of a police force that appointed itself. He has a point. At least the worlds he protects hired him. Nobody asked the Guardians to create so many fuck-ups.

Still, Dox is a tough protagonist to root for, so willing to sacrifice others for what he deems the greater good, which typically involves ensuring his survival. But aside from himself, he doesn't play favorites. He'll sacrifice anyone, including his son, if he thinks it's the best option statistically. And even if things ultimately work out for Dox, Bedard has enough things go wrong, and lets the rest of the cast push back against Dox enough, that it maybe keeps him from being too insufferable. It's at least fun when he cancels a contract with the Psions because it's better than dealing with a pissed-off Starfire, or Lobo makes him drink some hideous concoction because he knows Dox is desperate enough for his help to do it.

Random Back Issues #168 - Batgirl #34

Like Batman hasn't been felt up by someone trying the, "sorry, didn't see ya there," trick before.

We got a kid coloring while his dad peers nervously through the peephole at someone pounding on the door. Dad asks his son if he forgives him. Kid says sure. The next page is a crime scene with two chalk outlines. Another weeknight in Gotham City.

Batman's nosing around with his flashlight, but Batgirl's fixated on the coloring book and the kid's chalk outline. She wants to help solve the murders, but Batman tells her she's not ready to be a detective. Does he explain what she's lacking? Of course not.

Next morning at the docks, someone tries to sell electronics with nothing inside. The buyer, blind or not, doesn't appreciate this. As the seller is hauled off, blind guy - called Ving - gets a call the, 'big, blind, furry eagle has landed!' as we see Batman busting heads in the background. Not sure why you wouldn't just say "Batman's here!" at that point. Cassandra's in the holographic training room Oracle has, still thinking about the dead kid. She punches the wall until her hands bleed. Then she punches some more. 

Meanwhile, Ving's assembled all his people and their merch at some warehouse, where they'll lay low for a week or two. This is how they intend to move into Gotham, hide in a panic room any time Batman starts sniffing around? Doesn't seem like that would work, since nobody could count on doing business with them. If you've got hot merchandise, are you going to sit on it until these guys poke their heads back out? But maybe they figure there's so many stupid crooks in Gotham there'll always be someone to deal with.

Irrelevant, though, 'cause when Ving opens the massive safe, Batgirl's inside. Then she's outside the safe, beating the dog mess out of at least thirty guys, while Ving stumbles around. Directly into Batman, who welcomes him to Gotham. When Ving protests it's impossible for them to have known, Bats replies everything's impossible until somebody does it, something Ving said earlier when one of his guys commented that they said it's impossible to move into Gotham. Clearly the guy only heard part of the sentence, it was actually impossibly stupid to move into Gotham. Forget Batman, you choose a warehouse that's name starts with "Two" and then you're dead.

Batgirl's waiting behind Ving, costume spattered with blood, and that's it for him. She wants to know who actually shot the kid. Batman squints at a hair he took from the crime scene and points at some guy that's already unconscious, then scrawls "DNA" on that poor schmuck's head in red marker as the cops arrive.

Cassandra's not satisfied, feeling they didn't do anything. Batman argues they caught the little boy's killer, and he'll face justice. Batgirl's response? 'Not enough.'  What about all the lives saved because these guys will be in jail? Still no. At which point Batman declares now she's ready to be a detective. I don't know, I feel like teaching her to read would be a helpful thing to tackle first. Also, Batman's a detective, and that didn't stop the murder from happening, which is what I think Batgirl really wants.

{2nd longbox, 112th comic. Batgirl (vol. 1) #34, by Kelley Puckett (writer), Daimon Scott (penciler), Robert Campanella (inker), Jason Wright (colorist), John Costanza (letterer)}

May on a Precipice

May solicits didn't present many surprises, other than I didn't see Nova: Centurion. Apparently it's been canceled. Ouch. Combined with two books ending in May, I fear I'm headed for another second-half decline in comics to buy.

What's new? Marvel's Spider-Man/Superman crossover was in the May solicitations, after also being in April's. Not sure if that means it was delayed, or Marvel was trying to get a jump on orders or what. Either way, it's still written by a bunch of people whose work I have no interest in, so pass it over again.

IPI has the first issue of The Matron, by Drew Edwards, David Bowles, Monica Gallagher and Henry Saxon, which follows the daughter and granddaughter of a famous serial killer, trying to live their lives decades later, when a similar string of killings begins. Will I even be able to find copies of this book to try it out? Dunno.

Mad Cave has a solicitation for the tpb of Our Soot Stained Heart, a mini-series by Joni Hagg and Stipian Morian which hasn't actually finished coming out yet, but maybe it will have by late spring.

What's ending? Spirit of the Shadows concludes with issue 5. It was in last month's batch of solicits, but the 4th and final issue of Touched by a Demon is also supposed to be out in May.

And the rest? With no Nova, Marvel is down to Fantastic Four #11 (with a back-up story by Stan Sakai!), Marc Spector: Moon Knight #4, Generation X-23 #4, and Moonstar #3. Ryan North's also writing a mini-series about Dr. Doom trying to go back in time to fix all sorts of past conflicts in an attempt to create a better future, before Reed Richards can do the same.

Which is a very Doom thing to do (if not a very Reed thing to do), but, setting aside Marvel's occasional rules on changing the past just creating branching timelines, can North give Doom a rest for a minute? He spent a damn year on a massive event that was all about Doom, which also involved him manipulating time. It's not even like that was by a different writer; it's the same guy! Maybe instead, he could do a mini-series about the Wizard trying to go back and manipulate time, only he fucks up and erases himself from existence at the end? I'd probably buy that (in tpb.)

Batgirl is maybe wrapping up the story about her having blood-shadow powers, Babs may have acquired and then sold a powerful artifact she really shouldn't have, D'Orc sounds like he's going to get dismembered one way or the other, and the answer to Is Ted OK? is getting more "NO" by the day.

Roofman (2025)

Jeff (Channing Tatum) wasn't doing well financially, so he turned to robbing McDonald's by climbing in through the roof. He got caught, and was sentenced to prison for 45 years on, assuming the movie's portrayal of the robbery in question was accurate, a bullshit kidnapping charge. It was (brief) unlawful imprisonment, at best!

He escapes prison but, stuck until his friend comes up with fake passports, Jeff hides in a local Toys R' Us. Let's hear it for the early-2000s, when you had commercial space options for havens other than Wal-Marts!

The movie spends a little time on Jeff settling into his hidey-hole, learning how to disable the record function on the security cameras - which he follows up by immediately running into the store to grab peanut M&Ms - setting up his own cameras (via baby monitoring cameras), stuff like that. It's through these activities he gets invested in the lives of the employees, specifically Leigh (Kirsten Dunst) and the dickhead supervisor, Mitch (Peter Dinklage.)

I did, when he first announced the store was closing over the intercom, briefly entertain the notion Mitch was an OK guy who really liked working at a toy store. His dismissive attitude towards Leigh's requests for the weekends off when her ex doesn't have custody of their kids, plus implying one of the other employees was at fault for the missing M&Ms because he had a noticeable paunch, put that to rest.

A big chunk of the film is centered around Jeff (or John as he introduces himself) and Leigh's relationship, started after Jeff brings a bunch of toys to her church for their toy drive. Toys he stole from the store where she works, but Mitch dismissed her offer to attend, and didn't even consider her request for a donation, so I guess it was his Grinchiness that's at fault.

The romance parts are the least interesting bits, though to be fair, a lot of them are focused around "John" trying to connect with Leigh's daughters, who are probably stand-ins for his own daughter, whether that's conscious on his part or not. And the movie uses that to highlight Jeff falling into the same patterns that probably got him busted in the first place. He thinks he's not enough, so he showers people with gifts to buy affection. Which takes money, which leads him to commit crimes, and there you go.

His fake passport making friend (LaKeith Stanfield) tells Jeff he's got the "calculating" part of being a crook down, but not the "cold." (Stanfield has the cold, because I'm pretty sure he took a 6-month contract to Afghanistan figuring Jeff would be caught by then, so he wouldn't risk his operation being brought down trying to help the guy.) Instead, Jeff is 'goofy.' And Tatum plays a goofball well. He's not afraid to look silly or cheesy, in a way where you can't quite tell if he's earnest or desperate.

Probably desperate, and trying very hard to delude himself. The part where he knocks out the security guard, then loudly insists it's not his fault reminded me of John Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blank, kneeling over a man he just killed with a pen, insisting, 'it's not me.' This movie doesn't really dive into that, the excuses Jeff made for himself, beyond he thought it was what he had to do to be a "good" dad.

Dunst has the role of the one charmed by this goofy, secretive man, but you can see a bit how past relationship experience makes her wary. Maybe not at first, when she might think the secrets are just him putting on an act. But the longer they date, as he starts with these desperate plays for her daughter's to like him, the more concerned she gets. She commented her ex wasn't present for a lot of things, and I wonder if "John" going overboard with the gifts feels like a different slant on the same trend. He's not going to be around, so he's trying to buy goodwill via his wallet.

The lessons Jeff says he's learned by the end are somewhat undercut by the brief note before the credits that the real Jeff escaped prison two more times after this incident. Maybe he just gets stir-crazy. 

What I Bought 2/18/2026 - Part 2

The anime re-watch wrapped up Gundam Wing over the weekend. That was fun, since I hadn't watched it in at least 15 years. I forgot how quickly things would change. Maybe one episode spent letting us think Heero died after self-destructing his Gundam, a half-dozen episodes on Relena trying to run a pacifist nation she only learned she was the inheritor of like 15 episodes earlier. She surrenders to avoid more deaths, an episode later she's a figurehead queen. An episode or two after that, she's running things for real, only to lose that one episode after. Gundam creators got no time for decompression, clearly (consecutive recap episodes in the middle of the series aside.)

It's Jeff! Meets Daredevil, by Kelly Thompson and Gurihiru - Those might be the most pronounced horns I've ever seen on Daredevil.

It's another collection of brief Jeff stories by Thompson and Gurihiru. Contrary to my expectations, they aren't focused on Jeff working with Daredevil. Their interactions are limited to the first comic, appropriately titled "Daredevil did it," where DD knocks over a statue while pursuing some thief (complete with a big sack with a $ symbol on it, so you know they respect tradition.) Jeff was sitting on a bench eating lunch in front of it, so the cop that comes along arrests Jeff.

Fortunately, Gwenpool and Kate Bishop hire Matt Murdock, and Jeff is acquitted, while Daredevil is sentenced to the community service of picking up all those pieces of statue that have just been lying scattered around the park ever since? So if you always wanted to see Daredevil doing in that a reflective vest. . .you'll have to by the comic because I scanned a different image. Hah!

The remainder of the comic is Jeff in his usual hijinks, most of which involve food. Although he does get mad when he keeps losing a fighting game and hurls the TV through the Hulk's kitchen window, which I can both relate to and think is an unwise choice. There are consecutive strips where Gwen is trying to make Jeff take medicine for some skin rash he's got, but Jeff proves extremely capable at not swallowing the pills. Although all that could have been avoided if Gurihiru simply drew a picture of Jeff's stomach, allowing Gwen to slip through the gutters to drop the pills in there.

It's cute fluff, but that's fine with me.

Generation X-23 #1, by Jody Houser (writer), Jacopo Camagni (artist), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - Maybe it's the angle, but Gabby;s lower body looks majorly elongated relative to her upper body.

Laura and Gabby are protecting a random mutant girl from a bigoted mob. Bigoted, idiot mob, given at least one of them shouts, "Just little girls!" at two girls with very long, very sharp claws extending from the backs of their hands. I'm once again amazed every citizen of the Marvel Universe hasn't managed to accidentally kill themselves trying to gargle bleach instead of mouthwash.

In the middle of the fight, something weird starts happening. Something like stained glass pieces appear from thin air, and as they pass through people, they get switched to, I'm not sure. Gabby thinks she smelled a friend of hers from her days as a sex worker, Kiden, who had time manipulation powers. Except seeing Laura at one point as young girl in a frilly dress, while Gabby looked like some Rob Liefeld creation for a second (sleek, elongated helmet with glowing visor) seems like more of an "unlocking alternate realities," power.

But I never read NYX, so maybe this is how the power worked. Laura follows the scent, finds more of the stained glass, plus a machine with the same claw set-up and hair as her. Beyond that, someone who isn't Kiden, who was looking for Laura, because people are dying from experiments involving mutant DNA. The girl speaks in fragmented and cryptic sentences before aging like she drank from the wrong Grail. Laura tracks her scent to a too-normal looking building, she and Gabby break in, there are more of the robots, and then a bunch of teenagers who are very happy to see Laura.

It feels like Laura is going to assume the teens are victims, while I suspect they're the ones conducting the experiments in order to make themselves more powerful. Maybe Gabby will be more suspicious, maybe not. Houser keeps Gabby as very eager and chatty, while Laura looks after her but plays along in trading jabs occasionally. The way the relationship was written felt right, which is a good sign.

Camagni plays into the characters' personalities by having Gabby be very expressive with her body language and facial expressions, where Laura is more reserved. So Laura will study a "too-normal" building, and all we get are narrowed eyes, while Gabby will stand there with one finger tapping at her lip in a "thoughtful" posture. When Laura tracks the girl's scent back to said "too-normal" building, in a page of her riding a motorcycle through the city, Camagni layers on panels showing the girl's progress as Laura's following the trail to its source. 

Sunday Splash Page #415

"Nighttime Visitor," in Power Pack (vol. 1) #27, by Louise Simonson (writer), Jon Bognadove (penciler), Al Gordon (inker), Glynis Oliver (colorist), Jon Rosen (letterer)

The 4 Power kids - Alex, Julie, Jack and Katie - meet a kind alien who grants them superpowers. So they do what any kid would do, use the powers to protect their dad from evil aliens out to steal the information about a matter-anti-matter convertor from his brain.

Power Pack ran 62 issues, from 1984 into 1991. I assume the idea was a book aimed towards younger readers, with kids their age as the leads to identify with, rather than Marvel's usual late teen/early-20s protagonists. Plus a bit of a fantasy approach. The Kymellians (the kind aliens) look like horses. The kids end up with a talking spaceship named Friday.

Maybe that was the idea. I would have been in that age range, younger than even Katie when the book started, and it was never a book I was interested in. I knew Power Pack from guest appearances in other books. The issue of Uncanny X-Men where one of the Morlocks erases the memory of the kids from their parents because Annalee wants to abduct them to be her kids. Thor's Secret Wars II tie-in, where the Pack help Thor and Beta Ray Bill fight off a Beyonder-amped Kurse.

The one issue I do own was purchased along with those couple issues of X-Factor when I was collecting the Mutant Massacre storyline. The Power kids are friends with Franklin Richards, who had some kind of dream power, and was somehow subconsciously aware of what was happening to the Morlocks at the hands of the Marauders. The kids are friends with Leech, too, so into the sewers they go.

I think, when Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men discussed the Mutant Massacre, they talked about the, maybe it's a tonal disconnect, of positing this story as this brutal extermination of an entire community of mutants by a crew of psychopaths. The Marauders are pushing the X-Men to the limits, driving Colossus to kill, crippling Angel. Then you've got a bunch of kids fighting Sabretooth, who can knock Rogue out cold and tear up Wolverine, and making it out unscathed.

Even wilder, the kids had apparently just switched powers - something I don't think I knew they could do until years after the series concluded. Even when Alex Power had all the powersets during his stint on the New Warriors, I assumed there'd been some kind of accident, not a deliberate move on his part - meaning during Mutant Massacre they aren't even entirely sure how to use the powers they've got. So you have Julie, now with the density power Jack typically has, trying to hit Arclight by condensing her mass into a tiny self, getting backhanded into a wall hard enough to get stuck, Alex can't bring himself to hit anyone with Katie's Energizer powers, Jack can't figure out how to manipulate gravity to glide like Alex, but they all make it out unscathed.

It makes sense the kids would rush to help their friends, and they do save Leech and Caliban by keeping the Marauders occupied until X-Factor shows up. But they seem out of place in the story. Risks of a shared universe, not every story that makes sense for a character from a characterization perspective works from a tone perspective.

Saturday Splash Page #217

"Drive Thru", in Red Before Black #1, by Stephanie Phillips (writer), Goran Sudzuka (artist), Ive Svorcina (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer)

Val is a former soldier, looking for a job from her old comrade-in-arms, Miles. Miles works in drugs now, and there's a lady who was supposed to be establishing contacts for distribution, but decided to keep some of the drugs to sell for herself. If Val wants the job, she needs to eliminate this problem. And Val wants the job, since she's out of prison because an FBI agent thinks she's an "in" to the org Miles works for. For Val to stay out of prison, Leo needs to die. Instead, Val and Leo end up on the run together from Miles, the FBI, even a relative of Leo's that owns a gator ranch.

Val is prone to episodes where the world around her fades, shifts, is overlaid by a jungle. Sudzuka and Svorcina usually depict it in solid colors to start. Red vines twining around Val, tropical birds emerging from a purple chasm tearing apart the ground beneath Val's feet. Eventually it develops into a jungle, dense grass and trees, downed logs, all colored something close to natural. And somewhere in there, someone needs help. Usually it happens when Val gets violent, which is too bad, because being around Leo results in a lot of violence. Though the red tendrils appear during calmer moments a few times. 

Oddly, Leo is able to see the jungle - and thinks it's neat - though Phillips never explains that quirk. Leo has her own trauma, and Phillips shows the parallels in how neither of them got any support or help. Leo was dismissed as making it up by her family and the doctors. Val was turned away by the groups that were supposed to help people who had bad experiences serving overseas. Maybe that's the "why", but in that case, shouldn't Leo have a "jungle" of her own?

But Leo's more manic. She leverages it, in that she acts goofy or flighty to make people underestimate her.  Meanwhile, Val is repressing everything, trying to pretend nothing happened, nothing's wrong, all business. Until she's not. I don't think either character has addressed their problems, but Leo's more accepting of hers?

Phillips puts the work in building the peculiar relationship between these two. Leo seems so eager to have a friend, while Val starts out unsure if she wants to protect Leo, strangle her, or just get far away. It doesn't ever entirely end, because Leo seems so flighty and random to Val, but there's a gradual softening as the two save each other. Phillips slows the plot to allow for quiet scenes between them where they talk about something other than their impending doom. It's during those where we see the tendrils emerge from Val's chest, reaching towards Leo. They don't form into a full jungle, and it's not clear whether Leo can see them.

When the mini-series was coming out, I thought the pacing was off a bit. I think I was expecting more focus on a sort of cat-and-mouse chase between the Val/Leo duo and everyone after them. Spending an issue at Leo's relative's gator farm felt like an odd choice. Leo bringing Val to a spiritualist community, where two old women were waiting to tell Val she needed to stop running from her ghosts, only for Val to die like 10 pages later, felt like an odd choice.

Still does, a little bit, but I think the point is Val has been running all this time and refusing to acknowledge it. Isolating herself, throwing herself into things as distractions. All the people after them are a sideshow as far as Val's issues. Another thing she can use to avoid dealing with her past. So when she faces it, really looks at the guilt she feels, and the opportunity comes to possibly do it right this time, she seizes it. Not really sure where that leaves Leo, but Val's struggle is over, at least. 

What I Bought 2/18/2026 - Part 1

I was, by process of elimination, thrown into this stupid work group last year, for people who lead without actually being in leadership positions. I have no business being there, no idea what I'm supposed to be bringing to it, or taking from it. Which is not a huge surprise, considering the guy who I'm positive came up with it uses idiotic phrases like, "people leaders." As in, "consult with your unit's people leaders." What is that phrase supposed to convey that just saying "leaders" wouldn't? We don't have any dogs or robots at my job!

I'd do my job a lot better if they'd just leave me to it. 

Fantastic Four #8, by Ryan North (writer), Humberto Ramos (penciler), Victor Olazaba (inker), Edgar Delgado (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Sue is rocking a spiked outfit! Be on alert, but also get some popcorn in case she's finally ready to off Reed.

Most of this issue revolves around the notion that a universe is so vast, that you don't even need parallel universes for the same situations or people to occur more than once. So in another section of the 616-universe, there is another Earth-like planet, with homo sapiens-looking folks, including 4 exposed to cosmic rays who develop familiar powers. I mean, OK, seems a bit much to be that similar, but maybe it'll turn out to be another world of Skrulls convinced they're Earthlings.

But in this world, this Sue twigged to the fact her powers go beyond being invisible much sooner, and Reed encourages her to explore the full potential of what she can manipulate. Which seems to be pretty much anything. Magnetism, gravity, electromagnetic energy all that jazz.

Seems groovy, until this Sue has a nightmare of being besieged by enemies. And the fighting she does in her nightmare, translates to the real world. Her forcefields cut off this sorta-Earth from heat, and kills everyone. Except Johnny. There wasn't anyone else with heat powers on this sorta-Earth? Whatever, Sue hides in her guilt for a while, until she convinces Johnny to let her use his heat to perform a little brain surgery on herself.

Props to Ramos on that image, which will no doubt replace the whale in my nightmares. Now she doesn't feel bad about killing every human! Things went downhill from there, and the FF are about to find out just how downhill as they find a battered Galactus and the so-called "Invincible Woman."

Can you actually disable the portion of your brain that feels guilt or regret, but still feel joy, as this other Sue declares? Or is it just the absence of the pain, after weeks of dealing with it, translated by whatever's left of her brain as joy? And does that really mean she'd start going around, attacking people? Although it's a good beat Galactus tried eating her Earth, in which case the FF should really step aside and let this Sue finish Galactus off. Cosmic consonance, my ass.

The Party that Never Stops Restarting

Alex is headed to Edwards Island for the high-schoolers' annual wild party with her best friend, Ren, and her new step-brother, Jonas. On reaching the beach, they find only two other people: the queen bee, Clarissa, who has issues with Alex, and Clarissa's friend, Nona.

But that's OK! Because Ren really just wants to investigate the spots near a cave that emit strange signals, which is why he had Alex bring a radio. And it does pick up some strange signals. It also makes a strange floating triangle Jonas finds inside the cave vibrate until it forms a big triangle. At which point everything goes to hell. Something got loose, and it's angry and desperate to stay loose. If that means hijacking the bodies of 5 teenagers, that's what it'll do.

Oxenfree's gameplay is; 1) you guiding Alex from one place to another, 2) having her tune in various signals on the radio, and 3) dialogue trees. Characters will say something, and Alex has three possible responses, each mapped to a button based on its location. Something I didn't recognize until the second playthrough, you have the option to say nothing. Dialogue balloons will (usually) fade in a few seconds if you don't say anything. I don't feel like your choices make much difference to how the plot plays out, but they do impact your relationships with the other characters.

How they do that, in terms of which dialogue options prompt what shift, I couldn't tell you. Sometimes when a character says something, their face will appear in a dialogue balloon above another character. Clearly whatever was said caught that character's attention, but in a good way? A bad way? No idea! Until Dawn had a screen you could check that would show how relationships between whichever character you were playing and all the others where trending, but Oxenfree's got nothing similar I could find.

Which is accurate - not like you can be sure how a comment will go over in real life - but frustrating in a game where so much is about talking. I played through 5 times - doesn't take more than a few hours once you know where to go - and when the game tells you how things turned out with everyone at the end, I kept getting basically the same results. Jonas and Alex were always distant, Ren moves across country and Alex rarely hears from him. She has only a vague notion what Nona's up to.

The 5th time, I got it where Jonas and I are tight-knit siblings, and Ren and Nona are dating. I have some idea what I did for the latter, but no idea what prompted the change in outcomes for Jonas and Alex. If anything, I thought I was doing worse than usual with him. Now I did somehow create distance between Alex and Ren, so I'd figure that was enough, except it didn't change anything vis-a-vis Jonas when I did the same thing on playthrough #4.

Maybe that's just down to me. I tried to pick different responses, or make different choices. There's a point you decide to check if the museum on the island might have any clues, and one of Ren, Jonas or Nona is coming with you. I usually pick Ren, since it's his idea, and between he and Jonas, "best friend" wins over "step-brother of 5 minutes." But one time their arguing was so irritating I picked Nona. It didn't seem to change anything, but everyone's incredulous reactions were funny.

Still, certain situations I always responded to roughly the same. Sometimes I couldn't remember what I picked the time before. Or I didn't like the other options. Too cruel, maybe. The last 3 playthroughs, I told myself going in that I'd take the spirits up on the offer to let them have Clarissa in return for letting the rest of us go.

And, without fail, when the spirits made the offer, I'd refuse. The first time I chalked up to a sense maybe their hold on us wasn't as secure as they claimed if they were bargaining. After that? It was just stubbornness. Or else a feeling that, even if Clarissa was cruel to Alex, she didn't deserve that.

I don't understand the time travel - time displacement - aspects of the story. How characters vanish and appear somewhere else. Yes, sometimes the spirits possess you, and so you lose time, but you wake up in the same place. I can sort of square the notion that this throws Alex back into memories of her and her deceased brother, maybe because the spirits are trying to distract her (although you can apparently alter past events, at least according to subsequent flashback trips.) Doesn't explain people appearing or disappearing or dying in front of you, then turning up fine later. I also don't understand how winding antiquated tape players gets you out of smaller time loops.

Part of the reason I kept playing was to see if I could get them free entirely. First time, I tried closing the doorway from the other side, consigning Alex to a horrible fate. Didn't work. We've already discussed my reluctance to give them Clarissa. At a certain point, you can find letters around the island that tell what happened to the spirits. I was banking on that info to help Alex reach the spirits' humanity, convince them to let go and move on, if I could just find the right thing for Alex to say. No dice, and a cursory search online suggests I can't get this group out, only maybe save a different Alex from falling into the same fate.

Which is not an ending that puts a guy in the mindset of having accomplished anything by finishing the game.

Overdue Movie Reviews #9 - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

Sure, I've written about this film before, but never what I'd consider a real review of the entire thing. And this might very well be my favorite movie of all time, so 1-2-3, let's jam.

A bandit (Eli Wallach) with a price on his head. A bounty hunter (Clint Eastwood) with a scheme to make some dough. A hired gun (Lee van Cleef) trying to track down a man who knows the location of $200,000 in gold coins. Tuco learns the name of the cemetery where the gold is hidden, Blondie, the name of the grave. And the race to the money is on.

In the barest bones of the plot, there's not a lot there, yet the movie is nearly 3 hours long. Leone takes his time, right from the start, the slow build of the three men marching towards each other down an empty street, only for all three to charge into a saloon and gunfire to erupt. It's 20 minutes before Eastwood shows up, around a half-hour before "the good" appears on screen beside him, in what is more than a little tongue-in-cheek, given he's in the middle of betraying Tuco and stranding him in the desert.

But Leone fills the film with smaller set pieces and odd characters. The scam Tuco and Blondie run, Tuco constructing himself a new pistol. Tuco's painful reunion with his brother the priest. The prisoner of war camp, although this does serve to bring Angel Eyes into the chase more directly. The drunken captain commanding the Union forces trying to take the bridge.

The build-up to violence is long, the violence itself brief. Nobody gets shot, only to stagger back to their feet and keep shooting. No running gunfights where characters dive for cover. People draw their guns, someone fires first, the other person dies. Even in the Civil War battle scene, there's Tuco and Blondie's conversation about their respective pieces of information while rigging explosives. Then the bridge explodes, and a few seconds of cannon fire, impactful as two kids hurling insults at each other, and it's done.

The exception would be Tuco's beating at Wallace's hands in the POW camp. But it's non-lethal violence, a rarity in the film. Plus, Leone seems to have some fascination with main character(s) getting the crap beat out of them, as he used it in A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, though those beatings are administered by a gang, not an individual. And this one seems more brutal, maybe because Leone focuses more on Tuco's increasing distress. The choking noises he makes, the futile attempts to grapple with the bigger man, while one arm is shackled to the chair. Fistful might show Eastwood's battered face after the fact, but during, it's him staggering about, getting punched by whoever is closest. Or maybe it's that, in the other movies, those administering the beating are having fun. They're usually laughing, but Wallace isn't. I imagine he enjoys it, but it's also work, and he's got a specific purpose in mind: hurt this man until he talks. 

It was Roger Ebert's entry on his Great Movies list that clued me in to one quirk Leone maintains in this film: If the audience can't see something (because it isn't in the shot), neither can the characters. Right from the first seconds of the film, when a long shot of a distant ridge seamlessly becomes a close-up when a bounty hunter Tuco steps into view from off-screen, that's how things work. The world outside the camera is invisible to those within.

This plays out repeatedly. Tuco and Blondie ride up on the massive Union encampment at the bridge - where two battles take place a day - without knowing it until they're surrounded. In the cemetery, as Tuco claws at the dirt on Arch Stanton's grave, Blondie catches him by surprise, only for them both to be surprised by the arrival of Angel Eyes. Blondie's first appearance in the movie is him somehow walking up on Tuco and 3 other bounty hunters without any of them noticing until he speaks. While Blondie's distracted in the hotel by the men Tuco brought, Tuco was clearly sitting on the windowsill for several moments before announcing his presence. It's a curious approach, though it allows Leone to have repeated dramatic reveals and arrivals, and it may speak to these men's blinkered approaches to life. They're locked in on their desires, and when they sense it close to fruition, become blind to everything else.

Tuco would be easy to reduce to a comic relief character. His grandiose expressions and threats, the bluster. Hands tied and still creaming threats at Blondie. But Leone takes the time to list Tuco's crimes at both occasions of his hanging, many of which imply not just cruelty, but a level of planning, notably the one about getting paid in advance to lead a wagon train, then abandoning said wagon train on the Sioux hunting grounds. (Also, he's charged specifically with arson in a prison, which makes me wonder if it was part of an escape plan, or he just did it for kicks.)

And Eli Wallach gives Tuco enough cunning and sheer determination that he remains a threat. Sure, it seems unwise for Tuco to keep running his yap at Wallace, but he eventually gets the man's guard down and throws him off a train, then bashes his head against a rock to make sure he's dead. Tuco keeps his gun on him when he bathes, keeps it hidden until needed.

Tuco may appear the butt of the joke in the final showdown, unaware Blondie emptied his gun, but it speaks to how much of a threat Blondie considers Tuco. Initially, he had so little regard for Tuco he figured it was enough to leave him in the desert and ride off with the money. After only escaping death in the hotel via dumb luck, and nearly dying in the desert because Tuco wouldn't stop hunting him, Blondie knows better. He surely knows, as they near the cemetery, that Angel Eyes is out there, somewhere.

I doubt Blondie had the whole thing with the name on the rock planned, since the most planning we see from him is the scam he ran with Tuco, then "Shorty," but he must have figured there was a point it would come to shooting. And while Blondie seems confident he can handle Angel Eyes, he does not want Tuco in the mix. Whether because he can't trust Tuco choosing him over Angel Eyes, or he just isn't certain he can kill both of them, Blondie hedges his bets.

(He also decides Tuco's presence evens things enough he can go against Angel Eyes and his gang in the town being shelled. 6-on-1 was a no-go, but 6-on-2, where the 2 are Blondie and Tuco? Those are odds Blondie likes.)

And Tuco is the one who drives the story. It's his bounty that brings he and Blondie together, that leads to the betrayal, and ultimately the death-march. Which is how they meet "Bill Carson" in the desert and learn about the money. Minus Tuco, Blondie would have continued with his penny-ante scam of turning in criminals, then freeing them. Angel Eyes' plan to join the Union Army and scour prisoner of war camps would come to nothing, because Carson and everyone else who knew about the gold was a corpse in the desert. Tuco's also the only of the three we get any backstory for. He had wives - more than one if his remark to his brother is to be believed - and a brother, and two parents.

(Leone creates this trio, but tends to focus on duos. Tuco and Blondie as allies, then enemies, then allies again. Tuco and Angel Eyes briefly in the POW camp. Angel Eyes and Blondie as uneasy partners. When it looks as though it'll be Tuco and Blondie vs. Angel Eyes, the latter withdraws, leaving it a duo. And in the final gunfight, Tuco being unarmed means it's really just Blondie vs. Angel Eyes.)

One of my dad's complaints about Leone's films is there's no one who's good. Everyone is a scumbag, he says. While applying "the good" to Blondie seems sarcastic, and there's definitely a joke to the heavenly choir music that plays when Angel Eyes spots him at Tuco's second hanging and opines that a 'golden-haired angel' watches over Tuco, there are hints that Blondie has humanity or capacity for empathy the other two lack. The comfort he offers to the dying soldier in the burned out church, just prior to the final showdown. Covering the boy with his coat and offering a cigarette isn't much, but at least the kid doesn't die alone. The fact he asks Tuco whether he can save Shorty from being hanged, and apologizes softly to Shorty when Tuco says no.

Heck, it would have been simpler for Blondie to let Tuco hang, if he really thought their partnership had reached its logical endpoint. But he saved him, though we can question how seriously he meant it when he said he thought Tuco could make the 70-mile hike back to town. And he did leave Tuco half the gold, which Angel Eyes certainly wouldn't have (and I have my doubts about Tuco doing the same for Blondie, were their circumstances reversed.)

Leone sets the movie in the Civil War, yet the war is, at best, an impediment. None of the three characters have any investment in the outcome. Blondie regards it as a waste of lives. Angel Eyes uses it as cover to search for Carson, while lining his pockets by robbing the prisoners. Tuco puts on Carson's uniform because it makes it easier to demand treatment for Blondie. If he had recognized the soldiers riding towards them as dusty Union soldiers, he'd have thrown the Confederate uniforms away in a second, because their only use is as something to clear paths. They blow up the bridge simply so both sides won't have it to fight over, and will get out of their way. That those soldiers will be sent to fight and die elsewhere is not their problem. They don't notice the Union Army until they're captured because it wasn't in the shot with them, and it wasn't in the shot with them because they weren't giving any thought to it. All that mattered was crossing the river to get closer to the gold. 

It's not clear anyone else cares either. Carson enlisted to try and hide until it was safe to dig up the gold. Carson's the girlfriend, the 'fresh young whore,' as she's described by the legless soldier, is introduced as a wagon of drunk soldiers throw her into the street after having their fun. The hotel manager shouts support for Dixie, while muttering under his breath about the Confederates being cowards, and how he can't wait until they leave, so he can make money off the Yankees. Wallace is a goon, lording his strength over prisoners who can't fight back, rather than actual combat. Ditto for the Union guard who makes the prisoners play music while Tuco is beaten. The soldier Tuco taunts, who probably didn't get a penny for the arm he lost. The half-soldier sells any information he can, even if it relates to someone ostensibly on the same side as him. The captain of the Union forces at the bridge is a drunken wreck, hating his orders but unwilling to defy them. Just waiting for death, or someone who will do what he can only dream of.

The one guy who seems like a believer is the commandant of the prisoner camp, who believes prisoners should be treated with respect, and hopes to get Angel Eyes court-martialed. But he's dying of gangrene, making these vows sprawled on his back, while Angel Eyes smirks at him in unconcealed contempt. He knows he'll be long gone before this man could ever hope to prove anything. Of course, Angel Eyes expects to be rich, and instead ends up in Hell.

You really can't discuss The Good, the Bad and the Ugly without talking about Ennio Morricone's score. Unfortunately I'm not much good at discussing music, but the music is indelibly linked with the film in my head. (Also, fortunately, this Youtube video knows how to discuss music.) Morricone had some of the pieces ready before filming even began, and it's neat to watch how the music and the shots are interwoven. Tuco running among the graves, the names blurring as the music accelerates to match his pace, more instruments joining in as he darts from one row to another. The music is hopeful, Tuco thinking he's on the precipice of everything he wants, but also chaotic, the sheer enormity of the task of finding one grave among 5000.

And then the final showdown, with the guitar strumming signaling the beginning as Blondie sets down the rock. The castanets, and then the trumpets as the three slowly take their places in a long shot. A few shots of ambient noise before the music begins again, and Leone starts moving the camera closer, focusing on the expressions and twitches. Blondie giving Tuco a small smile and a nod, camera cutting between them like a signal. 'Hey, the two of us are a team, right?' Followed by a shot of Angel Eyes glance darting towards Tuco, reassessing his situation. The way Angel Eyes' hand starts towards his gun, then withdraws at a glance from Blondie. Tuco's fingers twitching, and Blondie's hand, perfectly still the whole time, even when everything else is speeding up. The cuts are coming faster, the music is building up, everyone's hands are starting to move, eyes are widening. But Blondie's impassive, just waiting for a conclusion that's foregone.