Messiah Without a Clue

I wouldn't expect a species as hard to kill as cockroaches to think much of a Great Beyond.

Kid Eternity: Book One covers the first 9 issues of Ann Nocenti and Sean Phillips' Vertigo imprint Kid Eternity series (mostly with Daniel Vozzo as colorist, and Clem Robins as letterer, minus the first two issues that are lettered by John Workman.)

The series starts with the idea Kid Eternity needs to "save" mankind, but Nocenti quickly dives into a variety of problems with that. How do you "save" mankind? Does mankind even want to be saved? And if it does, why would you put that job in the hands of this teenager(?) who died in the '40s, mistakenly spent 30 years in Hell, and got superpowers as kind of an apology from the Forces That Be.

Nocenti writes Kid as very much a young, naive, tempestuous, well, kid. His ability to resurrect anyone (typically well-known figures) is played as a sign of the shallowness of his knowledge. He summons figures he's heard of, whether their reputation is legit or not. He's tasked to find people who might be able to produce future Buddhas, and summons Madame Blavatsky, because he thinks she's the world greatest psychic.

He finds out several issues later from a friend she was actually a fraud, but by then, all the people whose doors she marked as potential parents have been murdered by half-demon kids and the fabric of reality is falling apart, partially because Kid got distracted and never sent Blavatsky back to the afterlife. I'm not sure how her sitting around scarfing junk food and watching TV is causing people to not die or for Swiss Army knives to fly, but those things were happening.

There are forces working against Kid, one of the demon kids a girl named Sara in particular, and maybe a woman named Infinity, but it hardly seems necessary. Kid gets easily distracted or depressed, seizing on any little idea. A mushroom he ate is able to use him to communicate with the leader of a hate group opposed to the mixing of the races and make that guy see how pointless the divisions are. Kid gets real excited about the success and thinks it's just the start of him helping everyone see that they have far more in common than not.

He promptly gets slapped in the face and told he's acting like a "damaged hippie." He tries using TV to get his message across by resurrecting a notable figure (he picks Marilyn Monroe), and she's shot by some guy affected by watching TV within about 5 pages, so the whole thing comes off as just a stunt. Especially as Phillips and Vozzo depict her differently from everyone else in the book. Phillips thins out his linework and cuts down on some of the cross-hatching, while Vozzo colors her and her outfit in tones that much brighter and more solid than everyone else. It gives her an otherworldly quality, almost like one of those concerts with "hologram Tupac" or whatever. 

For the first 6 issues, Phillips keeps Kid's eyes hidden behind those sunglasses. It's only when Infinity tries to, well, I'm not sure what she was doing besides trying to dissuade him from his mission, that we see behind his glasses (and even then, his eyes are black-and-red spirals because of whatever she's doing.) He ends up in a mental hospital, under the care of a guy who has horns like a demon, but ultimately just wants to understand why some people are gifted with great abilities, but he's stuck watching and trying to understand.

Kid's time under that psychic microscope contrasts with his early attempt to figure himself out, when he summoned Freud and Carl Jung to simultaneously psycho-analyze him. In that conversation, Kid mostly is shown as a static figure, face partially shadowed as Freud and Jung argue with each other on either side of him. Like the proverbial angel and devil, though it hardly matters which is which because they seem more intent on pushing everything he says into their respective frameworks than actually helping him resolve any issues. Kid ultimately decides therapy is a 'vanity performance' and bails, again not sending them back to the afterlife.

With "Dr. Pathos", Nocenti and Phillips show us Kid's memories as he lived them, or show him in a straitjacket, floating in the middle of the panel, besieged by those various memories. Pathos sits outside all that, watching with growing irritation as he can't find what makes Kid special enough to get this honor. Sometimes, we don't see anything more of him than a finger, pushing a button on his machine that digs into the subconscious. This dive into the psyche is about kid, but it's not one he's undertaken willingly. The writer - or the audience? - digging through the character's trauma to get something usable, or appropriate, or maybe just suitably interesting. 

Saturday Splash Page #183

"Busy Bees," in The Seeds, by Ann Nocenti (writer) and David Aja (artist/color artist/letterer)

Originally intended as a 4-issue mini-series to be released under Dark Horse's short-lived Berger Books imprint, The Seeds released 2 issues in 2018, then vanished, only to appear as a complete TPB in 2020. Here's another review of the series I did 4 years ago. 

Earth is dying, or at least that's what everyone seems to think. A billionaire tried shooting himself into space, missed his mark, and crashlanded on Enceladus. The people living inside the walls are dealing with frequent power blackouts and loss of wi-fi or communications networks. The people who moved outside the walls are living in the remains of what's out there, trying to get by without technology. At least, without wireless technology. Phones, Internet, things like that. They still have guns and the wheel and haven't abandoned agriculture. There's a quartet of aliens going around, gathering seeds and biological specimens. They hope the Earth is dying, because otherwise, the stuff they're collecting isn't worth anything.

But I think the point is that life is more resilient than we give it credit for. It's just that our particular notion of "life" isn't going to hold. Throughout the story, technology keeps failing, but life perseveres. There are two people, we only ever see them in hazmat suits. One is convinced their mechanical drone bees will handle pollinization, now that real bees are being killed by insecticides, pesticides mites. Specifically, pollenizing almond trees, because nuts are big money. The other is betting on things like planting wildflowers for the bees, or for fungi to repair ecological damage. At the end, the real bees have turned the drones into building fodder in their hives. The hives they built inside the tech acolyte's power junction boxes, messing them up in the process.

The quartet of aliens are used to dealing with single-celled life. Intelligent alien life (as intelligent as humans get, anyway) is a new thing for them, and it seems to mess with them. Race falls in love, or at least takes an interest in, a girl named Lola. Convinces her to move outside the walls, protects her from her cohorts. Eventually abandons the project. The leader of the quartet loses it, starts watching TV and shooting the sets with rifles. When a reporter named Astra publishes a photo of him and he becomes a star, he goes inside the walls the meet the people who find him interesting. By the end, none of the aliens seem to be making any plans to leave.

If they're actually aliens. There's a panel on the second-to-last page that suggests they may be lab-created by a biotech company, one that flew by earlier (flying over the no-tech zone) and sprayed stuff that killed the bees. The seeds aren't worth anything if the planet's still alive.

Aja draws a lot of nine-panel grids. Sometimes they're each showing individual things, but other times it's part of a larger picture, just broken up into smaller bits. There's also a recurring honeycomb motif, and in many cases, it's revealed by zooming in on something. Show a turtle, then zoom in on the design of the plates on its shell. Or zoom in on the wings of a fly, or an image on a phone screen until we're looking at a few pixels. The honeycomb design keeps popping up, suggesting a connection between living things, that we're not each just individual organisms, and technology is just humanity's best attempt at replicating life.

Sunday Splash Page #331

 

"Deep in the Red," in Marvel Comics Presents #110, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Steve Lightle (artist), Kelly Corvese (colorist), Bill Oakley (letterer)

Marvel's most successful pure anthology run (at least here in the U.S., maybe not overseas), running for 175 issues from the late-80s to the mid-90s. A real staple for the "5 comics in a bag" things at the grocery stores of my youth. Four stories in each issue, different creative teams. Usually a mixture of done-in-ones and multi-chapter stories, spread across several issues. So the image above is from chapter 2 of an 8-part Wolverine and Typhoid Mary story, but that issue also had a one-off story about Nightcrawler encountering a Jack the Ripper-style killer in the streets of London.

Confession time: I own about 30 issues, but they've all been dismantled. I pulled the staples, gathered the page of the specific stories I wanted (like the one above), and then clumsily reassembled them, thereby removing all the chaff. Mostly stories about Venom, War Machine, or Vengeance. Those three really dominate the back half of the run.

As expected, it's a real mix. You get stuff like Sam Keith-illustrated Venom vs. Wolverine stories, or early Pat Lee on a Beast one-shot. Alan Davis dusting off his ClanDestine characters again. Gerry Conway and early Scott Kolins on a 9(!)-part Young Gods story. Nocenti wrote a pair of multi-chapter arcs about Typhoid Mary crossing paths with first Wolverine, then Ghost Rider, culminating in the entire 150th issue being devoted to a story with Wolverine, Daredevil, Vengeance and some vaguely-Silver Sable looking lady all gunning for Mary for various reasons. All of those drawn by Lightle.

There's also a lot of random stuff by writers or artists I've never heard of, lots of very '90s art with absurd physical proportions and a severe lack of visual clarity. That's the risk with anthologies titles. You pay for stuff you don't want along with the stuff you do. I don't think that's why Marvel and DC can't sustain books like that any longer; more likely fans are conditioned to dismiss anthologies as "unimportant" titles. Either that or the majority of writers and artists can't do compelling, or even entertaining, stories in 8 pages.

Sunday Splash Page #319

 

"Rabbit's Footrace," in Longshot #1, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Arthur Adams (penciler), Whilce Portacio and Brent Anderson (inkers), Christie Scheele (colorist), Joe Rosen (letterer)

In 1985, Ann Nocenti and Art Adams brought Longshot into the Marvel Universe. A young man with a power that makes things work in his favor, hunted by strange monster-men. Longshot doesn't know anything about Earth. Doesn't know where he came from, how he got these powers, why he's being hunted.

Longshot lacking any idea who he is or what he's supposed to be doing allows Nocenti to have him drift into a variety of situations. He falls into a job as a stuntman for a reckless director, alongside a stuntwoman called Ricochet Rita. When that nearly kills him, Longshot tries to help a man frustrated with his life by stealing a lot of diamonds. Except actually having the wealth doesn't make the man happy, so he goes back to his family.

He runs afoul of both She-Hulk and Spider-Man, meets the kids that Nocenti used in her Daredevil run, has a mysterious "friend" he met early on, a talking, furry creature that keeps growing larger and more monstrous, turn against him. He meets someone with a power the opposite of his, creating bad luck for its wielder rather than good.

Then Mojo and Spiral show up.

Two things Nocenti introduces, that it feels like most writers subsequently ignored or forgot, is that one, his power only works when his motives are "pure". Trying to jiggle the odds to make himself some bank, or just to show off a little, won't work. The other is, if Longshot's getting unnaturally, unfeasibly lucky, isn't someone else getting equally unlucky? This, more than lack of knowledge of his past, or really even Mojo, is Longshot's challenge. How can he be sure that when he acts, it's for the "right" reasons? Is he fighting Fang to protect others, or because he's mad his friend turned on him? And if his luck being good, so that he's someplace else when Mojo arrives, ends with Rita being tortured and driven nearly comatose, then does he can have business using his power at all?

Mojo's later appearances typically present him as some parody of a TV or movie producer. Chasing whatever cheap concepts will provide quick ratings, as that conveys power in his world. Hence things like "X-babies." Nocenti's original version of Mojo is just as egotistical, and suffers from just as much if not more of an attention span deficit, but he's more delusional, and always cruel, whether unwittingly or not.

Mojo may order everyone to wear masks of his face, then panic two pages later that everyone is stealing his face. He claims the sun, then assumes Longshot is trying to steal it when he arrives on a hang-glider. His very presence brings death, draining the life away from anything around him, making him poison from the moment he arrives on Earth. Adams draws a lot of panels that are close-ups of Mojo's face and head, letting him dominate the field of view, while also showing the wild swings in emotion.

In contrast, Spiral, who hates Longshot and regards Mojo with equal parts contempt and dependence, is usually kept at a distance. Even when she's in the foreground on panels, her face and expressions are usually obscured. The focus is on her actions, the "dance" that allows them to bridge dimensions, or the flashing of her swords as she tries to kill Longshot for reasons he doesn't understand. On a rare occasion we do get a close-up of her face, Scheele colors the entire eye yellow, with just shading to define the retina and pupil, the same as Mojo and Quark, the modified ram with bad luck ability. Longshot's the exception, marking his origin as something separate and outside Mojo's control.

The mini-series ends with Longshot determined to fight Mojo in their home dimension and free all the slaves there. A battle he's seemingly repeated through endless cycles of success, failure, mind-wiping repeat for the last 40 years. Except Claremont almost immediately hauled Spiral and Longshot both into the main X-Books, with Longshot seemingly still none the wiser for what Spiral's beef was with him. Also, any progress he'd made in his naivete over the course of this mini-series seemed undone. Those mind wipes come fast I guess.

Fabian Nicieza's the one who decided Spiral was actually Rita from some point the future, captured and modified by Mojo, then sent back in time to serve his earlier self. Meaning her hatred towards Longshot is that he didn't save her. Doesn't really jibe with Longshot having no sense of his connection to Spiral here, even once he regains his memories, not to mention that seems like too much of a long-term plan for Mojo to undertake. He'd be too jealous of his past self benefiting from all his hard work.

What I Bought 12/7/2023

The late nights when I help Alex with a gig definitely take more of a toll than they used to. Lot harder to drag myself out of bed in the morning. Or maybe I'm better about recognizing I don't need to get up, so take the extra sleep. Yeah, let's go with that.

For today, two mini-series that wrapped up last month.

Captain Marvel: Dark Tempest #5, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Paolo Villanelli (artist), Java Tartaglia (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - Carol's wondering who threw water on an electrical fire.

There's a lot in this. Blake's robot did finish patching up Nada last issue before rushing to Blake's aid, and now bot and creator are sort of woven together. No mention of the bot planning to swipe some of Nada's power or the threat that it's mind is linked across servers allover the world. Also, Nada's changed her helmet design and lost the trenchcoat. I didn't think much of it initially, but it's not a bad shift by Villanelli. The helmet covers everything except her mouth, which is maybe her real weapon. The rest is shielded, and she's ditched the coat that sort of billowed and hid her. She's ready to act openly, and expecting a fight.

The "ferals", minus the anthropologist, follow Nada to Earth, but the three kids don't agree with her plan to destroy power plants because that would shut down hospitals and kill people. They're more frustrated that technology was supposed to free people from drudgery and let them create, but it's being used to create art instead. So Nada rolls with it, telling Blake-bot to tamper with a quantum computer. Which is a different kind of machine, so it causes satellites to fall from the sky and fires in lithium battery factories, along with power outages. Which is probably fine with Nada, since I think her goal is just to convince Earthlings to destroy themselves and their world as revenge for what was done to her world.

There never is any resolution to the, "Earth was using Nada's world as an illegal landfill," thread.

Carol's late getting there because she got blindsided by Nitro, who is really just frustrated because he gets blamed for kill Mar-Vell. He didn't think the guy would jump on a radioactive bomb and get cancer, but now everyone hates him. Carol taking the name Captain Marvel just reminds him or how his notable accomplishment (I guess we're ignoring him blowing up a school in Civil War), made him a pariah. It's pitiful and sort of hilarious that he won by a complete accident, because he couldn't grasp Mar-Vell acting differently than Nitro would in that situation. What a moron.

Spider-Woman and the others show up during the fight with Nitro to help out and get Carol home. There's a bit where Carol is buried under an avalanche, where she wonders if she pushed the kids too hard, and that's why Nada was able to (initially) turn them. Maybe she's too bossy. By the time Spider-Woman shows up, Carol immediately gives her an order (even before the "glad to see you hug".) The panel above, the second and third caption boxes, that's basically the extent of her questioning whether she's off-track before doing the Principal Skinner, "it's the children who are wrong" meme.

She does set aside catching Nitro so they can get back to Earth, and leaves Nada to the ferals because she's best equipped to deal with plummeting satellites. So there's an ability to prioritize, to recognize which threat has to be dealt with by her, but I don't think she had an epiphany about how now everyone responds well to being bossed around or told to haul themselves up by their bootstraps.

There's something there about her demanding a lot of others, but no more than she expects of herself, but I don't think Nocenti pulled off what the story tries to suggest, that Carol did reach the kids. The three teens had their own notions of what's wrong with the world and how to fix it. Nada gave them power, but they wouldn't just follow her tune. Nada even acknowledges she chose people who were too willful. I think we needed one more real conversation between Danvers and the teenagers, after they've got their power and Nada's made her pitch, for me to believe Captain Marvel really impacted them.

Grit N Gears #6, by Angel Fuentes (writer), Nahuel SB (artist), Carlos M. Mangual (letterer) - Unlike some other comic covers that promise things like dead Cyclops, this scene does actually happen.

Maple reaches town as Razorfist has the reverend crucified. her attempt to get Screw Driver up and moving only makes her a target, and as Screw Driver tries to shield her, this triggers some latent programming which causes Maple's body to transform into a Gatling gun arm to replace Screw Driver's missing limb. Which brings a swift end to Razorfist and sets what's left of his gang to running.

Fuentes and SB have that sequence span two pages, with three rows of panels. The transformation is on the top row, while Screw Driver turning Razorfist to scrap takes the middle row, which gets probably two-thirds the page space. There's part of me that gets this is the big deal, the end of the antagonist, and so it deserves the most space. But it feels like the transformation is more significant in light of later developments, and it's confined to three small panels in the upper right corner. Some of that might be SB's thick lines and rough coloring can't quite give it enough weight. There's no sense of triumph or surprise really in the art. It just kind of happens.

Anyway, Screw Driver collapses and Maple reverts to her usual form. The reverend, in all the show of humanity and gratitude I'd expect of a man of the cloth, insists they be destroyed. Maple's brother objects, as does the marshal and at least some of the other residents. Marcus keeps the residents from fighting by taking Maple and Screw Driver home. Screw Driver gets a new arm, but Marcus still leaves to help his grandfather fight the laws making automatons illegal.

So it's Maple and Screw Driver, together, the way Maple's mother apparently intended, as we learn via a message she tried to send into the future before setting out to look for Screw Driver. They never do explain how Screw Driver or Razorfist could see or learn of songs from the future, but Maple's mother figured that must mean there was a way to send messages from the past.

That's basically where it ends. The singing cowboy (automaton), his adopted daughter/weapon mod, and their big insectile robot steed. Roaming the west together, no doubt staying one step ahead of that reverend. It's not a bad ending. Some light at the end, but not all tied together neatly.

What I Bought 11/4/2023 - Part 1

Hopefully I'm having a good final big inspection trip of 2023 when you read this. Everybody will be in compliance, and all the people I've been waiting on paperwork from for months won't decide now is the perfect time to e-mail me and expect immediate response. Fat chance on the latter, but might as well try to wish it into existence.

As for you, you get reviews of two books from last month's Marvel stuff today, and a pair of first issues on Friday.

Captain Marvel #4, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Paolo Villanelli (artist), Java Tartaglia (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - Carol, the vial of Pym Particles was clearly marked "Do not touch." Come on, now.

Captain Marvel's fighting Nada, who alternates between big talk and pity plays at the drop of a hat. Taunt Carol that she won't be able to drain away Nada's energy in one panel, accuse her of mocking the disabled for noting Nada's biological and mechanical parts don't get along. Matches Nada's say whatever suits her purposes approach, but also the narrow line she seems to walk with her power as she suddenly collapses. Captain Marvel manages to talk Blake's robot into helping Nada on the grounds she can help get Blake home, where it's safe, but the bot seems to be evolving in problem-solving faster than anyone's aware.

I like the use of basic symbols and sub-emoji faces for the bot, although at this point I have to think it's a ploy by the bot to make people underestimate it. Oh, it's just a simple robot, can't think for itself, doesn't even have real expressions. No reason to feel threatened or wary!

The Feral Five are not on the same page about their next moves. Blake wants to go home, Zaka's starting to miss his mom (who, along with Spider-Woman, is finally in space and on their way), Keziah is learning to communicate with the locals. None of them are happy when Captain Marvel shows up, and then Blake falls wrong and gets badly hurt. The bot shows up and starts merging/uploading Blake and I'm getting a little lost.

Nocenti's got too much going on in this. The kids' frustration with their lot, Keziah's anthropological interests, Nada's nihilism, cynicism, whatever. The concerns about A.I. How Captain Marvel's confidence can be a blessing and a curse. The polluted alien world.

Nitro's here, but done nothing the last 3 issues. We've not really seen enough of the alien world or the people still living aboveground to get a sense of how badly Earth's dumping fucked it up. Or Villanelli's erring drawing it as a mostly rocky landscape with nothing much else. The whole subplot of Spider-Woman trying to follow after Captain Marvel to help is there, plodding along at roughly 2 pages an issue, which I assume will pay off in some manner in the conclusion. I appreciate Nocenti's trying to pack a lot in here (a sharp contrast with the next book), but I'm afraid there's no way to pay most of it off, or even properly develop a lot of it.

Moon Knight #28, by Jed MacKay (writer), Federico Sabbatini (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Wait, is MacKay just having Moon Knight fight a version of Bane? Is that what's going on?

Moon Knight, Hunter's Moon and Tigra attack Black Spectre's headquarters, with the help of 8-Ball's flying Hover Rack. Which promptly gets shot down, but they crash land in the building, so it's fine. Hunter's Moon quickly gets sidetracked holding off a bunch of masked guys in suits, so that's one-third of the assault team out.

Tigra, after insisting she's coming on this mission and telling Marc he better not think of sidelining her because they're dating. . .triggers a pressure plate for an explosive and is reduced to standing in a hallway while Moon Knight goes off to confront the bad guy alone.

Sigh. Really, MacKay? She doesn't even get to handle some member of Black Spectre's crew that she'd be better suited to than Moon Knight? Like, after he leaves her, Moon Knight runs into more of the mask-and-suit guys, presumably so he can be kind of beat up when he actually reaches Black Spectre, and Rosenberg can put red stains on the white costume. Too bad he didn't have an incredibly agile and tough person with enhanced senses along to help. Who could probably have jumped out the window ahead of the explosion and used her very sharp claws to climb the building and meet Moon Knight up top. Maybe that's being saved for next issue, but my confidence in MacKay is draining fast.

What is it with writers at Marvel, they are incapable of figuring out anything cool to do with Tigra? This should not be difficult!

Moon Knight reaches the top floor and Black Spectre's waiting with a bat. The wooden implement, not the mammal. They don't actually fight, of course. Gotta save that. And Zodiac - wearing a gold chain that says "Zodiac" like the cheesiest loser alive - reaches the Midnight Mission, where he's gonna get to fight Reese. So she gets to confront the guy who's the reason she turned Soldier into a vampire, which is nice for her. I guess after MacKay went to the trouble of having her point of that a vampire who can turn to mist might be useful for the mission, he had to actually, you know, do something with her.

Sunday Splash Page #293

 

"Outer Demons," in Katana #3, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Cliff Richards (penciller), Rebecca Buchman, Juan Castro, Le Beau Underwood and Phyllis Novin (inkers), Pete Pantazis (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer)

I've discussed before that DC's New 52 didn't do a lot for me, China Mieville's Dial H being a notable exception (both in terms of my enjoying it, and it actually qualifying as something new.) But I was glad DC brought Ann Nocenti in to write some books. None of those runs lasted very long - the 10 issues Katana got was the most of any I read, but I don't know how long she wrote Catwoman - and none of them got much of a proper ending, but I've learned to take what I can get.

Nocenti keeps what I think was Katana's original deal, in that her sword houses her deceased husband's soul, and she's after his killers. Which she thinks is his old friend, now a big wheel in one of the criminal "Weapon" clans. Katana figures she might as well bring all the Weapons down at once, but finds that more difficult than expected.

In large part because she's not really thought much of it through. Nocenti's version of Katana is impulsive, confident bordering on arrogant, sharp-tongued and generally unwilling to concede. She gets her ass kicked more than once for pressing a fight she was better off abandoning. Even when she wins, she's often cut up or scarred, but she's determined to take vengeance, as a way of avoiding dealing with loss. She keeps pushing forward until she gets the truth, and has to decide who she's going to be.

Vengeance and grief, desire and power keep circling around. The people without power try to play by the rules of the ones with power, hoping they'll be able to live that way. Except the ones with power can change the rules whenever it suits them. Some people give in to despair, some lash out, some act to change things. It's all about how people handle it.

The book suffers from inconsistent art. Alex Sanchez is the initial artist, and ends up drawing around 6 issues' worth of the book (he and Cliff Richards share art duties on a few issues), and some of the page layout choices are just peculiar. Sanchez seems fond of a pages with a large central panel, almost a splash page, with postage stamp-sized panels scattered on top. The central panel often makes for a striking image, but most of the important action is relegated to the smaller panels, where it's difficult to parse. I don't think it's an issue of Nocenti's scripts, because the problem disappears when Richards is the artist. Richards has some interesting layouts, too, but they're usually easier to follow. Sliding diagonally across two pages as the battle goes first up, then down a tree. Things like that.

The book ends with several unresolved plot threads I'm 99.9% certain no one else ever followed up, but Nocenti at least has Katana come to a realization of what type of person she wants to be and how she wants to do things. A little closure in that regard, at least.

What I Bought 9/13/2023 - Part 2

A nice, quiet weekend ahead of a week spent on the road. Possibly the last quiet weekend for the next month, though. Several impending engagements with friends and family, plus I'd still like to do that longer day trip I had planned at some point before the weather turns.

Captain Marvel: Dark Tempest #3, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Paolo Villanelli (artist), Java Tartaglia (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - Uh-oh, Carol's caught by the Fructose Bands of Life Savers.

Carol finds her way out of wherever Nada put her with the help of. . .I'm not sure what. Villanelli draws it as having a thin, shale-like outer layer, with a dark interior, save for a purple ring/eye/circle. Carol initially takes it as a threat, but changes her mind and it lets her fly out the eye to appear back in space.

Nada, meanwhile, is waiting on the other Earthfolk to decide to take her offer or not. There's some bickering, but two of the teenagers and the journalist are down. The teens' sister, Zen, reluctantly decides to stick with her brothers, and Blake's robot concludes Blake needs power too, because the bot can't protect him on an alien planet. I like that part, that the A.I. grew and responded outside of Blake's expectations or commands, even as it's still limited by them to try and protect its creator.

By the time Captain Marvel finds them, they're killing some of the local wildlife, for reasons that aren't apparent. Seems like a generic strength, speed, energy blast power set. They have different glowing yellow symbols on their faces, but I'm not sure what they mean. Remind me of a schematic for a circuit path of something. Like in Terminator 2, when Arnold's systems reroute from his back-up power source and there's a little red-and-black diagram? Kinda like that, but with yellow-orange.

Anyway, not sure how they got that from Nitro exploding while covered with Nada's weird purple goo-stuff. Probably doesn't matter. The key seems to be they have power and (theoretically) control, but what are they gonna do with it? The journalist, Keziah, said she would be happy to get power if it helped her communicate with these alien lifeforms. Instead she's killing those lifeforms? Was it self-defense? Did she try to communicate? Did she even get that power in the grab-bag?

Nitro also seems to be having doubts about his parent. Nada's a little too glib, comparing the whole thing to high school and them just needing to look "cool" to sell the Earthlings on her deal. Too confident she can outflank Captain Marvel again if need be. Although she does, in fact, outflank Carol again by the end of this issue. Fake it until you make it, I guess.

There's also a couple of pages spent on Spider-Woman and Carol's other pals trying to get a spaceship up and running to go help, but that's getting nowhere fast. Hopefully that thread will come to some sort of point before too long, because there's only two issues left.

What I Bought 8/9/2023

Tuesday morning I told the maintenance people at my apartment something related to the AC was leaking water. The last time it happened, it made the linoleum on my kitchen swell and caused stains on the ceiling of the apartment downstairs. I figured given all that, they'd get to it that day.

Took them until yesterday afternoon. Hopefully the floor didn't get worse since I had to choose it a couple of times in between to keep the temps tolerable.

Captain Marvel: Dark Tempest #2, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Paolo Villanelli (artist), Java Tartaglia (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - Aw crap, Nitro's exploding so hard he's fracturing the walls of reality.

Carol and the disaffected teens arrive on another planet. The planet is kind of a craphole, because apparently Earth companies have been paying someone to illegally dump all sorts of waste there. The wealthy on the planet fled underground to bunkers and left the rest of their people on the surface. Carol tries to investigate the surroundings, but gets jumped by Nitro and Nada. She doesn't recognize the former and they fight in space so he can't talk and say who he is, but Nada drags her in somewhere with her weird powers and that's the last we see of her.

Meanwhile, the teenagers and Keziah (the anthropologist who was also talking to the teens) are trying to figure out what the situation is on this planet and how to survive. Blake, who built the AI smartbot, is mostly complaining that the teens are complaining about helping him after he didn't make any effort to help them during atmospheric entry. The robot is rather polite, in that way it offers information that is sorta relevant to their conversations and thanks one of the teens for rolling it out of its landing crater. Then Nada shows up, offering them power.

Also, Spider-Woman's trying to figure out some way to get to Carol when all the super-teams are off doing other crap. Can't believe she wasted time calling Cyclops, like the X-Men were gonna help some inferior human.

I guess we'll see if Nada gets them to accept her offer. She's very good at playing to people's desires or worst instincts, at complimenting them or being glib and sounding clever. Like with Nitro (who is at least starting to question if he just a tool to her.) But even when she does play empathetic, she can't resist being condescending. When Nitro grouses that Captain Marvel is hoarding power, Nada questions whether "power" can be hoarded, that there's a finite amount of it in the universe. She even asks Nitro if, by being so angry at Danvers, is he hoarding anger, and thus depriving others of it. It doesn't seem like a serious question, more like she can't help stirring shit up, even with someone she ostensibly wants on her side.

Of course, Danvers is taking the brusque approach with the teenagers. Accusing them of whining, rather than trying to do something, or spouting motivational poster stuff about how even if they die tomorrow, if they do something good today it was worth it. It's half lead by example and half "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" speeches. It could work in the way reverse psychology does, but it could also be very off-putting.

Villanelli doesn't have as many chances to draw Danvers standing tall and looking impressive, but Danvers does still tend to dominate the panels she's in with the others. And the internal narration Nocenti gives her doesn't spend time on doubt. It portrays Danvers as confident, direct, seemingly always knowing what to do or at least what to try. No indecision, no hesitation, just action because she's sure she has things under control. Meanwhile, Nada tends to be drawn with her face obscured by her hood, just eyes and a Cheshire Cat smile. But she also leans in towards people a lot, invading their space like she's trying to read them so she can tailor her sales pitch.

What I Bought 7/8/2023

I hoped with 3 Marvel comics last week to have two days' worth of reviews. Also, to have them going on Friday. But the store in town didn't get their shipment of Marvel books, and the one in the next town over didn't have Fantastic Four. So we make do.

In other news, Alex bought a PS5 last week, which means I now have a Playstation 4. Huzzah! Now I just have to get in the habit of putting some time aside to play stuff again.

Captain Marvel: Dark Tempest #1, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Paolo Villanelli (artist), Java Tartaglia (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - Carol faces her greatest foe, Squid-Face.

The story starts in Maine, where Carol's waiting out a storm in a bar - she's not drinking - with some local sailor pals of hers. She saves some guy's sailboat from getting dashed on the rocks, then zooms into space to investigate some weird purple hole that sprouts tentacles. But she threw an asteroid at it and it went away, so I'm sure everything is fine. Then it's off to speak to some disaffected teens who feel there's no hope for the future.

Nocenti's Carol is very confident, bordering on arrogant. Not Tony Stark levels of self-confidence, but getting there, and Nocenti touches on how that can frustrate some people. She saves the boat without her powers, simply to win a bet. She ignores a scientist's advice to not just start attacking the mysterious space hole (to be fair, it was projecting tentacles). Villanelli draws Carol in dynamic or aggressive postures most of the time. She's striding forward or leaning into the storm as she works the sails. Or she's doing the classic superhero posture with us looking up at her. She's large and in charge, or feels like she is, anyway.

Stark doesn't mind in their brief conversation, but Jessica Drew is written as a bit more cynical than Carol (not as much as the teens, however) and the two friends have a bit of back-and-forth. Carol's like a walking motivational poster, opining that as long as you've got one day, you have a future. The question seems to be whether that's inspirational, which is probably what Carol thinks, or demoralizing/patronizing because she has advantages those teens do not. Carol did push through disasters - some of her own making - but that isn't the image she projects, so people don't see that.

The antagonists appear to be a mysterious hooded person with purple portal abilities, who calls themselves Nada, and Nitro. Yes, "kicked off Civil War, killed cancer-ridden Mar-Vell" Nitro. Who seems to be losing control of himself and his powers, and is frustrated of getting stuck talking to 'bots when he wants medical help. He thinks Nada is a kindred soul who hates technology, but it's pretty clear from the dialogue Nada is telling Nitro whatever gets him to buy in. He goes from ranting about 'bots to ranting about hating Captain Marvel, and Nada tells him she's actually a bunch of nanobots grown in a lab to steal everyone's opportunities to shine, then doesn't even remember that when they talk later. A little like these machine-learning things that just spit your input back at you.

Clobberin' Time #5, by Steve Skroce (writer/artist), Bryan Valenza (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - Seems more like disassemblin' than clobberin' to me.

Ogdu Fraize is planning to absorb all the energy of the Big Bang and use it to create a universe on his terms, as outlined in his over 200,000 page manifesto. Which he forces Ben, Boom, and the Un-Watcher to listen to. That monster!

The Un-Watcher gets them free, but Doom immediately gets blasted out of his armor. Skroce then places a big "CENSORED" bar over Doom's exposed face until he can get in another suit. Ben confronts Ogdu, which doesn't go too well to start. That suggested speech thing Reed gave him tries to psychologically deconstruct Ogdu, which mostly just pisses him off. But it does cause him to lean in close enough Ben can damage his suit and then knock him out.

It's a bit of a weird way to go, as the last page of the fight is Ben unaware he's muttering updates from the device like "systems failure", and Ogdu thinking these are more attempts to insult or dismiss him. But Ogdu is from a future where they only know bits and pieces of the era Ben's from, and he's focused primarily on stealing and retro-fitting that stuff to his plan. He's so dismissive of the era, or simply convinced the Thing won't stop until he's completely dead, that he can't realize that's not what's going on.

I'm not sure it works as a climax, but it's not bad. The fact Thing is so out of it he's mindlessly repeating that stuff helps play up the damage he's taken. This time Ogdu's blown off some of the outer later of rocks in jagged canyons and tears, rather than the more clinical, curious way he pulled him apart in issue 2. On the other hand, that Ben is just mindlessly repeating that stuff kind of says he was beat at that moment. In no position to even try to fight back, except that Ogdu got drawn into arguing with essentially a load screen. Overall, I'm not entirely satisfied with it as a wrap up to their fight, but your mileage may vary.

So the plan goes bust, the universe and Galactus proceed as they originally did. Doom drags what's left of Ogdu somewhere to face 'equitable justice,' which probably won't be good. Ben's friends look after him while he recovers, and the comic ends with Ben getting a prank over on the Human Torch. Which is a nice way to wrap things up, actually, things back to normal.

Random Back Issues #104 - Daredevil #267

We looked at an issue from just before this one 2 years ago. At that point, Kingpin's plan to use Typhoid Mary had pretty effectively burned Matt's life to the ground. Now, Daredevil's going to finish the job himself.

But first he's gotta go to confession. He finds his mother telling a group of kids about how God forgives everyone, even Lucifer, which one of the kids says makes God stupid. Matt's confession is an awkward thing, as he mentions his using violence to achieve his ends, his infidelity, his desire to kill his enemies. The priest is a barely defined void on the other side of the screen, eyes just dark holes, but he tells Matt he's being too hard on himself, that he needs to control the murder urges, and that God forgives.

Matt storms out, insisting he can't control himself, nor be forgiven. Well. Never mind, then.

DD protects Lance, the son of Bullet, who recently beat hell out of Daredevil as part of Typhoid's plan, from some bullies. He comes home with him, intending to kill Bullet. But an apartment filled with boxes of food and supplies meant to sustain Lance after the nuclear war he's sure is coming is so depressing it weakens Matt's resolve. He tries focusing on the details, or "the inches", to avoid the big picture. The big picture means confronting all the fucking up he did, the ruin his life's become. The ruin this kid's life is. Better to focus on how Lance uses bubble gum to fix gun mounts.

Bullet shows up by smashing through the front door. He and Daredevil fight a bit, Matt unable to unravel the contradictions of him wanting revenge on this hired killer, who also loves his son in some strange, stunted fashion. Lance fires a gun to get them to stop, Bullet apologizes (sort of) for beating Daredevil up, but it was 'just business.' DD shrugs it off, because Bullet is ultimately just that, a bullet. The one to be angry with is the one responsible for sending the bullet his way. So, time to go after Typhoid or Kingpin, right?

Wrong. Matt buys a train ticket out of the city, again trying to focus on just what he hears and smells around him, rather than what he's doing (running away) and why he's doing it (because he fucked up.) They pass a small plane crash in a field, and Matt, without thinking, jumps off the train to help. Romita Jr. used that same wide-legged posture earlier in the comic, when Matt leapt from the church steeple. Significance of leaping into new danger, maybe?

The guy he drags out is insistent on running back into the fire to retrieve bags of junk food and radio equipment. Well, I suppose nose candy is a type of junk food. Since Matt's blind, the guy figures he didn't see the cocaine that spilled from the bag, and why not offer him a job on his farm, to be neighborly? Sure, what's the worst that could happen?

{3rd longbox, 77th comic. Daredevil #267, by Ann Nocenti (writer), John Romita Jr. (penciler), Al Williamson (inker), Gregory Wright (colorist), Joe Rosen (letterer)

What I Bought 11/9/2022 - Part 1

The elections here in Missouri went about as poorly as I expected. Pretty sure everyone I voted for lost. Badly. But since he won the Senate seat, now our dipshit of an Attorney General is the rest of the country's problem, too. But weed is apparently legal now, which is good for the people who like that. Assuming the state Congress doesn't ignore the results, which they've done on other election results in the last few years. Like when the public voted to establish an independent board to set up election districts in an attempt to block gerrymandering and Congress ignored it. 

It's a lovely state except for all the people who live here. Anyway, comics.

Moon Knight #17, by Jed MacKay (writer) Alessandro Cappuccio (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) -  Moon Knight does not fight an actual lion in this issue. Sorry, fans of stuff like the Punisher punching a bear or Captain America fighting sharks.

Moon Knight drags, literally in Nemean's case, the two assassins into the Midnight Mission and lets it take the two of them apart. Grand Mal gets buried under a bunch of corpses, and Nemean thinks a bunch of stuff trapped him to be swarmed over by bugs over something. I'm not sure Cappuccio's art really works for this. Doesn't quite carry a traumatizing horror vibe to it. 

That said, I do like the shift is shading or coloring on Moon Knight in the Midnight Mission. The shadows go from a very stark on/off look, to something more graded and almost patchwork. Combined with making the eyes glow, it adds an otherworldly feel to Moon Knight when they're in this nightmare sort of place.

And while Hunter's Moon did die, apparently Khonshu's Fists don't can't die, so he's back. I feel as though it would need to be pointed out that if they don't die, why does Khonshu need more of them? Shouldn't he just have the same two for thousands of years. Why does God need a spaceship, I mean, new fists? I suppose they can still die of old age.

That done, MacKay shifts to the big vampire conference. The Tutor makes his pitch, full of lovely buzz words like, 'Aggressive recruitment models', and 'Postmodern vampiric organization.'  Apparently, being many centuries old doesn't keep vampires from being rubes ripe to be duped by hucksters. Fortunately, Moon Knight spares us from any further chatter by Vampire Marc Zuckerberg, by dumping Nemean and Grand Mal through the skylight, then walking through the door with Tigra. Tigra sporting something from the mid-2000s Jennifer Lopez collection, no less.

X-Men Legends #4, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Javier Pina (artist), Jim Campbell (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Wait, is that the same Jim Campbell who did the lettering on Giant Days? He's a colorist, too?

So Mojo's film plays out, but Wolverine and Shadowcat don't realize it's a film, so they're trying to kill each other, while other soldiers try to kill Mojo. Logan gradually notices that people are filming this and the fact his soldiers keep talking about acting and motivation finally sinks in. During this, Longshot lands on a mine that'll explode if he moves. So Kitty and Logan help him out.

During all this, Spiral is trying to undermine Mojo's film and make it into her own. I'm not clear on which parts are her doing, and which aren't. I assume when everyone stops trying to kill each other and they work together to survive. The blue snake idly watching in the foreground while a rabbit scampers in the background. Ooh, symbolism. That's definitely not Mojo, since his idea of symbolism would be a big red "STOP" sign. Also, Kitty opining that giving a bomb a female name (Bouncing Betty) is sexist. OK, Spiral's script writing needs some work.

Either way, Campbell lightens the hues a bit once that happens, as the first several pages were like someone was shooting through a dirty filter. Pina's art is realistic enough to give the characters convincing emotional reactions, which are just a little melodramatic in how they're framed. A narrow panel of Logan looking up (at what?) as he announces the danger Longshot's in. He looks appropriately grim about it, but in the weary way of someone who has seen this many times before.

There's a bit about the difference in how Mojo and Spiral see life, and how that informs what kind of stories they tell. Mojo puts people in situations, but sits back and watches as they destroy themselves. He doesn't know how it'll happen, but it'll happen. To him, that's life, unpredictable and ending violently. Spiral says that hers is about the story taking a different direction from what you expect, but it always loops back. No end, no escape. I've definitely watched some movies I thought would never end. But zigging instead of zagging is just being unpredictable, isn't it? Or maybe it's just being contrary.

Anyway, the mine, once tossed clear by Logan, opens a doorway that whisks the heroes off, Spiral intending to use them to start her own film franchise. That, does not work as she gets a little dragon fire in the face. The X-Men get sent home with no memory of what happened. Longshot, I'm not sure what happens to him, other than Spiral promises he'll end up in another of her films again. She wins a bunch of awards, Mojo fumes, but is intrigued by the idea of mutants.

Well, I like Nocenti's work because it's always got something going on in it. That doesn't mean I can figure out what that something is. Mojo doing no work, but claiming the credit for what Spiral does, letting the audience decide what happens based on their whims, rather than actually having an idea and committing to seeing it through. Spiral has one, and even if it doesn't all work, at least she took a chance. But even when she succeeds, Mojo's using it to springboard to something bigger for himself. The entirely derivative X-Babies. That's showbiz!

What I Bought 10/26/2022 - Part 2

I didn't really plan to save the horror book for Halloween, it worked out that way because Friday's books were loosely, "concluding stories", and these two books are still in their first half.

Sgt. Rock vs. the Army of the Dead #2, by Bruce Campbell (writer), Eduardo Risso (artist), Kristian Rossi (colorist), Rob Leigh (letterer) - Rock is not happy with the festive burning zombie decoration.

Good news, everyone! Campbell and Risso did mostly get exposition out of the way in the first issue! By the time we see Easy Co. in this issue, they're already sneaking around the "industrial district" of Berlin, looking for the zombie-generating lab. They find a heavily-guarded place where bodies are being delivered, but their attempts to commandeer a truck fall prey to the rear of the truck being full of undead Nazis.

Dealing with that requires a lot of shooting and some grenades, which somehow doesn't attract immediate attention. So they're able to spy on the factory long enough to see Hitler's personal physician leaving (after receiving some drugs, which I'm sure implies something unpleasant with regards to the genocidal failed painter). But more undead soldiers show up, and fire doesn't kill them, or at least not quickly, so it's out the window, into a truck and chase that doctor.

The opening scene is definitely the creepiest part of the issue (not that the book is terribly creepy or scary). A bunch of the undead soldiers in a tavern, drinking. Then they start shooting each other, but it's all in fun as they laugh at how it doesn't kill or even really harm them. One of them gets shot through the back, laughs, drinks, and watches the beer pour out the bullet holes like he's Daffy Duck. Then they all laugh with these wrinkled, decayed faces, and Rossi colors the whole thing in a sickly grey-green that almost matches the undead's skin.

I don't know if it's more unsettling or less to think these guys still have some capacity for thought and understanding of their situation. The fact they understand and seem to revel in it is disturbing. When Bulldozer's stuck fighting one in close quarters later, he empties a revolver in the guy's gut, and said guy just keeps grinning (and drooling, these undead guys have all got permanent drool coating their chins) and saying he'll live forever. Reminds me a bit of the Letzses Battalion from Hellsing, although these guys are a bit goofier than that lot, who gleefully mangled and shredded human bodies at will.

X-Men Legends #3, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Javier Pina (artist), Jim Campbell (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - I want Spiral to be throwing up some devil horns with her fingers to show she's enjoying this descent into a weird portal thing.

This is set immediately after the original Nocenti/Art Adams Longshot mini-series from the '80s. Longshot's captured by Mojo and dragged back to the Mojoverse, where Mojo plans - I use the term loosely - his next big cinematic piece with his incredibly lucky star. Dr. Strange may have stitched the portal shut, but Spiral reopens it and grabs Wolverine, Shadowcat and Lockheed, who came to investigate. Little reprogramming and recostuming later, and they're ready for starring roles in a big war picture. On opposing sides, naturally.

The heroes are almost props in this issue, as Nocenti seems most focused on Mojo, Spiral, and Major Domo. The resent the latter two hold for their boss, only thinly veiled (if that.) The contempt he holds for them, if even that. Mojo typically gets written as a comedy villain, maybe ever since the X-Babies thing. Just a big yellow blob that sees everything in terms of the entertainment value he can squeeze from it. Nocenti's the only one who seems to actually show that he's dangerous. Not just whatever it is about him that kills natural things by his mere presence. More the complete disregard for anyone or anything else.

He's a bit like a child, but an especially cruel one. Pain that happens to others, doesn't exist. Everyone is to be used by him, and you're only hope in getting him to listen is by appealing to his ego. He has no grasp of depth. As he puts it, characters change by being alive at the beginning of the story, and dead by the end. Major Domo argues in favor of creating real characters and giving them conflicts, but it only works because he points out that Mojo's ratings will plummet if they're bored for even a second. In panels where Mojo's the only character, he fills them, or close to it. A lot of those panels are close-up on his face. If he shares the panels with someone else, he still dominates it. 

Even in a full-page splash where Longshot briefly escapes and makes a speech while attacking Mojo, Mojo is in the foreground, taking up more of the panel than Longshot and Spiral (relegated to a small corner) combined. Even when Spiral and Domo plot betrayal, they're presented as greyed outlines, while Mojo's is this yellow shadow that looms in the background. He's got to be the star, the genius, the one everybody loves. Or else.

The Seeds of Destruction

Feels like the kid summed up the human condition rather neatly.

The Seeds was originally going to be a 4-issue mini-series published through Dark Horse's Berger Books line. Ann Nocenti and David Aja got two issues out, and then it just dropped off the radar. Finally, they released a collection of what would have been all 4 issues last winter.

So, the Earth's on the verge of total collapse. Some people still live in crowded cities, others have gone beyond the wall, abandoning phones and internet and whatnot to scratch out whatever existence they can. Probably the main character is Astra, your typical reporter in fiction who wants to do hard-hitting journalism, but has to give her editor the cheap sensationalist crap that gets views, or clicks, or whatever. And what Astra finds that might do both is Lola and Race. 

Lola's a young woman in a wheelchair. Race is a guy she finds herself growing fond of. Race is also part of a quartet of aliens living out beyond the wall. They're here because someone - it's never revealed who - is pretty sure Earth is about to go belly up. Their job is to gather as many seeds as possible for the Celestial Seed Bank. They aren't conquerors, or grand beings with plans of creating some Eden, so much as they're contractors, hired and sent to do a job. Race and one of the others, Sandy, both note at different times most planets they're sent to haven't gotten past single-celled life, so this was actually sort of a nice assignment.

 

A lot of the book is about choices, what people are going to decide is important. Is Race important enough to Lola to go beyond the wall? Is she important enough to him to go against his team's leader, who is clearly enjoying Earth a little too much. Is the opportunity to write the stories she wants worth Astra outing Lola as the one sleeping with an alien? Her boss argues yes, the public has a right to know there might be alien babies running around, but her boss also admitted that when she was going to write an article about a vampire cult, she created it herself. Basically, tell the lie hard enough it becomes truth.

There are a couple of other bits Nocenti adds in to round it out. A farmer wondering why his bees abandoned their hives, and feeling really bad about having to kill his prize sow. There are also two scientists somewhere, each of them with different ideas about what's going to save the planet, technology or nature. Which feels like a false dichotomy, since you can presumably use technology to help nature along. Technology might help you clear a field of invasive species so you could restore a native prairie full of wildflowers for the bees, for example.

I think Aja handles all the art and color work himself. The book sticks to a black/green-gray scheme. Which allows for high-contrast at times, but also can give things a sickly look. You probably wouldn't think a plant that shade of green was doing very well if you saw it. But it works. Even just the absence of the shadows works. Like when Astra's able to enlarge a photo of some idiot billionaire whose spaceship crashed on Enceladus, and she can somehow make out there's a plant sprouting in his eye socket inside his helmet. Cue Jeff Goldbloom "life finds a way."

 

He uses a pretty 9-panel grid most of the time. In some cases it's only one or two rows of 3 panels, and then a larger panel takes up the other third or two-thirds of the page. It makes things feel very restricted, I guess. Everything is caught in their own little boxes. Disconnected from larger things, maybe. There's a recurring motif of hexagonal grids. Beehives, insect wings, chain link fences, people's tattoos. I don't know what that means. Life falls into particular ordered patterns, and attempts to circumvent that are futile? Even if everyone is trying to isolate themselves, they still are connected? Trying to pretend nothing we do has an impact, and nothing else can impact us is a ludicrous notion? The things some people put stock in are incredibly fragile, while things considered archaic are more resilient than we expect?

I'm just spitballing, I don't really know. But I enjoy trying to figure it out.

Random Back Issues #60 - Katana #2

Katana's smack talk is still a work in progress.

I think Ann Nocenti's Katana series is the only other New 52 title I still have besides Dial H. Oh wait, no, I bought the tpb of that Giffen and Didio OMAC series a few years back. Nevermind. Anyway, Katana! I haven't read it in a few years at least, so trying to remember what the heck is going on's a treat. There's a bunch of clans based around what weapons they favor, and Katana's after the Sword Clan, who she holds responsible for her husband's death. She tangled with a guy named Coil, who uses a sword like whip in the first issue, but he's got a lot of reinforcements, and it ends with her refusing an offer to join and everyone scattering.

Katana catches up to one of them, the guy up above, who doesn't want to fight her. Instead, he'd rather parley, even agrees to help her infiltrate his family and bring them down. Which involves her attending a social function in disguise as his date. First though, she visits a woman with tattoos over all of her body, Shun the Untouchable. If I remember right, the tattoos can tell you important stuff, but it costs money for a peek and Tatsu's out of cash, so all she gets is a glimpse of a dragon on the foot and a riddle or proverb.

 

While she's trying to make a plan, she gets harassed by your typical drunk-ass bum martial arts master, who throws candy at her, calls her a twit, then kicks her butt when she fights him. He tells her she's got to learn how to disguise herself. He also explains the riddle that if one is past and two is present, then third is the future. Meaning what Tatsu saw is a glimpse of a future?

The big party has a bunch of ladies with double-ended swords putting on a demonstration. Their boss Sickle steps out and asks if anyone wants to accept a challenge, so Katana jumps in and fights the lot of them. She wins, but her sword acts on its own near the end. And since Sickle is her dead husband's brother and someone else who tried to win her heart, he knows who's under the mask. When he tells her to join up or he'll blow her secret identity, she agrees. The better to get close to her enemy.

 

But that'll have to wait because as she exits the party she's accosted by Steve Trevor, who wants to recruit her for that other Justice League. The one that had Vibe in it. Maybe Hawkman? I can't remember. I more surprised that she apologizes for putting her sword to his throat when he introduces himself. Maybe he was the League's public liaison, but I can't picture him being a well-known figure. 

And meanwhile, Killer Croc of all people has taken an interest in her, because her sword was said to have killed the last dragon, and I think Croc wants to level up. From what was sometime interpreted as a dragon, to the real thing.

[6th longbox, 90th comic. Katana #2, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Alex Sanchez (penciler), Claude St. Aubin (inker), Matt Yackey (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer)]