Sunday, December 22, 2024

Sunday Splash Page #354

 
"Deconstruction Site," in Mekanix #5, by Chris Claremont (writer), Juan Bobillo (penciler), Marcelo Sosa (inker), Edgar Tadeo (colorist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer)

Mekanix focused on Kitty Pryde, attending college in Chicago, bartending to pay for off-campus housing, and trying very hard not to deal with the recent death of her father amid the mass Sentinel attack on Genosha that occurred early in Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men.

Unfortunately, even if the other students don't know she's a mutant, that doesn't mean she's free of stupid bigots and their nonsense. When the story begins, she's already attending mandatory counseling sessions after she whupped the shit out of some anti-mutant guys that tried to get her to listen to their propaganda. That same hate group targets the project team she's part of, and when their sabotage causes a meltdown Kitty only narrowly keeps from killing anyone, the FBI naturally treats Kitty and the scientists as suspects, rather than the right-wing hate group that posted very public threats about them online.

In the midst of that, a few of the Sentinels from the Genosha attack - smaller, more insectile in appearance, but highly adaptable - hitch a ride on a freighter into the city and begin targeting mutants. The only other X-Man around to help is Karma, who has her own concerns trying to protect and care for her younger siblings. There's also Shola, who I think was a new character, a very powerful telekinetic from Genosha, trained to use his powers for defense by his parents, and dealing with his own grief at their recent deaths.

Bobillo's very good at making the various Sentinels look a bit different, but in similar ways. They remind me a bit of the machines that patrol the real world in The Matrix, but less uniform, and certainly less sturdy. Lots of thin wires and cables, and multiple optical lenses, rarely any weapons beyond their own mass (though one does incorporate a pistol Karma had been carrying.) Nodding to their ability to rebuild and improve themselves from whatever is available.

I feel like his human characters' heads are a little big for their bodies, or their bodies - especially the women - are too narrow for their heads, but he's good with body language. Critical in a Claremont-written book, where there's going to be lots of talking - Kitty naturally has to make a big speech in an impromptu debate with the leader of the hate group, a moment where she sets aside her anger and focuses on trying to help rather than just fight - and Bobillo keeps the characters moving or gesturing in ways that are appropriate so things don't grow too static.

This version of Shadowcat's hardened by loss and experience, or is trying to be. The way Claremont writes her, she's more like an open wound, taking very little prodding to provoke a reaction, whether from the bigots, the feds, her therapist (I'm not qualified to determine if this therapist is any more competent than most of the mental health professionals in the Marvel Universe. She at least doesn't appear to be evil.) Her grief, like Shola's, is mostly still directed into anger. She's trying to run from "mutant" stuff, but that didn't work, and now she's almost resigned to the notion of never having a moment's peace to enjoy herself or love anyone. Claremont also seems to moving towards a romantic relationship between Kitty and Karma, which so far as I know never went anywhere. Nowadays it always seems like they're going to push Kitty into bed with Emma Frost, which is just a terrible idea.

Anyway, the point seems to be Kitty can't give up on letting people in, on thinking things can be better.

Saturday, December 21, 2024

Saturday Splash Page #156

 
"Scatterpoint," in Slingers #1, by Joseph Harris (writer), Chriscross (penciler), Rob Stull (inker), Felix Serrano (colorist), Richard Starkings and Liz Agraphiotis (letterers)

In his brief "Identity Crisis" story, Spider-Man donned four different, all-new superheroic identities - Dusk, Hornet, Prodigy, and Ricochet - because there was a bounty on his head and seemingly everyone was trying to collect. Once he cleared his name, he put the costumes in a trunk in the attic and that was that.

Until a girl was found dead in an alley, dressed as Dusk. Before too long, he ran into two more people, one dressed as Ricochet, the other as Hornet. Though Spidey doesn't cross paths with him, there's a new Prodigy out there, too. And Dusk doesn't stay dead. All four were brought together by a benefactor with ulterior motives.

No, it wasn't Norman Osborn. Or the Kingpin. It also wasn't a Spider-clone thing, in case you were worried.

The book only lasted 12 issues, and I can't decide if that's why it feels like it lacks any sort of direction, or if it died after 12 issues because it felt aimless. The four college kids that got tapped for this only vaguely know each other ahead of time, and only Ricochet and Hornet seem to get along. Neither of them quite knows what to make of Dusk, and Prodigy is basically Vegeta: an arrogant dick not nearly as competent as he thinks he is. Nobody gets along with that dude.

The benefactor is a Golden Age hero trying to recapture past glory, or rewrite history to undo a past mistake, but what that has to do with recruiting these four teens and giving them these costumes I don't know. He doesn't call them together for training, doesn't advise or guide them. Prodigy is pretty much the only one that talks to him, in the hopes of receiving validation. That might explain why Prodigy is in all this, the old man feeds his notion of how he's "supposed" to be seen, but doesn't explain what the others are doing mixed up in this.

Harris and Chriscross also don't provide them with any compelling villains. A brief run-in with some Maggia guy and a hotel fire, but it's really their benefactor's ego that's the danger. A mass transit worker Hornet and Ricochet tried to keep from committing suicide, only to derail a subway and get the guy accidentally exposed to some experimental waste that makes him a big, angry, furry thing that wants revenge. He controls big, mutated rats that live in the tunnels, which just sounds like Vermin, personally. Though this guy looks more like a steroidal Man-Bat, sans wings. Nanny and the Orphan-maker show up for Ricochet, and, I mean, could we some villains whose whole shtick isn't being creepy bastards?

And then, after all that, Mephisto. I mean, maybe put them up against the Wrecking Crew or the Death Throws first, as a warm-up? Those guys are always good for "trial by fire" stories for teams. Anyway, that's when the cast finally start to resemble something like an actual team, and the book ends. Until then, they were mostly 4 individuals who happen to occupy the same book. Even at their most adversarial, the Defenders usually worked towards a shared purpose, they just butted heads about how to do it and when to stop. These kids are all running around without a clue what they're doing (Ricochet), what they should be doing (Hornet), or why they're doing any of it (Prodigy), except maybe as escapes from unsatisfying everyday lives (except Dusk, who is dead, which kind of limits everyday life.)

Chriscross draws 7 of the 12 issues, in a style that feels similar to Ed McGuinness, or maybe a bulkier Mike Wieringo. Tends to keep faces and designs simple and straightforward, but also clear and distinctive. None of the artists who draw the other 5 issues - Oscar Jiminez on #4, Greg Lunziak on 7 & 8, or Javier Saltares on 11 & 12 - have styles at all like his. They all use much thinner lines, much busier styles, more crosshatched intensive styles. You can still tell who's who, but it helps that Chriscross gave even their civilian looks such different styles. Can't readily mistake them for each other.

Friday, December 20, 2024

Random Back Issues #143 - The Spectre #19

After 50 years, Jim Corrigan finally gets that his mission is to confront evil in others to understand it in himself. Only took him leaving a friend to die alone because he just had to punish her killer, him basically wiping out the nation of Vlatava, getting possessed by Eclipso and nearly ending life on Earth, but hey! Jim's in the remedial class, any progress is encouraging.

The Spectre's going to get his chance to put this to work, because there's trouble brewing in New York City. An elderly rabbi was acquitted after he crashed his car into a group of black kids, killing one of them. This is after his sect bought up a bunch of  buildings in a predominantly African-American neighborhood and converted them into an enclave, off-limits to outsiders.

Tensions are running high, the cops are maintaining a perimeter around the enclave, but the Spectre flits right in and confronts the rabbi, who admits he hit the kids. Not intentionally, but he had known he shouldn't still be driving, and couldn't accept one more sign of his encroaching mortality. Old Moonface weighs the rabbi's soul and says that, taken as a whole, the good he's done outweighs the sin. Will the father of the dead child accept, "God says this man is no sinner?"

Yeah, me neither. The Spectre tries to disperse the angry people on both sides, and two demons of hate and anger emerge from the crowd and start brawling in the sky. It takes a couple of pages, but Spectre takes them down, and it's revealed his old foe Asmodus summoned them. Unfortunately, it's turned into a street fight down below during that, until the Spectre breaks it up. I guess the crowd could see his fight with the demons, but decided to have their own fight anyway? The rabbi emerges to apologize to the grieving father, but that's not helping.

So the Spectre makes them experience each other's grief. The concentration camps, dealing with the Klan. It seems to cool the father's anger, but the experience, the grief, something, kills the rabbi. Even when the Spectre isn't trying to kill people he still kills them. Frank Castle would not approve of such sloppy work.

In other plot threads, a young environmentalist who was set on fire by oil rig workers is reborn as Earth's water elemental (I assume this is picking up threads from Ostrander's Firestorm), and President Bill Clinton takes a break from being a scarfing Big Macs and being a creep to bring in one of his old professors, Nicodemus West, to discuss if there's a way to control or destroy the Spectre after he, you know, killed an entire country because he can't process grief in a healthy manner.

{10th longbox, 36th comic. The Spectre #19, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Carla Feeny and Digital Chameleon (color artists), Todd Klein (letterer)}

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

The Hills Run Red (1966)

Two guys steal 600 grand from the Union Army, but when they see they can't both get away, they draw cards to see who gets caught. Jerry (Thomas Hunter) gets caught, and spends five years in prison. Ken gets away and becomes your typical Western ranch baron, buying up all the land and with an army of goons to intimidate everyone into doing nothing.

Of course, Ken also promised to look after Jerry's wife and son, but when Jerry returns to the old homestead, he finds it deserted, save a few things. One, his wife diary, which tells him Ken didn't keep his word, because he refused to even loan her money to pay the mortgage. Two, two guys Ken sent to kill Jerry. Three, a random guy (Dan Duryea) hanging out in the barn loft who bails Jerry out and offers to go to Ken and claim he killed Jerry. He gets a steady goon job, and Jerry has the element of surprise.

I thought that Hunter was the same guy who played "The Stranger" in Any Gun Can Play, which would not have been a ringing endorsement. He's not, but I'm not sure he's an improvement. Hunter tries, sometimes, for this uncontrolled anger, where he stumbles out of his home and screams Ken's last name like he's Shatner in Wrath of Khan. Which is actually funny, hearing him yell "SEAGULL!" in the middle of the open range of Texas. Or he laughs oddly or whips his head around to glare at someone when they ask him something. It's too much - there's a couple of times I can see Dureya wondering what the hell this guy is doing - and it's not exactly consistently portrayed.

Beyond that, the film is mostly your standard "revenge Western," where the guy is hellbent on payback, but oh no, he finds things to care about again. You know, once he's done killing that guy. There's a requisite scene where Jerry gets shoved around a circle of guys who punch him - don't know why that was such a popular trope with Italian Westerns. Actually, there's two of those, but in one he gets to fight back.

Despite his initial standoff attitude, Jerry tries to help the townspeople push back against Ken's goon army. Except, in one of the film's quirks that nonetheless fails to elevate it above mediocre, the attempt fails, and the town is abandoned by the time the final gunfight (though it's less a gunfight than Hunter and Duryea chucking dynamite all over the place) begins. His help attempt fails because the tavern singer - who's only been in one scene so far - turns out to be in love with the chief goon (who is sort of the stereotypical cheerful psychopath.) So she intercepts Jerry's warning and alerts the goon.

The goon's also in love (or lust, more likely) with Ken's sister, who just so happens to have the same name as Jerry's deceased wife. At first, I thought she was Jerry's wife, who married Ken after he told her Jerry was dead. Then Ken referred to her as his sister, and I thought Jerry married his pal's sis. But no, she just has the same name so there can be a scene where she meets Jerry because he called out to his wife while delirious after fist-fighting 9 guys.

The movie either sets a lot of things up it doesn't do much to pay off, or lets things hang for the entire film, then remembers at the last second, 'oh yeah, we should probably explain that.' There's some stuff with Jerry's son that falls in the first category, and the reason Duryea's character keeps helping Jerry falls in the latter.

Monday, December 16, 2024

Another Year Under the Blogging Gun

Yesterday marked the end of year 19 here at Reporting on Marvels and Legends. No major disasters or disruptions again this year, which is a pleasant trend I'd be fine having continue. I didn't end up switching TPB/GN/manga review day from Monday to Wednesday like I considered, so the general schedule remained the same.

I don't know if that'll continue into this year. If the local comic store is going under I probably won't be picking up new books until the weekend most weeks, assuming there's anything to get. If new comic reviews start landing heavily on Mondays and Wednesdays, I may feel the need to shift features around.

Or maybe not. This groove - don't call it a rut! - is awfully comfortable.

The total number of new comics keeps going down, which has meant more reviews of graphic novels and manga. We actually finished the stuff I bought in 2023 two months ago. Random Back Issues, however, stayed about the same as the last two years (the progression has been 21-23-22.) Guess I've been getting just enough books to cover Fridays, but not much more than that.

Saturday Splash Page didn't make a lot of progress through the alphabet, starting with Swords of Texas, and just reaching Slumber last weekend. At least I got a little further along than I figured I would. Sunday Splash Page did a little better. Legend of the Shield to Master of Kung Fu (Secret Wars edition.) Actually finished the "L"s! Next year should be more productive, as I expect to get somewhere around Patsy Walker: Hellcat on Sunday Splash Page and to reach something Rocketeer related in Saturday Splash Page.

Some day the two Splash Page series will meet, but not in the next year.

One thing I've been looking at from time to time is which posts end up getting a lot of views. My best guess on why was I used some phrase that caused a search algorithm to lock on. That's the only way I can explain this year's Blogsgiving getting over 3 times as many views in a 4-hour span as any other post has this year. I figure the same is true for my review of The Gods Must Be Crazy, Star Power volume 4, and Apparently Disillusioned Adventurers will Save the World (#1 posts of August, April, and November, respectively.) I used some notable or popular phrase, and the bots flocked to them.

I'm less sure what's going on when it's one of the Splash Page posts. Why was Legion Lost so much popular than Legionnaires? How the heck did the post on Sub-Mariner beat out the one on a Suicide Squad comic with a predominantly movie-themed cast? For that matter, why did the Gods Must Be Crazy sequel get 1/4th as many views? Do search engines hate Roman numerals? All mysteries with answers lost to time, or lost to my laziness in pursuing them any further. But it sounds better the first way.

That's all I've really got for this post. Thanks for sticking around and watching me dump my brain out on the internet for almost two decades!

Sunday, December 15, 2024

Sunday Splash Page #353

 
"Run the Gauntlet," in Master of Kung Fu (2015) #3, by Haden Blackman (writer), Dalibor Talijac (penciler), Goran Sudzuka (inker), Miroslav Mrva (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

And here's the other Secret Wars mini-series I bought. Set in a version of K'un Lun ruled by Shang-Chi's dad, Zheng Zu, where Shang's become a drunken derelict since Zheng made him kill the leader of the Iron Fist clan.

Shang's prompted into action when a group of outcasts (kind of like Morlocks, but half of them are New Mutants) try to defend him, and agrees to be their teacher. Realizing none of that will do any good so long as his dad rules the roost, Shang enters the Thirteen Chambers, the tournament held every 13 years to determine who will rule the city.

I admit I was expecting more focus on the tournament, which is relegated to maybe the last issue and a half. But I was also expecting something more like a shonen anime tournament. You know, with a bracket and 1-on-1 match-ups, leading to a final 2. Instead, Shang has to fight everyone else (see above) before he can face his father, which doesn't seem like much of a tournament to me. It's also kind of weird that Shang tells Kitty the Thirteen Chambers predates K'un Lun, but Zheng is somehow able to control it to make sure Shang will have to face everyone else.

Talijac and Sudzuka combine for a very clean look, even during the fighting, nothing is too gritty or rough. They tend to use each panel as a beat in the fight, showing the flow of action from one move to the next. A block in one panel, a twist in the next, a strike in the third. It's a nice way of showing he, even having given up on anything, Shang's still a well-trained fighter.

The designs on the characters vary widely in how close they hew to the character that inspires them. Black Panther and Psylocke - sorry, Lady Mandarin here - look pretty much the same. But Jessica Drew of the Spider Cult's quite different. Not that she's in the book much. Most of the other challengers are introduced and discarded in the course of the third issue.

It all boils down to Shang facing his dad, but first he and Danny Rand have unresolved business. Which turns out to not be what it seems at first. Shang isn't innocent, but he did it to prevent a greater evil. I guess as some sort of arc for Danny, that he sets aside his desire for revenge against Shang for the greater good of the city.

Overall, it's not really what I was hoping for, but it's not bad. The Francesco Francavilla covers are excellent, however.

Saturday, December 14, 2024

Saturday Splash Page #155

 
"Bad Sign," in Slumber #2, by Tyler Burton Smith (writer), Vanessa Cardinali (artist), Simon Robins (colorist), Steve Wands (letterer)

A cop named Finch (that's him with his bare ass showing) is investigating a string of murders, each by a different person, all of whom claim it wasn't them. But each murder is marked by similar messages and symbols. The trail leads to a woman named Stetson, who advertises as a "Dream Healer", who helps people with issues by using a device that lets her physically enter their dreams and kill the memory that's causing the problem. Of course, Stetson is hunting for something else in the dreams of others. . .

The mini-series feels like a pitch for a Netflix show. Smith does some interesting things with the concept of entering someone's dreams, but in ways that would have been easy to translate to a moving screen. He and Cardinali don't really do anything with weird perspectives or the floors becoming the ceiling or locations looping back on themselves impossibly. The strangeness is relegated to the things they see, spider-turkeys and having some sort of goblin/zombie thing I assume she befriended in someone's dreams as a partner. Cardinali's art is very good at that; it's loose and scratchy cartoonish style, easily exaggerated for Stetson wearing Finch's skin as a suit to infiltrate his memory of a funeral, or a possessed teddy bear.

But Stetson's response to basically any situation is to shoot it, or threaten to shoot it unless it gives her answers. And despite apparently having a closet full of stuff she's likely pulled from people's dreams, she sticks to regular guns or maybe a flamethrower if she's feeling exotic.

As for the interesting things, first, the way Stetson's shtick works. If she kills the memory causing the nightmares, the person forgets it entirely. Bad experience with a clown? She kills the clown and you don't remember the clown ever existed. Except this isn't the best approach when the person that's the cause is someone the patient doesn't want to forget.

Second, the fact that even if the patient forgets what was traumatizing them, Stetson remembers, tying the mocking title of "dream eater" to the "sin eater" notion, I think. Whether it's because of that, the psychic damage of walking through a man-made portal into someone's dreams, or her not sleeping to avoid her own dreams, Stetson's waking hours are a surreal experience in themselves. She hallucinates a lot, seeing giant bugs in trucker hats at the convenience store, or random ostriches, and has internal conversations with a voice that isn't identified for a long time.

The book ran six issues in 2022, and ended on a number of cliffhangers. One character's under arrest, one's lost in someone's dreams, and Stetson got what she wanted, but it isn't clear what that's going to mean for her. I've not heard anything about the book continuing, so the answers may never come.