The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Padraic (Colin Farrell) has a farm with his sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon) on a little island off the coast of Ireland. Their days are repetitive. Siobhan cooks, tries keeping the house clean (despite Padraic letting his miniature donkey, Jenny, inside), and reads. Padraic takes the animals to the fields, delivers milk across the island to the general store for money, and goes to the pub at 2 p.m. with his best friend Colm (Brendan Gleeson.)

Except one day, Colm declares he's not friends with Padraic any more. At least, not the kind of friends who speak to one another, or spend any time together. He's been thinking of mortality, and what he'll leave behind to mark his time on Earth. He thinks it'll be music, but if he's to do that, he can't waste two hours at a time listening to Padraic describe what he found in his donkey's - sorry, it was his pony's - shits. When Padraic fails to take the hint, continually trying to resume their friendship as though nothing changed, Colm ups the stakes. The next time Padraic speaks to him, Colm will cut off one of his own fingers. Fingers are kind of important for fiddle players.

Padraic can't figure out what's happening, Colm can't seem to explain it in a way Padraic will understand sufficiently to leave him alone, and Siobhan's being worn thin trying to protect her brother from his own faults.

The thing that keeps coming up in this movie is "nice." When Padraic asks people if he's dim, or boring, they tell him he's not, but they don't say he's smart, or interesting. They say he's "nice." And nice is, seemingly, never saying what you actually think or feel, at least not in front of the person you're thinking or feeling about. The shopkeeper - a noxious little gossip - wants to hear news from the far side of the island, but when Padraic, irritated by the local cop poking fun at him, spills the cop beat his son with a kettle in front of said cap, she dismisses that as 'shite news.' She'd beat Dominic (Barry Keoghan) herself, if he were her child! No doubt as soon as both Padraic and the goon of a cop were out the door, she was making a note to press the next customer for more details.

There's an elderly woman, Mrs. McCormack, who, with her pale, wrinkled skin and dark robes, makes me think Emperor Palpatine's on the loose. She roams the island, observing and making ominous comments. When she tells Padraic there will be a death on the island before month's end, possibly two, and she'll pray it isn't him or his sister, Padraic can only stammer out how that wasn't a nice thing to say. Her reply, 'I wasn't trying to be nice. I was trying to be accurate.'

Nice is a lie. Nice is a bland smile that hides contempt or hatred or pity. It's something confused with kindness, but it's probably more about the person being nice, than who they're being nice to.

When Padraic gets drunk at the pub one night and lets Colm have it for hanging out with a cop who beats and sexually abuses his kid, his finishing insult is that maybe Colm was never nice to begin with. Because to him, that's a horrible thing to be, not-nice. And Colm,who had his own spiel about how no one remembers people for being nice, they remember them for creating things of lasting beauty, like music, remarks that was the most interesting Padraic had ever been. When he was drunk and pissed and said what was on his mind without worrying if anyone would disapprove of him airing the cop's dirty laundry right in front of the entire village.

Padraic's an interesting character, in that I don't know what to feel about him, exactly. In some ways, he's completely guileless. A terrible liar, clumsy in his attempts to jab back at people who hurt him, and ultimately extremely self-centered. When Siobhan tells him she accepted a position as librarian on the mainland, his first two questions are, "But what about me?", and "Who's going to do the cooking?" And maybe that's a consequence of his sister looking after him all these years, shielding him, or maybe he just can't really think in larger terms.

There's something, in how literal Padraic is about everything, how he tends to focus on particular points of fact while ignoring the larger meaning, that makes me wonder if, had the movie taken place in the present day, he'd be diagnosed with some level of autism. When Siobhan responds to the question about cooking by asking if that's his first question, he points out his first question was, "But what about me?" Being technically correct, while missing the point she's trying to make, that he's not thinking at all about her. When Colm, trying to make his point about what lasts in memory, says everyone's heard of Mozart, Padraic immediately rebuts that he hasn't heard of him. Correcting Colm that he was discussing his pony's shit, not his donkey's, while not addressing Colm's larger point that it was not a meaningful conversation or what Colm considered a good use of his limited time on Earth.

It doesn't feel like an attempt to derail the conversation so much as Padraic's mind just seizes on these minor inaccuracies. Those he can actually address, so he does. Maybe in his mind, since that point was wrong, the whole argument is pointless or misguided? It really highlights the foolishness of Colm's threat, even beyond that he's gone well past "cut off your nose to spite your face." Padraic is never going to understand what Colm is trying to tell him by lopping off fingers. He's going to see it as his friend is sad, or mental. Try to get the priest to help him with his "despair. So they can go back to being pals and drinking at the pub together every afternoon.

I would say Farrell gives Padraic the energy of a yappy puppy that follows you around, begging for attention, chewing on her pant cuffs and pissing on the carpet, then looking hurt when you scold it. But even Colm's dog figures out what's what, at one point actively trying to drag the shears out the door and away from its master. But Farrell does this sort of befuddled, wounded expression so well, that I can feel bad for him not being able to understand, while simultaneously wanting to tear my hair out each time he tries once again to renew his friendship with Colm.

Gleeson wears a pinched, weary air whenever he's dealing with Padraic. The lines on his face get deeper, and he seems to grow pale, like interacting with Padraic drains the life from him. Or maybe that's just the blood loss. With other people he laughs, or listens attentively, leaned towards them and looking ruddy and healthy. Even if what they're saying is horrible, like the cop being excited to travel to the mainland as extra security for some executions tomorrow. Which side is doing the executions doesn't matter. Pity they're shooting them instead of hanging, but he'll see some people die and get paid for the privilege, what fun. And Colm listens, makes comments. He may think it's awful, but I guess the conversation is real, says something about people. This other man's indifference to cruelty, his gleeful avarice, is worth Colm's time in a way Padraic's chatter about shit is not.

Yet, part of him still cares for Padraic. Picks him up when the cop slugs him and loads him in the wagon, later punches the cop for behaving like a dick towards Padraic. He doesn't like hurting Padraic - who likes kicking a puppy? - but apparently the notion of picking up and leaving, going somewhere far away, like Siobhan ultimately does, where Padraic would never find him, doesn't track. Better instead to lop off fingers - and never bandage them, seriously, at no point does he appear to receive any treatment, big ups to that band playing his song while Colm presses a hand full of stumps to his chest and conducts with a bloody fiddle - in the futile attempt to drive the man away. 

Maybe the saddest parts are Padraic's interactions with Siobhan. Because Condon makes you see that Siobhan loves her brother (and Padraic does love her, as best he can) but has spent her entire life accommodating his quirks, and his schedule. Fighting a losing battle to not let the donkey in the house. Read a book that's sad, and be asked what it's about, or at least why she reads it if it's sad, be told she should read a book that's not-sad. And even though I don't think she particularly gives a shit about Colm - she dismisses him as just like all the other men on the island, tied up in petty grievances, and corrects him on when Mozart lived - she tries to keep Padraic away so Colm doesn't further mutilate himself.

(The Mozart thing I think is a rebuke of Colm's point. People remember Mozart's music, but they don't necessarily remember the man. Whereas, at least on the island, people might remember Padraic as the nicest person. Or, they would have, at one time.) 

But because Siobhan calls the shopkeeper out on being a nosy ass that opens people's mail then lies about it, or tells the cop it's none of his business what she does, she gets told nobody likes her. Because she's not nice. She reserved that for her brother, holding back her frustration with his satisfaction with the monotonous rhythms of their life, and it's eating away at her. One of the hardest scenes was after the cop told her that, when she's crying in bed. Padraic hears her, starts to sit up in his bed, then rolls away. Either he doesn't know what to say, or can't bring himself to try. He's probably never felt like he had to. Can't fault her for getting the hell out of there.

Most of the movie, Condon's hair is a stringy mess trailing around her head like a bush that's not been trimmed in years. It's only when she's decided to accept the job that the bags disappear from under her eyes, she starts to smile, works her hair into something neat. She's getting out, chasing what she wants and it brings her to life. In that sense, Padraic's letter back to her, while maintaining his usual self-centered niceness, is a gift. He doesn't tell her Jenny died. He doesn't tell her he burned down Colm's house, possibly Colm with it.

He does tell her Dominic died - and I can at least hope Dominic's shitbag father drank himself to death soon after - but only as a way of explaining why he can't come live with her, because Dominic is no longer an option to take over the farm. By keeping everything raging inside him locked away from someone who would care, who would probably come rushing back to try and keep her brother from getting killed, he grants her the peace to keep living the life she wants.

One thing that feels significant in a way I can't place comes during the final conversation between Colm and Padraic. All through the movie, characters use the word "feckin'." Feckin' mental, feckin' shitbag, and so on. In this final conversation, in response to Colm's apology for Jenny's death, Padraic says, very clearly, "I don't fucking care." The shift in word choice or pronunciation feels important, but I'm not sure how. The whole conversation does mark the shift in the landscape between the two. Colm seems ready to put things behind them, Padraic is not. They're both still alive, so nothing is over. Colm looks across the sea to Ireland and remarks there's been no shooting for a couple of days (this takes place at the tail end of the Irish Civil War in the 1920s), and maybe there'll be peace.

Padraic dismisses the idea. Doesn't nod along mindlessly or agree. They'll be back to fighting soon enough. A metaphor for he and Colm. This quiet conversation doesn't change things, even if part of Padraic still wishes it would. The way he nearly breaks when Colm thanks him for looking after his dog, like he can't tell if he wants to cry or throw up. I wonder if, in that moment, he was about to ask Colm if he wanted to go to the pub, and had to stop himself. Like he's learned a lesson, or this is the "new me" as he yelled at Dominic's back at one point, but the old him isn't entirely gone yet. Instead, he responds "Any time," and walks away. It's outwardly polite towards a person he hates, but it's also a threat. He could come looking to settle things with Colm at any time.

Trouble Comes in Threes

I guess those three could technically count as trouble. Like a bug bite. Not one in an impossible to reach spot, just one that's kinda awkward.

I don't remember why, or for that matter where, I bought volume 10 of Dragon Ball last year, but I did, so let's take a look. Volume 10 wraps up the second Dragon Ball hunt, which is probably better known as the Red Ribbon Army Arc.

By this point, Goku's already single-handedly trashed the entire RRA - as far as he knows - and is just trying to gather all seven balls so he can wish his friend Upa's father back. There's one ball to go, and while it was hidden from Bulma's radar, it's not hidden from Fortuneteller Baba's magic. And who's got it?

Yeah, the Pilaf Gang. They think they've got a good shot against Goku, and could almost be forgiven for the over-confidence. They trapped him successfully last time, and he only escaped because he transformed into a giant, berserker ape. They know his tail is his weak point, and they have three mech suits to exploit it! Except his tail is gone, and he's a lot stronger than they remember.

Look, I'm not showing any scans from the fight because the burned off Goku's pants trying to get at his tail, so he's fighting bare-assed most of the time. And a defeat like that just about draws a line under those three as characters of any significance. The only other thing they do in Dragon Ball is somehow find the rice cooker Demon King Piccolo is sealed in at the bottom of the ocean, and open it. Maybe Goku should have hurt them a little worse.

Dragon Ball retrieved, deceased father figure revived, and Goku even managed to catch his 4-star ball before it shot off over the horizon. Nothing left now but to prepare for the next Tenkaichi Budokai! Toriyama skips the intervening 3 years, although I know the anime added some filler episodes of Goku meeting some different martial arts experts and learning stuff.

But in addition to Krillin, Yamcha, and Jackie Chun, there's some new challengers to worry about. Roshi's old rival Master Shen is here with his Crane School students, a porcelain doll-looking twerp and a 3-eyed asshole. Tien talks a lot of shit, to Yamcha and Krillin's annoyance, but Goku's sure the guy can back it up.

And Yamcha finds out quickly that he can, suffering his second consecutive first-round defeat. To make it worse, Tien goes and breaks Yamcha's leg, just to be a dick. Yamcha's down already, there's no need for it. He just does it to prove a point. One thing that annoys me, after the Tournament is over, Yamcha brushes it off. Yeah, Tien apologizes, but I'd be a little pissed about someone doing that. But I tend to hold grudges. Maybe that's not in keeping with the true spirit of martial arts.

Also, Goku vows to avenge Yamcha in a match, then loses to Tien in the finals. Great job, Goku! Of course, years later Goku will promise Krillin that, if he lets Vegeta live, Goku will kick Vegeta's butt if he comes back to cause trouble.

*Looks at Vegeta helping Cell achieve his perfect form.*

*Looks at Vegeta helping Babidi release Majin Buu*

It's possible that, like "marriage", "promise" is a word that Goku doesn't actually know the meaning of. Or, in clickbait sports talk, Goku just isn't clutch. I'm picturing Stephen A. Smith on some show, yelling about how Goku always chokes when the stakes are highest. 'There is no question he's a great fighter. . .when the pressure is off. HOWEVAH. . .'

After a comedy match-up between Jackie Chun and a Man-Wolf angry he can't change back into human because of Jackie blowing up the Moon in the last tournament - pour one out for Boss Rabbit, stranded up there by Goku then blown to HFIL with no warning - we get another Turtle vs. Crane match-up, as Krillin's up against Chiaotzu and his weird bullshit.

But it's Goku blabbing his mouth about killing Master Tao (Shen's brother) that will kick things to another level of hostility. 

Sunday Splash Page #436

"The Whole World in Her Hands," in Ant-Man and the Wasp #5, by Mark Waid (writer), Javier Garron (artist), Israel Silva (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)

Didn't plan on this being a Mark Waid weekend, but nonetheless. A mini-series from 2018 pairing the 2nd Ant-Man (Scott Lang), with the 3rd Wasp (Nadia van Dyne.) Almost said "2nd Wasp," but there was that stretch after Secret Invasion where Hank Pym called himself the Wasp. Lang was out in space helping the Guardians of the Galaxy with something and needs a ride back to Earth, or he'll miss his daughter's birthday party. Nadia grudgingly agrees to help, via some process where she builds a device to catch Scott if he rides the beam projected by the Nova Corps transmission system as a tiny guy. Scott has to jump into the beam precisely when she says, or he could get lost in the Microverse.

Does Scott forget to pick up the plant he's bringing Cassie as a gift, then end up jumping into the beam a split-second too late, missing the receiver entirely? This is post Ant-Man movie Scott Lang, of course he does! Nadia gives chase, and so begins an adventure in the Microverse.

Waid's clearly having fun with how weird physics get at sub-atomic scales, though he's understandably selective about what gets explained. Nadia makes a point that she and Scott are breathing, despite being smaller than an oxygen atom, can see despite being smaller than a photon of light. And while she says this, she scoops up a handful of what looks like earth, but Garron depicts the parts shifting into a bunch of fluttery, glowing green, they might be bugs, or they might be like flower petals, or the sub-atomic equivalent of one of those. Point being, things work differently here, and Nadia, being the theorist, wants to be cautious. Scott - who says in response to Nadia's questions that he did think about those things, then made himself a sandwich because he didn't know the answers - wants to get home, and not let anyone get hurt along the way.

That's how things play out over the mini-series. Nadia mostly tries to remain serious and calm and understand the science of the different things that go wrong with she and Scott during their travels. Like when there are suddenly several of her, because they've become living quantum particles, existing in several states simultaneously. Scott mostly doesn't understand what she's saying, but does his best to help by forming connections with people - first, what passes for insects in the Microverse, then with a maligned experimental scientist in a Microverse society - and by grounding Nadia when her emotions start to hit too hard. 

That's the undercurrent, past Nadia's hostility towards the man who "stole" her father's work. Nadia is trying desperately to impress a father she never got to meet, who never knew she existed. Scott, for all this version's many faults, is a guy who tries really hard to be a good dad. To be there for his daughter, and not make her feel like his love is contingent on her accomplishments. And so, in his slightly panicky way, he knows how to keep Nadia calm when things get too much or she starts to doubt herself.

Garron is able to keep Scott and Nadia looking basically normal, while the things around them look very strange. The Microverse scientist - who Waid writes a lot like one of the scientists you'd see in Marvel's '50s era sci-fi/horror comics - is a bizarre conglomeration of tentacles, holes, teeth, and green things that might be eyes. The way they're arranged makes no sense to my eye, but that's kind of the point. Things works differently down there. In the first issue, they encounter a type of creature that looks a bit like sheets hanging from a single hook, that shift between colors. How they speak, how they move, what they would subsist on and how they get it is not immediately apparent. How the predator pursuing them steals the "red" from them, causing them to become a pile of grey dust stuff, is also unclear. But as Scott points out when Nadia advises staying out of it, those beings are alive, and they're in pain. So Ant-Man and the Wasp get involved.

Saturday Splash Page #238

"The Direct Approach," in The Web Annual #1, by Mark Waid (writer), M.C. Turner Alan (penciler), John Lowe (inker), Linda Kachelhofer (colorist), John Costanza (letterer)

I discussed the one round of Annuals the Impact Comics line had when we looked at The Legend of the Shield Annual in 2023. The Web Annual was the first chapter of the overarching story of Templar - a massive guy with a Fu Manchu 'stache, whose legs look like he has water retention issues - trying to reveal the location of a holy grail (the Holy Grail?) via a series of ecological catastrophes. But, as I used a page from that in Sunday Splash Page #302, and the Web's part is only really significant in that it's the one time "Rad" Stiles gets to do anything of use in 15 total issues of The Web, I figured I'd highlight one of the other stories running through the annuals.

Across 4 of the 6 annuals, Waid charts the history of the Jackson family and how it intertwines with the original Shield. Who, by what passed for the present day in the Impact Comics-verse, had vanished decades ago, along with his super-suit. So in 1953, the Shield is bribed into rescuing the son of "Lucky" Jackson, a notorious mobster, with the promise of a written confession of enough crimes to put Jackson away for decades. Matthew, who has an eidetic memory and serves essentially as his father's ledgers, is less than pleased that the man who rescued him then hauls his dad off to jail.

The story jumps to 1958 Cuba, where Matthew is preparing to take over the organization from his father's right-hand man. If he can survive the rise of Castro, and the ample opportunities it provides for backstabbing. The Shield, even if there's not much he can do about the societal upheaval on the island, saves Matthew, who turns away from crime. We learn in the 3rd part that his son Tony is hanging with a bad crowd, idolizing his grandfather (still in prison), despite Matthew talking up how great the Shield was, and ends up doing a favor for a certain Mistah Big in their city. Deliver a package to a certain home by midnight on Halloween. Matthew, who is pretty much a stringbean in every chapter, throws on a Shield Halloween costume and saves his son from getting blown up by the bomb.

Which brings us to the 4th part. It was depressing, but a perfect fit for being in The Black Hood Annual. Set in the "present day" - meaning, 1992 - we find Tony still living in his hometown of Soundview. In part 3, we were told it was the 5th largest city in the country, a thriving place. Now it looks like another dying, post-industrial city, and Tony has taken all his father's talk about the Shield to heart in the worst way. He roars around on a motorcycle, wearing what's left of that Halloween costume over a leather jacket and calling himself the Shield. Tony's trademark seems to be, upon finding criminals, to say, 'Okay scum, it's Judgement Day,' then kick the door in and start shooting. Maybe spout some Schwarzenegger-isms while beating up the crooks.

He lives alone in a ratty apartment, smoking cigs and doing pull-ups. Says his wife is the streets, and she needs a firm hand, which is, not great. As the narrator puts it, when his father died, Tony went a little nuts. Even his grandfather, finally out of prison, can see this is bad, and is pretty blunt Tony is not the Shield. Which doesn't stop Tony from walking to a trap to rescue his grandfather, one set by an old friend. A trap that gets him and the friend killed. No one but "Lucky" comes to Tony's funeral. Well, except for one older gentleman with orange-red hair. Hint, hint *looks significantly at the splash page.*

The arcs don't quite line up. The Jackson family don't exactly get more decent, as Matt's probably the best man of the three, but circumstances around them seem to decline steadily. Lucky was the biggest wheel in what passes for Impact's version of Vegas (or maybe Atlantic City?), all glittering lights and fancy parties. Then Matt's trying to hold a casino together in a country about to be flipped on its head. Then the setting shifts to a different thriving city, that ten years later looks like a dump.

Is it that, the further you get from something's origin or true existence, the more distorted perception of it becomes? Lucky understood the Shield, who he was, how he acted, what he believed, enough to use him, and was just honorable enough to stick to his deal. But Lucky was never going to be the type to stick his own neck out. Matt comes to respect the Shield and what he stands for, but isn't strong enough physically to be him. His lone act of heroism gets him killed. And maybe, in an effort to distance himself from his and his father's criminal past, Matt got too lost in hero worship. He forgets there are limits to what the Shield, or one man in general, can accomplish. He understood that in Cuba, but by Tony's adolescence, he'd forgotten, and the Shield was nearly godlike to him. Tony's physically strong, but that aggrandized view of the Shield, plus his father's death, did a number on him. The vigilante he becomes can't save anyone, and it hardly occurs to him to try until his grandfather is endangered. He figured if he just kept beating up scum, it would fix things eventually.

What I Bought 7/15/2026

Google sent some notice a few weeks back that they wanted me to approve some thing or the other that would let them use anything I searched for to train their bullshit faux-AI. I, being the contrary sort, said no. So now Google and Google Maps don't recall anything I searched for previously. Which I suppose I have to admire, from a pettiness standpoint if nothing else.

D'Orc #6, by Brett Bean (writer/artist), Frank William (color artist), Nate Piekos (letterer) - The fantasy world equivalent of a Ghostbusters containment unit.

D'Orc travels through some spiritual realm with a talking Super Smash Bros. logo that is apparently Fate. Fate shows D'Orc how he was conceived, but is vague about the identity of his parents, other than his mom was an orc and his dad a dwarf, the last 2 survivors of some big war, who shared one night of probably hate-sex.

Fate's more relevant point is that nothing is destined, because everyone is always making choices, and all those choices have consequences that overlap and react, so how could things be destined? Except Fate also implies it already knows what choice D'Orc is going to make as far as whether to help the bone witches (apparently there's an entire coven) burn the world down. Which sure sounds like something that's destined.

D'Orc escapes the crystal to find the Bone Witch, his shield, and the chicken are fleeing something. The something is the angry dwarf from a few issues ago, now minus part of his face. Which doesn't make sense, because the Witch's potion was actually supposed to trigger D'Orc's berserker fury so he would kill the dwarf, because the Witch hates him for something he did. Possibly sleeping with D'Orc's mom. Possibly never calling the Bone Witch by her name (whatever that is.) Probably something bigger than either of those. Regardless, why would a potion meant for that erase part of someone's face?

There's some fighting, there's some attempts at escaping, D'Orc is falling out of the sky into the dark half of the realm. Maybe? He was just supposed to head for the Scar - isn't that where he started the series? - but I guess he needs to see how the other side lives.

It feels like Bean finally did something beyond, "D'Orc runs into some random people and shit happens." There's some actual momentum towards, well, something. The Bone Witch Coven as someone for D'Orc to seek out. The angry dwarf deciding he's going to raise an army, which I guess locks him into Primary Antagonist role for the near-future. I was waiting to see if the book would actually give me a reason to look forward to the next issue beyond hoping the next issue would give me a reason, and I guess this qualifies. 

Fantastic Four #14, by Ryan North (writer), Ramon Rosanas (artist), Edgar Delgado (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) -  The glitchy effect on the logo made me confused whether there'd been a printing error, or my eyes were just getting really shitty.

Dinner at the Baxter Building is interrupted with Jo and Nikki find the rest of the family staring transfixed at a series of numbers on a screen. Or in Alicia's case, staring blankly as her fingers run over a series of numbers on a touchpad. Nothing can get their attention or pull them away from the numbers.

And people are sharing this string of numbers, which is apparently the furthest out anyone has ever calculated pi, worldwide, causing more and more people to enter this fugue state. And if they lose access to the sequence, say because their phone battery dies, or someone rips open the faceplate of their fancy-schmancy armor, they go crazy.

Yes, like that. Now Tony Stark has another excuse the next time he does something horrible, besides "booze" and "futurism."

The kids figure out this is like that time Reed explained that poison ivy pretty much only bothers humans, and this is not something to improve the odds of survival, just a weird, random development. For some reason, a particular sequence in pi fucks with humans' brains. And since the kids can't change the value of pi, they have to figure something else out.

The answer involves time travel to mess with human evolution, and goddamn does North seem to be going to the time travel well a lot. Mucking with time was a huge part of One World Under Doom, especially the FF issues, where it felt like there were no fewer than 3 different stories that involved time travel. He just sent Reed and Johnny to the Roman era two issues ago. Give the timeline a rest for a minute, man. 

So there's a clue in a particular something that's off in Rosanas' art throughout the issue, up to the point Jo and Nikki explain it. And then when they make their fix, it reverts things to what we would consider normal. Except it's more like they made that the new normal. I'm not sure if I have more trouble with that, or the idea this was supposed to be an entirely random thing, and not a targeted attack. Also, I can't believe that, "Hey, we calculated pi to 8 billion digits!" would get that much traction on social media. Not to mention all the people that would never see it on social media. Like me.

Not to mention all the people on Marvel-Earth who aren't humans or aren't entirely humans, that therefore shouldn't be affected. Carol Danvers is half-Kree now. Beta Ray Bill's apparently Thor now, he ain't a primate. Clea's mother is whatever the heck Umar is, which I doubt is "human," regardless of what she looks like.

Other People's Unfinished Business

Love yourself, and you'll never be lonely a day in your life. Wait, that's not right. . .

The Unfinished Swan finds Monroe adjusting to the death of his mother, who made many paintings of animals, but never finished any of them. Monroe could only keep one, a swan whose neck wasn't complete, but one night, the swan leaps off the canvas, and Monroe sets out in pursuit.

The chase leads him through a fairy tale world of castles and giants, towers and ships carried through the skies on balloons. Though some of the views are staggering, the world is frequently monochrome, save the swan's gold-yellow footprints. However, Monroe can chuck paint around to bring some color to his surroundings.

The paint helps him in pursuit of the swan, though the ways it helps varies. In earlier levels, it distinguishes the path. In a world where everything is white, how could you tell the wall from the hallway, or a wooden slat bridge from the pond it crosses? Well, by throwing paint around until the differences becomes clear.

Later, when the paint color shifts to a light blue, it acts like water. Plant life will grow towards it, providing vines Monroe can use as handholds to get from one place to the next. Still later, you enter worlds like blueprints through picture frames. There you use paint around to mark the dimensions of boxes or blocks, which appear in those spots in the real world once you return. I didn't enjoy that part; I'm not much for that sort of spatial puzzle. Never a big Lego or building blocks guy. My junior high computer lab had some game where you tried to construct a bridge across a waterway, and once you were done, the game would send a truck across to see if you did a good job. I never once managed to build a bridge that actually stayed up.

So gameplay where I need to create a series of stair steps, high enough to get me where I need to go, but not so high I can't jump onto them, but also extending across chasms, but not extending so far they block the next thing I need to build, was not enjoyable.

Not that there's any massive penalty for failure; if Monroe falls to his doom, he simply re-spawns at the beginning of that particular room. There are a few places where giant spiders lurk in the shadows, and they can bite Monroe, but other than making me feel bad I let this kid get hurt, there's no downside. There's no damage meter; there is one point where you need to climb before the water level rises (though again, you just re-spawn if you don't), but otherwise you're not working against a clock or anything.

It all feels like a dream that also somehow explains to Monroe his parents' lives, though it's hard to tell what's a metaphor and what's meant to be the real. There are gold letters stamped here and there, and if Monroe hits them with paint, they become a page in a story of a selfish king. The king made kingdoms for himself, but resented when his subjects demanded he add shadows so they weren't bumping into things. He eventually made himself a queen, who was uninterested in any of the gifts the king showered her with, except a paintbrush she used to paint animals she never finished. She left without warning, and the king, with no subjects or loved ones, started a monument to himself - Bender would be proud - until his magic paint powers faded.

Monroe meets the king, who refers to himself as Monroe's father, at the very end, as the king describes a dream he had - which you play through - where all the things he built were being covered in paint some boy was hurling about. The king gives Monroe his magic brush and says he needs to go home, and once there, Monroe paints a complete picture of a swan with two babies.

What does all that mean? Was his dad actually a king, or just some guy who was really creative, but only created for his own benefit? Who thought of everything as his, and that's why Monroe's mother bailed? And she loved painting, but the whole experience left her too soured on art to ever finish anything? Or she just painted for the fun of it, so it didn't matter that she finished? But the game says, after Monroe finishes his painting, that he knows him painting would make her happy.

Also, at one point prior to Monroe meeting the king, during the mess with me trying to make platforms, Monroe reaches a telescope in a tower that lets you peer back into the "real" world at a moon or planet in the night sky. We see two people holding hands. His parents reunited, even though the king is still inside the head of his own monument at that time?

Overdue Movie Reviews #14 - Mad Max (1979)

A lunatic calling himself the Nightrider - sorry, the Night. . .RIDER! - steals a police cruiser, then dies while being pursued by the Mobile Police Force. The rest of his biker gang aren't too pleased, but nothing much comes of it until a different member of their group, the drugged out, spineless Johnny the Baby (Tim Burns), gets arrested, then released because there's no witness who will testify. The arresting officer, who everyone calls Goose (Steve Bisley), punches Johnny repeatedly on the way out the door, and is ultimately killed.

Between this and Top Gun, not a great stretch of years for guys called "Goose."

Goose's being burned alive prompts his buddy Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) to retire to live in the countryside with his wife, Jessie (Joanne Samuel) and their baby. Obviously that's not going to last. The movie's called "Mad Max," not "Mellow Max."

Yes, I used a variation on that bit when I reviewed the Mad Max video game. It amuses me, I'm using it again.

I guess because it had been a couple of years, I had the details of the plot messed up. I thought Toecutter and his bunch declared war against the MPF for Nightrider's death, and Goose's death was part of a larger war of attrition. Max retired and they hunted him down.

That's probably the way most '80s American action movies would have done it, but that's not the way George Miller plays it here. Toecutter indulges Johnny's desire for revenge - in the stupidest, most overly complicated way this gang of intelligence-deficient biker trash could manage, we'll come back to that - on Goose, and Max leaves. Then Jessie just so happens to encounter Toecutter and the gang on the way to the family farm "up north," and doesn't take kindly to his being a creep. So they take revenge for the slight to their pride. There's no indication those likely radiation-addled crank jockeys have any clue they're up against the guy that killed their pal. Hell, I'm not sure they even know he's after them for killing his baby and running over his wife. I'm not sure they ever even saw Max up at the farm. Johnny doesn't recognize him at the end, since he's convinced Max is executing him for stealing a dead man's boots.

And while Goose's death is the impetus for Max's decision, according to Max, what he's afraid of isn't death, but going round the bend. Ending up just like Toecutter and his bunch, roaming the highways, leaving wreckage and ruin behind him, the only difference being he's got a badge to excuse it all. Got some bad news for you there. . .

Of course, maybe it makes sense the story doesn't work like an action flick. Miller shoots certain scenes more like a horror movie. The extreme close-ups on the bugged-out eyes of a character right before they pancake against the grill of a big rig, wouldn't have looked out of place in a few years in Evil Dead or something similar. The scene for Jessie in the woods, the voices coming from everywhere, the mutilated dog hanging from a chain. The blue lighting as Max slowly ventures into Goose's hospital room, where you can only see an arm outlined against the sheet over top of him. As the arm drops off the side of the bed into view and Max can only stare horrified, the image seems to waver, like he passed through a translucent curtain or veil.

A threshold's been passed, whether Max knew it or not. One way or the other, he wasn't a cop any longer. He tried to run away from it all, and when that fails, takes the V-8 Interceptor meant to be the shiny toy that kept him there. And he follows the captain's order to do whatever he likes on the road. But he's not worried about paperwork being clean, any more than he's worried about being the hero his captain thinks the people need. He's something else entirely now.

Then, in other ways, it very much is an action movie. The high speed chases with so many moving parts. The spectacular car wrecks, where vehicles go flying like they were punched by the Hulk in a comic drawn by Sal Buscema. (That one poor stuntman who wipes out on the bridge and his bike cracks him in the back of the helmet as they both skip across the pavement.) The camera shots from right in front of the bumper of a speeding car, or taken to suggest the viewer is barreling right towards something. A baby, an oncoming truck. Once Max sets out for revenge, he's apparently relentless, hounding Toecutter and his guys for days at a time, ignoring a bullet wound to the leg and his arm getting run over.

Which could be that horror vibe, Max becoming something different. Especially the bit where Toecutter leaves the mechanic's shop and finds the photos of Jessie and Goose in his helmet, with no sign of who left them. That's some vengeful spirit stuff right there, but action heroes tend to be almost superhuman, so there's not a huge divide from that to a supernatural terror, especially depending on whose point of view you're watching from.

OK, the revenge on Goose. The thing about the attack on Goose is not that they kept him busy with the cabaret singer so Johnny could tamper with his bike. It's that, having caused him to wreck in the middle of nowhere, all alone, they wait until the mechanic drives out and loans him his truck to haul his motorcycle back. Then they throw something through the windshield to cause him to wreck, then ignite the gas. That's more steps than was really necessary.

Was that for plausible deniability purposes? Because I can't see these guys caring about that, and even if they did, if you run him over on an isolated strip of road while he's all alone, you don't have to worry about plausible deniability then, either.

Maybe it was just to set up what Max does to Johnny at the end. Poetic justice, ironic punishment, that sort of thing. Which, I will admit I did appreciate. Of all the bikers, Johnny's the one I dislike the most. Nightrider's a loon, and I'm not sure his brain is even on the same planet as his body. Toecutter sees himself as some leader of a wayward flock, and makes a big show of himself, but also makes certain gestures that demonstrate he feels some loyalty to his guys. Presumably he made the arrangements to pick up Nightrider's body, and they give it an entire procession, carried in the back of the pick-up with Toecutter as he sits on his lawn chair throne.

Meanwhile, Johnny's just an annoying little shit. As soon as he's got someone to hide behind here comes the tough talk, but at any other point, he's a sniveling coward, full of excuses for why nothing that happens is his fault. Quite why Toecutter wastes time and energy on protecting him I don't know. I guess because he regards Johnny as one of "his", and therefore only he has the right to punish him.

The movie says it takes place 'a few years from now,' and civilization, though mostly recognizable, is clearly on a downward swing. All the towns we see look mostly deserted, the locals worn and weary. The kind of people you'd see in the beleaguered town of a spaghetti western, where they wear every year they've lived on their faces. The mechanic tells Jessie the ice cream shop will be glad for the business. Of two people, one of them a baby, buying at best one cone apiece. That's pretty dire. The roads are empty, save the cops, the bikers and the occasional fuel tanker.

MPF headquarters look like a building that ought to be condemned. Broken windows and rot in the walls. I've seen better maintained police buildings in movies where a zombie apocalypse is in full swing. A V-8 engine is treated as some rare treasure, a miracle anyone could find one and get it running. But the MPF patrol on the edge, where things fall apart first. It was once a frontier, and it's becoming one again. We never get a good look at a big city, the most populated place is either the cabaret or that roadside diner Goose is at, where the tow trucks are faster on the ball than he is. Their trucks are in pretty good shape, shinier and newer-looking than the MPF's cars. The only business still doing well is one dedicated to salvaging the remains of tragedies.

The Team Needs an Exorcism

Another example of "you're not the boss of me," ending badly. 

The Case of the Team Spirit is the first collection of John Allison's Bad Machinery, released through Oni Press. The core cast - Shauna, Charlotte, Mildred, Sonny, Linton and Jack - are all starting the upper level of public school. There's a helpful glossary in the back, provided by Charlotte (which makes the accuracy questionable, but I won't know any better), that explains to a dastardly rebel descendant such as myself that UK schools are 4 through 11 and 11 through 16 (or 18), so I assume this is the latter.

This means new teachers, new uniforms - man am I glad my schools never had uniforms, so that I was only constrained by my mother's insistence I wear shirts with buttons to junior and high school, rather than t-shirts* - and new problems. Charlotte's tendency to chatter gets Shauna in trouble. Jack and Sonny find themselves hoodwinked in a football card swaps by the devious Bobby Swaps. As always, never engage in an activity with a person whose last name is a word for said activity.

While Linton, and to a lesser extent Jack and Sonny, try to figure out why the Russian oligarch who now owns the local football club seems to be having so much bad luck, Shauna and Charlotte, with the eventual assist from Mildred, try to help an elderly Russian woman who refuses to leave her home so the aforementioned oligarch can level a neighborhood and build a new stadium.

Wait, he's going to pay for the stadium himself, rather than demanding the local government fork over hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars? We need more Russian oligarchs owning sports teams here in the U.S., pronto.

It takes about a third of the book for anything truly supernatural or paranormal - which I gather are regular occurrences for this bunch - to show up. Then it shifts to Linton and the other boys trying in their half-assed way to investigate curses, while the girls are more focused on helping Shauna retrieve her nice birthday jacket from a bully from her old neighborhood. Which does result in Mildred more fully entering the fold as the third girl in the crew.

I'm guessing the competition between the boys and the girls to solve these mysteries - which Jack and Shauna appear to be keeping record of in secret - is a holdover from some earlier series of Allison's. I got that feeling a lot, that these characters have mucho past history I'm only dimly aware of, and not just the boys repeated mentions of their case involving Mad Terry, which they were not supposed to speak of.

Which makes sense. Charlotte mentions their history teacher dated her older sister in uni, which, since said older sister was friends with Esther de Groot, means said dating would have taken place concurrent with events in Giant Days. And Charlotte dragged Esther along to steal holy water from a church in that book, so she's clearly been at this sort of thing for a while.

Where were we? Allison jumps the focus between the characters, letting one or the other drive events at different times. So it's Shauna's friendship with Mrs. Biscuits, and Linton's diehard Tackleford FC fandom that start things off, Shauna gets isolated for a time as Charlotte's burgeoning friendship with Mildred gets Shauna in trouble and leads to the jacket theft. Meanwhile, Jack's the one getting roped into potential crimes so a friend of his older sister's will get the boys a tour of the stadium, so they can search for hints of curses.

I feel pretty bad for Jack, who is a neurotic mess even by the standards of teenage boys. He seems very popular with his sister's friends, but clearly has no idea what to do with that or how to respond. So his mind spirals off into flights of fancy (such as his misunderstanding of what a "military-industrial complex" is) or increasing panic (see above.) 

Much of the humor is one kid saying something unexpected or bizarre. Or hurtful. Allison's pretty good at remembering teenagers will go for the jugular if the opportunity presents itself. Some of the insults in here, I wouldn't have come out of my room for a year. There's also a lot of good timing. Near the end, Shauna asks the oligarch an obviously rhetorical question, and in the next two panels, as Charlotte and Shauna debate whether Charlotte is, in fact, 'reversing his psychology,' you see Mildred thinking about something. And then in the third panel, she answers the rhetorical question, to everyone's annoyance, and my amusement.

That said, I laughed hardest at the parts involving the Russians, both Mrs. Biscuits and the oligarch. Because I read their dialogue aloud in my best Boris Badenov accent? Or maybe because a man describing, in a real effort at inspiration, how he started his fortune mining lithium with his bare hands, then upgraded to a spoon, and would just eat a little lithium whenever he felt sad, is simply hilarious to me.

* This, not coincidentally, is why I hate polo shirts and have not worn one in over two decades. I had lots of fun t-shirts, and wasn't allowed to wear a single one to school. I was never going to be cool, but dressing like a preppy dweeb when my actual approach to school was clearly apathetic slacker didn't help.

Sunday Splash Page #435

"Norse God of Annihilation," in Ant-Man (2022) #3, by Al Ewing (writer), Tom Reilly (artist), Jordie Bellaire (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer)

Released in 2022, this 4-issue mini-series centered around a mysterious future Ant-Man, who kept traveling back in time and briefly interacting with the previous holders of that title. His purpose, other than it has something to do with the ants they control, is kept a mystery until the final issue. By which time there are really much bigger problems to worry about (see above.)

Pym's story is set either prior to the formation of the Avengers, or very close to it, and involves him being targeted by a group of enemies from his solo book. No, the Scarlet Beetle wasn't invited. It also involves Pym and Jan's date at the movies being interrupted by a young Eric O'Grady, who throws popcorn at Pym. So Pym follows him into the lobby and sets ants on him. When Pym is captured, the Wasp finds him because Scott Lang is trying to break into the apartment and opens the soundproof window, letting out Pym's agonized screams.

Lang's presence is apparently to set up Jan letting him use Hank's old Manhattan lab whenever he wants as a favor, though Scott has no idea what she's talking about. How, exactly, he forgot meeting a diminutive flying woman while trying to break into an apartment, the occurrence of which apparently convinced him to move back to Florida, I don't know, but it certainly makes the whole thing feel needlessly convoluted.

Reilly and Bellaire try to modify their styles or approaches to mimic the eras the stories are set in. In this case, Bellaire uses mostly solid, basic colors, what would be bright colors, but the shades give the impression of being a little faded, or maybe yellowed? Reilly, meanwhile, has a sort of stiff, solid line to his figures - although his O'Grady has a wicked smirk straight out of Ditko's style - and straightforward layouts of 5-6 panels per page.

O'Grady gets the second issue, shortly after he stole the experimental suit, as he doesn't know it can generate Pym Particles (thanks to Skrull tech Skrull-Pym built into it), so he tries digging up Scott Lang's Avengers Disassembled-corpse. Because he's an idiot. Lang's is set in roughly the present day, and involves he and his daughter trying to shrink Ultron (at this point partially Hank Pym) into the Microverse inside some Asgardian-rune inscribed Vibranium coffin.

In the second issue, Reilly and Bellaire try to mimic Irredeemable Ant-Man. Reilly does a pretty good Phil Hester impression, with more heavy blacks and a stronger, more squared-off look to the characters. Some occasional pages of characters just sitting in one place for a bunch of panels in the same position, thinking over things. Bellaire uses a lot of a muddy orange-red that I definitely feel I saw regularly in Marvel comics of the mid-2000s. It's giving me New Avengers flashbacks, and I don't like it!

Third issue is closer to what I think of as Reilly's art style, at least based on Walter Mosley's The Thing mini-series. Much lighter line than Hester, busier than the Pym story, and Bellaire uses more variety in the shading here than the prior two issues. Softer shades if Cassie is a little embarrassed by her dad, or bright, sharp shades for explosions or lightning. The layouts are more dynamic and varied in panel count, there are more elements that jump across the page or through panels.

This is still the era of Lang being regarded a joke by most other heroes, so Stark and Thor are pretty disrespectful. No surprise from Stark, but I'm disappointed with Thor. Where's your humility, hammer-boy? Did you trade it to get back your arm? At least Cassie tells her dad to stop sucking up to them, and references Scott saving the world in World Hive, though he shares credit with her. Because he's a good dad.

They get interrupted by Black Ant (the robot duplicate of O'Grady from Remender's Secret Avengers) and the coffin gets flung somewhere in time. Ewing ties things into Age of Ultron, which I could do without remembering exists, but I can't tell what parts of the explanation were actually from that, and what are things Ewing bolts on for his own purposes. Either way, the four Ant-Men deal with an Ultron hopped up on Odin-sauce, and that's that.

This time around, Bellaire's color work really dominates. It's a lot of solid blocks of color, bright blocks, and Reilly's lines almost vanish under it. Which might be something about the mythic nature the heroes of the past have achieved in the future, that leaves them blurrily defined because there's so much that got lost over the centuries. (Future Ant-Man definitely wasn't expecting O'Grady to be like he was.) 

But what, exactly is Ewing driving at? There's a bit at the end, as they get ready to try their plan to stop Ultron, where Pym says all the World's Smallest Hero can do is 'think big.' The Ant-Man of 2549 found his "nano-swarm" couldn't fix an ecologically devastated Earth, so he cloned a bunch of extinct ant species. They lacked any natural instincts. So he fucked around in the timestream to measure how past Ant-Men controlled insects as part of some plan to install the instincts. His time traveling provided a guide for Ultron to find his way back into the timestream. Big plan, big fuck-up, big problem. Pym's own examples of overreaching are well-known, but after that, it feels stretched.

O'Grady is just trying to stay alive, and going about it in the dumbest way possible. Maybe the over-reaching is that the suit exists. Skrull Pym internal monologues that it was only Pym's need to prove himself that made the Skrull build such a suit (which contains Skrull technology that might give him away) in the first place. Lang, though, is trying to be careful. The Avengers don't like that he's bringing the coffin to New York, but he argues it's got the most precise equipment, and this is the sort of thing - shrinking a hybrid of a genocidal artificial intelligence and its creator into a micro-universe - you want to be precise about. As it turns out, Ultron-Pym figured out how to communicate on the ant-helmet's frequency and was subtly guiding Scott there, but it still doesn't feel like taking unjustifiable risks for uncertain gain.

So is it the inferiority complex thing? Pym, well, again, the history of his attempts to prove himself that end disastrously are well-established. I don't feel like Ewing accounts for '60s Pym meeting both an endpoint of an artificial intelligence he created and seeing what happened to himself. Although maybe '60s Pym's bold statement that if he ever does create and AI, it'll be a lot better, is the over-reaching thing again. Lang is constantly scrabbling for respect and to try and look cool so his daughter will look up to him. Zayn Asghar apparently wasn't content with a "nano-swarm" that could at least rebuild homes and stuff. No, he has to bring back ants to fix the planet's ecosystem, by himself.

But then there's O'Grady. A petty, selfish, small-minded, dim-witted putz. He's entirely realistic about just how likely he is to survive if he can't shrink to escape danger. It's not an inferiority complex if you are, in fact, inferior. He doesn't care enough about anyone but himself to bother trying to do something big to prove himself. There's Black Ant, who is planning on being a henchman for Ultron, and really wants to do a good job on this escape attempt, but still kind of half-asses it. He's boasting Lang won't be able to call ants for help because he bribed them with really good sugar, for Pete's sake. This is not a serious person.

Saturday Splash Page #237

"Truant Officers," in The Web #5, by Len Strazewski (writer), Tom Artis (penciler), Bill Wray (inker), Eric Kachelhofer (colorist), Vickie Williams (letterer)

The Web was a bit of a rarity in the Impact Comics line as an ensemble book (Black Hood had a revolving cast, in a sense, which we'll get to when Sunday Splash Page gets there.) Where the other books revolved around solo heroes, "The Web" was an entire government organization. It had existed since the late '60s, with a broad mandate to investigate the unusual, but seemingly really created to investigate the disappearance of that generation's superheroes, the American Crusaders. Without success.

There were multiple agents, with different areas of operation, varying levels of public visibility, and different approaches. They eventually got powered armor, although the power was transmitted from some central station, and required authorization to use, even before Web fell on hard times as the years passed and budgets shrank. Eventually they were roaming swamps in business suits, chasing reports of UFOs.

With the emergence of new superheroes they're back in business. More money (but also more oversight), and more staff. That's where Strazewski makes his mistake, the cast is simply too large. From top-down, you've got Powell Jennings, who is some dipshit prep-school goober appointed as head of the agency. Of the field staff that are holdovers from the earlier years, there's Bill O'Grady, in charge on-site (that's him in the flak jacket), "Big Daddy" Rothco (the bearded guy), the Sunshine Kid (a spiritualist/hippie type), St. James who gets brought in to run tactics, "Jump" Kennedy, a pilot whose girlfriend was abducted by aliens a decade ago, and Gunny Beaupre. There's another guy, who calls himself "Troy" but is referred to by others as "Brew", who shows up in another issue.

Among the new generation, there's "Win" Winfield, whose older brother is part of the same prep-school dipshits as Jennings, Rad Stiles, the aggressive dickhead of the cast, Buster Thomas, the scientist who devised the updated version of the armor, where the power boost circuitry is actually wired under their skin, and Saleh/Silver, a former DEA agent and St. James' estranged daughter. Plus, the three kids up there (from left to right, Jamal, Alyce and Kevin, although Jamal is sometimes white and sometimes black, depending on the issue), who found an old Web base when Big Daddy used it after stopping a theft in the first issue.

That's too many characters! Especially when we're told, in issue #2, only one of them was intended to be the actual "Web" that was out in the field, in public. Double-especially when they're crossing over with the other titles, or devoting pages to guest-stars. Buster teams up with The Fly in issue 5, the (3rd) Shield guest-stars in issue 12, and The Fly, the Comet, and a third hero get suckered into attacking Web in issue 9. Plus, the last two issues are written by Paul Kupperberg, listed as "guest writer," so he brought in yet another old agent (up to then unmentioned) for his own story.

As a result, the book feels overstuffed and directionless. Plots or character arcs make little progress. Some characters get basically nothing. Issue 8 implies Winfield's desperate to prove himself after being compared unfavorably to his brother all these years. That doesn't jibe with his behavior up to then, where he seemed content to stand back and let others lead. Nothing's ever done with the tension between Silver and her father, beyond the initial argument that shows it exists. "Jump" has one run-in with a UFO, this time with working armor, but it ends inconclusively and he doesn't tell anyone about it or try to get any help. I couldn't tell you a thing about Rad or Gunny. Not likes, dislikes, motivations. Nothing.

The kids - who insist on being called "the Posse" - get one back-up story where Big Daddy tries to teach them how to drive some vehicles. While they don't crash, they're reckless enough he yells at them to stop after two pages. Also, O'Grady talks about maybe using them for undercover or intelligence gathering, but putting them in bright yellow armor on loud vehicles, while likely to increase their life expectancy (at least the armor part) doesn't seem great for that purpose. At least the kids negotiated themselves $25/month in pay, which is $25 more than they were initially being offered.

Generally, the focus is on O'Grady, Sunshine, Big Daddy, and Buster. O'Grady struggling with an administrative role and chomping at the bit to do fieldwork instead. He never really sorts that out, never gets better at handling Jennings' particularly irritating brand of making unreasonable demands, then blaming O'Grady when they backfire. Sunshine spends a lot of time making remarks that are supposed to be sage or clever and pretending to kind of be above the fray, but it's Kupperberg who comes closest to addressing the flaws in that, as the laidback attitude lets a former agent who built his rep on a lie get put in charge of peoples' lives. There could have been something for Big Daddy, training the kids, but again, that got almost no page time. Thomas is a scientist by trade, who submitted to the procedure she developed after early attempts went badly. She isn't supposed to feel very confident using the armor, but that only crops up intermittently.

Maybe the plan was always for the "1 agent" bit to get thrown out by circumstances, but that could have been something to make better use of such a bloated cast. Have a real sense the characters are competing with each other to be that "1 agent", and the negative impact that has. Maybe Buster shifts towards tech support, coming up with new gadgets for the armor, or Sunshine sticks strictly with training. Some characters wash out, or maybe "Jump" vanishes pursuing his vendetta against the aliens.

Tom Artis draws the first six issues, then guest pencilers for three issues, then Hoang Nguyen for three issues, and Barry Horne draws Kupperberg's two-parter. I'm not sure Artis' art was suited to such a crowded book. His art looks alright in the larger panels, but once he has to cram more characters in, or the panel space shrinks, things get messy and disorganized. His art always looks very busy to me, a lot of small lines and hatch marks on faces and clothes, though I guess that could be Wray's inks. With room to operate, like a full-page splash, it's fine. In the 5th panel of a 6-panel page, with 4 characters involved, not so much. The coloring also overwhelms the linework at times, rendering characters indistinct blobs.

Nguyen fares better, at least once Mike DeCarlo starts inking in issue 11. The previous issue, the linework alternates between almost disappearing and giving characters oddly exaggerated mouths. DeCarlo seems to use a thinner line, but it's a stronger one. The characters are solid, distinct. The action is clear and easy to follow. Just in general, it's less busy-looking, but it's also an issue that focuses heavily on just Silver and how she ended up with Web, so there's not as many people in mass-produced armor running around at one time.

The book's also plagued by miscommunication between writer and art team. Panels that don't show what the dialogue implies is there. In several of those cases, it's like there's a one-panel delay between dialogue and art, the latter running behind the former. It's worst in the guest penciler issues from 7 through 9, so maybe it was a time crunch thing. There's a page of a fight in issue 8, a 9-panel grid, that's a complete mess of dialogue that doesn't seem to match the action. There's no flow to anything, to the point I'm not sure if you're supposed to read down the columns or across the rows, because it doesn't really work either way.

Taken as a whole, it's by far the weakest of the core six titles.

Random Back Issues #172 - The Spectre #57

This is the 8th issue of The Spectre to appear in Random Back Issues. God's loaded my dice.

Or maybe not, as the issue begins with Spectre finding the Pearly Gates busted open, and nothing behind them! No angels, no souls, no God. The Spectre and Jim Corrigan have been having their differences recently, but they both want to get to the bottom of this.

Corrigan suggests pounding the pavement, question some suspects. First to Limbo, where an extremely skeletal Deadman is hanging around, watching a bunch of shadows traverse a foggy canyon. Spectre explains God's missing, and Deadman busts a gut, to Spectre's displeasure. Deadman says his god, Rama Kushna, is still around, and he doesn't know the Spectre's God 'from spit,' but it ain't here.

Next stop, Hell. Two angels, Remiel and Duma, are running things, because Lucifer abdicated. Remiel is trying to reform Hell, make it a place souls are redeemed through torment. It's not going great. 'Whip them with love,' apparently being a difficult concept to get across. Duma is zoned out, ignoring Remiel to the point the latter considers murdering the former. 

Spectre kicks in the doors, wishing to speak with the Lord of Hell. Duma, finally showing some life, kneels before him and offers the Key to Hell. The Spectre barely resists, claiming he's no creature of Hell, which Remiel thinks is crazy talk. The Spectre can freely enter Hell, but not Heaven. Michael forced his compliance, and Spectre was given a Sisyphean task to complete, walk the Earth until evil is no more. Well, when you put it that way. . . God sounds like kind of a dick. Maybe it's good he's missing.

Or maybe not. When Spectre delivers the news, the demons go into a frenzy, calling him a liar and attacking him. Which does not go well, and makes the Spectre suspect Hell is behind it, until Remiel points out the demons are afraid. They exist in opposition to God, so if God's gone, will they cease to be? Oblivion terrifies even a demon. I guess Remiel never talked to Jason Lee's character in Dogma, since that guy preferred non-existence to Hell.

At a dead end, the Spectre departs, leaving Duma to cry over Michael's disappearance (I guess Duma loved Michael?), the demons to sulk back to their various fiery pits, and Remiel to remark that for the first time, he feels like he's truly in Hell.

Lucifer's enjoying retirement on a beach in Australia, watching the sunset. Must be nice to have a job that offered retirement benefits. He's unperturbed at Spectre's claim of God's absence, so Spectre sets out to question the pantheons of "lesser" gods. This will involve him barging into places he's not welcome and throwing his weight around like an asshole. Which could either be representative of Corrigan's style of police investigation, or the behavior of Christians throughout human history. Meanwhile, Lucifer sits on the beach, remarking the Spectre should have stayed and watched the sunset. 

{10th longbox, 70th comic. The Spectre #57, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Carla Feeny and Digital Chamelon (color artists), Todd Klein (letterer)}

False Flags - Stephen Robinson

Robinson's focused on Germany's "auxiliary cruisers," merchant ships or freighters that were re-fitted to be combat capable, then sent out under the colors and flags of other nations to prey on shipping. Robinson notes early in the book that, according to the Hague Convention, this was entirely aboveboard, so long as the ships raised the Kriegsmarine flag and removed all false insignia before they started firing. They could have the guns ready to fire before then, but as long as they didn't pull the trigger, it was totally cool.

There are four vessels Robinson focuses on: Orion, Pinguin, Komet (which reached the Pacific through Arctic Sea with help from a Soviet icebreaker) and the Kormoran. They operated in this role only through 1941, primarily in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, though some of the ships saw action in the South Atlantic and around the Antarctic. The Pinguin captured basically an entire fleet of Norwegian whaling vessels in the span of a couple of months. Great for the whales, probably not so great for Norway.

Although Robinson emphasizes that the goal of the raiders was not simply to sink or capture as many ships as possible. Rather, the point was to make it too hazardous for freighters and other merchant ships to travel alone, and to restrict the routes they could take. A convoy can only travel at the speed of its slowest member, so forcing more shipping into convoys, along more circuitous routes that hug friendly coastlines, reduces the amount of shipping that reaches Britain.

Which doesn't mean the raider ships don't want to do direct damage. Robinson tends to move chronologically, shifting between ships in each chapter. He uses remarks from the various captains' logs and memoirs, or articles and letters of the crews, as well as the comments of some of the prisoners from captured ships. Generally speaking, the raiders seem to have treated prisoners fairly well. Better than the blockade runners the prisoners were sometimes transferred to for transport back to Germany.

The comments also provide a sense of the captains' personalities and expectations. The captains of the Orion and Pinguin both clearly expected this to be like the raider activity in the First World War, where they could raise their flag and command a ship to stop engines and not transmit a warning, and everything would be orderly. Instead they find that a lot of these ships try to escape, broadcasting warnings about raiders and firing back (inaccurately) with whatever guns they were loaded with. (Norwegian and Greek ships seem to still, on the whole, surrender quietly, while British ships, unsurprisingly, do not.)

In contrast, Komet's Captain Eyssen didn't waste any time with that sort of "gentlemanly warfare." He raises his flag and fires some shots and tells the ship to surrender or it'll be sunk. If it doesn't surrender, it gets sunk. Period. Of course, Eyssen comes off as generally over-agressive and high on his own supply, usually at the wrong time. He gets it in his head to not only sink all the Dutch supply ships picking up phosphate at Nauru (OK), but, since the island has no defense, to shell the factory and the port as well, basically trashing the place. Except he disguised his ship as a Japanese vessel, and Japan got a lot of phosphate from Nauru, so he kind of pissed off one of Germany's allies. Later, he decided to sink some ships near the Galapagos Islands, which were within the "Pan-American Neutrality Zone", which pissed off the U.S. at a time when we were still not "officially" at war with Germany.

Robinson includes a lot of maps showing the route a given ship traveled over a certain period of time, with markers indicating places where they captured or sank a particular ship, or laid out a minefield. There are several times where ships lay mines, mostly around Australia or New Zealand, and while they don't sink many ships, once their presence is known, those countries' navies have devote some of their limited warships to dealing with that, rather than protecting convoys from U-boats and battleships. Which doesn't go so well for a couple of the raiders when they run into cruisers, but that's the risk of trying to draw your enemy's attention. Sometimes you get actually do get their attention.

'Wehyer had to first rendezvous with the Regensburg in the Marshall Islands to refueled before heading to the Carolines. After passing Santa Cruz, Wehyer decided to disguise the Orion as the Japanese freighter Maebasi Maru and the crew painted characters on the hull copied from a Kodak advertisement produced in Yokohama.'

The Set-Up (1949)

Robert Ryan plays a boxer. Not a great one, not a title holder. A small-timer, who fights once a week in a cramped gym, with a ring so small it sometimes looks as though a fighter could stand in one corner and connect with their jab when their opponent was in the opposite corner. His wife (Audrey Trotter) wants him to stop, but he won't. Not yet. But tonight he's facing an up-and-coming boxer, Tiger Nelson (Hal Baylor), and Ryan's manager and trainer each took money for him to lose in the 3rd round.

We missed the first 30 minutes finishing up Something Big. With this movie coming in at 73 minutes, that's a considerable chunk. By that point, Ryan's in the tiny locker room the collective group of challengers for the night are sharing, and his wife is roaming the neighborhood with a ticket to the fight, silently debating what to do.

The film switches between those two threads as each of the other fighters heads to the ring. We don't see their fights, just the aftermath. One fighter comes back bruised and with a swollen eye, shaken and being harped on by one of the trainers or medics. Another is carried in unable to remember who he is. Through it all, Ryan's sitting and watching and trying to prepare himself. Telling the trainer needling the loser to knock it off, nodding along with the fighter who is sure he can win, because all it takes is one chance. 

Meanwhile, Trotter is moving, seeking a distraction but finding reminders of what she's avoiding everywhere. She doesn't talk much, just walks, and wrings her hands, and the longer she walks, the fewer people are around. Until she's alone on a bridge, watching trolleys pass by on their way someplace else. Does she stick with a guy who keeps going out to get his brains pulped, or leave? Ultimately she's got to make that choice.

The fight is a wild thing. Ryan ignores his trainer's advice to stay and at a distant and wades in, throwing (and taking) punches like Rocky Balboa. It doesn't look good. The kid is landing a lot more punches, though my dad noted that when Ryan lands a hit, it always staggers the kid. But the ref is either bought, or just uninterested in enforcing the rules. Ryan takes at least two low blows, with no reaction. The kid rakes at his ears at one point, and later, when he's sent Ryan to his knees, doesn't retreat to a neutral corner. Instead he hovers, and throws another punch as Ryan starts to stand.

Sometimes when Ryan's knocked down, the camera maintains its position outside the ropes, but at least one time when he's flat on his back, it switches to looking down at his face, like it's the ref counting him out. Although the shot I really liked was right before the start of either Round 2 or 3. His trainer and manager have stepped back, but Ryan's still on the stool, leaned against the corner post, solid black background. He's all alone, more than he knows, and the only way out is forward. The view switches to looking over his shoulder at his opponent, already up on his feet, hands raised, corner full of people that have his back.

During the fighting, the camera also keeps showing us certain members of the crowd. A blind man who has someone describe the action, and at one point is cheering for the kid to closer Ryan's other eye. A middle-aged woman shouting for someone to "kill him!" She doesn't care who gets killed, as long as she sees it. A younger guy that gets really into it, throwing jabs and flinching like he got punched. A heavyset guy who is eating something different each time we see him. Early on, most of them are scornful of Ryan - we hear someone in the crowd call him "grandpa" - but they're ultimately just as happy to see him lay out the kid.

(I joked with my dad the middle-aged woman was really yelling at the vendor, telling him to keep feeding that guy until he popped.)

And there's the gambler, with his irritating lady who makes big bets because she knows the fix is in. Too bad for her nobody told Ryan until the fight was already going. Too bad for Ryan, the gambler won't accept that explanation. It's a quick shift, Ryan back in the locker room, getting congratulated by the medical staff, all weary smiles as he wonders where his guys are. And then the gambler walks in, the medic leaves, not in a hurry, but he won't meet Ryan's eyes.

Which is when it all starts to hit Ryan how bad this is going to go. He was ready to walk into the ring and face a boxer who was supposed to be younger, faster, stronger, better than him, but he's not ready for this. Now he tries to run, but just like in the ring, there are no other exits. He's got to walk forward into another fight he's not going to win.

What I Bought 7/2/2026

I decided July is "fish or cut bait" month for several books. Maybe not the best time for it; there are already two mini-series ending this month. But there were a couple of new books I picked up I intended to decide whether to stick with them, and a couple of others that I think have gotten a fair shot, but need to really sell me on them. So we'll see how that goes.

The Deadman #2, by W. Maxwell Prince (writer), Martin Morazzo (artist), Chris O'Halloran (colorist), Good Old Neon (letterer) - Boston Brand unwittingly dissolved the blood doorway that would lead those souls back to their proper realm.

Deadman needs to know what that demon was, but the only book that would tell him was destroyed. Fortunately, not until after it was read by a guy with a perfect photographic memory, who Deadman and Batman once arrested. For breaking into a museum to read rare books, the man was sentenced to Blackgate Prison. That seems not at all insane.

Deadman tries to possess Batman to get into the prison, but Bats apparently trained his mind to resist such things. Of course he did. Plastic Man was helping Bats with some case involving drug-smuggling mummies, so Deadman takes him instead. As he's getting info, an inmate takes his meds which cause him to turn into a giant plant guy, who deals Plastic Man a mortal blow. Good work, Deadman! OK, fine, he keeps Plas' soul from moving on, and the Bibliophile tells him the creature he saw is from Hell. 

If "The Bloom" is someone I'm expected to know, I don't. Morazzo's got a little Frank Quietly in his art. Mostly I guess the texture of his characters, their faces. Sort of rough, pebbly effect to their skin and wrinkles and whatnot. His Batman definitely tends towards the broad and bulky end of the spectrum. No nimble acrobat here!

The theme of the issue might be "change." The first page is Rama Kushna explaining how souls go through cycles of rebirth, and in each life accumulate good and bad in their karmic ledgers. And Deadman keeps making assumptions about people. He assumes Plastic Man just became a hero on a whim, a flip of the coin, but learns different when he possess him. Gets caught flat-footed by Batman's efforts to not only resist possession, but develop tools to let him communicate with Deadman's spiritual form. He seems to expect the Bibliophile to be some monster, but decides just by looking at him in prison that he's no bad guy. Duh. He broke into a museum just to have new books to read.

(There's also this thing, it was in the first issue as well, that presents people as equations. "Lorna - 3 Nights Sleep = 1/2 Lorna" And in both cases, the person who has been reduced to "1/2" tries something to help, something from their past, and it doesn't work. The equation still comes out to "1/2 Lorna." So you can't fix anything going back? Well, I'm completely screwed.)

So is Deadman changing? If he keeps making assumptions about people, keeps thinking they can't or won't really change? Still hanging on to attachments from a life he can't have? 

Batgirl #21, by Tate Brombal (writer), Stephen Segovia (artist), Rain Beredo (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) -  That's definitely a very cool cover by David Talaski, with the falling flowers and the eyehole as a prison window.

While her friends try to escape the cops - who are called "TUCOs", and I'm offended on behalf of Eli Wallach's character - Cass is stuck inside some mental trigger thing. Dr. Forget-Me-Not wants Batgirl to solve the murder of the little girl, using only what she can glean from her own memories. Which she now has access to all of, even when she was a baby.

Except she (and we) see all the memories from the third person perspective. She's watching herself fight the little blonde girl, who was Forget-Me-Not's attempt to create an ultimate weapon by making a person you can program with whatever identity or thoughts you need.

Forget-Me-Not and David Cain argued about something, which Napolitano (I'm assuming) renders as unintelligible squiggles because Cass didn't understand words at that point in her life. I can't decide if that makes sense, ignoring the question of whether I should be worrying about something like that in a plot like this. I don't understand what birds are saying when they sing, but I still remember what the song sounds like. Cass as she is now could probably piece some of it together from the sounds.

Whatever. She knows the girl was killed with a large knife. She knows she had the knife at one point during a spar with Bronze Tiger, but it disappeared. She knows Cain and the doctor left her and the other girl alone at some point because of the argument. The girl tried to hug her and Cass didn't understand what that was. And so Cass comes to the conclusion she's the killer. 

I'm assuming there's some kind of bait-and-switch there. Not that Cass couldn't have killed someone else before she learned to read body language. More I don't see what it adds to her as a character. She gets to feel bad about killing someone who was victimized at the hands of the person who should have protected her, like Cass was? Plus, Segovia's consistently drawn the killing wound as the big slash the goes diagonally across the entire torso. Would a kid roughly the same size as the victim make a wound like that?