Sunday Splash Page #420

"Dead Duck Pond," in The Punisher (vol. 6) #19, by Garth Ennis (writer), Steve Dillon (artist), Matt Milla (colorist), RS and Comicraft's Wes (letterers)

The Punisher was originally an antagonist for Spider-Man, a guy who took it upon himself to punish criminals by killing them, tricked by the Jackal into thinking Spidey was a criminal. After that was cleared up, Frank Castle hung around, scuffling with Spider-Man and Daredevil over his lethal approach. But the U.S. loves a guy who shoots people we think "deserve" it, especially if he uses high-powered firearms, so he got an '80s mini-series, which, well, what I remember of it, Mike Zeck's art was really good.

Then Punisher got an ongoing series. And another, and another. And maybe also a quarterly series. Yep, the '90s were banner decade for punishing, but things got stale, so then you got the stunts. Frank is badly injured and gets a surgical procedure that gave him black skin. Went crazy and killed Nick Fury, had amnesia for a bit. Then he died, and there was an "angel Punisher/supernatural hitman" bit. We, uh, we don't like to talk about that.

Then they gave the character to Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon for a 12-issue maxi-series under the Marvel Knights imprint. They took it back to basics, just Frank targeting a crime family, but with a dark comedy twist that let them get away with depicting some excessive violence. Like the issue where Ma Gnucci and her guys hunt an injured Frank through a zoo, and Frank uses the animals to thin out their numbers. Culminating in him punching a polar bear to get it pissed off enough to swat a guy's head clean off his shoulders. Or Ma Gnucci hiring the Russian, a mountain of a guy, who also happens to be president of the Smolensk Daredevil Fan Club and dies, as I believe Wizard put it, choking on man-boob. Wizard loved that maxi-series.

And I guess the fans did, too because Marvel, never one to pass up a chance to run something into the ground, gave Ennis and Dillon an ongoing Punisher series, also under the Marvel Knights label. Except all Ennis could really do was be more extreme with the absurd aspects. So the Russian survives suffocation and decapitation because some military agency put him back together. Oh, but the procedure gave him huge boobs! And the Russian loves them! Or Spider-Man shows up, gets immediately knocked out by the Russian, and the "team-up" is Frank holding Spidey up as a punching bag. Or Frank and Wolverine fight a gang of little people, and Frank runs over Logan with a steamroller.

The one person who might pass for a supporting cast was the pitiful Detective Soap, part of the task force assigned to catch Frank in the maxi-series, now passing info along to Frank and generally being the butt of every joke. I think at one point a story strongly implies, if not outright says, Soap picks up a hooker in a bar that is actually his mother.

The other writers who occasionally took a turn weren't much better. Example, Tom Peyer wrote an arc about a guy outfitting taxis with all sorts of lethal weapons, so it's essentially the Punisher in Twisted Metal. Frank steals one of their taxis, but because he didn't pick up the Daily Bugle's editorial cartoonist, and said cartoonist is black, the Bugle soon has a cartoon about racist cab drivers. The bad guys recognize Frank Castle from a caricature. Like there are at least 2 million scowling, dark-haired white guys in New York City.

Ennis came back after that for the remainder of the book's 37 issue run. Sometimes with Dillon on art, but sometimes Tom Mandrake or Darick Robertson. The only issues I have are this one, where Frank runs into his old neighbor from the maxi-series Joan the Mouse, and issue 28 (by Ennis and Mandrake) where Elektra keeps killing the guys Frank is targeting before he can. I read somewhere once, that was the only Marvel comic that referenced the Frank Miller/Bill Sienkiewicz Elektra: Assassin. It's only a brief reference Frank alludes to in terms of what he's able to learn about her, but apparently every subsequent Elektra writer just kind of decided to ignore that book.

Basically, Marvel Knights Punisher is the comedy bits of Hitman, minus any of the meditation on brotherhood, the human capacity for self-justification, or the cycle of violence. It's just Frank killing lots of criminals, and sometimes it's presented as absurd, so you should laugh.

Sunday Splash Page #419

"Feed Trough," in Prez (2015) #3, by Mark Russell (writer), Ben Caldwell (penciler), Mark Morales (inker), Jeremy Lawson (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

The original Prez, a DC series about the United States' first teenage president, came out in 1973. Created by Captain America co-creater Joe Simon, it ran 4 issues, and from what I can tell, was about as accurate a representation of teens in the U.S. as you would expect from someone who had been writing comics for over 30 years by that point. Which is to say, not very. Ed Brubaker and Eric Shanower did a one-shot in the mid-90s under the Vertigo imprint, about Prez Rickard supposedly emerging during the '96 election, after two decades off the radar.

Then, in 2015, as part of one of DC's various post-New 52 branding exercises (DC You?), we got Prez, by Mark Russell and Ben Caldwell. Rather than set it in the present day, Russell sets the series in 2036, where Beth Ross is a 19-year-old working at a Li'l Doggies House of Corndogs in Oregon, and trying raise money to treat her father for some initially unknown illness, which turns out to be the deadly cat flu.

Beth goes viral when she accidentally dunks her pony tail in the deep fryer while filming a training video about proper grill cleaning. This doesn't help her raise the $4 million dollars her dad needs for nanotech treatment but, in a world where people can vote through social media, Beth wins Ohio in the 2036 Presidential election after a popular online personality touts her. To be clear, Beth is too busy trying to pay bills and visit her dad to ever run. The guy just gets the video extra exposure, and his followers decide to vote for this person they've heard of, rather than either of the lame-ass, middle-aged white men the two major parties are running.

The least believable part is that the other candidates are only middle-aged, rather than octogenarians.

As a result of Beth's win, no candidate gets enough electoral votes, so it goes to the House of Representatives, where each state gets one vote. This sets off a furious, hilarious and deeply pathetic scramble by each candidate to promise various spending projects and perks in return for a state's support. One side offers Ohio NASA. Texas' rep in turn demands 2 NASAs, plus a football stadium. In an attempt at extortion, states start voting for Beth, without keeping track of how many of them are doing so, and she gets elected. The system works - you over like a speed bag.

Beth isn't even sworn in until issue 3 (although it seems like Russell intended this to go longer than six issues), and spends most of issue 4 trying to pick a Cabinet (including a Neil Degrasse Tyson stand-in) and staff. Prez Rickard shows up as an aged, outcast Senator, offering to be her VP on the grounds the major powers won't try to kill her if they risk him becoming President as a result. Which doesn't stop random, gun-toting guys in hunting vests and American flag hats from taking their shot, literally.

I would give Russell credit for predicting the January 2020 insurrection, but white Americans waving guns around like fucking idiots whenever they feel the slightest bit aggrieved is, in the words of Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, not a prediction Meat-man, it's a fact of life. Likewise, the U.S. having armed sentry robots stationed around the world that are controlled by guys in beanbag chairs treating it as Call of Duty, getting yelled at by their boss for getting crumbs on the keyboard, feels less like satire or a prediction, than simply reality.

Morales has a loose enough style to pull off the exaggeration (or attempted exaggeration) of the story. Panels are filled with what I think are holographic pop-ups that, for example, offer a patient in the hospital more info about cat flu, if they pay a subscription fee, of course. The major antagonists are various CEOs, faces always hidden by glowing cartoon logos. Like Pharmaduke, or "Jack Smiles", who is always a big gold smiley face as he proclaims they run things, or he parachutes in to tell his employees the product they sell is time, because they make sure the consumer doesn't have to wait as long for stuff they could buy any number of other places. Or the news debate program - hosted by the blonde with the ludicrous hair in the upper left, or another one just like her - which has updated results on who the viewers think is winning, with the losers' face being covered by the flag as the outro music starts.

There's also a subplot about a self-aware killbot - developed in the notion it will save money if they can fire all those guys in the beanbag chairs - that doesn't like the things it has done, changes its name to Tina, and finds religion. Morales makes Tina appear both large enough to be menacing, but with an expressive digital face and body language.

Russell writes Beth as sarcastic, yet idealistic. Bright, but unfamiliar with how things are typically done in politics, which Russell (via Rickard), paints as a positive. Beth owes no favors for getting this far, so she doesn't have to give a Cabinet post to some incompetent dickhead because he campaigned for her.  Some of the outcomes are silly in the optimism, not so much Beth shutting down all the armed sentries and visiting other countries to apologize, but that many of the countries (though not Iran) accept the apology without say, demanding reparations.

Also, her end run around the CEOs and their pocket Senators is. . .to rely on someone even richer to help out? A guy who built a powerful computer, that has written every conceivable story in every language (we're shown the Oscars at one point, and he's credited as writer for 4 of the five nominated films.) Counting on a benevolent trillionaire doesn't seem any likelier to produce a positive outcome than relying on billionaires has. Maybe that was going to come back to bite Beth subsequently, but the book never got a second arc.

Sunday Splash Page #418

"Multiplication Problem," in Power Up, by Doug Tennapel (writer/artist), Jennifer Barker (letterer)

Hugh works at a copy shop with his buddy Doyle. They have an idea for a video game, Earth Dog Jim, but Hugh can never work up the nerve to submit it to a game company. So he keeps working at the copy place, dealing with a boss who promotes him, then gives him the job of firing Old Man Wembly so they won't have to pay his retirement.

Hugh finds an old video game that, when you press a button hidden in the controller, sends the power-ups out of the screen and into the real world. So many problems solved! Gold coins to make him rich. An invisibility power-up to make to make the boss think Old Man Wembly got fired (doesn't that mean he's not getting paid?) Extra lives that provide extra Hughs to take care of other tasks around the house.

Obviously, this all backfires, as the pursuit of happiness through material wealth is always shown to do. (I would at least like the opportunity to see if purchasing my own island can fill the yawning hole in my heart.) Old Man Wembly eventually reappears, Hugh's attempt to help his son in paintball instead gets the kid banned, his wife doesn't like this fixation on stuff. Oh yeah, and their cat hits the special button when the final boss is on the screen, and Hugh ends up in a battle for his life with a scowling guy with horns and a cloak, who Tennapel drenches in black ink, with just a little bit of white around the joints and eyes for contrast.

That's one of Tennapel's recurring themes, that you can't live your life retreating into fantasy. You have to interact with real people and pursue dreams and stuff like that. Although he illustrates the pitfalls at the very end, as Hugh and Doyle present their game to the CEO of "Electronic Artisans," who replies to Doyle's comment about this being paradise with, 'If it was paradise, I wouldn't make you sign all the rights over to me in a rapacious, one-sided agreement.' Well, then.

Despite some of the fantastic elements, Tennapel keeps his art grounded. It's still his distinctive style, but the characters mostly look like regular people going about their days, and the power-ups are low-key. Old Man Wembly just vanishes and goes about his work, and we aren't updated on him until it wears off and he reappears. The extra Hughs look just like original Hugh, save a number on their shirt and an off switch under their chest that makes them vanish.

The running battle with "Lord Doomus" is a little different, as Hugh's trying to escape in his new muscle car, given the ability to leave a Tron-style wall behind it via power-up, and Doomus can shoot missiles out of his chest. But Hugh's still just a guy. He's no ace driver, and he drops most of his power-ups during the fight, leaving him with only one option.

Sunday Splash Page #417

"Power-less Pack," in Power Pack (2020) #4, by Ryan North (writer), Nico Leon (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

In 2020, Marvel was going to do another event about government overreach, this time targeted at teen heroes, who would have to either knock off being superheroes, or accept an adult hero as a "mentor." Called Outlawed, the event got kneecapped by the disruptions in distribution (among other things) from COVID.

There were a few tie-ins, but a lot of stuff got canceled. From what I can tell, the most notable moment was Cyclops, now able to remember the time his teenage self was brought to the future, declaring the Champions were under Krakoa's protection. But really, when the best moment in the event involves Cyclops doing something (admittedly) cool, you know it was a bum idea.

That said, besides the Champions, Power Pack were probably the perfect group to put in the crosshairs of this sort of foolishness. Ryan North does have Alex try to argue that, due to time spent traveling the new multiverse (post-Hickman's Secret Wars) with the Future Foundation, he's actually old enough to qualify as a mentor to his siblings, only to be shot down by some bureaucrat fascist on the grounds time dilation due to multiversal travel doesn't count. Although this was around the same time as Rainbow Rowell's Runaways, when Julie was dating Karolina Dean, who was a college student by that point, so it seems like Julie ought to have counted.

But it sets the tone - if the mini-series starting with another Katie-drawn intro to the Power Pack, outlining their powers and general deal didn't do that already - that North may not be taking this entirely seriously. The kids' efforts to find a mentor focus first on Frog Thor - who became a character separate from the "Thor turned into a frog" bit in Simonson's run at some point - and eventually settle on some guy we've never heard of, Agent Aether. Who encourages the kids to use their various powers to generate electricity to help people.

Except Agent Aether's the Wizard, whose machines are actually draining the kids' powers into him. Oh, and he sold the electricity they created to a multinational company to make himself money. In other words, the Wizard finally found his proper level as a villain: A schmuck who cons desperate kids and commits petty fraud. Only took him 60 years, but congrats on finally recognizing his place in the hierarchy.

There's probably something North's pointing out, about how dangerous it is to give an adult responsibility for a kid just because they were able or willing to register an identity in a government database. That's all the Wizard had to do, cook up a fake look and make a show of being helpful. Whoever was in charge of the government department didn't do any sort of vetting, either from laziness or understaffing. 'He's an adult, wears a costume, good enough. Next!'

Still, the Wizard's an idiot, so all it takes is the kids, with some help from Wolverine, pretending they actually had more power than he thought, to goad him into throwing them back in his machines, which they reversed ahead of time, so they'd drain the powers back out of him. Continuing with the notion of North not taking this seriously, Logan responds to a written request left at the Krakoan Embassy by showing up at the Powers' home, where the kids claim he's a special tutor who helps kids from early elementary to college. Their dad remarks he looks just like that X-Man, Wolverine, but is otherwise OK with "Professor Brucie Mansworth" tutoring his kids.

Maybe North's point wasn't how half-baked most attempts to "protect" children via government intervention are, but that parents are incredibly stupid and nobody should be procreating? Anyway,  to sell the notion the kids still have powers, Logan stages a battle against them as "Wolvermean", Wolverine's evil twin (which Leon and Rosenberg depict as a palette-swapped, arts-and-crafts version of Logan's costume.) The battle ends up televised, with the scroll at the bottom wondering if violent video games are helping kids be better at fighting crime? I enjoyed all of that, found it hilarious.

There is some nonsense in the fourth issue about how, when the Wizard drained their powers, some part of his selfish, misanthropic nature leached into the kids. Julie posits this because Katie is angry adults put them in this position. Plus, she tried to fry the Wizard with the last bit of power she had and nearly killed a forklift driver. But, Katie's got good reason to be pissed.

And not just at the Wizard. The intro was part of her plan to finally tell their parents about their powers (North references her previous plan to do this in the mini-series we looked at last week, which may be one of the only times I've seen those mini-series get referenced by something in-continuity, for whatever value that term has at Marvel these days), and Katie got overruled by her siblings again. Now her powers were stolen by a bad guy that only got his hooks in them because of poorly thought out nanny state bullshit, and her siblings are dismissing her feelings, telling her she doesn't really feel that way. That seems like a bird turd cherry atop a cow shit sundae.

That said, the generally lighter tone lets Leon add in a bunch of humorous touches. The Asgardians have a sign that tell visitors, no, they don't know where Frog Thor is, and are insulted you think he's an acceptable substitute for their ruler. The Wizard's HQ has hand-drawn plans for how he'll beat other villains, like Juggernaut, with his new powers. He might be a worse artist than Katie, so I guess he didn't swipe that along with her powers. The team beat Taskmaster and Jack and Katie can't resist poking him with sticks while he's down. Each issue is from a different kid's perspective, and Jack filters a lot of his perception through his dream of having a social media account dedicated to his adventures. So we get panels of Alex using his powers presented as videos to click on, with titles like, 'BLACK HOLE IN BROOKLYN??? Video footage PROVES it happened!'

Sunday Splash Page #416

"Storytime," in Power Pack (vol. 3) #1, by Marc Sumerak (writer), Gurihiru (artist/color artists), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

The Power kids' ongoing ended in '91, and then, not much of anything until a 4-issue mini-series in 2000 that I haven't read. But the Nineties probably weren't the decade for a kid team at Marvel. Not x-treme or kewl enough.

In 2005, Marvel got in one of their periodic moods to make some stuff aimed towards younger readers, complete with manga-influenced art from the Gurihiru team, that really emphasizes these characters are kids, as opposed to "kids" that are built more like young adults. So, a bunch of 4-issue mini-series revolving around Power Pack, starting with this one. Katie's hand-drawn retelling of the origin over the first 4 pages aside, it's not an origin series, as the kids have already had their powers long enough to make some sort of name for themselves as crime-fighters.

(There'd be a Power Pack: Day One mini-series covering the origin later, but I don't own it.)

Each issue, Sumerak focuses on one kid, usually them dealing with the strain of being a hero. Katie wants to stop hiding, and tell the story of them getting powers from an alien horse for an assignment about what she did over the summer. Alex tries to juggle responsibility as the oldest with wanting to spend time with a girl he likes. Julie wants to focus on being a regular kid instead of a superhero. Jack, however, wants to spend as much time being a superhero as possible, whether his siblings are around or not. Whether he's able to handle the trouble he encounters or not.

The issues aren't entirely standalone, certain elements pop up more than once. Katie's frustration with her feelings being dismissed by her siblings leads to an outburst of power that leads a Snark to their home. He returns in the final issue, having recruited and empowered a masked robber that escaped earlier in the issue when Julie was being pulled in too many directions at once. Both antagonists are dealt with by letting them get pulled into another dimension by a squid-thing, via a doorway the kids' dad built in their basement.

Which is kind of a harsh resolution now that I think of it. That squid probably wasn't looking to make friends, no matter how silly Gurihiru make it look. Certainly when the portal got opened in issue 2, disrupting Alex's date, the squid was played as a serious threat, but Sumerak doesn't dwell on what happened to the bad guys. Guess we know where Stark and Richards got the idea for their Negative Zone prison.

Sunday Splash Page #415

"Nighttime Visitor," in Power Pack (vol. 1) #27, by Louise Simonson (writer), Jon Bognadove (penciler), Al Gordon (inker), Glynis Oliver (colorist), Jon Rosen (letterer)

The 4 Power kids - Alex, Julie, Jack and Katie - meet a kind alien who grants them superpowers. So they do what any kid would do, use the powers to protect their dad from evil aliens out to steal the information about a matter-anti-matter convertor from his brain.

Power Pack ran 62 issues, from 1984 into 1991. I assume the idea was a book aimed towards younger readers, with kids their age as the leads to identify with, rather than Marvel's usual late teen/early-20s protagonists. Plus a bit of a fantasy approach. The Kymellians (the kind aliens) look like horses. The kids end up with a talking spaceship named Friday.

Maybe that was the idea. I would have been in that age range, younger than even Katie when the book started, and it was never a book I was interested in. I knew Power Pack from guest appearances in other books. The issue of Uncanny X-Men where one of the Morlocks erases the memory of the kids from their parents because Annalee wants to abduct them to be her kids. Thor's Secret Wars II tie-in, where the Pack help Thor and Beta Ray Bill fight off a Beyonder-amped Kurse.

The one issue I do own was purchased along with those couple issues of X-Factor when I was collecting the Mutant Massacre storyline. The Power kids are friends with Franklin Richards, who had some kind of dream power, and was somehow subconsciously aware of what was happening to the Morlocks at the hands of the Marauders. The kids are friends with Leech, too, so into the sewers they go.

I think, when Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men discussed the Mutant Massacre, they talked about the, maybe it's a tonal disconnect, of positing this story as this brutal extermination of an entire community of mutants by a crew of psychopaths. The Marauders are pushing the X-Men to the limits, driving Colossus to kill, crippling Angel. Then you've got a bunch of kids fighting Sabretooth, who can knock Rogue out cold and tear up Wolverine, and making it out unscathed.

Even wilder, the kids had apparently just switched powers - something I don't think I knew they could do until years after the series concluded. Even when Alex Power had all the powersets during his stint on the New Warriors, I assumed there'd been some kind of accident, not a deliberate move on his part - meaning during Mutant Massacre they aren't even entirely sure how to use the powers they've got. So you have Julie, now with the density power Jack typically has, trying to hit Arclight by condensing her mass into a tiny self, getting backhanded into a wall hard enough to get stuck, Alex can't bring himself to hit anyone with Katie's Energizer powers, Jack can't figure out how to manipulate gravity to glide like Alex, but they all make it out unscathed.

It makes sense the kids would rush to help their friends, and they do save Leech and Caliban by keeping the Marauders occupied until X-Factor shows up. But they seem out of place in the story. Risks of a shared universe, not every story that makes sense for a character from a characterization perspective works from a tone perspective.

Sunday Splash Page #414

"Ride the Jade Tiger," in Power Man and Iron Fist #75, by Mary Jo Duffy (writer), Kerry Gammill (penciler), Ricardo Villamonte (inker), Christie Scheele (colorist), Jim Novak (letterer)

Danny Rand's run as a solo hero lasted 15 issues. 26 if you count the stint headlining Marvel Premiere. Luke Cage did better. His solo run went 49 issues, first as Luke Cage Hero-for-Hire, then as Luke Cage: Power Man. At the end of the day, neither was apparently doing well enough on their own. So somebody got the idea to do a team-up book between the naive kung fu white boy and the street savvy black guy with bulletproof skin.

Power Man and Iron Fist took over Luke's book's numbering at issue 50, and ran to issue 125, at which point, Danny got killed. (John Byrne later reversed this in his Namor run, of all things.) I bought 21 issues a few years back, whichever sounded interesting to me. Most are written by either Mary Jo Duffy (from around issue 58 to 80), or Jim Owsley (from the last year of the book). Mark Bright drew all the Owsley issues I've got, while Duffy's are drawn by, variously, Trevor von Eeden, Marie Severin (with Steve Leialoha), Kerry Gammill, or Denys Cowan. There's also a 4 issue story by Kurt Busiek and Ernie Chan in the mix that concludes at #100.

Maybe it's just the issues I picked, but it feels like the book makes more use of Danny's supporting cast than Luke's. Colleen Wing and Misty Knight are around a lot, either hanging out with Danny or on jobs of their own (which inevitably dovetail with whatever Luke and Danny are doing.) Danny's corporate associate Jeryn Hogarth sometimes gets the boys jobs.

They do operate out of Luke's set-up in an old theater, so his pal D.W. is around a lot, and there's some time spent on Luke's various romantic entanglements. Plus, the book is using Luke's "hero for hire" storytelling engine. Maybe incorporating more of Danny's cast and villains was a way of balancing things. Plus, you can get some mileage out of throwing Luke Cage into mystic cities, fighting spectral ninja assassins and sentient, angry plant-people.

And it's in a different way from putting Danny in a world Luke is accustomed to. Danny's utility in those stories is his naivete (and probably the fact he doesn't look intimidating at first glance.) Like when Danny is hired by a woman to protect her from a stalker that turns out to be Whirlwind. Even though the man is a costumed criminal, no one in the neighborhood will help Danny actually find him. Because Whirlwind is from there, and Danny's not, and he can't navigate the idea that matters more than the man being a crook.

With Luke in K'un-Lun, it's not him being naive, but him seeing things with fresh eyes. Danny, even if he doesn't agree with all of it, is used to how things work. He doesn't object when women are treated as irrelevant, and leads the charge to try and exterminate the Hylthri. When Luke questions him about it, Danny says that's just the way things are here. Luke gets to act as the one who cuts through the pomp and the bullshit and get things moving. Plus, Luke and Lei Kung the Thunderer make an interesting duo, mutual (grudging) respect masked by irritation on Luke's end and condescension on Lei Kung's.

In between stories about power struggles over an other-dimensional city, or assassins trying and start a nuclear war, there are more lighthearted stories. All the writers get mileage from Luke and Danny taking jobs they find distasteful and demeaning, or simply being caught up in bizarre circumstances. One time, Luke may come into possession of a quarter that's actually a device that disrupts electronic circuitry, and gets hounded by some crazy mountain climber whose associates look like Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart. Or they take a job to check on some vault in the Alaskan tundra, which turns out to be empty for some reason, and the security guard, already loopy from the isolation, goes completely round the bend.

Sunday Splash Page #413

"Pipe Organ from Hell," in Power Girl (vol. 2) #3, by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Amanda Conner (artist), Paul Mounts (colorist), John J. Hill (letterer)

Power Girl had a 4-issue mini-series in the late-80s, then bounced between team books - not to mention origins and powersets - for almost 20 years. Infinite Crisis bringing back the multiverse meant it was OK for her to be a Kryptonian from a different, now-deceased, universe, which at least settled the origin and powerset. Still, now that her past was concrete - as concrete as anything gets in a Big 2 superhero universe - what to do with her present?

Amanda Conner, Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti started with trying to get her a civilian life again. In the arc in JSA Classified that led into Infinite Crisis, Geoff Johns established that while Power Girl had an apartment, she was hardly ever there. Dust on everything, she couldn't keep track of where her key was (Conner drew a pile of doorknobs just inside the apartment from Peej breaking them to get in each time she actually came by.) Not even bothering with a disguise or secret identity, just walking to the door in her costume.

So, get her an apartment. Have her try to maintain, with limited success, a secret identity as Karen Starr. Get her a cat, which allows Conner to draw all sorts of interesting or funny stuff in the background when Power Girl's at home. Continue building the friendship with the current Terra (as started in the Terra mini-series from this creative team the year before), but make sure they interact outside superheroics. Doing stuff like going to the movies together. Get Peej back in charge of her old company, Starrware (I don't know how many reboots of the character ago that was), with a focus on technological solutions for environmental and ecological problems. That provides the opportunity for supporting cast members who aren't costumed adventurers, while also offering a setting which can provide both conflicts and solutions to conflicts that don't strictly involve a Kryptonian punching stuff (fun as that can be to read.)

Then throw her up against a wide variety of foes. The arch-villain of this creative team's run was the Ultra-Humanite, himself a refuge from Earth-2 like Power Girl, though I'm unclear how he's still around. U-H has a superiority complex related to his intellect, and a chip on his shoulder because his body let him down, resulting in his brain being implanted in an albino gorilla. He initially plans to move his brain into her body, which is an inversion of the typical focus on Power Girl's appearance. Where often it's the male gaze about her physical appearance, for U-H, it's about the power inside that body, and what he thinks he could do with it, rather than the usual lust motivation. He's still reducing her to a body for him to use, but in a different way. Not that it ends any better for him.

And there's plenty of the other kind of reduction dealt with in the book. Lots of brief scenes of people talking down to Power Girl or otherwise behaving inappropriately, which she then shuts down in some way. An egotistical scientist interviews for a position at her company and dismisses her concerns about his plans to bio-engineer psychological change into people to match what he thinks is "healthy"? That dude is shown the door. Some bum tries to flash Power Girl? Freeze breath on his junk. The 2-part story where Vartox shows up, having decided Power Girl is the ideal woman to help kickstart a population boom on his planet, is one long exercise in her dealing with an annoying dickhead with no respect for her (or boundaries.) There's a lot of yelling, followed by punching.

I'd like to solve more of my problems with yelling followed by punching. Maybe skip straight to the punching.

Beyond that, there's a teenage girl who tries to use a magic book to destroy aspects of industrialization in an effort to protect the planet, and a trio of wild alien ladies looking for a planet to have a party. And there's Satanna, looking for revenge after Power Girl's initial defeat of the Ultra-Humanite. Except this was at the same time the Humanite had gotten his brain transferred into Terra, so that played out strangely. Satanna went to the trouble of getting weapons from Dr. Sivana to kill Power Girl, only for the Humanite, in Terra's body, to destroy the weapons. Satanna helped with the brain transfer, so why are they working at cross-purposes?

Conner fills the pages with all sorts of background details and foreground action. Wherever Power Girl goes, in costume or civilian clothes, we see people passing by take notice. (Sometimes she comments, sometimes she doesn't.) Two people may be talking while one of Karen's employees is chasing her cat in the background. Colorist Phil Mounts uses vivid colors, nothing muddy or restrained. The Ultra-Humanite's weapons fire bright-green beams, Satanna's armor she got from Sivana has a gaudy leopard-print design. The subterranean land Terra comes from has clothing that changes into dayglo colors in response to the wearer's emotions. Even if things get ugly at times, these are still bright, exciting adventures for the most part. Weird science stuff, magic, aliens! Satanna's chief henchman is an angry badger scientist, a detail I really loved.

Conner makes Power Girl a big presence. Taller than most of the guys at her company, so she often has a noticeable height advantage in the profile shots of two characters conversing. She shifts easily from amusement to exasperation to anger as the situation changes. Not that she can't play diplomatic, but this is not a character who is going to bite their tongue and play nice to avoid stepping on some jerk's feelings, or worry about being called a bitch for it. They play up the "power" in her name, too. She swings cars like she's waving a paper fan. A panel full of Bioshock-looking machines is followed by a panel full of shattered junk. Or she survives an explosion that vaporizes an alien spaceship with nothing more than some scorch marks on her skin and mild disorientation.

Unfortunately, the creative team left after 12 issues, replaced by Judd Winick and Sami Basri. Winick proceeded to tear down Starrware and embroil Power Girl in Justice League: Generation Lost-related plots, and Basri's Power Girl seemed like a much more reserved and remote character than Conner's. A lot of narrowed eyes and harsh glares. I gave that 5 issues and then bailed out hard.

Sunday Splash Page #412

"Skyrocket's in Fight," in The Power Company #10, by Kurt Busiek (writer), Tom Grummett (penciler), Prentis Rollins (inker), Wildstorm FX (colorists), Comicraft (letterer)

Power Company was a bit Heroes for Hire, but with more focus on the business side of superheroics for hire. The economics of it, the boardroom politics that cause friction, how other heroes might react to this, especially given the number of really sketchy companies in the DCU, stuff like that.

Co-creators Kurt Busiek and Tom Grummett put together a team of almost entirely new characters. They did use Bork from the Brave and the Bold story, "But Bork Can Hurt YOU!", and a clone of the Paul Kirk Manhunter that chose not to die fighting the "good" one. Otherwise, I think everybody was new, even if some of their origins involved established characters. Homeless runaway Sapphire happened to swipe a weird gem that was prized by Kobra (as seen in Random Back Issues #29), and the head of the company, Josiah Power, was an attorney who had his career ruined when that metagene bomb from Invasion! activated superpowers.

(There were a series of one-shots introducing each of the characters, each with a different artist, but I'm not going through all those.)

The set-up is half the cast - Bork, Sapphire, teched-up former stuntman Striker Z - are "associates", which seems to translate roughly to employees, the others - Josiah, Manhunter, pop star/sorceress Witchfire, and Skyrocket up there - are partners, who bought shares in the company and therefore get more of a say in how it's run, clients they accept, things like that. Manhunter is a merc, looking to diversify his holdings. Witchfire thought it'd be good for her public profile. Skyrocket's the only real hero of the bunch, but helping people because it's, "the right thing" don't keep the balance sheet in the black.

It's still, in some ways, a traditional superhero team book. Grummett's art runs to that style. Clean lines, smooth art. The colors are bright, the action is big. Other than Josiah - who mostly wears a suit - and Bork - who rocks jeans and a tank top - everybody has very "superhero" looks. And Busiek's writes to have subplots for most every character, which can be shifted from the background to the focus at any moment. There's a lot going on in the casts' individual lives, and in their relationships with each other. Manhunter and Witchfire against Skyrocket, Josiah trying to keep everyone going the same direction because he does believe there's value in this. Bork and Sapphire as sort of a mutual support group, the homeless teenager and the mutated ex-con. Skyrocket trying to make friends (or allies?) of the associates. Manhunter's past coming after him.

Unfortunately, the book ended after 18 issues, so a lot of things were never resolved. Bork felt a little bad about trashing some armed robbers he used to know from his criminal days, and worried about backsliding. Sapphire was probably going to be targeted by Kobra eventually. Witchfire learned something about herself that was never explained or delved into in any particular way. Josiah spends the about 8 issues in a coma, coming out of it just in time to help rescue the group from another dimension. His sidelining does allow more friction and backstabbing between the other 3 partners, letting them make moves they might not otherwise, but he felt like he was going to be a more central character, so the extended absence is notable.

(Busiek and Grummett don't really get to anything with Striker Z, unless we count the story where he and Manhunter run into trouble on what was supposed to be a publicity stunt, and Striker learns not to make assumptions about how easy or hard a job is going to be. He was present when Witchfire learned that thing about herself, so I wonder if there'd have been something there. She's a big star, with the ego to match, he's a stuntman, one of the guys who makes big stars look good.) 

While Busiek and Grummett introduce some new threats - at least, I think Dr. Cyber and the Dragoneer were new - they don't mind using what's already available. Third-rate super-powered goon squad The Cadre are hitting a lot of scientific research facilities and companies, which Skyrocket is trying to figure out how to protect when they won't sign contracts hiring the company to do it (because her sales pitch needs work), and Manhunter and Witchfire veto her using company resources for pro bono work. Dr. Polaris shows up as the man behind the Cadre, amped to new levels of power thanks to an alien (a Controller? I don't know DC aliens) he'd taken prisoner. 

(Coincidental, but Nicieza did something vaguely similar with Graviton in Thunderbolts around this time, ramping up the villain to new levels, taking all the other heroes out of play except for the book's cast. Except Graviton was being used by the alien, rather than using it. Which just proves he's more of a goober than Dr. Polaris, I guess.)

They can't have other heroes popping up all the time, but there are a few. Green Arrow, as much an antagonist as anything. Issue #15, drawn by Gary Chaloner (the only issue Grummett doesn't pencil), has Batman hounding Manhunter across Gotham. Firestorm pops in for a few issues, needing gainful employment. I read somewhere years ago, can't verify the accuracy, there was a poll about who the fans wanted to have join the book, and the Haunted Tank won. But it ended up as some experimental hover tank, piloted by Jeb Stuart's granddaughter and haunted by Jeb. Not sure that's what folks were looking for.

The book did not end with the company closing its doors, but other than Josiah Power appearing in a reboot of the Power Company last year, I'm not sure any of the others have shown up anywhere since. Which at least means they weren't fed into the Event Woodchipper by Johns, Meltzer, or some other writer. It's too bad. I tracked it down in back issues several years ago, and wish it would have gone longer. At least to see how some of those other threads played out.

Sunday Splash Page #411

"Casualties," in Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka ch. 11, vol. 2, by Naoki Urasawa, Osamu Tezuka, and Takashi Nagasaki

Someone is targeting the seven most advanced robots of the world, as well as those who advocate for the rights of robots. Victims are left displayed with something resembling horns sticking from the ground around their head, like the Roman God of Death. The Europol detective assigned to the case of the murdered activists, Inspector Gesicht, is one of those "great" robots himself, so a failure to solve the mystery in time could have very real consequences for him.

Pluto is a work of Naoki Urasawa's, inspired by Osamu Tezuka's "The Greatest Robot on Earth" story in the manga we know here in the States as Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atom in Japan.) I don't know the original work, don't know much about the character or his world, period, so I can't say in what ways this is inspired, and in what ways it's simply Urasawa's own thing that just happens to inhabit a fictional world created by another writer/artist.

The impetus for the attacks traces back to the "39th Central Asian War", where the President of the United States of Thracia convinced the rest of the world the Persian Kingdom had too big a robot army, and was working on dangerously advanced artificial intelligences which could threaten the world. So they invaded, with those same seven robots taking part to one degree or another. Some fought, others, like the pacifist Epsilon, refused to fight, but helped with surveys after the war that sought proof of these dangerous A.I.s.

They didn't find anything, except a bunch of shattered remains of robot bodies. No sign of the alleged brilliant scientist Persia had working for them, "Dr. Goji," either. But now something was killing advanced robots, and people who advocated for their rights. Something that seemed to harness nature itself.

Something Urasawa does, after the murder of Mont Blanc kicks things off, is spend time with each of the robots. What they do, what they want. North No. 2 - the second to go - is built for war, but chooses to act as butler for a blind pianist, one brilliant but embittered. North No. 2 keeps all his weapons concealed beneath a cloak, and asks to be taught to play the piano. Brando became one of two great fighting champions (another of the robots, Hercules, is the other), but he and his wife have a house full of kids. Epsilon takes in orphans, including one boy traumatized by something he saw during the 39th Central Asian War. Gesicht has a wife, and they discuss maybe adopting a child, or going on vacations. Even robots that aren't designed to look as human have lives. Gesicht delivers the news to the wife of a robot cop that was badly damaged by an assailant, and both are shiny metal, with Johnny-Five like faces and dimensions. But the loss of her husband shakes the wife dearly.

It makes it seem odd that Gesicht treats things like struggling to tell if Atom is human or robot as a rare experience, because all these robots seem human. Maybe "alive" is the better word. They aren't the same as humans, but they're still alive. They seem able to hallucinate, or see things that aren't real, as they die. Brando cries out that he won against Pluto, even though he didn't. Gesicht sees the past when he dies, the things that were locked away from him in his memory.

Urasawa spends a lot of panels on close-ups of faces, and I don't think you could tell from the expressions, which characters were organic and which weren't. Maybe Gesicht doesn't pout or grumble like some of the human cops Atom interacts with, but he smiles softly, he narrows his eyes, he shouts or grows angry when someone he cares about is attacked. He's aware he interprets the world differently from humans, that he drinks tea just to look normal. That he even bothers to pretend, to put people at ease, or simply for his own reasons, seems like a living, thinking response.

The other major theme I notice is memory. The various robots often exchange memory cards, or connect to each other wirelessly as a way to share evidence. In this way, sometimes one character learns something the other didn't notice, or doesn't remember. Atom finds something in Gesicht's memories that he's forgotten. Or more accurately, been made to forget. Hercules comments that humans erect monuments, or hold memorials, to preserve a memory against being forgotten, while robots never forget, so long as they don't erase the memory.

What we see in this story is humans do a lot more than just build monuments or hold vigils for those they miss or admire. Atom was created by Dr. Tenma to replace his dead son. Tenma, however, considers Atom a failure, because he isn't like Tenma's son. He likes a book on insects he found, a gift from Tenma the dead boy hid away. And Pluto, and the mysterious "Bora", are both products of a man's unwillingness to let go. They're monuments to his anger, to his loss, and he wants the world to be unable to forget, no matter how much damage that requires, even to himself or his children.

Sunday Splash Page #410

"Adrift" in Planetes Omnibus vol. 1, ch. 5, by Makoto Yukimura

Planetes revolves around the crew of an outer space garbage truck, basically. Fee, Yuri, Hachimaki and eventually Tanabe, pilot a ship that collects space debris. Left floating around Earth, the debris could prove dangerous to outer space travel, since even a tiny piece, with sufficient velocity, can tear through the hull of a ship.

There are occasional humorous chapters. Tanabe helping a guy on another crew who claims to be an alien exiled here - for making crop circles and turning cows inside out - understand how to interact with people. Hachimaki goes home and fights with his rocket-obsessed little brother. There's a flashback chapter about Hachimaki's dad playing baseball with the rest of the Mars mission crew while waiting for word on the birth of his first son back on Earth.

But a lot of chapters are ruminations on life and death, what matters to people and what should matter, the people left behind, that sort of thing. While Fee has her issues with her disobedient, compassionate son, and Yuri lost his wife when their shuttle got caught in a debris storm, most of it is focused on Hachimaki, and man, writer/artist Makoto Yukimura really lets Hachi have it from every direction.

When Hachi injures his ankle because he hasn't been doing enough exercise to offset the bone weakening from zero gravity and ponders returning to Earth, because space doesn't want humans here, Fee yells at him for being a crybaby and tells him to run home. When he sets his sights on being chosen for the "Jupiter mission" and dedicates himself to training like a madman, without concern for anything other than his desire to explore space, Tanabe yells at him for being heartless. He gets criticized by the head of a terrorist organization that bombs civilians in space stations for not caring about space and being willing to roll through anyone or anything to get out there. Again, this guy is a mass murderer, he's lecturing Hachi, and the story seems to present this as perfectly reasonable and not at all ridiculous.

And it's only Hachi who comes in for this. The guy in charge of the Jupiter mission is just as ruthless. When the engine testing lab explodes, killing 324 people, he offers blithe promises of financial compensation to the families, then says he's confident the data collected will help correct the flaw in the engine's design that caused the explosion. When confronted by the sister of one of the scientists, Lockwood remains unrepentant, telling the sister she didn't understand her brother at all. She has a gun, she doesn't shoot him. He just walks away, to keep doing what he's doing.

I'm left wondering why is it OK this guy continues on this path, but everyone keeps telling Hachimaki he's fucking up no matter what he does? Hachi's dad talks about 'selfish dreamers,' the ones who wanted to go to space like Tsiolkovsky and made their own personal dream into a goal for all mankind,. Lockwood seems to be exactly that kind of person, willing to cast anyone on the pyre of his dream and call it acceptable losses in some greater glory for the world, but his callousness apparently impresses Hachi's dad so much he goes back on his intent to retire in favor of joining the Jupiter mission. And Hachi's mom is OK with this, because she knows he'll always come back.

Sure, until he doesn't. This series reminds us often, space is extremely hostile to humans. No air, no water, solar flares that irradiate the hell out of you. Debris floating around that can blast your ship apart without a moment's warning. Yukimura draws a lot of pages showing part of the Earth, and space beyond as a void with only a few pinpricks of light. Or it's just space, nothing but emptiness and one poor astronaut in a suit. Unfortunately for me, all this works contrary to the statements we get from people about how they're always in space, because Earth is part of space. The Earth may be in space, but everything about this series says it is not of space, Carl Sagan's point we're all made of starstuff aside. So that doesn't work for me at all.

We meet astronauts who were in space so long they're eaten up with cancer from radiation. Hachi nearly dies when he gets disconnected from his ship, and is fortunate to be in the moon's shadow, or a solar flare would have killed him. As it is, the isolation, cut off even from communication, nearly destroys his career because he can't handle the sensory deprivation. During the training for the Jupiter mission, one of the other guys is injured in a crash (and would have died if Hachi didn't carry him for nearly 10 hours across the Moon until Fee and the others find them.) No more space for him, it's back to the Ukraine to herd cows!

But his mother's grateful he's alive - even if Hachi can't understand what she's saying - and that seems to be the main point. Even for these people who dedicate themselves to space and leave others behind on Earth, they still need those people who care about them. And they need to care about those people, I guess, although it's hard to see that. I see no sign Lockwood needs or cares about anyone, and I'm not sure how happy Hachi's pal was to be cut off forever from space, but it seems to be the lesson Hachi is supposed to learn. I don't really understand the approach Yukimura takes; Hachi hallucinates a version of himself in a spacesuit who encourages him to give up. Later it's some sort of strange spectral cat, then it's an alien that turns into Tanabe.

Because of course the two characters that fight and bicker and don't see eye-to-eye on anything are going to get married. Naturally. And it's handled in such an oddball way - Hachi asks while they're playing some word association game, and Tanabe can't explain later why she agreed - that it feels entirely perfunctory. Like Yukimura decided Hachi needed that character development and just forcefed it into the story.

Fortunately, during the stretch where the mission is on its way to Jupiter, Yukimura shifts to a plotline about the U.S. decrying some other country having weapons satellites and how that makes space unsafe. So they start destroying them. Even though this exponentially increases the amount of debris, to the point certain orbital paths become unusable. But if there's anything the last 25 years have demonstrated, it's that the United States is dumb as hell. This turns into Fee leading an operation to try and find a disable the weapon satellites and haul them away before there can be more destruction, trying to avoid the military the whole time. This seems to be a dive into Fee's character, her particular brand of stubborness, which manifests itself in other ways in her son that she struggles to navigate.

(There's a bit where a rogue officer in the U.S. military, who Yukimura draws to look like KFC mascot Colonel Sanders, uses AI to fake interviews where Fee, Yuri, and Tanabe explain why they're doing this. Disturbingly prescient.)

In total, there are parts of the series I like, and it looks gorgeous, but there are also a lot of character beats that feel inconsistent or simply land wrong with me. 

Sunday Splash Page #409

"Reliquary", in Planetary #3, by Warren Ellis (writer), John Cassaday (artist), Laura DePuy and David Baron (color artists), Ali Fuchs (letterer) 

A man sits in a diner in what appears to be the middle of nowhere. The blacktop is being consumed by the desert sands, and based on his complaints, the coffee would be just as well buried, too. A woman in black arrives with a job offer, and Elijah Snow accepts. Now he's working for Planetary, an agency dedicated to keeping the world strange, funded by a mysterious "Fourth Man."

As it turns out, there's a lot of strange stuff out there, including Elijah Snow, who is a "Century Baby," a person born on January 1, 1900, along with several other notable individuals they come to learn about during the series 27-issue run, not counting a couple of crossovers with the Justice League, Batman, The Authority, none of which I own. Ellis, Cassaday and DePuy peel the mysteries back as they go along, delving into Snow's past, Planetary's past, the world's past, and the four individuals that have spent decades keeping every bit of the strangeness they could get their hands on for themselves.

In practice, the creative team repurpose characters from the pulps, the comics, movies, whatever to their purposes. One issue is concerned with an island where all the kaiju just suddenly appeared in the 1950s, then seemed to die out 20 years later. The first issue reveals there was a secret society of guys - all Century Babys like Snow - that created a super-computer in the 1940s that inadvertently created or unlocked (I was unclear on that part) new universes, including one that had its own protectors. The secret society is basically characters like Doc Savage, Tarzan, the Shadow, with the serial numbers filed off, and the other universe's protectors are basically the Justice League, But Not.

Likewise, the "Four" that Planetary finds themselves in opposition with are the Fantastic Four, But Not. Ellis taking the notion that Reed Richards' inventions never seem to actually improve or change Marvel-Earth beyond what our world is, and attributing that to selfishness and malice rather than editorial diktat.

Cassaday and DePuy absolutely illustrate the hell out of the book. Need a ghost cop to shoot bullets of fire that move at right angles, with a close-up on the target as the bullet ignites them from the inside-out? They can do it. Need to draw back, show a single man wandering inside an immense ark from another reality, full or pillars covered in shiny gold wrought into intricate patterns? They can do that. Enormous rotting monster corpse, or people having a philosophical argument inside said rotting corpse? They got you covered.

There are times I wish Cassaday's style was a bit more exaggerated. Like he would let his lines get more jagged or loose for things that might beggar a human's perception. But overall, I think the fact he kept that steady, smooth line, tending more towards a photo-realistic approach, really works. Part of that is that Ellis' characters, even when confronted by some of this strangeness, never seem all that shook. Jakita or Drummer might get excited, in the way a child is with a new toy, but no one's sanity is in danger. They aren't gibbering in tongues or clawing at their faces. In general, the people affected like that by what they encounter end up dying shortly thereafter. For Planetary, what they encounter might be something they've never seen before, but they've certainly seen things as strange before, if in a different way.

Likewise, while DePuy's colors are strong and vivid, she doesn't really go for anything bizarre. Nothing day-glo or technicolor, blinding you with how garish it is. Things are not muted, exactly, but not something that makes you avert your eyes. The idea is for you to see the strangeness, and maybe comprehend it.

Similar to the artistic approach, Ellis using all these knockoffs both works for and against the book for me. At times, it's interesting to see what he does with, essentially, James Bond, or in the case of the issue above, the trope in Hong Kong cop flicks of the honorable cop being killed by his bent partner. At others, I'm distracted by my mind's, "Oh, that's the Lone Ranger. Oh, that's the ship from Jules Verne's story about going to the Moon," and so on. 

That said, while Elijah Snow is definitely a Warren Ellis protagonist - he smokes, he's sarcastic and rude, likes to get on his soapbox while also threatening to kill people he perceives as disrespectful to him - the book itself is also more optimistic than I might have expected. Snow concludes that simply cataloguing strange artifacts and phenomenon isn't enough; they need to use these things to make the world better. (We don't really get to the part where they do that, but I think we're meant to assume it will start happening.)

This is (part of) his issue with the Four: They help no one but themselves. They resented that they weren't granted special abilities, so they went and got some (which, I don't think is an issue in of itself), but then decided to close the door behind them. There was no ideal beyond, 'get that bag,' and this is what Snow finds unacceptable. He even chides Jakita at times for regarding the things they find as nothing more than a way to alleviate boredom, like all these discoveries are just like trophies you collect in a Grand Theft Auto game to pass the time between running people over.

There are certain parts that don't mean anything to me, most of which I assume are related to the larger Wildstorm Universe, of which I have little-to-no interest. The Bleed, for one. There's also an issue where Snow's mind is sent into a sort of microverse that underpins all existence. Except he learns that as a Century Baby, he is somehow not part of it. But the place underpins everything, so how is he not part of it. Snow later mentions something about all the members of Planetary being parts of different "systems" of defending existence or the universe, but I don't really follow that, either. I don't think any of it is necessary to read the comics. It's probably enough to grasp that Snow rediscovers his purpose, then goes to war against the group that he feels stands in the way of said purpose.

The book suffered from a lot of delays, though that wasn't much concern for me, seeing as I bought used tpbs a decade after the series concluded. Two years between issues 15 and 16, three years between issues the final two issues. I would assume that was Cassaday, but he was also drawing that Joss Whedon-written X-Men book during part of the decade (1999-2009) the book spans, so maybe Ellis took his sweet time getting scripts to him? Obviously, this was written by Ellis, but at this point I imagine you could find a used copy of the original set of tpbs for fairly cheap, thus ensuring he wasn't getting any of your money. Or pirate it. I'm sure that's also an option, if the book interests you and you've somehow taken even longer to investigate it than I did.

Sunday Splash Page #408

"Spider-sicle," in Peter Parker: Spider-Man (vol. 2) #37/135, by Paul Jenkins (writer), Mark Buckingham (penciler), Wayne Faucher (inker), Transparency Digital (colorists), RS and Comicraft (letterers)

Following the general mess that was The Final Chapter, Marvel canceled most of their Spider-titles, rebooting two with new first issues. Amazing Spider-Man, helmed by Howard Mackie and John Byrne, and Peter Parker: Spider-Man, by Mackie and John Romita Jr.

Quite why anyone thought having both books written by Howard Mackie of all people was a good idea escapes me, beyond the fact nobody at Marvel was making good decisions in the '90s. Case in point: that stretch, which lasted about 18 months, is known primarily for Mary Jane appearing to be killed in a plane crash and Peter dealing with being a grieving widower.

Romita Jr. eventually moved to Amazing when Byrne departed, which is also when Paul Jenkins and Mark Buckingham took over Peter Parker: Spider-Man. While they weren't able to entirely avoid plotlines in Amazing (such as Norman Osborn drugging Peter's toothpaste so he could make him dress up as the Green Goblin and attack Peter's friends in some twisted attempt to make Parker into his new heir, no I'm not kidding), they did get to do their own thing most of the time.

(They adapted pretty smoothly to J. Michael Straczynski having Peter move into his own apartment and become a teacher. Jenkins actually had Peter strike up a friendship with a neighbor, more than JMS did, and alluded to the difficulties of getting papers graded when you were out late fighting the Rhino.)

"Their own thing" was, especially for the first year, mostly done-in-one stories about Peter's life. How it shifts to accommodate Spider-Man, and frequently, how other people perceive Spider-Man. One issue might be about a young boy in a troubled home who imagined himself as Spider-Man's sidekick, with Spidey as a sort of parental figure who reminds him to work on his math and be forgiving when his mother forgets to sign his permission slip for the field trip. Another is about how different cops see Spider-Man, or a private investigator who thinks he's pieced together Spider-Man's secret identity (based on assumptions about what the man must be like in his civilian life to act like Spider-Man.)

Jenkins and Buckingham were also the creators of my favorite entry of Marvel's "Nuff Said" Month, as they penned an issue where Spidey comes under attack from a veritable army of criminal mimes.

Jenkins' version of Parker is a bit of a dork. Not as funny as he clearly thinks he is - there's an issue where Peter tries stand-up comedy and bombs completely - and always seems a bit harried. Like there's just a little too much on his plate for him to handle. It fits with Buckingham's depiction, where Peter always seems to have bags under his eyes and look a little older than you think he might. It's a stressful life, and all his neuroses and guilt complexes don't make it any less so. At the same time, Buckingham's Spider-Man can often look graceful, then just as swiftly look like a fool, but always seems to pick himself back up.

The few multi-part stories Jenkins did in his 30 issues were a mixed bag. There was a vengeful parent who at first appeared to be like a Super-Adaptoid, but was more of a low-grade mutant Mysterio. But, proving he didn't play favorites (or that he read the fan responses), Jenkins fed that guy to Doc Ock in a story that felt needlessly convoluted (chips that could control people being placed in advanced cybernetic limbs), but nonetheless played Octavius as a vicious, determined threat.

Then Jenkins brought Norman Osborn into play, although the story is most notable for Humberto Ramos shifting from cover artist to interior artist. Talk about whiplash, going from Buckingham to Ramos was like a brick to the face. Actually, a brick to the face might have been preferable to Ramos' weirdly disjointed, oddly proportioned, undead-esque sunken eyes, art. I could not figure out why Marvel thought this guy had any business drawing comics.

To be fair, even with Buckingham on pencils I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it. However cool I might have originally thought the reveal of Norman as the mastermind behind the Clone Saga was (and I have to sadly admit I was excited to get that comic because i thought it might be worth something, silly me), I was thoroughly sick of Osborn by the time this story rolled around. Especially when Jenkins goes to the edge of Peter killing Norman Osborn, only to pull back, because that would mean Osborn "won," somehow. Osborn had already, just in this story, beat the shit out of Flash, dumped booze on him, put him behind the wheel of a truck and driven it into the side of Peter's classroom, putting Flash in a coma that appeared to be the result of a relapse into alcoholism. That's a pretty solid win, but at least if he's dead he can't enjoy it.

I know, if Jenkins killed him, someone else would just bring him back, and we'd still have Norman trying to be good or whatever the hell is going on in the Spider-Man books right now.

All that is to say, that story got tossed from the collection (possibly into the trash) many years ago. Jenkins and Buckingham left the book at issue #50, turning it over to Zeb Wells and a host of pencilers for 7 issues until the book was canceled. Jenkins took up the second volume of Spectacular Spider-Man, occasionally working with Buckingham. While "Peter Parker" has been placed at the front of at least one volume of Spectacular since, this particular title has been left behind. 

Sunday Splash Page #407

"Big Trouble," in Spider-Man #22, by Erik Larsen (writer/artist), Gregory Wright (colorist), Chris Eliopoulos (letterer)

We're getting to this book now because eventually (75 issues into its 98-issue run), the book's title became Peter Parker: Spider-Man. When they restarted the Spider-titles at #1 after "The Final Chapter", they kept that title, and I bought that book for a couple years (see next week), so that's where this got stored.

But before all that, the book was a Todd MacFarlane vanity project. Todd Mac was the hot name in comics, so Marvel gave him his own book, either to capitalize on his popularity, or just to try and keep him around. If the latter, it didn't work, since MacFarlane was one of the seven who founded Image Comics, and departed with issue 16.

I've discussed in Splash Page entries for Spectacular Spider-Man, Sensational Spider-Man, and Web of Spider-Man, that it's hard to see any real principle that distinguishes those books from Amazing Spider-Man. Spectacular might have started with a notion to focus more on "Peter Parker", but the civilian side of Peter's life is such a big part of the Spider-Man formula that doesn't really do anything. Amazing wasn't exactly ignoring the Peter Parker side of things.

The best you can probably get is a writer who pursues a particular interest and puts that stamp on the book. J.M. DeMatteis eventually focused Spectacular on the psychological trauma that causes someone to put on a costume and fight or commit crimes. Likewise, I might say Gerry Conway leaned Web heavily into organized crime stories, jostling for territory or dominance (albeit in a very superhero way of big, public battles for Spider-Man to get involved with.)

If I were to try and summarize MacFarlane's run on Spider-Man, it'd be horror. He had basically 4 stories, not counting the final issue crossover with X-Force. You get Spider-Man being attacked psychically by Calypso, who is also controlling the Lizard to make him more feral and vicious (to attack Spider-Man physically.) Or Spider-Man is caught between Ghost Rider and a version of Hobgoblin that's fright mask is his face, but thinks he's a servant of God out to punish sinners. Or the Wendigo shows up, or Spider-Man has to deal with Morbius ruling a sewer kingdom of homeless people with mental health issues. It's all monsters, with at least a hint of the supernatural to them.

Also guest appearances by popular characters like Wolverine and Ghost Rider. Can't forget that!

I'm going off vague impressions. I only had a few issues of MacFarlane's run. Apparently, Nineties Calvin wasn't looking for horror in his Spider-Man comics. But once Todd Mac leaves, the book's adrift. For 30 issues, it cycles between creative teams, each popping up for one story, then moving aside. Erik Larsen's "Revenge of the Sinister Six" is the only one that goes beyond 3 issues, it and the one-shot by Ann Nocenti and Rick Leonardi that precede it are all that I still have.

Issue 45 marks the point where Marvel starts doing a lot of stories that run across all the monthly Spider-titles. Spider-Man becomes less a book of its own - for what that's worth - more a cog in a larger mechanism, especially as The Clone Saga revs up. It's Howard Mackie and Tom Lyle for ~20 issues, then John Romita Jr. takes over as the regular penciler for the most of the last 30+ issues. Through "Ben Reilly is Spider-Man", the return of Norman Osborn/end of the Clone Saga (which is when the book adds "Peter Parker" to the title), and the generally directionless last two years of the book.

I own scattered issues. Peter and Ben fighting Sentinels during Onslaught. Spider-Man getting on the Juggernaut's bad side for an issue. Identity Crisis. The closest thing to an overarching theme I can find is Norman Osborn making life difficult for Peter and Spider-Man. There's some other stuff about Captain George Stacy's brother and his two kids, Jill and Paul, showing up. I think Paul turns out to be a bigot, but I can't pretend I care.

Sunday Splash Page #406

"Traffic Gods," in The Pedestrian #2, by Joey Esposito (writer), Sean von Gorman (artist), Josh Jensen (color artist), Shawn Lee (letterer)

The 4th issue promised there'd be more of this series, but it's been a year since then and I haven't seen even a solicitation for one, we're going forward. 

So, for around six months, there's been a vigilante roaming the streets of Summer City. Well, not the streets so much as the sidewalks. Crosswalks, too. He shows up, helps people in danger, and then speed-walks into the night with nary a word. What's his deal? Well, it has something to do with that assemblage up there, but it's unclear how much the man inside the suit is an active part of the whole thing. There's also an opposing force, represented by the big red hand in the "DON'T WALK" sign, and while The Pedestrian has one person in his corner - a veteran now working as a crossing guard - the opposition is grabbing all the new recruits it can.

With The Pedestrian a silent figure, likely in the thrall of forces larger than himself, and the other guy's identity a secret, a lot of Esposito and von Gorman's focus is on the regular people drawn into the orbit of these forces. Not only Kira, a young woman the Pedestrian saves from a mugging on her way home, but also James Tucker, the guy who tried mugging her. Twin brothers, Syndey and Jeremy, new to town and nearly run over by a drunk driver, who Kira ends up babysitting later. Randy, who The Pedestrian helps parallel park one time, and vaguely knew James in high school. There's a detective, investigating the vigilante, trying to figure out what his deal is.

Nothing is exactly working out for these people. Randy was pre-med, but dropped out after a year, due to a drinking issue. Now she works at seemingly the only pizza place in town. Kira can barely afford a studio apartment shared with 3 people, and loses her job because her being interviewed on the news about her mugging makes it look like the store is in the "bad" part of town. Jeremy and Sydney seem to have come from a school district with lots of extracurriculars, and that's not the case at their new school, so they feel isolated. James takes a lot of abuse as the cashier of a crappy local hardware store, and goes home every night to an empty apartment and orders pizza. Detective Sherwood is sort of a joke among her coworkers, and even her father thought she was a fool for thinking she could make the city a better place.

For all of them, Summer City is like a vortex they can't escape. Nothing seems to get better, no avenues for improvement of their lot in life are available. So it becomes a question of whether they fight the pull, or surrender to it. But they are, at the end of the day, regular people. Von Gorman doesn't draw any idealized bodies or figures. A lot of the characters slouch, or walk with a stooped-shoulders, defeated gait. The detective has some stress lines on her face, James has the kind of stubble that just looks sloppy, not whatever it is people who keep stubble and look attractive do for that effect.

That doesn't mean they're helpless, it just means it can be difficult on your own. The Pedetrian's opposing force seems to feed into resentment and frustration. Not so much power as revenge. James, once under its control, isn't interested in money, or getting out of town. He just wants to hurt people, to lash out. There are a lot of people like that in Summer City. They eventually become a horde, dressed all in black except for the handprint over their faces and the red glove. There's a scene where the twins have dragged Kira out on a search for The Pedestrian, and as they stand at a crosswalk, the red "DON"T WALK" sign flashes. With each flash, more of those guys appear across the street.

It's very effective, nicely done, and it emphasizes that even if you don't give in, that doesn't mean you can't get overrun if you try and handle it alone. The twins would have been in deep trouble if they had gone out without Kira, who couldn't have protected them much longer if Detective Sherwood hadn't shown up. When The Pedestrian's out of commission for a bit, it's Randy helping the crossing guard that gets him going again. It's connections, but also whether those connections are trying to help, or drag you down.

Sunday Splash Page #405

"Farewells at the Fountain," in Patsy Walker, a.k.a Hellcat #17, by Kate Leth (writer), Brittney L. Williams (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer)

In 2015, Marvel canceled all their ongoing series as part of Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic's Secret Wars (since the universes all those books took place in were gone.) Even before the event was over, Marvel began relaunching the books. Because the mini-series was behind schedule, plus Marvel probably worried they weren't flooding the market sufficiently with just tie-in mini-series.

The number of books I was buying did not recover to where it was the year before, and most of what I did buy were titles I was buying that Marvel canceled then restarted. Duggan and Hawthorne's Deadpool. G. Willow Wilson and Takeshi Miyazawa on Ms. Marvel. Ryan North and Erica Henderson's Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. There were a few new titles, but Joshua Williamson's Illuminati died in about 7 issues, and I dropped Waid and Samnee's Black Widow after 6. Which leaves this book, also part of one of Marvel's periodic attempts to possibly broaden their market. Maybe draw in some younger readers, maybe draw in some readers who, gasp!, aren't dudes.

Charles Soule and Javier Pulido used Patsy in their She-Hulk series, Hellcat acting as Jennifer Walters' investigator. But the client list is kind of slim, and Patsy has to seek other employment. Where she's confronted with the fact that a) she's not cut out for retail, and b) people know who she is.

On the former, in addition to her low tolerance for unpleasant customers, she's too prone to changing into costume to pursue thieves, though that brings her into contact with a telekinetic named Ian, who eventually becomes friend and roommate. His using his powers to commit larceny because there were limited other employment opportunities gives Patsy the idea of starting a temp agency for people with powers. So they can pay bills without breaking laws!

On the second point, the issue becomes people know her not as Hellcat, but as Patsy Walker, star of all those comics about her teenage years. Comics which are being reissued by her old rival Hedy, who finagled the rights from Patsy's medication-addled mother. This forces Patsy to face a past she would rather flee, an image of idyllic teenage years that were followed with a lot of heartbreak and bad decisions. That Hedy later tricks both of Patsy's ex-husbands into attacking her, resulting in Hellstrom sending Patsy to Hell, doesn't help.

The book loses She-Hulk thanks to her grievous injuries at Thanos' hands in Civil War II, so Kate Leth brings in Jubilee (still a vampire and single mom) as an assistant for Patsy. Outside the sometimes-visible fangs, the main aspect of her vampirism is turning to mist, which art team Brittney L. Williams and Rachelle Rosenberg depict by drawing Jubilee as a fluffy pink cloud wearing her trademark sunglasses.

Most of the conflicts end up resolved with at least some talking, but also some punching. The main antagonist usually gets the latter, the flunkies the stern talking-to (or a kind ear, depending how stupid they were being.) Which is kind of funny since Leth writes Patsy as very eager to jump into action. But she's also willing to listen. Truly, Patsy Walker contains multitudes.

There's also a lot of magic. Magic and mysticism have been a big part of Hellcat's deal since at least her return from the dead, if not going back to Moondragon trying to train her mental abilities. Englehart and Breyfogle's mini-series gave Patsy a better understanding of magic and how to avoid it, via time spent fighting in Hell. Immonen and Lafuente's mini-series suggested Patsy had a lot more going for her than being able to simply sense magic.

(Christopher Cantwell will lean way into this in his 2022 mini-series, with Hellcat being a drug-addled mess haunted by her dead mom, and a "true form" that looks a lot like Tigra, but as that description should make clear, that mini-series was trash and is better off chucked into a black hole.)

Anyway, Leth and Williams keep bringing Patsy into conflict with magic. An Asgardian goddess using unhappy mortals with powers to commit crimes. Hellstrom dumping Patsy in another demon's realm. Even when Leth brings in the Black Cat - unfortunately in her terrible "Queenpin" phase - Felicia is out to steal a set of magical claws that let her control people if she slashes them. Finally, Patsy seems to catch some sort of other-dimensional flu that, when she sneezes, makes weird magic crap happen. Her favorite stuffed animal appears as a giant tiger that claims to represent all her fears. America Chavez's costume gets changed to rep Canada.

(That ends up resolved by Patsy talking about feelings with a demon, and accepting she can't try to hide away in an ordinary life.)

Williams tends to keep the art simple, though there's a lot of attention paid to clothes. Sometimes it's simplified even more, like when Patsy gets really excited and starts bawling or hopping around, eager to punch things. With most of the other characters drawn as significantly taller, she looks like a child wound up on energy drinks. It's a little strange to see in stories where Patsy's tormented with poor life decisions, or Ian runs into his abusive ex-girlfriend, but those are usually the times where Williams sticks to the stronger lines and stable designs, which gives the book about as serious an air as it can achieve.

The book ended at 17 issues, with Jennifer Walters sorting out the rights issue around the comics off-screen, making Patsy independently wealthy. It's unclear if she'll abandon the temp agency idea, but if her discussion with the demon was anything to go by, she's going to embrace being Hellcat again. Whatever that means when she was regularly changing into the costume during this series. I guess she might join the Avengers again or something?

It feels a bit like the end of Dennis Hopeless' first Spider-Woman series, where the Black Widow chides Jessica Drew for ditching the Avengers to go help people on Ben Urich's list. Like superheroics only matter if you fight the big fights, the ones that already have 50 heroes facing them down. Focusing on small-scale problems, people stealing purses to pay the rent, that doesn't count.

Sunday Splash Page #404

"Hellcats and Dogs," in Patsy Walker: Hellcat #3, by Kathryn Immonen (writer), David Lafuente (artist), John Rauch (color artist), Dave and Natalie Lanphear (letterer)

Patsy Walker gets sent to Alaska as part of the Initiative. Proving what a genius Tony Stark is, he only sends one hero to the biggest state in the U.S., and it's one who can't fly, teleport, or run fast. At least Patsy didn't have to worry about a having a Skrull infiltrator as a teammate!

What Patsy does have is an ability to sense magic and a nose for trouble. She's quickly on the trail of some suspicious bears, who lead her to a group of shamen (sha-women? Google says "shamaness," assuming I can trust it, which I probably can't), who task Patsy (or as they dub her, "Double-clawed Cat Full of Red Hellfire with Her Head Against the Wind and Comes Not Quietly from the Great Sea Road") with recovering their daughter, Ssangyong, from the terrible beast that has taken her.

It's a quest then, complete with an assortment of allies and an irritating guide that, like Navi in Ocarina of Time, Patsy just wishes would shut the hell up. With magic involved there are rules and traditions, but Immonen writes a Patsy Walker who is both well aware of these things, and confident/flighty enough to interpret those rules as she sees fit. At one point, to draw out an ally she requires but pissed off earlier, Patsy is told to 'lie by a grave.' Once the grave is located, Patsy stands atop it and announces that everyone loves her. Which is, of course, a lie, and the angry, antlered bear appears.

Things are not what they seem, the young girl (whose parents named her after a car, ouch) less an abductee and more a runaway. In a way, this makes Patsy even more qualified to help, as she's well-acquainted with an overbearing parent who tries to control your life. Two, if you count Moondragon's "mentoring," which mostly took the form of berating Patsy, if what I saw in Defenders was any indication. So she can try to reach Ssangyong through some oblique references to her own poor life choices and, when that fails, get frustrated, slug the girl, and haul her out like a sack of potatoes.

This was my favorite mini-series of 2008 (though the last issue got delayed and didn't come out until January '09.) It was funny and absurd. Crossing a chasm via a bridge made of little white rabbits, or Patsy arguing with herself about Iron Man blaming her for burning down Alaska. Lafuente's art is exaggerated without getting too loose or uncontrolled. You can tell who you're looking at or that Patsy's dealing with, even if circumstances alter them. He's got a good eye for detail in the clothes or the settings - Ssangyong's living in the wreck of an old sailing ship at the base of some frozen tower, with a Sasquatch who wears plaid pants and suspenders. (Phil's a real sweetie.)

Immonen's Patsy Walker is so many things, though I think most of all she simply follows her whims. If some creepy guy in a bar is bothering her, and dares her to chuck her mug at him, she'll do it without blinking. If the local guide is reluctant to help, she slides a big wad of SHIELD's cash at him to change the attitude.

She's able to adapt quickly or brush off disappointments. When Iron Man calls, she asks if she'll be assigned to Miami. He corrects her that it would be Florida, which causes her to shriek ecstatically until he tells her she's going to Alaska. One panel of a devastated Patsy, staring into space in a dress she's modeling for her neighbor, and then she's over it, asking who else is on the team and envisioning her and Beast skiing together in a daydream where Lafuente exaggerates his art a bit more for imagination effect. Did she want to apologize to the antlered bear, or track down the water lemming that kept smacking her in the face? No, but she needed them for the quest so she got over it.

(And when the bear demands she properly bury the dead body she lied beside, she tricks the wolf into attacking the bear to create the grave via impact crater. Again, she knows how things work, and knows how to bend the rules to her advantage without breaking them.)

The mini-series ended with Patsy's managing to broker a truce between Ssangyong and her mothers, and Ssangyong warning Patsy that she's got more magic inside her than she realizes. Immonen never got the opportunity to explore that, but another writer would.