What I Bought 6/29/2026 - Part 1

The weather has turned miserable here in the last few days, in the usual manner of being hot, with a humidity that is nearly suffocating. At least it waited until the end of June to start. Really couldn't hope for better than that. Definitely will miss actually wanting to be outside for the next couple of months. Suppose that leaves me more time for comics, so let's get into the last few holdouts from June, starting with a first issue.

Junk Punch #1, by Paul Tobin (writer), Javier Olivares (artist), Francesca Vivaldi (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer), Colleen Coover (artist/inker/colorist/letterer) - Something about the color of her outfit, combined with the big smile makes me keep thinking I'm looking at Squirrel Girl. Maybe it's that the guy in the spacesuit near her butt resembles a big, fluffy tail?

Clara Castanelle has, as she explains to one of her victims on page 2, a chemical affliction that makes her compulsively punch people in the junk. When she's not doing that, she's getting drunk, feeding peanut butter to pigeons so bug-eyed I think they were crossbred with pugs, having orgies, and maybe, possibly, helping people with problems. If a fortune cookie tells her to.

The problem of the moment is someone stealing goals. Not life goals, but goals in soccer games. As in, the ball is flying towards the net, then swerves off into the sky for no apparent reason. Information gathered by a couple of her allies - a fortune teller named "Medium Cotton", who walks around in cowboy boots, underwear and a turban, is prominently involved - think a crime lord named Silverhand is behind all this. But, Silverhand's knows Clara's investigating and has upped the apparently preexisting bounty on her head so that she's the #1 target in the city, instead of #7.

My main takeaway from the first issue, is I may not be on the right wavelength for this book. Tobin and Olivares are clearly going for absurd, but it's not hitting with me for some reason. A guy named "Joey Bagoducks", who ends up with one of his ducks trying to assassinate Clara, only to turn out to be a dude in a duck suit after she punches him in the junk, that's absurd. Obviously. And people who try to assassinate her shout "ASSASSIN!" in a very different font (though Esposito uses that for several different words or phrases during the issue.)

But I spent most of the issue metaphorically scratching my head and wondering what I was looking at, instead of laughing. Maybe it's that things are too random, or maybe it's just Clara that's too random. She's goes from agreeing to help find the stolen goals, to forgetting what she was doing a page later, to flipping a coin to decide whether to enter a bar, then entering before the coin hits the ground, to having an orgy two pages later. The junk punching thing feels less like a chemical affliction, and more like something she does just whenever it catches her fancy. Which is true of everything else in her life.

Olivares and Vivaldi making Billowing City a cramped, dingy-looking place. Buildings stretches high above and almost obscure the sky entirely, but they aren't gleaming or impressive feats of architecture. Mostly lots of cheap neon lights and dirty streets, but lots of people. Wide variety of colors and outfits, but nothing garishly bright. Like everybody is so fully flying their freak flag they all kind of cancel each other out. 

A Tale Fit for Legend

Corrective dental work for those choppers must be hella expensive.

Thor and the Warriors Four starts on a down note: one of the Power kids' grandmothers is dying. Katie doesn't really understand the problem, Jack's angry, Alex is struggling to look after them and be realistic, and Julie's in, I guess bargaining.

Which is where the book of Norse Myths a helpful nurse just happened to give Julie comes in. She gets the idea they just need to travel to Asgard and ask for one of Idunn's Golden Apples, and their grandmother will be fine. An abrupt (and oddly convenient) team-up with the Pet Avengers against the saddled Asgardian wolves offers a way to reach Asgard. Then a helpful old man, who needs one of the apples for his ailing wife, helps them out with clothes that disguise the fact they're mortals, even from Heimdall.

It's unclear how long the kids are in Asgard, as this all seems to take place in the span of one night on Earth, but they develop a reputation as the "Warriors Four" for being very helpful around Asgard. When they even help Thor and Beta Ray Bill fight a frost giant, Thor agrees to ask Odin for one of the apples.

At which point all the Asgardians turn into babies, offering the Gurihiru art team ample opportunities to draw cute stuff, which they are very good at. Beta Ray Bill de-ages too, I guess because of the enchantment on Stormbreaker? The helpful old man shows up to guide them to the path to the apples, Julie, Jack and Katie retrieve the apples, defeating Ratatoskr (called "Ratatosk" here) in the process, over five years before Ryan North used the Norse Squirrel of Mischief in Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.

Loki's really fallen on hard times if he's gloating about outsmarting a group of grieving children. As usual, Loki didn't think things through, and the gods beginning to age to what their years are brings about unexpected consequences. Like Ragnarok. Loki gets his at the end, but I think Zalben missed out not letting at least one of the Power kids give Loki a good sock in the kisser.

Zalben uses the kids' desperation to save their grandmother to drive the conflicts. There's a bit about Alex and Julie disagreeing about magic and science, whether a gold apple can actually give immortality, but it's written so it feels like a defensive reaction and Alex trying to be the older sibling. He doesn't want to get their hopes up (or his own), and to keep them out of danger, so he tries to talk them out of it, to dismiss the possibility anything can be done. Julie's willing to take the risk, take almost any risk, to try and save her grandmother. If that means believing in magic, fine. If that means stealing the apples, fine.

Zalben keeps up the adversarial relationship between Katie and Jack for comedic effect here, with Jack hogging credit for Katie's victory over Ratatosk, and Katie describing her brother to a doctor as 'having dark and is mean.' That, plus Katie's fascination with Beta Ray Bill, or "Thorse", and the various baby hijinks keep things from getting too depressing.

Each issue also has a back-up story written and drawn by Colleen Coover, about Hercules taking over babysitting Power Pack for Johnny Storm, and keeping them entertained by telling about the 12 Labors he undertook to prove himself to Hela. There's also a brief fight with HYDRA (the terrorist group, not the multi-headed mythological beast) when they try to steal some of Dr. Power's science stuff.

Sunday Splash Page #67

"The Direct Approach, Indirectly," in Bandette: The House of the Green Mask, Chapter 1, by Paul Tobin (writer), Colleen Coover (artist)

You will notice this is not a full-page splash. There are no full-page splashes in Bandette. But like hell I was going to skip it.

Besides, it is perfectly in keeping with the title character for her entry into a series of posts about splash pages, to be a 9-panel grid. It is, by nature of the page's rigid structure, contrary to the the way all the other books will do things.

Yes, I'm talking out of my ass, but I'm not wrong.

Bandette Volume 3 - The House of the Green Mask

This collection came out last fall, and normally I immediately jump on Bandette collections, but I was preoccupied. Job, moving, the complete collapse of all hope in decency, the usual shit. But now I have it, hooray! (Before we start, I want to say the colors in the book look much better than they will here. I took the pictures without using the flash, so as to avoid the glare that so often mars the pictures I use here, but the counter to that is how dark the pictures are)

In Volume 3, a mysterious criminal known only as The Voice is abducting people to interrogate them about a House of the Green Mask. One of the people abducted is Daniel, the delivery boy who is one of Bandette's associates (and completely smitten with her). So Bandette sets out to find and rescue Daniel, by drawing in basically everyone she can. Her friends, the police, various politicians and socialites, dogs. She does find him, they rescue the others, we are given a tantalizing hint towards Bandette's backstory, and the Voice is now a potential threat (and source of creative henchmen) going forward, with Absinthe being taken off the board in Volume 2.

But with Bandette, it's less about the plot, and more about how Bandette moves through it, her reactions, the jokes. So there's an extended sequence where she's trailing The Voice across town through a parade, with the aid of her various Urchins. This is played out over several nine-panel grid pages of Bandette in pursuit of his black car, checking in with her friends via walkie-talkie, while sporting a different disguise in each panel. In one, it's Lincoln's hat and beard. In the next, she's dressed like the Man with No Name. And she's wearing this over her usual outfit, while claiming to be in perfect disguise.

Or Le Monsieur, the only possible challenger to Bandette's title as World's Greatest Thief, thinks he's on the trail of the Green Mask, after watching a film about Madame Presto (which Bandette stole and screened for her friends). And that doesn't go how anyone might expect, either.

Paul Tobin's writing is light, and funny, both in terms of sight gags which Colleen Coover ably draws, and some well-delivered lines (which are also aided by Coover's illustrations). Bandette re-positioning a pigeon while telling it that it is interfering with the drama. Tobin's able to write so that, even when Bandette is being serious - for example, when she's advancing on Dart Petite and mentioning how they're going to discuss how Dart harmed 'her Daniel' - the voice is still recognizably her. It felt silly, but also perfectly in character for Bandette to call up her friend in the police, Heloise, simply to tell her she was stomping, then hang up. That should seem stupid or pointless, but the creative team sells it, so it's cute? Charming?

As mentioned above, Coover uses a lot of nine-panel grids, which allows for a deliberate pacing. Jokes can be drawn out over 3 or 6 panels. We can see a sequence, be it a chase, a fight, or simply a conversation with a flow to it. Things don't seem rushed or crammed together. Coover knows what information needs to be in each panel, and doesn't waste space on stuff that doesn't need to be there. Which is kind of key when working with nine panels, since they isn't going to be much room in each one.

Also, Bandette almost seems to use the pacing of the grids as a chance to disappear at the top of the page, then reappear at the bottom. What I mean is, Bandette likes to surprise people, appearing suddenly behind or above them, seemingly from nowhere. But between where she was and where she ends up, we were following someone else across and down the page at the steady pace of the grid. Like in the page above, where we see her in the upper right corner, then we follow Daniel methodically to the right and down, only to be met by Bandette, who has taken some more direct route. But of course a thief would have no time for for the normal narrative flow of the page, and cut simply to the part she enjoys.

As with the previous two volumes, I highly recommend The House of the Green Mask.

31 Days of Scans - 5 Character Dream Team

I said last December I wanted to do a few of those "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" rosters this year, and thus far, I haven't. Because I decided to wait and kick it off with this one. As usual, these can be difficult, because there are so many options. Which is why I have to restrict myself in some ways, or I'll never make a decision. This time around, I opted for characters created outside Marvel and DC. So, same rules apply as the last time, only there'll be no Mastermind, since it states 5 characters only.

The Leader: Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener's Atomic Robo. For the purposes of this exercise, Robo is in his normal body. However, I'm not sure precisely when I'm taking him from. It might be simpler, in terms of getting the team together, to take him from the 1940s (for reasons that will become clear shortly). But if I take '70s Robo, we get possible Carl Sagan appearances and Robo wears a Gilligan hat sometimes. If I take current day Robo, we get the benefit of considerable experience and greater scientific knowledge in our Robo. With the present day, it's easy enough for Dr. Dinosaur's Time Bomb to throw Robo to the '40s, or perhaps another universe. There were his multiple run-ins with the Shadow from Beyond Time, or Tesla's device that opens a doorway to the vampire dimension (which Majestic-12 later got its hands on). Or something else we haven't seen yet. The options are there, and really, any Robo will be good.

So Robo is going to be the leader, but he's also going to be the brains of the outfit, at least as far as science goes. In more criminal areas, there are at least 2 characters on this team more experienced. However, given the nature of the world some of these characters inhabit, Robo is going to run up against some things he is going to have difficulty squaring with his views on how things work. Magic for one, time travel for another. One of the things I greatly enjoy about Atomic Robo is when he gets exasperated with stupidity or nonsense and resorts to sarcasm. Probably because that is how I respond to stupidity and nonsense. I expect this team to exasperate and confound Robo repeatedly. And everyone is a strong personality in their own way, so keeping them together is going to be a challenge. Especially because, in a crisis, Robo seems inclined to try and do everything himself and keep his Action Scientists at a safe distance. Understandable, since he's bulletproof and they aren't, but I doubt this crew will be as accepting. But he'll bring lightning guns, and lightning guns heal all wounds. With horrible burns, but still.

The Man with a Boat: Doug TenNapel's Earthworm Jim. This one is fudging it a bit since, a) Jim was originally a video game character, and b) the comics he did appear in were published by Marvel. But once again, Blog Commissioner allows it (all those illegal payoffs, er, paid off). Jim may or may not have a boat, but he does have a rocket large enough to carry a couple of passengers, and capable of traveling to other star systems. Close enough. (Note: One could substitute the Tick, and it would largely achieve the same effect, but I prefer Jim and it's my team, so nyeah.)

Jim operates in a sort of Silver Age world (which is why I can't be sure he doesn't have a Worm-Boat. He had a Worm-Cycle in the cartoon). Heroes keep their word, and triumph because they believe in things greater than themselves, like honor, or true love. Things that ought to be bizarre are treated as largely unremarkable. Radiation gives you super-powers, not cancer (though the powers are more likely to be funny than useful, as the need for jokes requires). Problems can be solved with science that makes not the slightest bit of sense. In a lot of ways, putting Jim on this team is a way to torment Robo with a heroic version of Dr. Dinosaur. There are going to be times Jim will suggest a completely idiotic solution to a problem (like dressing up as waiters to fool pursuing henchcats into eating explosives dressed up as seafood), and in the time it takes Robo to start listing all the ways that's nonsense, it'll work.

Of course other times, the nonsense solution won't work at all, because it's nonsense. In that event, Jim can just fall back on blasting things. Robo should at least appreciate having another person on the team who solves many of their problems with combinations of shooting, jumping, and hitting.

The Rogue: Colleen Coover and Paul Tobin's Bandette. This could put Bandette out of her depth, which by itself might make it worthwhile. Robo and Jim have both dealt with threats that could have ended existence. Then again, Bandette quite likes the world, because it has so many things for her to take from people, she'd be quite willing to help. Neither of the first two characters are all that great at stealth. But they are both fairly upright guys, so I wonder how much friction there would be about her stealing. Because it's a certainty if they storm the combined lair of Helsingard and Professor Monkey-for-a-Head and she sees a painting she likes, she'll take it. I'm pretty sure she can talk circles around Jim at will, which won't stop him from pleading she abandon her life of crime, and when that fails, probably trying to haul her off to jail.

Robo's going to be a harder sell. But Robo has worked with governments in the past, even though he doesn't trust their motives, because he fears how much worse they'll make things if he leaves them to clean it up themselves. So working with a thief who is more than happy to assist the police in bringing down other, more serious, criminals might be something he can live with. Until it puts the whole team in the crosshairs of someone better left alone. . .

I expect Bandette to enjoy the experience immensely. She's going to have an opportunity to steal things no one else from her world might ever have a chance to even see. She has the chance to become the greatest thief in the entire multiverse, which is the kind of challenge she'd love.

The Muscle: Dave Stevens' Rocketeer. Making Cliff the Muscle is a bit of a joke. If this were the old JLI, Robo would be J'onn, and Bandette would probably be Ted (she's too clever to be Booster). I'm not sure who Jim is, maybe the Big Red Cheese? He has that sort of upright, honest outlook, albeit a little more wacky than Billy. Cliff would be Guy, shooting off his mouth and getting punched in it. I fully expect him to be knocked unconscious within 5 minutes of this group being put together (and I expect Bandette to borrow the rocket pack about 5 seconds later).

Still, Cliff is generally an upright guy despite his temper, and he's more than willing to put his neck on the line. He has a little experience with super-science, so he ought to take a liking to the lightning guns at the very least. I do expect a giant talking worm to shock him (Bandette would probably just respond with some variant of how marvelous it is to meet a giant worm, and set about charming the pants off Jim. Even if she were flustered, she wouldn't show it). Cliff is probably the one who is going to struggle the most to prove his value, so he's going to overreach, make mistakes, try to butt into things that he should have stayed out of.

Also, if you think that Betty will team-up with Bandette at some point, probably to get their hands on some important classified documents, you're absolutely right. Betty's stubborn and enthusiastic nature ought to play well off Bandette's more playful outlook. There will also almost certainly be a team-up between Bandette's dog Pimento, and Butchie, that bulldog that hangs around the diner Cliff eats at most of the time. Hell, we have the possibility of an Atomic Robo/Doc Savage team-up, since the Doc is the one who designed the rocket pack. Hmm, could we tie that into Robo's Flying She-Devils of the Pacific mini-series? Rival jetpack designs, or the She-Devils could have improved on the Doc's design. Basically, my reason for possibly having '40s Robo is to say he and Cliff already inhabit the same universe. Their worlds can at least sort of coexist.

The Woman of Mystery: John Ostrander and Tim Truman's GrimJack. I know you're thinking John Gaunt isn't a woman, and you'd be correct. However, it was established that - spoiler for 25+ year old comic! - having rejected Heaven to save his best friend, Gaunt's fate was tied to the city of Cynosure, and he's doomed to be reborn until the city is destroyed. At least some of the future incarnations we saw in the double-page splash that explained this were female. It could be one of those GrimJacks. A good writer could do something with a character who is a woman currently, and has grown up as a woman, but also remembers past lives as a man just as vividly, and how they choose to identify themselves in light of that. I have no idea, frankly, how GrimJack would approach it, though I expect there'd be an adjustment period when he recalls his past lives and handles it badly. You need someone who isn't me writing this thing for that, but the potential is there.

Setting that aside, GrimJack brings a lot of experience to the table. Even if were aren't using a reincarnation (in which case he has multiple lifetimes), he has decades of conflict in his life. Robo's been alive for awhile, but he's lived comfortably enough he could spend time going to school, running a company, developing entirely new disciplines of science. Gaunt had to spend almost his entire life struggling to survive. Grows up in the shittiest part of Cynosure, the Pit. Gets sent to the Arena to fight for his life for the amusement of the upper class while still a kid. Gets out as a teen, finds a little love and peace in a pocket dimension, then returns home and finds himself in a battle against the literal forces of Hell. Survives that, joins a bounty group called the Lawkillers. Survives that, joins the Transdimensional Police, then the Cadre as an assassin, then becomes a freelance mercenary. He lives and thrives in a city that is constantly changing in size, shape, and population, where the physical laws that govern one street corner may have no bearing around the next block, and that too, is constantly changing. He's pissed off innumerable people, from politicians to bounty hunters to gods. Even if he did catch a bullet eventually, he made past 50 in a profession where a lot of people would be lucky to reach half that. He knows how to survive, is what I'm saying.

It's that knowledge I think the team really needs. Robo can be deceptive, but for him, that means he plays bullet magnet while someone else sets things in motion. Cliff is a generally lousy fighter, and not much good at making plans, and abandons the ones he does make at the drop of a hat. Bandette is sneaky, but tends to let fights drag out because she's having fun. As for Jim, well, despite his great big muscles and his really big ray gun, Jim is still an earthworm, which means he is pretty dumb. Gaunt fights dirty, using any edge he can get. Any weapon, any bit of his surroundings, any distraction, any moment of weakness in his opponent, GrimJack takes advantage of it. He wouldn't have lived as long as he did if he hadn't. Plus, he's getting old, and with the aches and pains, it's just better to end fights quicker sometimes, you know?

Also, I'm curious how he'd respond to Robo. Gaunt had a rule about not allowing Tourbots in his bar (those are ways for people to cheaply travel the city while sitting safely in a chair in an office somewhere, by placing their consciousness in a rolling trashcan), and once of his worst foes was Kalibos, an artificial intelligence that merged science with magic, and kills people to wear their skins so he can roam the city doing as he pleases (sowing discord and chaos as the ultimate expression of his freedom). So GrimJack might have some problems with artificial intelligence. Until Robo helps him put Kalibos down once and for all. Gaunt is, again in JLI terms, Batman, which is not something I'm hugely happy about given my frequent antipathy towards the Bat, but I don't see a better comparison. I do think that, once he got to know them, he'd develop moderately warm feelings. Jim might remind him of his friend Judah the Hammer, Cliff's a young hothead GJ would probably try to keep from getting his head blown off (that said, GrimJack is the one I expect to put out Cliff's lights in the first 5 minutes). I think he'd have to respect Bandette's skill (there will NOT be any romantic relationship between those two. however. Bandette is not spinning the wheel of likely death all his girlfriends have).

As for how you get them all together, rough draft, assuming Robo and Cliff occupy the same universe. There's a mishap with the portal, only they're thrown somewhere other than the vampire dimension, probably Cynosure (or the vampire dimension went into phase with Cynosure and they survived it long enough to emerge into the city, probably joining whatever forces from the city are keeping the vampires from overrunning the susceptible dimensions). At the same time, Bandette's world came into phase, and through some circumstances, she's come into possession of the Manx Cat. Maybe someone from Cynosure came to Paris and found her, and offered her the job. When the Cat gets stolen, GrimJack is the one who always gets dragged in to retrieve it. Which sets off a chase through the city, and Cliff, observing the chase, tries to help Bandette. Which doesn't go well, so Robo jumps in (literally), and GrimJack brings out the heavy artillery. Bandette probably hangs around to watch, or recognizes she has no idea where home is at this stage, and at some point, Robo falls into a section of the city where technology doesn't function, which hopefully slows things down enough nobody gets killed. As for Jim, I expect him to abruptly arrive after an incident involving him trying to make root beer in his garage for a box social he invited his rogues gallery to. He shouldn't have accepted a golf club from Psycrow to stir the mixture doing a thunderstorm. They could potentially end up in a section where technology can develop low-level sentience, in which case his suit would go out of control, and the whole group has to try and contain it, destroy it, or get it to a different area where it'll revert to normal.

Robo ponders the choices that have brought him to this place in "Why Atomic Robo Hates Dr. Dinosaur", by Brian Clevinger (writer), Scott Wegener (artist), Ronda Patterson (colorist), and Jeff Powell (letterer). Commandeering a giant hamster to stop a shotgun wedding is just another day in the life in Earthworm Jim #2, by Dan Slott (plot), John Lewandowski (script), Barry Crain (pencils), Sam DeLa Rosa (inker), UL Higgins (pencils), Ed Laz (colorist). Bandette is living the dream in Bandette #3, by Paul Tobin (writer), Colleen Coover (artist), Ryan Jurgensen (digital production), and Irina Beffa (design). Cliff is more confident than he ought to be in Rocketeer, Chapter 4 (I couldn't figure out which comic specifically it would be in), by Dave Stevens (writer and artist), Laura Martin (colorist), and Carrie Spiegle (letterer). GrimJack's stint as a dentist ended swiftly amid complaints about his primitive working conditions in GrimJack #1, by John Ostrander (writer), Tim Truman (artist), Janice Cohen (colorist), and John Workman (letterer).