Forces Weak and Strong at Work

Good try, very comforting.

Volume 1 of The Terrifics, titled Meet the Terrifics, is initially a get the team together arc. Lemire manages that by having Mr. Terrific's company bought up by Simon Stagg while Terrific was off doing something involving other dimensions. Stagg's presence means Metamorpho's there, as well as that Stagg will be messing with some science he doesn't understand. Namely, a door to the "Dark Multiverse".

Plastic Man was involved in the multi-dimension stuff, so Terrific brings him along. Except Plas has been in some sort of comatose state for 5 years, until the otherwordly energies wake him up. Lemire's going for a more volatile version of the Fantastic Four, and having Terrific (and Batman, apparently) basically keep Plas around for all that time, making no attempt to find something else that might awaken him, or locate anyone who might care about Plastic Man, is certainly Reed Richards at his worst.

A signal picked up through the doorway takes those 3 into the Dark Multiverse, where they find Phantom Girl (or a Phantom Girl, at least) stranded on a giant corpse, along with the machine sending the signal. She's able to bum a ride back to the right dimension, but understandably wants to go home. As does Plas, and Terrific just wants to study these readings and figure out who "Tom Strong" is. Metamorpho's arguing with his girlfriend Sapphire about what a crumb her dad is.

So Lemire concocts the idea that dark multiverse energy has bonded them, so they can't be more than a mile apart. Then he throws together a few other threats to basically force them to actually do stuff, since otherwise each of the four seem content to sulk otherwise. The end of the trade reveals a mysterious figure in a metal mask, who promises he'll find and kill Tom Strong first, nyah nyah. It feels like the pacing got wonky, because the end of issue 6 starts having multiple full-page splashes, one after the other. The last 11 pages have 23 panels total, so I don't know if Lemire intended more struggle for the cast before they triumphed, or Dr. Dread's monologue was supposed to last longer, but something definitely feels off.

The book has 3 pencilers in 6 issues. Ivan Reis is gone by the end of issue 2, replaced by Joe Bennett for the fight with the War Wheel in issue 3. Then Evan Shaner handles issues 4 and 5 before Bennett returns for issue 6, which is the second part of a story about an entire town being slowly turned into Metamorphos.

Bennett's art can at least lean in the same general direction of Reis', though Bennett's characters are bulkier and drawn with a much busier line. A lot of hatching and trying for extra texture, especially on Plastic Man and Metamorpho. Reis' Plastic Man is very smooth and almost artificially clean, while Bennett tends to draw him with sharper angles and joints, almost like his version is trying to mimic having knuckles or actual goggles on his face, rather than the goggles being part of him, which I assume is what's going on.

Shaner's work doesn't look a bit like either of the others, keeping his characters much cleaner and simpler in design and look. None of the artists seem to do a lot with Metamorpho's ability to change shape, but I guess with Plastic Man (who basically never holds one form or set of proportions for more than a panel) it feels redundant. Nathan Fairbairn colors Shaner's issues with brighter, more sharply defined tones than Marcelo Maiolo does for Reis and Bennett. Maiolo may be going for something closer to realistic coloring and shading. They both seem to work for the artist they're paired with.

Lemire writes Metamorpho as gruff and sarcastic, bickering constantly with Plastic Man, who is basically never serious. Mr. Terrific just seems exhausted by everyone else's presence, and whenever he's not barking orders, it feels like he's talking out loud to himself more than any of the others. Phantom Girl is alternately petulant and impatient, frustrated that when she tries to turn solid, she disintegrates whatever she touches. She's the youngest, so you see the guys each trying to help in their own way. Plas tries to keep her spirits up, Terrific gets a journal she can use without destroying it so she can interact with something.

It does feel like a book that's struggling to hold itself together, and not just because of the shifting art teams. Dread has to reveal himself to goad Terrific into pursuing him, by presenting Tom Strong as an answer to Terrific's questions. Lemire's version of Holt seems mostly interested in Tom Strong because he doesn't know who he is or how he encountered the giant creature floating in the void. He just wants to pull apart a mystery, but there isn't a sense of why the others would care, except they seem to figure Terrific is the best chance to break this bond between them. So they could just refuse to go until he fixes it. He can't go more than a mile without them, and he doesn't seem to really want them around anyway, so why not focus on that first? Prioritize!

Saturday Splash Page #92

 

"Elemental Imbalance," in The Terrifics #5, by Doc Shaner and Jeff Lemire (storytellers), Nathan Fairbairn (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer)

Starting in 2018, and I guess spinning out of one of those Metal or Dark Multiverse event things I did my damnedest to avoid, this is sort of a "Fantastic Four in the DCU" book, though Lemire has to work a little to bring together his chosen cast.

Mr. Terrific's company was bought up by Simon Stagg while Terrific was off in the Dark Multiverse or something. Holt shows up to meet with Stagg about it, finds him using Metamorpho as some sort of probe to explore said Dark Multiverse. I'm going to try and make that the last time I use that phrase in this post. It's mostly another way for Lemire to throw the cast into different worlds.

Stagg fucks it up, Holt busts out a comatose Plastic Man, who wakes up from a reaction to the energies being thrown around, and keeps Mr. T and Metamorpho from dying as they get sucked in. They find the corpse of some giant, and run into Phantom Girl from the Legion of Superheroes. Or a young girl from the same planet, a thousand years in the past, I guess. When they make it back to Earth, they find the energy won't let them get more than a mile apart. So they might as well deal with other problems while they're stuck together.

The problems don't waste any time showing up. They're attacked by a War Wheel, then a town in Michigan suffers an outbreak of Metamorphoing. That giant corpse they found had a beacon left by Tom Strong, so Mr. Terrific's determined to track him down. In the middle of that, he's targeted by a Dr. Dread. My first thought was it was the Dr. Doom knock-off from the Extremists that fought the Justice League in the '90s, but no, it's someone else entirely. I tend to have issues with Lemire's, let's call it leisurely, pacing in some of his other things I've read, but he keeps the ball rolling here.

The cast stick together in large part for lack of better options, even after the artificial constraint is gone. Phantom Girl finds she's been away from home much longer than she thought, and finds it more stifling than she recalled after a few adventures. Plastic Man had been in a coma for 5 years (5 years?!), so reconnecting with his kid doesn't go great. Metamorpho gets turned back into Rex Mason, but just like Ben Grimm, can't quite believe he's good enough for Sapphire Stagg that way.

Mr. Terrific's the most resistant, as Lemire writes him as extremely isolated. All this, the mystery, the energy holding them together, it's just getting in the way of his research. Tom Strong, who has a full life of action science, but also a family of adventurers, a talking gorilla pal, a robot butler, all that jazz, acts as a sharp contrast with Michael Holt, who had his own company and a skyscraper research lab, occupied solely by him.

The biggest issue the book has over Lemire's 14 issues as writer is the lack of a consistent artist. Ivan Reis is the first go, but Jose Luis is already drawing 5 pages by issue 2. Joe Bennett draws issue 3 and 6, with Shaner handling the two in-between. Then Dale Eaglesham for two issues of trying to find Tom Strong, but Jose Luis draws another issue before that arc's done. Then three issues by Viktor Bogdanovic, before the last two issues by Bennett.

You can sort of handwave the shifts in art style with the jumping between universes, although it's rarely a 1:1. Shaner draws the first issue of the Metamorpho story, but Bennett finishes it, for example. It doesn't kill the book. Jose Luis is adaptable enough he can draw close to either Reis or Eaglesham's to minimize the obviousness of the shift. Bogdanovic's rougher, more sharply squared off figures are the most out of place compared to the others. But it doesn't help it, either. Again, I could try arguing the shifts represent the quartet struggling to come together as a team, when they're even trying, but that would require the art team to stabilize when they finally choose to stick together.

What I Bought 8/30/2020 - Part 1

Hey, it's September! Which means summer is almost over. Child and Teenage Me would never have believed that some day, they'd be excited about summer ending.

I didn't track down all the comics from last month I wanted, but I managed to find five so far, which isn't bad, these days. Let's start it off with the last issue of a mini-series.

Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage #4, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Denys Cowan (penciler), Bill Sienkiewicz (inker), Chris Sotomayor (colorist), Willie Schubert (letterer) - Can Vic bleed through that mask, or does it just get trapped against his face underneath it? That would be unpleasant.

Vic's back in the present, and it's still chaos in Hub City. He's convinced he has to face this devil, Tot says he's being an idiot and that Vic Sage needs to get on the air and try to get people to calm down. Vic goes on the air and encourages people to fight back against injustice, without burning everything down. He also reveals himself as the Question on live TV. Good thing nobody watches network news, anymore.

He blows up the abandoned building that started all this, but his target isn't there, so he heads for the Mayor's office. At which point the Question kicks the shit out of a bunch of cops in riot gear. That was fun. He tries to convince the mayor to do the right thing, guy shoots himself instead. The "devil" shows up talking shit, Myra blows his head off. Which doesn't do a thing for all the rioting and everything else going on in the streets, to Vic's despair. But he puts the Question mask back on and goes to do. . . something.

I get that Lemire probably doesn't want to do a story where all the problems are solved by the costumed vigilante beating up one guy. But then what is the point? That Vic is screwing up by deciding he's just going to be the Question? That he can do more to address the actual systemic is as Vic Sage, investigative reporter, and that by trying to rely on punching dudes he's just playing into the "devil's" hands? The devil's got him so fixated on how they keep doing this dance life after life that Vic ignores the big picture?

I don't know, it's just kind of weird ending. Vic wins, but he loses, and maybe he didn't actually win because he was always fighting the wrong battle. And he doesn't get that, so he's just going to keep losing, isn't he? I think that was kind of how the O'Neill/Cowan series went. The longer it went on, the more Vic turned to the Question, the more destroyed he got. Because he couldn't make things better putting on a mask and punching people. Not for the problems that really plagued the city.

I feel like the panels on the second and third pages from the end are out of sequence. Or the lettering is in the wrong boxes. Vic falls to his knees in front of a puddle and triggers the gas to attach the mask and stands up as Tot asks him if he thinks he's special. But on the next page, he's back on his knees staring into the puddle and responding to Tot's question. So I don't know if he lost hope briefly again in one panel, or if the question about him being special was supposed to be in the panel where he was still on his knees, and he gets up afterward. Were the panels supposed to run across the two pages, or read one, then the other? I don't know.

Other than that, a lot of tall, narrow panels. Especially during the scenes in the Mayor's office. They aren't necessarily zoomed in on a character's face, so I think, since those scenes heavily involve Marlick, the devil, it's supposed to make you feel trapped with him. There's no getting out and away from him, from what he's saying, from what he's planning. Most of the panels in Vic's scenes aren't that way. Some of them are very compressed, spread out the width of the page, but short, and others are somewhere in between. Things are shifting for him. He has new information, about himself and his enemy, and he's making decisions about his life that could be a major shift.

When the two of them are together, the panel shapes move back-and-forth depending on who has the upper hand. Tall and narrow when Marlick's got the edge, shorter and wider when Vic's fighting back. That's pretty much all I have on this.

What I Bought 6/29/2020 - Part 1

There were no comics out I wanted this week, and as far as I know, there aren't any I want coming out next week. But I have a few books from earlier in June that showed up, so let's take a look at the third issue of a couple of DC titles.

Amethyst #3, by Amy Reeder (writer/artist), Marissa Louise (colorist), Gabriela Downie (letterer) - I gotta say, compared to riding a giant caterpillar or a narwhal, a flying horse seems kinda dull.

Amy does receive help from the Kingdom of Aquamarine, except it's in the form of a prince who really doesn't want to accompany her. So there's some squabbling, they find an encampment of nomadic merchants, who Amethyst has to defend from Prince Topaz, and then they use a secret passage that Prince Maxixe knows to get them to Dark Opal's Castle Greyskull looking fortress.

I feel like Amethyst is supposed to be learning a lesson from all this, but a) I'm not sure what it is, and b) I don't think she's learning it. Phoss keeps insisting Amethyst spends too much time in her castle or up in the air with her flying horse, which feels significant. But Amy only seems to take the advice to interact with everyday people like the Banned under duress. She also doesn't seem very appreciative of the allies she does have, for as much griping as she does about all the people that won't help her. To be fair, she did grant the Banned safe haven in whatever is left of her kingdom, which is nice. She still has some sense of right and wrong, she's just weak on the concept of persuasion. Or negotiation.

I wonder if Amy has fallen into some bizarre reflection of Gemworld, where the people she could always trust are now against her, and those she couldn't are actually helpful. I don't know, just a gut feeling, which is almost certainly wrong given my awful track record of predictions.

The opening page is nice, a quick recap done as Amethyst explaining the situation to Lady Aquamarine, set against a backdrop of a map of Gemworld. I love the the lands apparently still form a giant skull. So odd, and given how often the different lands fight, you'd think they'd have spread the landmass out a little more. Make an archipelago in the form of a constellation or something like that. The lands of Diamond being the teeth is a nice touch.

Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage #3, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Denys Cowan (penciler), Bill Sienkiewicz (inker), Chris Sotomayor (colorist), Willie Schubert (letterer) - Dang Vic, what did you eat to create that kind of a cloud?

In 1940, gumshoe Charles Sage takes a case from the sister of a missing factory worker. Maggie and her brother were encouraging the others to unionize, and Jacob's vanished. He barely gets started before some guys show up to gently suggest he drop the case. At which point Charles abruptly becomes the Question, beats their asses, and then turns back to normal. He continues working on the case, but keeps having flashes of being other people, in other times, which he doesn't understand. He gets captured and dragged to a building built on top of the mine the guy last issue died in. At which point Maggie shows up, and stabs him. Man with a Thousand Faces 2, Man with No Faces 0. But in the present, Vic thinks he knows what he's up against, and thinks it's going to tell him who he really is.

I don't know. Having the Question fight an enemy who can take on different appearances as it pleases, who can manipulate people from all walks of life and levels of money and influence, seems like an appropriate match up. As Richard Dragon notes, this isn't an enemy you can just choke the life out of, but Vic is a reporter, he can shine the light in other ways, if he remembers to.

At the same time, the whole past life thing just doesn't work great for me. Denny O'Neill and Denys Cowan gave the Question a certain amount of mysticism (or maybe spirituality is a better word), but he's not exactly magical himself. This smacks a little bit of whatever it was they did with him in the New 52, where he was an angel that forgot who he was. Or was he Judas? Or was that the Phantom Stranger? I know, I know, better to not bring up such things at all.

There are a few points in the issue where Charles' face almost disappears. Not counting the brief moment where he becomes a later reincarnation of himself. Mostly the eyes are shadowed to the point nothing is visible, but sometimes Cowan draws him so that even the mouth is a barely distinguishable line. Maybe it's just a mood thing - this is very much in line with a noir, with the private detective getting into hot water after a dame brings him a sob story - but it's usually when he's following a lead, or trying to put the pieces together. Trying to figure out what the right question is.

What I Bought 1/18/2020

I couldn't find the last issue of Steeple anywhere over the weekend, but I did get the other two books from the last two weeks I was interested in. Even if that did mean grabbing that Black Cat issue with the ugly variant cover. Nothing coming out this week, though.

Black Cat #8, by Jed MacKay (writer), Dike Ruan and Annie Wu (artists), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - I mean, is the Black Widow even in any of the Earth X stuff? I assume she must be, because if she wasn't, why not just come up with a Black Cat Earth X design?

There are two threads. One is a daytime conversation between Felicia and her mother, where Felicia tries to get her to accept a cruise to Germany to get her out of the line of fire of Odessa's forces. Although Miss Hardy feels confident she won't be targeted. The other, more entertaining thread is Felicia bringing along the current Beetle to help her swipe the plans for the Randall Gate in Iron Fist's basement. Which leads to Felicia getting to play with Danny, while the Beetle gets her ass kicked by the little girl that's currently Iron Fist, I guess.

I think this is playing off that Iron Fist: the Living Weapon series Kaare Andrews did in 2014. Or maybe some GN called Immortal Iron Fists that came out two years ago, also by Andrews? Hey, let's just be impressed a writer at Marvel actually bothers to pay attention to what other writers are doing with characters.

Now I think Annie Wu drew the parts with Felicia talking with her mother. Granting I haven't seen her artwork since Fraction's Hawkeye run, but that part of the issue looks more similar to what she did back then than the part with Beetle and Iron Fist.  It works for the talking parts, Wu uses body language well. I wouldn't normally think of Felicia being as nervous as she is here, but it's her mother. Special circumstances. Felicia's on the defensive a lot, backing up or with arms crossed, while her mother is leaning in, or pointing at her, or the one initiating physical contact.

The costumed part of the book, the eyes are bigger, shading is softer, faces are rounder, so I'm guessing that's Ruan's work, which I'm not familiar with at all. I like it, the comedy parts with the little dragon are amusing, Felicia's expressions work, the fight scene is good. I like the tilted panels as it goes back-and-forth between Danny and Felicia throwing attacks at each other. Also, Danny being happy to just fight a thief villain instead of someone out to "absorb his chi or cut off his hands" makes me smile. Even if it does piss Felicia off to be called a villain.

Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage #2, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Denys Cowan (penciler), Bill Sienkiewicz (inker), Chris Sotomayor (colorist), Willie Schubert (letterer) - Alright, time for a Vic Sage/Jonah Hex team-up!

The issue is set in the Hub City of 1886, and follows a Charles Victor Szasz, secretive town blacksmith. He tries to protect the apparently only black family in the town when the husband is framed for a brutal murder, but fails, thanks to a preacher who spurs the townsfolk on and isn't what he appears. Szasz is found by a native woman who talks to a skeleton and throws a faceless mask on him and tells him to go kill the preacher, who is really the "creature of a thousand faces." He hesitates and fails, and the scene shifts to the early 1940s.

OK, guy with no face against creature with a thousand, sure, interesting contrast. Vic's been trying to stop this guy for multiple lifetimes, and I'm guessing next issue will demonstrate he keeps fucking it up in one way or another. Or maybe it's always the same way, He hesitates. I don't recall the O'Neill/Cowan Question being big on killing people, so maybe that's the hang-up. Although 1886 Vic's issue was he'd killed too many innocent people previously.

There's a couple of points I'm not sure the art and the writing are on the same page. Dialogue that seems like it should fit with Vic, being said by one of the guys pursuing him, judging by how much of a beard the speaker had. But most of it is really good. There's a panel of him walking through the desert with the sun shining over his shoulder where, Sienkiewicz goes heavier on the scratchy linework to put Vic's face in shadow, and there's a few circular yellow arcs that overlap his face. You can just barely make out the lines of his eyes and nose. It's a really effective way to show how the light would hide his face from where we're viewing him.

And I like this trio of panels with Vic's eye spilling into the panel of the creature, while the arrow uses that moment to find its target.

What I Bought 11/20/2019 - Part 1

It was actually a pretty decent haul for comics this week. 4 books, plus 2 books from last month that finally showed up. The downside is, right now there's only 6 comics coming out the rest of the year I want to get. December is gonna be a long, cold month.

Anyway! Here's one comic about a person who thinks they're nothing, and another about one with no face.

Test #5, by Christopher Sebela (writer), Jen Hickman (artist), Harry Saxon (colorist), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letterer) - Got the whole, wide something in their hands.

Aleph is alive again, making their way to Laurelwood, again, talking to Mary (who is actually Laurelwood) as he goes. Aleph had found the town once before by chance, all their modifications somehow honing in on it. But Aleph wasn't ever ready, or was close to dying, or the city was being torn apart, so Laurel kept resetting things to get how they want it. But now that they're together, there's still the matter of what comes next, and that's a bit of a stumbling block. Aleph isn't entirely sure what they want, and even when things seem to be going well, Laurel is more like us than they might admit.

It's a bit of an ominous ending, or maybe just realistic. Hoping that you can find some perfect point, then just hold there, isn't going to happen. Laurel mentions it midway through, that humans always want some big ending where everything is resolved, but it doesn't work like that. Things keep happening, good and bad, only the details change. The future is going to have a lot of the same bullshit mistakes the present does, and the past did. Just different people making the mistakes, even if they don't think they're people.

I like the last few pages, where Aleph initially wakes up alone in an empty apartment, then goes out to meet Aleph in an empty town, devoid of any details. Then you turn the page and Aleph's waking up again, but it's their apartment with Laurel, and there are paintings on the wall. Clothing is a little more elaborate - Aleph's at least wearing a collared shirt now - and the town has other people, the buildings have marquees on them now. Laurel is still learning from Aleph, but not everything is something Aleph would want them to learn. Although there's the suspicious part of me that wonders if Laurel killed Aleph again before that reboot or retooling.

This was interesting. I don't know that I love it, but it was neat. Be good to read it all over again at some point soon. 

Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage #1, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Denys Cowan (penciler), Bill Sienkiewicz (inker), Chris Sotomayor (colorist), Willie Schubert (letterer) - I love that swirly smoke and the implied red building in the background.

The Question exposes a councilman molesting underage kids, but finds a curious ring on the councilman. While he's chasing that rabbit hole, Myra is accepting her brother the mayor is a scumbag, and the entire city begins to go up in flames over a cop shooting a black man for running a red light. But Vic is trying to figure out why he found a skeleton in a long-abandoned building with a bullet hole in its head, and a mask just like his over its face. So naturally he goes to Richard Dragon, who roofies his tea, and now Vic's wandering around in the past. As you do.

I'm curious what direction this will go with the stuff in the past versus the stuff in the present. Vic is chasing down this secret order while the city quite possibly burns. It's clear the Mayor won't take any action that will help, but is that a conspiracy? Or is he just an incompetent, hamhanded doofus? Is Tot right that Vic Sage would be more use than the Question right now? Maybe none of this is going to factor into the story, but it feels like the moment Vic decides to just leave to go talk to Richard Dragon about his visions is a big deal.

There are several moments in this where his eyes aren't visible, even as a Vic Sage. They're these black pits, even if the rest of his face is perfectly visible. The moment after Myra walks away with the mayor's attorney. Again when he sees the video of the shooting and stumbles into the riot. I like how placid all the panels are on that page - dull colors, empty alleys - and then the final panel, a brick comes in from the right side of the page and smashes a window with a big red sound effect. And then the majority of the next page is Vic standing there alone on one side of the street, while the other side is total chaos. Then, in the panel below that, he pulls his hat down low and walks away. Caught in the Question, rather than the problem at hand.

What I Bought 3/29/2016 - Part 1

It's been interesting to me, watching the reactions to Batman vs. Superman, as I've seen people whose opinions I respect who liked, and others I respect who despised it. I'm still not going to see it, mind you, because it doesn't look like anything I'd enjoy, but it's still interesting.

Descender #11, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Dustin Nguyen (illustrator), Steve Wands (letterer and designer) - TIM seems remarkably calm, especially considering his admission in the issue he feels something akin to pain.

The Hardwire can't find any sign of TIM's dream in his brain, and Telsa is both starting to maybe care about TIM, and definitely doing a bad job of concealing her mistrust of the Hardwire. TIM-22 is jealous of TIM-21's ability to feel affection for Andy and other humans, and he's not too happy about 21 having replaced him as Psius' favorite. So he tries to kill him. Or maybe that's just part of Psius' plan to see if another near-death experience gives TIM-21 another prophetic dream. Andy is still trying to negotiate assistance from his ex-wife, a plan not aided by the fact the Gnishians tracked his ship and are on the attack.

I can't decide if things are picking up any. Everything seems to be happening in small increments. I'm not sure why Telsa would be surprised the Hardwire worship the Harvesters. They were the ones who showed that the organic species are not invincible, and could be resisted, seemingly with impunity. Yes, their actions also created a lot of hardship for robots everywhere, but Old Testament God was frequently a dick, and people still worshiped him. I'm mostly curious at the difference in Driller the UGC grunt observed since Andy showed up. I'd probably be more curious if it was something we'd seen, rather than been told about, but that's not the way this book is going to operate, I guess.

Nothing much has changed as far as the art goes. It's still a very pretty book. The contrast between the expressions of TIMs-21 and 22 at any given moment is used well. The sadness on 21's face when he hadn't actually found Bandit, contrasted with the blankness on 22's face in the background. 22's eager smirk at the robot army being constructed, against 21's shocked look.

Roche Limit: Monadic #1, by Michael Moreci (story), Kyle Charles (art), Matt Battaglia (colors), Ryan Ferrier (letters), Tim Daniel (design) - I think it's supposed to be a broken mirror, but the way the border curves around it makes it seem like the faceplate on a helmet.

This book has done a full-on swan dive into Dark City. Alex Ford, who was the drug maker with the bomb in his chest in the first mini-series, finds himself alive in a city, with the corpse of Gracie, who ran the nightclub in the colony, next to him. Watkins who was doing experiments on people warns Alex he has to find the Black Tower. Which leads to a sequence of Alex trying desperately to find a train that will take him there, although no one can seem to give him proper directions to one. And Sasha, the scientist who stayed behind on the colony in the second mini-series is living in an observatory, being visited by an adult male and a child called Man and Girl, until some old guy tells her she needs to move her recording instruments to a different section of sky, and she picks up a transmission from the leader of the expedition in the second mini-series, and she starts remembering things.

So people are dead, but not dead? Or trapped in some simulation or dream created by the things from the other side of the Anomaly, trying to figure out humans? Or the alien creatures have absorbed their souls and this is some attempt to break them down, incorporate their essence somehow, by getting people to buy into the illusion? I don't know. It's not an encouraging start, especially with the whole sequence of Alex trying to catch a train and getting the runaround, which is straight out of Dark City. I guess I should be glad Moreci didn't try to start with an entirely new cast again, given how poorly I thought that went last time.

Battaglia's color choices are probably what stands out most. In Sasha's place, the colors are softer, they blur together more, and they're usually warmer, friendlier colors. In the parts that take place wherever Alex is, the colors are usually these sick looking ones. Like there's a yellow haze over everything, the way it might seem in a room full of smoke with a dim lamp. Everyone is yellowish, and even when the background shifts, it's to a solid color of something garish. An obnoxious green, or a bright orange. It grabs your attention, and sometimes corresponds to moments of violence (though there are plenty of those where the color doesn't do that).

What I Bought 2/12/2016 - Part 2

I did end up not buying two books of mine that came out in the prior three weeks. Illuminati #4 because I missed it being listed in last week's releases, and Deadpool #7, because it was 10 bucks. I appreciate it's a larger than normal issue, but that's kind of a steep order. I try to stay below six bucks on individual issues, new or old. Maybe it'll drop in a few weeks.

Descender #10, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Dustin Nguyen (illustrator), Steve Wands (letterer and designer) - I'm going to go ahead and judge by appearances and say those people don't seem friendly.

On the Machine Moon, the Hardwire are trying to be friendly to their new visitors, not that Telsa is making it easy. If UGC officer school had a diplomacy course, she flunked it. The Hardwire wants to hear more about TIM's dream, because they think it represents him having a connection to some server where the A.I.s of all the machines that have been destroyed are backed up. Quon insists it doesn't exist, but TIM is willing to be helpful. Elsewhere, Andy and his partners visit his ex-wife, who leads a group of cyborgs that live on a world hit the hardest by the Harvesters. We'll see if she chooses to be helpful or not. And the UGC has gotten concerned that TIM is somehow going to bring back those same Harvesters.

I'm not sure how to feel about Telsa. I don't particularly like her, but I'm not certain that's fair. It isn't just the gruff demeanor, it's that she doesn't show much common sense for someone who seems very aware of how vulnerable she is, surrounded by being she considers terrorists, who certainly don't want her going home and telling her bosses where they live. Does she try to play nice? No. When TIM asks her if he can go play with the other TIM, she gives him a gruff, "I'm not you mom, do what you want." Maybe you want to keep him liking you, since he's the only reason you aren't dead right now? For someone trying really hard to prove to her father she belongs, and to everyone else that she didn't achieve her rank because of her dad, she's doing a less-than-stellar job.

Interesting contrast in colors between worlds. The Machine Moon is almost all white, with just some faint pink hues in places (except for that sculpture garden, and I do wonder if Telsa's right to be suspicious of that). Sampson, the planet of the cyborgs, is all these heavy greys and blacks, with a few lighter shades, probably to represent a hazy dawn. It's almost the exact opposite. And then the UGC offices are all this light blue. I don't really know what the significance is of the differences. With the Machine Moon, to represent some sort of sterility in their thinking, or a lack of anything to hide or celebrate because their past is so brief. Could be for a general absence, or suppression of emotion. For Sampson, a ruined, patchwork world or horrors, with patchwork people trying to embrace their situation.

Nothing really new for me to report with this book. It's still pretty, but I'm still not sure whether I care about the characters enough to stay with it.

Henchgirl #4, Kirsten Gudsnuk - I was trying to figure that cover out, because it seemed different from the others, less funny and more of a pin-up. And then I noticed Mari's holding her friends security badge and it made more sense.

The Butterfly Gang steals some chemical with Coco claims will help them find the mole in their gang, though she's vague on the "how". Mari then lets it slip her roomie works at the lab in question, and is forced to steal her security badge to aid in the theft, Which leads to a lot of totally deserved yelling from Susan. Then the story shifts, as we learn Mari is actually the daughter of two superheroes, who have published a book about their career, and their other daughter, the really photogenic one who became a costumed crimefighter as well. Mary gets a little frustrated about being left out of the book entirely, and she and her friends end up at dinner with her family. Which has lots of tension and awkwardness, and then Tina lets it slip Mari's part of a criminal organization, and her mom kind of burns down the restaurant.

I hadn't expected that Mary's parents would have powers, let alone they'd both be well-known heroes. I had kind of assumed she got her powers by accident, which might explain her general lack of direction in doing much of anything with them. Although I could see how super-strength could be pain, since people would probably assume she was dumb, and just use her for her muscles. Like the Butterfly Gang. She really needs to just beat them up and take over. Make them do nice things, or else. Yeah, that sounds like a flawless plan.

Gudsnuk occasionally does these more realistic faces, or maybe more detailed is a better description, but she uses them to good effect. Mary's sad face when Susan was chewing her out, because it looks kind of awful, and crying shouldn't look pretty. Plus, she's trying to get her friend to let her off the hook, which Susan really shouldn't. Now the Gang knows Mari's friend works for Gaintech, what happens the next time they want to steal something from there? There was also that extreme close-up on her sister's teeth, which was kind of terrifying. Now I'm wondering if Photo-Girl is going to snap from the constant pressure of living up to her parents' public personas and expectations. Especially since Mary seems to have largely cut off contact entirely. Probably for the same reason.

What I Bought 1/26/2016 - Part 1

Not a blistering start to the New Year on the comic front. Only six books in the first three weeks. Let's start with a couple that came out two weeks ago, each of which has been riding mostly on my affection for the art. Can the writers start carrying their half of the water?

Descender #9, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Dustin Nguyen (illustrator), Steve Wands (letterer and designer) - Jeez Quon, try not to be so mopey. Enjoy your space voyage. It may be the last one you ever make.

And the machine resistance even hooked Quon up with a new robotic limb, for which he is extremely ungrateful. TIM-21 is extremely upset they left Bandit and Driller behind, and Telsa is no help. TIM-22, on the other hand, is a good listener, and shares some of his experiences, though I can't help wondering if he's trying to manipulate TIM-21. I feel the pleasant pink lighting that suffuses the room during their conversation is meant to make us as the audience find it touching, and take it at face value. While Telsa plots to escape with either of the TIMs, they reach the machine homeworld, hidden within an asteroid. Which I find pretty cool in theory. Strange worlds hiding beneath the surface are something I guess I like. Probably because I wonder what's beneath my feet.

Back on Gnish, the deceased king's son takes the throne (and the hairpiece, and it's color makes me suspect it's a Trump reference). The new king immediately declares he's doubling all bounties on robots. So Andy and Blugger better pick up the pace if they're going to find TIM first. To that end they find Driller and Bandit (as well as that UGC lieutenant), and Andy mentions there's a chip in bandit that could be used so TIM could always find him they can probably reverse to find TIM. Or, rather, Andy's ex-wife can probably do that.

It's interesting to track the changes in TIM-21's speech patterns. When he's yelling about their having left Bandit behind, and him not being able to reduce his emotion settings, because that's not how he was designed, he still seems like a young, frightened kid. But when he's talking to TIM-22, and he starts discussing Telsa as lacing in certain social graces, that sounds like someone very different. I don't if that's strictly a matter of his emotions being under control by then, like a person's, or if it's meant to imply something about artificial life in this universe. Do they think in a more orderly fashion when around other artificial life forms, but humans throw them off somehow? This is a similar train of thought to the one I had a few issues back about Driller's speech patterns seeming to expand the longer he was around TIM. Of course, he's around plenty of robots now, and seems to have regressed, but he's also spending all his time killing those robots. That not quite double-page splash of him taking out five robots at once was very nice. The splash of yellow and red at their throats was a nice contrast to the general grey tone of their bodies, and it reminds the reader of blood, makes us remember this is gladiatorial combat, whether the contestants are organic or not.

Overall, one of the stronger issues of the series for me, which is encouraging.

Illuminati #3, by Joshua Williamson (writer), Shawn Crystal (artist), John Rauch (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Is the Frog-Man on the cover? He's not a villain! I'm going to blame this on Reed Richards and Franklin, since they created this new version of the Marvel U. Great work guys, between that and the whole thing with the Terrigen Mists being actively harmful to mutants now, you're doing a bang up job.

The crew escape the Fenris club with relatively little trouble. Not surprising since only loser super-villains would go to a club run by those creepy siblings. But now there's strife among the roster, so the Hood gives everyone 24 hours to decide whether they're in or not. So we see what most of them get up as they decide whether to stick with this. Thunderball wants to use the rewards to form his own technology-producing company, Enchantress is out for more power and revenge, the Mad Thinker wants access to new science to expand his boundaries, and Titania doesn't seem to have anything else. So they all come back, the heist is just getting started, and here's new Thor. Let's take odds that the Hood tipped her off to be that distraction he's telling the team they need.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the writing. Enchantress seems off - she says she hates running from a fight, but Amora's struck as the sort to avoid direct conflict when she can just seek revenge from the shadows or through proxies - and I'm not sure about the Mad Thinker. The search for more knowledge fits, but his ragged, disordered appearance not so much. And I would expect an LMD based on Eric O'Grady to spend more time making excuses for stupid crap he does.

The Hood's line of bull seems right, though. For all my feelings that he's never been the big wheel he thought he was, Parker did always show a knack for being able to read people, and use that to manipulate them. That came in handy for getting him out of the trouble he landed himself in by doing stuff without knowing who he was dealing with first, but it's still a skill he seems to have. Titania and Thunderball seem about right. Both seem like the type to recognize that at some point, they aren't getting what they want out of being costumed crooks, and it's time for a change. So it's 50-50 on the cast.

I still like most of the work Crystal is doing with the art. Making the rubble from Titania hitting the ground form the "SMASH!" sound effect was a good touch, and the scowl he gives Amora, combined with the green Rauch has her eyes emitting when she describes what she'll do with her full powers, that was good. The Hood's face remaining mostly in shadow during his conversation with Titania, even when the hood was pulled back, feels significant, but I'm not sure what it represents. He's talking about knowing he'll get busted someday, but he wants to grab as much as he can and enjoy it before then. It could be a load of crap, meant to convince her she'll never get that happy home with the Absorbing Man she was hoping for, but it sounds pretty legit for him.

What I Bought 12/22/2015 - Part 2

Holiday greetings to you all. The question for today is, will the spirit of the season cause me to be charitable in my feelings towards these comics? Eh, could be.

Descender #8, Jeff Lemire (writer), Dustin Nguyen (illustrator), Steve Wands (letterer/designer) - Maybe they'll make an '80s style buddy sitcom about Andy and Blugger. The Robot Killin' Pals! It could have a catchy opening theme and everything.

As to the actual content of the issue, the Robot Killin' Pals try to reach Gnish, only to be blocked by the UGC, because everything's gone to hell in light of last issue's assassination. Andy doesn't care and tries to get past them, only to end up with a lot of pursuing spacecraft, which makes him try to hide on a planet of gaseous beings, which is a little freaky, but effective in dissuading pursuit. And there's a lot of flashbacks to Andy's childhood before and after TIM showed up interspersed through the issue. And that's pretty much it.

It's still a very pretty but, but also pretty slight. Not in any real hurry to get anywhere. Maybe the brief jaunt to Phages will end up being relevant, but otherwise, there wasn't much to it. It's kind of a neat concept, but the story doesn't linger long enough to do anything with it, so it's almost like a stall. Nguyen going to black and white for the flashback pages made for an abrupt shift, in a good way. Suggesting Andy keeps losing himself in memories, then having to snap himself back to present problems. Blugger could prove to be a good addition to the cast. He seems like he'd provide a certain amount of that Ben Grimm-style gruff sarcasm, albeit in a much more amoral package overall. But overall, my interest in the book is starting to wane.

Illuminati #2, by Joshua Williamson (writer), Shawn Crystal (artist), John Rauch (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - I almost missed the Black Ant there at the bottom of the cover. To be fair, I've generally done a good job forgetting Remender's Secret Avengers.

So the rest of the team has not entirely bought into the Hood's bull, but they do have things they want he's helping them get, so they're in for this "rob Asgardia" plan. And there just so happens to be a scientist who built an artificial Bifrost Bridge to get them in, if they can convince him to let them use it. He's at some club run by those creepy Fenris twins, where there's a rule against killing. A rule Black Ant promptly breaks by shrinking inside the good doctor, then growing until he bursts the guy wide open. Yeesh. At least they got the location of the doohickey, and the passcode, but now everyone in the club is going to try and kill them for breaking the rules.

There are certain things about this I can't track. Whether the Hood is just playing at being irritated by Black Ant's actions, or if this is a team-building exercise in disguise. Why Enchantress seems to be an alcoholic now. She's drinking in every single scene she's in. Sure, Asgardian, high tolerance for Earth booze, but still, kind of strange. The whole thing with Trapster trying to stick up Titania kind of came out of nowhere, although the last time I saw him, Deadpool seemed to have convinced Pete to perhaps rethink his life choices. Maybe Pete found out the straight and narrow pays like crap, but again, there's the presence of the gun meant to resemble a repulsor ray he somehow acquired. So I can't tell if these are mysteries to be answered later, or just weak writing. Which is a feeling I had when I tried Brian Wood's X-Men run, and I didn't like it then, either.

But I do like Shawn Crystal's art, even if a lot of his male characters have this pointy-nosed, sunken eyes, slightly fang-toothed look. Could be deliberate, making them seem a bit feral and dangerous, but I'd expect a Strucker to keep themselves up a little better. That one panel with the close-up on the Mad Thinker in his underwear was as unpleasant as I imagine it was supposed to be. Especially with Titania's 'I've seen much worse.' And the page of the Hood detailing his plan, for all the little flourishes. The entire crew wearing cool, black sunglasses in the first panel, because they're a crew on a heist. The actual use of wheelbarrows to carry the loot in panel 2. The Hood's grandkids all in their own cloaks in panel 5. I do wish he made the Hood look a bit younger, but that's me still thinking of the characters as a mostly dumb punk, swimming in waters much too deep for him.

Basically, both books are a case of the artist currently buying my goodwill, and we'll see if the writer's can up their game enough to keep me around (though Illuminati may not stave off cancellation long enough for that to matter).

What I Bought 12/1/2015 - Part 1

I actually have eight comics to review this time around. Things are starting to look up, and all it took was for Marvel to quit dicking around and release some new series. Or the same series that had been put on the shelf for months.

Deadpool #2, by Gerry Duggan (writer), Mike Hawthorne (penciler), Terry Pallot (inker), Val Staples (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - And this is what happens when you aren't Robert Redford playing a character who knows Nick Fury. You get Deadpool at your niece's birthday party, instead of Iron Man.

The other "Deadpools" are concerned they're not being paid, and that the company isn't making any money as a result. Huh, who knew letting a crazy person run a company wouldn't be a path to financial success? They get a paying job, but it turns out to be them throwing a bunch of illegal immigrants out of their apartment building for an asshole landlord who wants to take advantage of rising property values to build a condo. Some of them - meaning not Foolkiller or Madcap - feel bad and give their shares to the people they just beat up. Did Deadpool teach them a lesson? Well, considering it may not be Deadpool, probably not. Adsit has come to visit Wade and tell him the truth of his parents death, and the hood wearing Deadpool stabs Adsit and laughs at how this will make his plan to destroy Deadpool even easier.

It's not T-Ray is it? Please tell me it isn't T-Ray. I hate that guy, in that Superboy-Prime, "don't even want to see him" way. But I can't figure who else it could be. The head ULTIMATUM guy is dead. So is Butler (and he'd know Wade did that already). I don't see this as Dracula's style. Cripes, it's going to be Agent Gorman isn't it? The SHIELD traitor who stiffed Wade on his money for rekilling all the undead Presidents. He somehow survived being thrown into a garbage compactor. Might explain Adsit's reaction.

Hawthorne's doing a pretty good job making all the Deadpools distinguishable from each other, but giving them noticeable little flourishes. Solo and Foolkiller are the only two I can't tell apart when they have masks on. I liked the page of the team smashing through the apartment building. You can follow Stingray down the page, to the two on the top floor. Madcap is directly above Terror, so you can track down to him, and then over to Solo, which takes you to his meeting with some of the tenants. I still can't quite figure either of them doing this, especially Foolkiller (who hasn't killed any fools so far), so perhaps Duggan will highlight how Wade roped them all in at some point. And if the hooded guy isn't the real Wade, where is he? It seems like he ought to have noticed this was happening, and at least been mildly curious.

I'm really enjoying this, and I want to see where Duggan and Hawthorne go next, even though I'm sure it's going to leave me feeling really bad for Wade when all is said and done.

Descender #7, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Dustin Nguyen (illustrator), Steve Wands (letterer/designer) - What is the thing in TIM's stomach region? Does he have a digestive tract, so he can simulate eating?

TIM, Telsa, and Quon are rescued by this robot resistance group called the Hardwire. They were actually only there for TIM (and to kill the Gnishian leader), but TIM wouldn't leave without the other two. He was not able to convince them to find Driller, Bandit, and Tullis, so they're stuck on a planet that hates robots, and probably won't love the UGC since the Hardwire is setting Telsa up to take the fall as part of the assassination. In a different plot thread, we meet a robot bounty hunter, one who is concerned only with finding more robots, and when he learns there's a bounty on TIM, he jumps at it. He's a few steps behind, but he finds the last survivor of that first crew that tried to catch TIM, and that guy has a tracking device locked onto TIM.

The last page reveal of the hunter's identity felt unnecessary. It was pretty obvious from how intense he was about hunting down TIM, combined with TIM's comments about how he wants to find his "brother", who the hunter was. On the other hand, given how obvious it was, at least Lemire and Nguyen didn't draw it out over several issues like some big mystery.

I do wonder how, whenever the hunter finds TIM-21, how that meeting is going to go. Considering his actions in this issue, it's going to be pretty hard for me to roll with it, if they decide for a tearful, hug-filled reunion. That seems unlikely, but he certainly didn't seem a sympathetic character. Although not many characters have been sympathetic so far. Psius is content to throw the entire galaxy into (bloody) chaos to suit his purposes. Telsa only considers TIM a means to some revenge. Quon's a thief who built his rep on others' work, and now is a pathetic wreck (though he's remarkably coherent for having an arm cut off). TIM-22 blew a guy's head off without a second thought. OK, the ruler of Gnish was a scumbag, and certainly responsible for genocide from the Hardwire's perspective, and I'm inclined to agree.

I was looking at the side-by-side panels of TIMs-21 and 22, and it's interesting how much Nguyen just raising 21's eyebrows adds to his sense of being alive. 22's face is purposefully blank, but if you cover everything below the eyes, they're still noticeably different. The eyebrows are the most obvious, but I feel like there must be something in the eyes themselves helping. I just can't figure out what. Other than that, I like how Nguyen uses his colors on the frozen world at the start of the issue. The massive amounts of white, but working in the blue to suggest ice or drifts. It's just impressive to me.

What I Bought 8/19/2015 - Part 4

I think there are only 6 comics coming out for me this month, and there are 5 Wednesdays. It's going to be pretty thin by the looks of things. Now watch 4 of the books come out next week.

Descender #6, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Dustin Nguyen (illustrator), Steve Wands (letterer/designer) - Nice touch having that hole in the finger overlap with TIM's eye. Also that it's a right hand, which is the one Quon's missing now.

In flashback we learn that Quon was able to build his robots because an archaeological dig found an incredibly advanced robot lying damaged and inert in the ruins of a dead civilization not known to be that advanced. When Quon and his mentor woke it up, it spouted some barely intelligible but ominous sounding warnings. The mentor was wary, Quon was too busy seeing dollar signs, so he stole all the data and went into business for himself. His story doesn't exactly impress the King of Gnish, who orders him killed, but then the robot resistance arrives to rescue TIM, and they have their own TIM-bot.

Which is not the big last page cliffhanger I think Lemire thinks it is. TIM was one of a series, why would I be surprised there's another one around? I'm not clear on how long there was between TIM-21's activation and the Harvesters attacking, but surely Quon had time to build more. I know civilization went on a robot-destroying bender after the Harvesters, but since we know some robots survived, another TIM just isn't that big a surprise.

I just noticed that during the flashback, Quon says what they've learned from the robot will change everything. Which makes me think of Zola's reaction to the Cosmic Cube in the first Captain America movie. Nothing good ever comes of someone insisting x will 'change everything.'

At the end of the flashback, when Quon chooses to steal the data, I like how the page is laid out. It's basic, 3 panels above, 3 below. Quon goes into shadow in the bottom 3, once he's made the decision to value his own gain over everything else. The top 3 gradually zoom in on him, because Quon's story focuses on him and what he did (which makes me think Solomon will appear later, having been off doing his own follow-up research), but the bottom 3 move in on the robot, with Quon serving as a dark void behind him. Suggesting either doom, or the unknown danger lurking in space, which represents wherever the Harvesters came from, and their mysterious reasons for doing so.

Roche Limit: Clandestiny #4, by Michael Moreci (writer), Kyle Charles (artist), Matt Battaglia (colorist), Sarah Delaine (flora and fauna), Tim Daniel (design) - Is that Moscow's (the blind crime boss) sword? What the heck? Can't see it doing much good, since I doubt any of the people in this story know how to use it.

As it turns out, all these expeditions have been a cover by Moiratech to send pieces of a spaceship to the colony. A spaceship which will bring that immense monster in the jungle to Earth, and let it affect everyone on the planet. And this expedition brought the last section. The A.I. version of Langford insists they have to kill the monster, and die in the process. Understandably, the crew isn't OK with that. They opt to try and steal the ship instead, so they can return to Earth and warn people. They encounter a lot of the creatures, including the resurrected twin(?) brother of that scientist who went into the forest and died. The twin is fully committed to helping the creatures get to Earth, because they need something from human before humanity kills itself? But oh well, psycho twin gets his ass beat and they steal the ship, but they're going to stick around and do something.

It's kind of a mess. Danny says exposure to the Anomaly withers the soul, which sort of jibes with what we learned in the first mini-series (the effect of the Recall drug and such), but doesn't explain how entering the Anomaly causes a person's soul to break off from their body. I'm not sure if that's an inconsistency on Moreci's part, or if it's meant to represent a gap in the character's knowledge. There probably haven't been any humans who have entered the Anomaly since Danny arrived, and it's possible Langford's memoirs (which is what the A.I. is based on), wouldn't have any record of that either. In which case they wouldn't know that. Also, I feel like we're short one character, Kim, the scientist that saw a different life she could have had, with her girlfriend and child, if she hadn't taken this position. She was determined to reenter the forest last issue, and I don't think we've seen her since. Am I meant to assume she's dead, or is she going to make a dramatic, last minute appearance? No one in the book seems to remember her at all.

I wonder if Charles is starting to feel rushed. Some of the action sequences on the last few pages looked really rough. Like he was trying to use heavy inking to cover for not putting as much detail into his pencil work. And whatever Sasha sees on the last page that tells her the Black Sun has arrived isn't exactly clear from the art. The third panel has a ship in it, against a red and orange back drop, with a black sphere in one corner. I guess that could be the Black Sun, but if so, I feel like it should have been given a much more prominent placement in the panel. This is supposed to be a big deal, important enough that Sasha's decided to heck with survival and warning Earth, let's go back to the incredibly hostile world and fight. The art needs to convey the sense of the threat, and it just doesn't. I'm left grasping at what I think she saw. In issue 4 of the previous mini-series, the last page was a full-page shot of the Anomaly, with a huge black shape emerging from its center, as one of the cast drifted into the Anomaly. That got my attention, because of the contrast between the colors, and the scale. Here, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be looking at.

What I Bought 7/22/2015 - Part 4

I’m back in familiar territory again, and it’s nice. My time away wasn’t bad. Saw some sights, learned a lot of new things, which will hopefully prove useful in the future, but the living arrangements were not ideal. I like being able to walk to basically any place I want to go in town, or at worst, drive there in 5 minutes.

Descender #5, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Dustin Nguyen (illustrator), Steve Wands (letterer and designer) – They almost look like a happy, heavily armed family. You’d never guess most of them want to kill each other.

The party arrives on Gnish, where they’re greeted by its pig-faced ruler, who is very eager to get down to extracting information from Dr. Quon, who he figures knows all about the Harvesters. Except Quon says he stole all his research and so he didn’t really build any robots, including TIM, and certainly not the Harvesters. Probably should have said that before they cut off his arm, but oh well. Telsa and TIM are stuck watching all this, and Telsa might, in spite of herself, feel bad for the little bot. Or maybe she just wants him to stop being so distraught at Quon’s suffering because it annoys her. As for Driller, Bandit, and Telsa’s lieutenant Tullis, they get tossed into the pits, which is basically robot combat to the death for the enjoyment of the citizens. Tullis isn’t a robot, but oh well, these things happen. And the United Galactic Council has learned Telsa’s ship was hijacked and taken to Gnish, and her dad is all set to find some way to rescue her. From a hostile world currently consolidating alliances and power in opposition to the UGC. I’m sure that wouldn’t have dramatic and dire repercussions, but I guess if one hopes the little bot can teach them how to make their own giant, mass-murdering robots, one has to take chances.

It seems to me that Driller’s range of speech is expanding. Not a lot, but it’s hard for me to picture the Driller of three issues ago making an observation like the one the issue starts off with. Namely that TIM being designed to trust humans, so he can be a better companion, means the joke is on TIM, considering Driller's opinion that humans are not to be trusted. That raises some questions. Is this a result of being around TIM, the whatever he has that makes him so special and important? Or has Driller always been capable of this range of thought and contemplation, he was just out of practice after 10 years alone in an abandoned mining colony? Some pathways in his brain fell out of use, and they’re only gradually getting up to snuff again, like an atrophied muscle.

There’s been a lot of discussion in the last 10 years or so about whether torture is a productive form of interrogation. I think the general findings are it isn’t, but comics seem to ignore that. Batman dangling people off rooftops mostly works, Steve Rogers telling Black Widow and Moon Knight to start kneecapping people ferrets out a traitor (remember to thank Warren Ellis for that last one). Does it qualify as producing useful intel in this case? They didn’t learn anything about the Harvesters, which was the point of the exercise, but they did learn Quon doesn’t know anything about the Harvesters. That’s sort of useful, in the sense it tells one they need to look elsewhere for answers. Like one of those placemat kiddie mazes, and they’ve ruled out one path as leading to a dead end. By removing somebody’s arm. I may have to wait to see if he explains that revelation, and if that sheds some light on things. We’ll check back in next issue.

I did finally get the first issue earlier this week, along with some other books we'll get to in the next week. There's not a whole lot there I wasn't able to infer from issues 2-5, other than I hadn't realized the Harvesters were that large. They're into Celestial, tower over mountains, size range. I imagine Quon's confession in issue 5 explains some things from the first issue. Like how Quon wasn't able to figure out the Harvesters had a similar bit of code in them to the TIM robots he supposedly created. Overall, it's a very pretty book, but I wouldn't mind a bit more forward momentum, a concern I had about it going in, given what I've seen of Lemire's pacing in his stories. Though I have no idea how long Lemire and Nguyen intend this series to run.