What I Bought 3/30/2024 - Part 2

A month ago, it came out that the folks running Scout Comics hadn't been paying the writers and artists of the comics, or even responding to questions about why they weren't being paid. No explanation for uneven publishing schedules, unfulfilled promises about promoting books, real bad look all around.

The CEO types are in typical C.Y.A. mode, but I guess that explains why I hadn't seen anything released by Scout in the last 2 months. I figured the company went under, and maybe they have for all intents and purposes. Guess I'll have to wait and see if anything shows up.

Deer Editor #3, by Ryan K. Lindsay (writer), Sami Kivela (artist), Lauren Affe (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - A blackjack doesn't seem the ideal weapon for vampires, unless it's soaked in holy water.

Bucky goes to the neighborhood the mayor bought up, and finds Rose, the mayor's daughter there. All the other houses are full of other vampires, a quiet little community they can bring victims to and feed with certainty no one will report anything. But Rose knows nothing about any of this, the neighbors bursting in flame and becoming far less human-looking a total surprise, so what's she there for?

They go on the run, apparently cross-country, while Bucky tries to figure that out. By the time he does, Rose has ditched him and. . .that's pretty much it for Rose until the final page. Bucky goes back to Sheltered Cove with his sub-editor, Soo (the girl on the cover). The two of them go house-to-house, naming the vamps and either staking them or throwing them into the sun, all on video. Which seems like a lot of murders to be recording yourself committing, but I guess the mayor thought it might be too obvious to pass any laws extending protection to the undead.

And that's pretty much it. Bucky knows there's more out there - Rose, most notably - but he's not going looking for it, under some vague, "the story will find you," reasoning. I don't know if that's meant to be a statement on being a reporter versus a "hero." Bucky pursued the story. He was wrong several times, but he kept going and if one element eluded him, he just followed the ones he still had. He's not going to devote his life to pursuing every last thread. It feels like follow-up on the loose threads would be part of a reporter's job, but maybe not.

It feels like Kivela draws more panels that are strictly Bucky's face, or that emphasize the fact he's a deer in some way. A close-up of a lip curled in a challenge, or him turning to address someone, almost nothing visible from the neck down. Lindsay's certainly writing Bucky as more quick to violence, and that usually involves ramming someone with his antlers. If he slams a guy facefirst into a deck railing, kivela draws it so Bucky's hooves are a prominent part. Three fingers (or two and a thumb, whichever), with those long black nails.

I still don't know why they made the main character a talking deer beyond the opportunity for a pun with the title. Deer are traditionally prey, and vampires a traditionally predators, but he's flipped that script. Or everyone can see that he's different, even if nobody is shown staring or acting shocked, so his actions are out in the open. Even on the run, Bucky can't hide. The mayor and his bunch do, however, which might be why he's so hellbent on exposing what they're doing. No shadows, no secrets, out in the light where everyone can see them, like they can always see him.

That's probably not it. I've yet to read anything by Lindsay where I could figure out what point he was trying to make.

What I Bought 2/24/2024 - Part 1

Welcome to March, hurrah, hurrah. See what that brings us. Starting things off with the first two issues of a mini-series.

Deer Editor #1 and 2, by Ryan Lindsay (writer), Sami Kivela (artist), Lauren Affe (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - On these mean streets, you need the instincts to run directly into the side of a car that would rather avoid you.

Bucky's the editor of a newspaper. He's also a deer, or a man with the head of a deer. Not totally sure which. Kivela gives him hooves, but the digits are able to move and operate like fingers. Bucky gets a call from a coroner about a man who was acting strangely before he was hit by a car. That leads to a bar, which leads to a dead press secretary for the mayor.

As these things usually do, Bucky soon finds himself encountering various lantern-jawed, dimwitted goons with a taste for punching until they get keys that open lockers at bus stations. Bucky thinks it's a simple land grab, real estate scheme. Buy them up, kill the ones who hold out, sell the land for quick bucks. A private equity twist on the Wild West classic.

It turns out to be something much stranger. The mayor and a bunch of his friends are vampires, which we actually learn via Bucky's sub-editor, who Lindsay chooses to follow for the first half of the second issue, as Bucky is missing for three months. The second half of the issue covers what he's been up to (getting tortured), before the mayor makes the standard "work for us," spiel.

That leads to a nice little fight scene, which I thought maybe Affe would take as an opportunity to shift away from the blue-and-white color scheme, but no. You could make a good argument it didn't really change anything. The mayor's still in charge, Bucky's still an opposing force, the end result is yet to be seen.

The mayor said in the first issue, knowledge isn't power, power is power. Which is the deep insight one expects of a public official. Bucky noted the mayor is a creep that rules with threats and intimidation (and we've certainly seen that's true), but he makes the trains run on time, so the populace doesn't care. Guess we'll see if that holds through to the end.

What I Bought 10/30/2021 - Part 2

It's been overcast here the last couple of days. I don't think it's actually that cold out there, but the heavy clouds make it feel that way. At least the leaves have changed color nicely.

Everfrost #4, by Sami Kivela (artist), Ryan Lindsay (writer), Lauren Affe (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - The Legion of Doom went for a more organic look for their swamp base this time around.

Van and Rannveig fight it out a bit, with Rannveig ultimately attaching a bomb to Van's back, right in that spot that's hard to reach. You'd think humanity would have evolved arms that could rotate a little more at some point. One of the telepathic ice dragons appears and swallows them both, whisking them away from the AI controlling the world they encountered last issue. The dragon is actually controlled by what's left of Van's friend Eight, who was not a highly intelligent monkey, but a symbiotic thing that had been attached to the monkey.

They head to a spot where the AI's been gathering all the information on everything about the planet, intending to destroy it and revive her son. It's not there, but a bunch of angry clones of her son are, and she kills them. But the AI's already located the little alien she'd successfully grown at the start of the series. Van wanted to use it to get off world, the AI intends to turn it into another database. Neither of them gets what they want, but the infant alien does provide another alternative.

I went back to reread the first three issues, and that did help certain things make more sense. I don't grasp how the alien can be an escape craft, or a memory bank, or have blood that can help remake the world. Chalk that up to it being a weird alien, I guess. I think the Eric she encounters at the site of the uplink is her real husband, not simply a copy, but I'm not positive of that.

I don't think I understand Van as a character. She seems constantly set on moving forward. The past is something to be strip-mined for useful parts (like when she seeks out her mother), but otherwise unimportant. The AI's offer to give her a true version of her son doesn't slow her down in the slightest. I guess I'm not sure why she's so deadset on moving forward. She wants off the planet, but why? Just because it's a frozen mess, a dead end world in its current state? Because it holds a lot of painful memories? 

She says Rannveig wants to use the AI's stored knowledge of everyone to set things back to how they were, to restore what she's lost. Van says she can't think of anything worse. So has she just decided it's too painful to try and retrieve what she lost once, or is that that she feels setting things back won't actually make them any better? Van admits she doesn't care about this world, but also thinks she's going to save it. Which aren't mutually exclusive, I guess it's a matter of who she's saving it for, and I don't know the answer to that.

What I Bought 8/27/2021 - Part 2

I'm ready for summer to be over. Pity it's probably only going to get longer in each successive year. For today, there's one comic wrapping up (for now), and another almost to the end.

Jenny Zero #4, by Brockton McKinney (writer), Dave Dwonch (writer/letterer), Magenta King (artist), Dam (color artist) - Don't do it Jenny! He has the high ground!

Jenny's doing pretty well against the rank and file. Helps when you're big enough you can toss a tank around like a Nerf football. So they send down the big mech on the cover, who proceeds to mess her face up until we find out the dog can also grow to kaiju-size and rips its arm off. Jenny finishes it by smashing the skull with its own metal fist. Which also kills the pilots, because she thought they'd be in the torso. 

I feel like there's a joke there I'm not getting. Is it referring to a difference in where American and Japanese fiction depict as the traditional cockpit location in giant mechs? Or was Jenny just shitfaced? She did ask the dog for his opinion, which could be taken any number of ways.

Jenny still loses to the old "we have a alien smart gun pointed at your friend's head, surrender or else," ploy. So she works for the corrupt security agency after all. Which is headed by a woman who is part of a hive mind with the thing Jenny's father died trying to stop. Since the comic ends on that reveal, I guess the follow-up will have to come in another mini-series.

That's a little frustrating, but I guess it makes sense. It didn't seem likely winning one big fight was going to get these people off Jenny's back for good. And while she's learned about her ability and maybe how to really use it, there's still the matter of her actually using it. She really does not want to be like her father, but it doesn't appear she's going to get that choice. I don't love that aspect of it, that's she ultimately going to be forced to do the world defender thing. I imagine she'll ultimately embrace it, but it feels like putting the best spin on a bad situation.

But I'm criticizing stories that haven't been written yet. What a foolish endeavor, especially given my piss-poor track record predicting what's going to happen in stories.

King's scratchy, loose lines work really well for people getting beat up. It easily translates into someone looking ragged or battered, like they've been knocked off-model a bit. The characters can get hurt, even if it doesn't seem to slow them down much. "Mayo Boy" was moving around pretty good after Jenny flicked him over the horizon. Jenny shakes off getting her face punched in once she's got a minute, too. They both probably have advanced healing, though. On a coloring note, there's one page where Dam gets Jenny's uniform entirely the wrong color scheme. Only for that one page, though, which makes me wonder how nobody caught that before it was too late.

Everfrost #3, by Sami Kivela (artist), Ryan K. Lindsay (writer), Lauren Affe (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - Took me a couple of looks to notice the creepy smiley face.

Van does talk her way out of trouble, by showing the clone had a transmitter they can use to access the Ward's island. So they do, and the Ward are long gone, leaving only an immense computer brain (with a smiley face) and some clones. Who kills a bunch of the people in the Bloom, meaning they were clones of people other than Van's son (based on something Van says about how it not being able to kill her means she's not a clone.) 

The computer separates them and tries to bargain with Van for information on the giant alien thing she's been trying to resurrect. Van takes the opportunity to learn some things, though I'm not clear what good they do her. She continues to refuse to play ball. I feel like she keeps changing her mind about what her goal is, but the consistent theme is she doesn't want to let anyone else be the one who changes her mind. She works with the Bloom, but there's no real sense she cares about their goals, and if they interfere with hers, well too bad for the Bloom. 

One person's way to save the world is another's way of burning it down. Or, it may not bring someone much consolation you're going to save humanity, if you get them killed in the process. It's kind of funny that Van is the sort of person who will do something that affects you without consulting with you first, on the grounds she's sure she knows better, while simultaneously being the type of person who would never tolerate someone else doing that to her. I feel like I just described Tony Stark.

There's a two-page bit where the computer shows the surviving member of the Bloom this idyllic landscape, which is then subsequently destroyed by Van, as a way to set the two of them against each other. I'm curious why that would work, when I don't think that lady has ever seen the world look like that. Hasn't it been a mostly frozen wasteland for most of her life? But it does also show her friends and allies being killed by Van's path of. . . whatever you'd like to call it. Vengeance doesn't seem quite right. That part is certainly accurate. Van leaves a real trail of bodies in her wake, and since I can't see her letting this thing about her son's DNA go, I suspect there'll be a few more in the final issue.

What I Bought 7/31/2021 - Part 2

Yesterday was just one of those days where everything seemed to piss me off. A constant string of people bugging me for stuff, or failing to get stuff to me they were supposed to turn in weeks ago, or people not being around when you need them for something. When the weather is as unseasonably nice as it is this week, it makes a person question why the hell he's working.

Anyway, related to comments made during last week's October solicitations post, I did end up tracking down the first two issues of Everfrost.

Everfrost #1 and 2, by Ryan K. Lindsay (writer), Sami Kivela (artist), Lauren Affe (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - Gotta appreciate a unique approach to prison construction.

Van is a scientist on a frozen, dying world, trying to find a way off. Her current approach involves trying to incubate offspring of some immense, star-traveling creature in the bodies of local fauna she killed. With some promising results, she sets off to a place called the Precinct to try and check in with some other researchers she knows. What she finds is that she's somehow been gone much longer than she thinks, and someone is selling clones of her deceased son.

I would suspect this one blonde on the latter, who we see in flashbacks killed an earlier clone of her (their?) son in front of her because someone or something called "Ward" learned what they did. Then Van shoved her husband over the balcony into the ocean, but we know that never kills people.

There are also a couple of factions fighting it out in Ward's apparent absence. The Warlords, who seem to have been servants of Ward and run things in his (or her or their) absence, and The Bloom, who seem to be determined to challenge the Warlords who they feel are hiding some sort of important knowledge. Van knows both groups, but I get the feeling neither is exactly how she remembers, either.

One thing that comes up quite a bit in the first two issues is the difference between how Van categorizes her actions, and how everyone else does. She says she went into the wilderness to find a way everyone could leave the world. Her companion, a talking monkey-like thing, says she came out there to die. Others say she went out there to hide. She asks around about her mother because she was hoping to find some information, her mother (or a computer hologram of her) says she really means she was planning to take whatever she could find. She forms an temporary alliance with The Bloom, and jeopardizes it almost immediately by decapitating one of their lieutenants, who is another clone of her son, and therefore a mole. 

But maybe she's wrong, she's been gone a long time, and I wonder if that's going to be the point. That she went off, telling herself it was to save the world, when it ultimately became her turning her back on it, whether that was what she really intended or not. She may have a solution to the problem she knew, but the world hasn't stayed still waiting. There may not be anyone who wants her solution any longer. And Lindsay writes Van as, if not fully aware of that, at least recognizing she's on unfamiliar ground at times. Although her internal narration is a little odd in that she sometimes seems to be telling someone this story, like when she refers to something as being 'the point in the story when.' Other times, it's like she's just talking to herself inside her head. Maybe that's just where she's at mentally. Not unhinged or anything, just out of practice with other people.

Kivela draws the world as almost locked in ice, but the towns and people are a mixture themes and levels. People carrying swords or wearing helmets that wouldn't be out of place in Skyrim, side-by-side with energy shield you can wear on your wrist and little flying robot attack drones and tasers. People on both sides of the Warlord/Bloom divide fly what look like dragons carved from blue marble. Van looks like she's wearing a spacesuit, probably for protection against the cold. The Precinct has some buildings which feel like maybe a Middle Eastern feel, but also more Gothic industrial look. The outskirts consist of thrown together tin structures and big tanker ships that are icelocked.

It's kind of a bizarre hodgepodge, and I'm not sure it gives the story a strong sense of place because the pieces don't necessarily fit together in a coherent whole. But it does suggest a civilization used to one way of doing things, that had to adapt quickly, in whatever ways they could manage. And if I figure Van is supposedly fixated on getting off this world (although she seems more interested in killing all clones of her son) then the places around her don't really matter to her. Just places to get what she can from, then get away.