The Song of the Dodo - David Quammen

Islands are an excellent place to study a lot of aspects of biology. Dispersal, competition, adaptive radiation, speciation, natural selection, on and on. They're isolated to various degrees, so it's somewhat easier to keep track of arrivals and departures. They're of relatively limited area, so it's easier to define the boundaries for a study.

Quammen looks at the history of studying life on islands as it influenced the development of the idea of evolution by natural selection by Alfred Wallace (and Darwin), and then how the study of that changed over time. Especially once MacArthur and Wilson developed their theory of island biogeography. Which said, in a simplified manner, that the number of species on an island will be based on a combination of its distance from the mainland and its size. Distant islands are difficult to reach, not many things can swim/float/fly that far. Small islands can't support as many species, because there's not as much space, and not as many habitats or ecological niches.

Operating from that, MacArthur and Wilson deduced there's a sort of equilibrium each island between new arrivals, and the extinction (or extirpation) of species already present. Where that point is on the graph depends on the islands size and distance. This is interesting enough on its own, or it was to me when I was talking biology classes in college. But it's become more relevant as human development and reshaping of the planet progresses. 

As Quammen notes in the late stages of the book, even habitats on the mainland are becoming islands as the land around them is turned into Wal-Marts, or row of identical suburb housing. Missouri, for example, has about 1% of the tallgrass prairie it had before the Europeans showed up, and it's scattered all over the west side of the state, in little patches. 40 acres here, 120 acres over there, maybe a nice 3,000 acre patch on a conservation land.

While Quammen discusses all this, and the resulting battle lines that were drawn after The Theory of Island Biogeography was published, he's also traveling the world. Speaking to different biologists (including Edward O. Wilson, because this book was published in the 1990s) about their work, how it relates, what they're finding. 

That can involve speaking with a biologist who discovered a previously unknown species of macaque in Madagascar, that's carved out a niche by eating parts of cane trees that are high in cyanide. Or traveling to the Amazon to a location where there are dozens of small patches of forest left behind from the clear-cutting, essentially islands surrounding by oceans of open land, where scientists monitor the species within to see how they're doing. How big a patch is enough to sustain a population?

Quammen's not a biologist by trade, and he's definitely not a mathematician, so he tries to avoid getting too technical when the topics he's discussing start veering into logarithmic math. Which is fine with me. I know the math part is important, but the Experimental Design course I took in grad school taught me I didn't grasp how people figured out the mathematical relationships that they build their formulas on.

Quammen's writing is very casual at times. full of his own opinions, and not just on his distaste for math. He's moderately scornful towards Darwin, who he's pretty sure delayed publication of a paper Alfred Wallace wrote and sent to him for review on evolution by natural selection, so Darwin could finally get off his ass and publish something about it first, after 20 years of nitpicking his writing. 

He may very well be right, although I think basing it on best estimates of shipping rates from Indonesia to England in the 1850s is a little flimsy. But you have to factor it in when you read it. Quammen describes Darwin's writing style as 'half-barmy', but Quammen's the one who felt this book needed a four-page digression about him getting mugged in Rio and almost missing his bus out to meet a biologist studying muriquis. Outside a brief joke that the monkeys seem to behave more politely than humans in Rio, the story serves no purpose, and the book's over 600 pages, so it's not like it needed padding out.

What it could have used, was some diagrams. The book has several general maps, showing things like whatever island chain he's happening to visit at that point in the book, along with a few relevant towns marked on it. But seeing as this book is presumably written for people who aren't trained biologists, maybe some pictures would have helped. A copy of the graph MacArthur and Wilson made, or a diagram showing how adaptive radiation works. Something to illustrate the concepts. Hell, even some pictures of the creatures he's talking about wouldn't have hurt. I know what a Komodo dragon looks like, but I have no mental picture of an indri.

That aside, it's a neat book to read if you're at all interested in that sort of biology. And if the idea of these biologists sniping at each other like high school kids via research papers published in various scientific journals amuses you, well there's a fair amount of that in the second half.

'The crux of the matter of extinction - the extinction of Raphus cucullatus or any species - is not who or what kills the last individual. That final death reflects only a proximate cause. The ultimate cause, or causes, may be quite different. By the time the death of its last individual becomes imminent, a species has already lost too many battles in the war for survival.'

The Runaways Need One Good Team-Up Experience

I'd like to see the Runaways interact with Squirrel Girl. By which I mean Ryan North and Erica Henderson's version of Squirrel Girl. (Not sure if anyone's used her since Unbeatable Squirrel Girl ended. Kind of curious to see how she's characterized when she does eventually appear.)

Partially because the team seems so insistent that adults have always let them down, it would be nice for them to get at least one data point that didn't confirm to that. I mean, technically they already have a couple, because Cloak and Dagger did intend to help them, but got ambushed and mindwiped by the teams' parents. And Spider-Man was fully intent on helping them until Nico barged in and zapped like she frickin' Electro.

(Nico Minoru: Making the wrong decision every time since 2003.)

That aside, Squirrel Girl's unbeatable so she can't let them down. Although, since she was a freshman or sophomore in college for all of North and Henderson's run, she might not qualify as an adult. That would make her no older than Chase or Nico at this point, but they're playing at being adults.

Besides that, I think Molly getting to team-up with Squirrel Girl would be pretty enjoyable. Finally, someone who would encourage all of Molly's flights of fancy! Doreen thoroughly supported Gabby's plans to dress a wolverine up in fancy suits and let him rampage through cardboard cities she constructed, so yeah, I think she and Molly would get along great.

There is the risk that Doreen's boundless optimism would react with Gert's relentless cynicism like matter and anti-matter, devastating all life for miles around. But that would turn out to be part of some grand contest between the embodiment of Positivity and Negativity, where they see how humanity reacts in such an apocalyptic event, to see which of them is more powerful.

I know, cynicism and negativity are not synonymous. It's a first draft, it just needs some (read: a lot) of workshopping. As long as we all agree the ultimate winner will be Brain Drain's bizarrely hopeful nihilism.

The Siege of Jadotville

Viewing options on Netflix are dire as fuck these days, so ended up watching this movie about a small detachment of Irish soldiers the UN sent into the Katanga province of the formerly Belgian Congo.

The operation is, of course, fucked from the start. It's really just a dog-and-pony show. Send them out, act like 150 men with outdated weapons, limited food, and no air cover are a real presence. Meanwhile, the higher-ups have other plans going, which fail, and make the situation worse. Then it turns into a Cover Your Ass situation, and the troops are hung out to dry while the politicians maneuver. That classic tale.

The Commandant of the Irish troops (played by Jamie Dornan) has apparently read quite a lot about war, but never fought one himself. None of his troops have. Dornan portrays him as increasingly frustrated, but determined to do his duty. Of course, there comes a point his definition of his duty and the United Nations' differs.

But the UN had their chance to do this right, when now-deceased President Lumumba requested their help. But he was going to nationalize all the mining, and might have been to friendly with the Soviets, so they balked. Now that General Tshombe's pulled a coup, they decide it's time to get involved. Locking the barn after the horse killed a bunch of people.

Except the mining companies are quite happy with Tshombe being in charge, and hire him 1,000 mercenaries, including some French Legionnaires as officers. Little difficult to take the UN seriously when it's own members are undercutting it and working against it. It's the League of Nations with better press agents.

Although I'm not sure the Legionnaire guy should be ridiculing Ireland for not having fought a war. Is having gotten your asses handed to you in every war you fought over the previous 150 years really any better than having not waged an official war at all (I say official, because I think the Irish would contend they fought a war of sorts against the English)?

The film does just the bare minimum fleshing out some of the soldiers. The sergeant is gruff but steady. This one guy is worried because he enjoyed killing people. The sniper is extremely competent. This one guy asks what the other soldiers' moms look like so he can beat off to it. Just a bit more depth than a standard paper plate.

The movie does that a fair amount though. It sort of hints at a potential subplot, but never does anything with it. They introduce a widowed white lady whose husband made their fortune and died mining uranium early in the film. She and Quinlan talk a couple of times before the shooting starts, including her letting him use her phone to call his wife, which suggests she may play a larger role, but it never goes anywhere. There's a chunky white guy in a suit who must be a mine official (looks a bit like that Canadian politician Doug Ford and is listed in the credits as Man In a White Suit) that shows up a couple of times. He's watching one of the initial assaults by the mercs, and Quinlan orders the sniper to kill him. Other than the mercs withdrawing temporarily, nothing comes of that either.

I understand this is based on a true story, and therefore not everything get tied up in a neat little bow. But if you are going to do it as a story, why include elements that don't really go anywhere? As a reminder it's a lot of white people messing around in an African nation they (or their ancestors) helped screw up in the first place? I think they had that covered between all the UN guys being white, the French guy who hires the mercs, the French legionnaire leading the mercs, etc.

The Fighting Distracts From the Awful Family Reunion

That's the sort of comment you save for at least the third date/fight, creepo.

I went by the store I bought volume 1 of Shaolin Sisters from last month, but they didn't have volume 2. I bought volume 3, anyway. The trio of sisters still aren't on the same page. Well, they're all chasing Bai Wang, who stole Seilin's bell, or Drake, who stole the other two, that pretty much constitute all their deadbeat kung-fu father gave them, but they aren't working together. Julin and Kalin must have convinced their pirate queen big sis not to kill them, but Seilin's not interested in a team-up.

Bai Wang's got other concerns, as some mysterious dude named Drake shows up riding a giant snake with crow wings. That's nifty, if likely to be an ecological disaster. Her lineup of '80s arcade beat 'em up characters manage to kill the creature eventually, and Bai Wang handles the other guy with, I think, an energy beam. Maybe the old Special Beam Cannon, the art's still a little vague and reliant on reader interpretation at times. Kakinouchi really likes panels of alternating light and dark sheets or radiating lines coming directly at the reader. I'm not sure it's the best approach.

Drake turns out to be someone thought dead in volume 1, possibly under mental control, and retreats, everyone on his tail. Julin and Kalin get stuck fighting Nini the Nun (is that the worst name of the four, or is it Shino the Able?), and Seilin runs into Kuichi the Dog, who, based on the panel at the top, has no concept of personal boundaries.

And then it turns out none of the girls are really up to the challenge. Even with the advantage in a handicap match, Julin and Kalin are losing, and Seilin is unable to actually shut up the creep she's fighting. She has to get bailed out by the last second arrival of someone called "Shark". Guess it's better than "Tank."

I dunno, I feel like it's not great the alleged main characters of your story can't even handle the sub-boss. They're not even the main villain herself (assuming Drake's boss doesn't turn out to be the main bad guy), but her lieutenants, you know. Make them tough wins, sure, but give 'em something. 

Maybe once they have their bells back, and actually work as a team it turns around. Whole greater than the sum of the parts and all that, but this is volume 3, and there's only two more after this, so it's not like there's a whole lot of time for them to level up.

Sunday Splash Page #157

 

"Swirling Mists and Starry Skies," in Doctor Strange (vol. 1) #183, by Roy Thomas (writer), Gene Colan (artist), Tom Palmer (inker/colorist?), Jean Izzo (letterer)

Welcome to Master of the Mystic Arts March (and April)! Starting off with the one and only issue I own of Strange's first ongoing series. This book was originally Strange Tales, which for its last couple of years had mostly become Dr. Strange's book by default, but also sometimes featured Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD. Then they went ahead and changed it to his book officially at issue #169, and it remained that way for 15 issues. 

This is actually the final issue. I own because it's the very first comic in Essential Defenders Volume 1, because Roy Thomas kicks off the battle against the Undying Ones, which moves through Namor and Hulk's books, and that eventually Steve Engelhart would use through the first several issues of Defenders, once that book actually exists.

That said, there's not much to that in this issue. Stephen gets a telegram from an old friend, and when visits finds the man under the control of three minions of the Undying Ones. Strange defeats them by - pulling open the curtains and exposing them to sunlight. Credit for lateral thinking, I guess.

Possibly the more significant development in this issue is the Stephen returns home from a big adventure trying to save Eternity to learn that the manifestation of reality has tried to do him a solid. Strange had to publicly do magic to save someone, and so Eternity has changed his identity to Stephen Sanders, which will presumably keep people from tracking him down to bug him about magic and/or try to kill him. Not that it has much effect on this issue, other than leaving Stephen awed that Eternity can do something so intricate to such a minute detail with seemingly no effort.

Gene Colan's art is the real draw here, and I think the lack of color lets it show off a little more. You can see all the wavy mist and shadows and the full contrast in a way the color printing of the time probably didn't allow (next week's entry is also Gene Colan-drawn, but in color, and I don't think it looks nearly as good). When Stephen visits his friend, Colan uses these tall, narrow panels with thick borders to show Strange is hemmed in with the threats. Once magic starts getting thrown around, the panels tilt and almost topple as Strange is pushed on the defensive. Magic takes the form of either wavy lines or bizarre whirlpools, like doorways to other realms are just casually being tossed around.

Strange wouldn't get another solo book for about 5 years. We're going to spend a few weeks on that one, though, starting next week.

Random Back Issues #56 - She-Hulk #1

Come on Jen, everyone knows Chilly Willy's a penguin. Just because Blizzard's frozen through and through, it doesn't make them the same.

The first issue of Dan Slott's run has Jen spending as much time as possible as She-Hulk, living a party girl lifestyle, in sharp contrast to the glimpse we see of her in law school. Where she was quiet, studious, and basically went unnoticed by everyone in her class. I don't know anything about law school, but it seems like it would be competitive enough the other students would notice someone doing well enough to finish summa cum laude. But maybe law school is so tough you don't have time to worry what anyone else is doing.

Anyway, in the present, she's dating an underwear model, abusing her Avengers Priority card to park illegally, stressing the mansion's security protocols with all her unannounced guests. Most unforgivable, she's making a ton of extra work for Jarvis with the messes and the parties.

During a trial for a company which stored Anarctic Vibranium (the kind that's unstable and melts all metal) improperly, she bails during her closing argument because of an Avengers emergency. MODOK is trying to use Blizzard to freeze the entire planet so AIM can have all the technology. All the technology that will now be buried under a shitload of glaciers? As you saw up above, Jen handles that and throws another big party at the Mansion. Big ups to Captain America for offering to help Jarvis with the mess. He's a solid dude, not like that lout Tony Stark, who just stands there silently.

 

Jen ends up winning her case, the jury returning the verdict in minutes, and that's the end of her good news. Her model boyfriend breaks up with her, citing a need to date someone with more 'depth.' Then Captain America and the Wasp swing by to tell Jen she's out. Not out of the Avengers, but out of the mansion. Presumably, Steve is worried living in the mansion is causing negative health benefits because look how tiny her hands are.

When she gets to work, her car gets booted because her Avengers Priority no longer works, and she finds out the guy with the Vibranium issues got a successful mistrial filed. His attorneys argued Jen helping to save the world unfairly prejudiced the jury. Then she finds out she's fired because she's been acting too unprofessionally.

 

So it's off to a bar, where several guys try unsuccessfully to hit on her, and then Blizzard hits her with an ice beam. From a gun. If all his power comes from a gun, why did MODOK even need him? Just kill him and take the freeze gun! Anyway, Blizzard's pissed she ruined his chance to be a big shot. When she busts loose, he figures she's about to ruin his face, but instead she offers to buy him a drink, and he eventually passes out.

At which point she's approached by Holden Holliway, one of the heads of Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg, and Holliway, the firm that defended Anarctic Vibranium guy. Holliway already mentioned that she's very important, for reasons I don't think we learn until the end of Slott's run on the next volume. Pretty sure he ends up being evil. I know, an evil lawyer? Ridiculous.

He starts off by making reference to her not really being drunk due to her metabolism and 'immense body weight'. Man likes to live dangerously. Or he figures whatever is left of him after she punches him can sue her. He offers her a job, but as Jennifer Walters, not She-Hulk. Jen reluctantly agrees, telling herself she can stand being 'her again.' Unfortunately, Jennifer doesn't have the unique metabolism or body size, so she is immediately completely wasted and pukes all over Holliway's shoes (and an unconscious Blizzard). Well, Holliway's a dick, so I'm gonna say he deserves it.

[9th longbox, 198th comic. She-Hulk (vol. 1) #1, by Dan Slott (writer), Juan Bobillo (penciler), Marcelo Sosa (inker), Chris Chuckry (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer)]

Triple 9

The title is a reference for the police code for officer down, apparently. Because this crew of thieves are planning to steal some files from a Homeland Security depot on behalf of a Russian-Jewish mob, and killing a cop is the best way to make sure all the cops are otherwise occupied.

So Anthony Mackie's character, as a cop himself, decides they can sacrifice his new partner (Casey Affleck). Especially since the partner's dad is also some veteran cop (played by Woody Harrelson), who will call in everybody if his son's dead. Except Affleck saved Mackie's life, so there's a little bit of conflict there for him. Is he really going to set this guy up?

Which is as close as most of the thieves get to any moral stand. Aaron Paul plays a former cop on the crew whose brother gets killed by the Russians to send them a message. He falls apart over that, and the whole "kill a cop" thing only makes it worse. Chiwetel Ejiofor is the leader of the crew, and he does a decent job of playing a guy who knows he's on a string, but can't help thinking he can salvage the lousy situation he's in. And his frustration comes through in how he gets violent and dangerous with anybody who threatens him pulling this job off. He tries to act like he has loyalty to the crew, but when it comes down to it, he's only loyal to himself.

Harrelson's performance is less effective, since he seems to be going for the idea that this cop has been at this too long, seen too much, lost too much. But he plays it so over-the-top in his mannerisms it's hard to take it seriously.

The movie probably tries to wrap too many of its threads up too neatly. Just too many people shooting other people out in the open, or planning to shoot other people in the open. It was very satisfying when the main Russian mob lady (played by Kate Winslet) got her comeuppance. I don't think they needed the bit where she turns out to be racist. She was already obviously a manipulative, cold-hearted asshole, I was fully on board with her being killed. But sure, why not?

The Black Cat's Magical Introspective Journey

I said I wanted to try and go a little in-depth on the scenery Jed MacKay and  C.F. Villa used during Felicia's conversation with the ancient magic in Black Cat #3, so with no new comics for me this week, let's do that.

It starts with her in a circle of light in an otherwise featureless void, where she is promptly joined by the magic, taking the form of the Black Fox. It's got a sales pitch to make, and it chose her teacher, rather than her mother, her father, Spider-Man, either member of her crew, or anyone else. Could be because the Fox has a certain amount of status with her, or could be foreshadowing that she can't trust the Black Fox. Because the magic is trying to get what it wants here, by acting like it's giving Felicia what she wants. There's also a bit where's he's talking and circling her, and he's under his own, separate spotlight. He's got his own goals, and they don't necessarily align, or even overlap the Cat's.

After a brief check on what's happening in the world, they start their descent. It takes them across a chessboard, while the magic insists it just wants to run free, without being constrained by rules. Not a bad sales pitch to make to a thief. Only some of the pieces are identifiable, but it looks like Bruno and Iron Man are on one side, and Spider-Man and Odessa (and probably some Thieves' Guild lackeys) are on the other. I know one of the upcoming solicitations says Spidey's not happy with what Felicia's been up to, but the placement of Iron Man on what might pass for Felicia's side is curious. Unless it's simply because she was able to use his resources. And there's the fact they both walk straight across the board in one go. Which is restricted to either rooks or queens. Powerful pieces, but neither one is what you have to protect or capture to win. Not sure what the king would be in this case.

The path continues further down, and by this point, we can see that beneath the path is fire. Right at the moment the magic shares enough power that Felicia can carve up 5 symbiote dragons in one swipe. Is it salvation, offering exactly what she needs to save her and her crew from an ugly end, or is he leading her into Hell? The earth is, in a sense, burning right then. But there's also the question of what exactly the magic would do if it were given free reign. It might decide that fire is pretty groovy.

And just like that, Felicia and the Fox are in another odd little room, decorated in what I assume is 1960s style. It's got the mock-up of Warhol's Marilyn Monroe painting up, the TV's a distinctly archaic model, and Felicia's chair looks like something out of a period spy flick. Which is an odd choice. Compared to when Felicia first appeared in comics, setting her childhood (and the memory they watch is from that time) in the 1960s probably works chronologically, but it would put her in at least her 50s now. Unless it's some sort of notion of the slick cat burglar character being of that time. 

Or it's really about the Fox, since he certainly could have been active then. Felicia's caught up in both the Fox' game and the magic's, but they both want her to think it's her play. That she's the one who really wants this power, or that she really wants to rob the Thieves' Guild master vault. This whole issue, it's the magic, dressed up as Fox, that leads the way. From one setting to another, one part of its pitch to the next.

Two other points. One, the way Villa draws the room, it seems like the furnishings occupy only a small part. The walls, the ceiling, and the tiled floor are all featureless, empty. Maybe saying she hasn't really expanded her life much. She has a few friends, maybe, if her crew counts. A mother she mostly keeps at arms length. A succession of brief flings or failed attempts at more meaningful relationships. Taking measure of a life in terms of emotional connections, Felicia doesn't have much.

Or, it's just so nothing distracts from the sales pitch, which at that point involves reminding Felicia of how little she's been able to do at times. She couldn't keep her father out of prison, could only break him out to let him die at home. And Doctor Octopus once tore her up really badly when she tried to help Spider-Man. On cue, out in the real world, she gets more aggressive, actively taunting the dragons to try harder, even as she stomps on the neck of one.

Shift again, this time to a hallway filled with paintings. Spider-Man pushing her away because he doesn't think she's powerful enough to fight alongside him. Captain America and the FF telling her to hit the bricks when she goes looking for powers. The Kingpin, who gave her luck powers specifically as a way to take revenge on her and Spider-Man. And then Venom, who tore her up badly once upon a time. Which brings it back to her current situation, although I'm surprised they didn't use the time Carnage nearly killed her during Maximum Carnage. Not that I'm going to complain about ignoring that story, but it would have fit.

I wasn't sure why the shift from the TV presentation to the paintings, but maybe, since he also used the TV to show her what was going on outside, this was a way to cut her off from that. Keep her focused on his pitch, and not on how gleefully she's wiping out dragons, or how freaked out her crew and Dr. Strange are. There's also the sense that a painting is more permanent than a television show. Felicia could turn a TV off, but the painting suggests these are things she's always going to remember. Villa draws the painting as larger than Felicia, and she's shown looking up at both the Kingpin and Venom ones. They loom large. All these rejections, screw-ups, defeats, humiliations? They're going to stick with her.

But hey! Maybe this helpful source of old magic can give her the chance to do something about it! It's not like all these shitty guys that made her feel inadequate! The magic's really not doing a bad job here. Feeding her worst impulses by portraying itself as unfairly hampered by the rules of magic. Making her feel like she isn't good enough as she is, and reminding her of times she failed to drive it home. Ignoring her making Iron Man look a chump, or taking out Sabretooth by herself, or the fact that every time something she's tried hasn't worked out, she pulled herself back together and tried something else. 

It makes her angry, defensive, impatient, and that's when he makes his real offer, done up as a game show. Because this is all just a game to the magic, finding the way to get her to, as he put it earlier, 'say yes.' he even makes an entire audience of himself, although they oddly remain silently. I'd expect them to either encourage Felicia to take the deal, or encourage the Fox to offer her everything behind the doors. Which it could, but my acting like each thing on offer is its own discrete prize, it makes the magic seem so much more generous. It's going to give her what's behind all three doors, not just one. What a pal!

What's behind the doors? Well, the power to destroy all those people he just reminded her beat her up or made a fool of her in the past. Wealth, respect, her father alive and back with her mother again. Villa draws Felicia's mother leaning her head fondly on her father's shoulder, but both of them are looking proudly at Felicia. Finally, all those past loves back with her, and her on a throne no less. I confess I don't know who the brunette on the right is, in front of Flash and the Puma. I'm also curious at the implications of Odessa being there. Does that mean Felicia knows Odessa's in love with her, that this whole thing is more than just a power play by the New York branch of the Thieves' Guild?

And while he does refer to some of them leaving her, it's after he says, 'Every heart you've broken, healed.' Again, trying to make her feel like a failure, but one that this magic can fix. And the doors, and the versions of her behind them, are all much bigger than Felicia herself. Bigger, better versions of herself, hers for the taking.

Of course, it ultimately doesn't work. For all that the magic appeals to the rule-breaker in her by talking about how constrained it is by rules, everything it offers is based on the magic putting its own rules in place. That Felicia has enough power to kill Venom or Wilson Fisk, or bring her father back from the dead, or make people love her. Felicia doesn't let other people restrict her, but by the same token, she's not all that interested in locking other people up.

I still think the magic misreads her in that it thinks she just wants all this stuff handed to her. The Black Cat's whole thing is taking what she wants from people who think no one can take stuff from them. What's the point if it's just handed to her by an ancient source of magic? But I'm not sure that perception lines up with the text, beyond her refusal to use magic in matters of the heart. Maybe in the sense she demands enough power to protect her friends before she'll even really listen to the pitch.

I do like that the Cat seems to have managed to keep a little of that power even after rejecting the offer. The magic offered, and she held onto it, or stole it on the way out the door.

Kraken - China Mieville

A preserved specimen of a giant squid goes missing, somehow. All signs among the spiritually inclined point to this somehow ushering in the end of the world. Which causes a lot of chaos, because this is going to be a real end, nothing emerging from the ashes. Billy Harrow's the employee of the museum who prepared the giant squid, and this leads all concerned parties to believe that he is a figure of some importance. Which he is, but not in the way anybody seems to expect.

This is my first time reading Mieville's prose work, so I don't know if the twists and surprises are typical. Because that's a big part of this, just a seemingly constant string of misdirection and red herrings. Billy insisting there's nothing special about him, but he's wrong. But they're wrong about what's special about him. This person's dead, no they aren't. This person's behind this, no they aren't.

For the most part, it works because Mieville demonstrates that basically everyone is fumbling in the dark. They all suspect someone else is behind it, but all the assumptions keep turning out to be wrong. I think he goes to the well one time too many, though. There's a moment I thought the situation was resolved, the day had been saved, and then the story says, "Nope, not yet," and finally the true threat is revealed. But by then, I was just ready for things to be over. I wanted to exhale, and having to go through one more tense struggle was just too much.

That said, I love the world-building. All the different sorts of magic and belief, the ways of interacting with the world, of finding little loopholes. It's very interesting, in light of the final boss and what he's actually trying to destroy, the way all these characters have found little niches, ways to survive, thrive, or make a living. A place they can operate, a thing they can do that's unique.

Sometimes he leans a little too hard into trying to make the characters unique, at least in the sense that a couple of them really irritate me. I assume the one competent cop really just being a bully, who learned magic because she liked being able to use it to humiliate people, and presumably became a cop for the same reason, is deliberate. But the main hired muscle threat has this incredibly irritating way of speaking where two-thirds of what he says is seemingly random phrases and I just hated it. And Mieville didn't really do a good job of conveying what made him so terrifying to everyone. Goss seems to be a real sadist, but that's hardly unique in the book, and other than that, he's more annoying than impressive.

Outside that, though, most of the characters are interesting in how they're all sort of harried, stressed, and responding to it in different ways. Hunkering down, freaking out, shutting down, snapping at everyone, watching with avid interest. It's a real variety, which felt like a good representation of how people would behave.

'Billy dripped in more bleach and the ink rolled. "We're not going to pour you down the sink. You don't get to dissipate painlessly with rats and turds." He held the pipette over the glass. "I will piss in you and then bleach you so you dissolve. Where is the rest of you?"

He wrote. The penmanship was ragged. FUCKERS.'

What I Bought 3/4/2021

Well, I hoped to also get the last issue of Sympathy for No Devils when I swung by the store last week, but no dice. So we'll just look at the two comics I did manage to get. The theme this week is Wolverine guest appearances! Are they gratuitous? Maybe!

Power Pack #4, by Ryan North (writer), Nico Leon (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - Wolverine smiling like that creeps me out. Also, if he's about to stab a dude, that is not the best place for Jack to be perched.

The other Power kids use what little power they've got left to bust free and keep Julie from dying horribly. Unfortunately, that means they're basically out of power, against the Wizard, who has all their powers, and is talking a bunch of shit about it. Katie's got a little left and actually tries to kill him, to their extreme concern of her siblings, but the dude can move at lightspeed, so good luck with that.

He talks some more junk about how they're dumb, and he's great, and that's why he should have this power, and then he flies off. The kids yell at each other, Julie puts forth a highly questionable theory that while the Wizard drained their powers, some of his personality went into them and that's why Katie's trying to murder people and complaining about how adults have screwed everything up for them. Or she's justifiably pissed about how adults have, in fact, screwed everything up for them.

Deciding they a) need help, and b) still need a mentor, they leave a note at the Krakoan embassy for Logan, and he shows up at their apartment, where the kids introduce him as "Dr. Brucie Mansworth", and tell their parents an extremely convincing story about how he tutors children from kindergarten up to college. I really hope their parents are just playing along, because no one can be that stupid. 

 

North wants us to take Julie's explanation for them being angry at face value, but it really just sounds like someone who doesn't want to admit they're angry they fucked up and wants to blame it on something else. I mean, she's chastising Jack for saying "frig", I'm pretty sure she's just grasping at any control of the situation she can manage.

Is the Wolverine appearance gratuitous? Well, he doesn't do much of anything here, and I feel like Katie just as easily could have contacted Shadowcat, so for the moment, yes.

Runaways #34, by Rainbow Rowell (writer), Andres Genolet (artist), Dee Cunnifee (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Here we see Molly following in the proud tradition of Shadowcat and Jubilee by already being taller than Logan by the age of 13.

So Molly did check out Krakoa on their official website, and the X-men (or whoever) did receive two e-mails from Griffith Park. One asking to be picked up, the second telling them to stay away if they know what's good for them. So they assumed it was Molly, until Chase points out Griffith Park is over 4,000 acres, so there's probably more than one damn mutant living there.

Good to see Krakoa has failed to solve the issue of bureaucratic incompetence, in addition to the issue of populating your government with fucking war criminals and the equivalent. So much for mutants finding a better way.

The X-jerks prepare to leave, while doing a piss-poor job apologizing (another thing mutants apparently haven't improved upon), when Molly insists she's going to help find this other mutant. They find a suspiciously vacant lot, then march into an invisible passage to some empty mist-covered place, where they all get attacked by monsters.

Hey, Chase actually found something he can fight without getting his ass whooped! I'm frankly disappointed by that.

Nico does a spell that disperses the void and reveals a big mansion and all of the sudden she and Pixie are into each other? I have made no bones of the fact I don't get relationships where you just show the characters fighting and arguing constantly, but even allowing for that, this development makes no goddamn sense. And I have no idea if I'm supposed to know who the Legolas-looking guy we keep seeing each time Nico uses her magic is supposed to be. If he's shown up previously in this run, I haven't bought that tpb yet.

 

Rowell seems to be hinting that Molly might be getting frustrated their her friends are still treating her like a kid, instead of an equal. Chase tells her if he and Nico decide she needs to leave the search for this missing mutant, that's it. I know they legally adopted her, but I imagine that gets a little frustrating. Especially considering Molly is stronger and more capable than probably either of them. Certainly more so than Chase.

That said, if she's thinking maybe Krakoa would be better, she's got another thing coming. I'm pretty sure she'll get dismissed even more readily there, based on the bits I've seen from the current New Mutants run. Gabby (aka, Honey Badger/Scout) is not having a good time.

I like Genolet's designs for the monsters. They're sort of generic, with the yellow eyes, and the teeth, and a couple of them have mechanical parts, but I think that's the point. This was a defense system, probably generated by someone's mind, and they defaulted a sort of basic "Scary Monster" look.

Is the Wolverine appearance gratuitous? Well, as he notes, almost anyone would have been a better choice to send on this mission than him. He clearly doesn't want to be there, and spends all the time he's not fighting monsters rolling his eyes and making sarcastic comments. So I'm going to say "no", because it's a good representation of how poorly Krakoa is being run, and that's why Molly should stay far away.

Sunday Splash Page #156

 

"Trying for the Stunt Bonus," in The Dirty Pair Omnibus, by Haruka Takachiho (writer), Hisao Tamaki (artist), Meaghan Tucker (letterer)

I originally learned about this after David Brothers did a few posts about it on 4thletter back in the day. He talked it up, the panels he used for examples made it look pretty good. Since I had no expectation it would actually get translated, I went to the point of buying it in Japanese. Can I read kanji? No, no I can not. Then we did get a translated version in late 2019, and I bought it. I'm actually fairly surprised how much I could understand just from the art, now that I know what everyone was saying.

Past that bit of history, there's not much to say I didn't cover in my review last July. The action sequences are really entertaining and drawn well. Some of the comedy bits work, some don't. I think the nature of Dirty Pair stories, that their missions always end in immense property damage and loss of life, does work against the comic when it tries for more emotional heft. Yuri sees two of her childhood friends die in one of the stories, and it seems very sad. 

Then it turns out they died because her and Kei's partner, a sort of sentient panther-looking thing went on a rampage and wrecked something he shouldn't. And the comic kind of plays that as a funny moment of the two of them scolding him for it like he just ate the last of their chocolate or something, as opposed to getting two innocent people killed. But, again, these two are so used to people dying around them, because of them, so maybe it really shouldn't matter these two were actually friends?

What I Bought 3/2/2021 - Part 2

We've got two different books on their third issue today. One is still in its King in Black tie-ins, but the other has fully moved on to greener pastures.

The Union #3, by Paul Grist (writer), Andrea Di Vito (penciler), Le Beau Underwood (inker), Nolan Woodard (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - I went with the Dave Johnson variant cover, because it looked cooler.

The Choir went home, but made the mistake of stopping a robbery and getting noticed. Now she's vanished, and the annoying government guy is on Union Jack to go investigate. Complete with his new teammate, British Puck! I mean, Bulldog. Also, he has a red cross painted on his face, which should probably make me think Switzerland, but instead reminds me of that Crossed series thing Avatar publishes.

Snakes and Kelpie are there, because they and Choir had been keeping in touch, and there's a shapeshifter called, appropriately, Shifter. After a brief squabble, government guy allows himself to be taken hostage. but once they're in the car, it turns out he used to be a power-stealing villain called the Sponge. He weakens Shifter, then shoots him in the head, but pretends the guy committed suicide. Delightful. Couldn't just take away his healthcare? Anyway, he knows who's got Choir, so that'll be a thing for next issue. If Union Jack is going to get this team to rally around him, he's gonna have to get on with it.

I really wonder how differently this would read if Grist was doing the art as well. Because I read some of the dialogue, or caption boxes, or character names (the Sponge in particular), and I can picture it looking like Jack Staff, and it reads differently. Like how the captions would proclaim Jack Staff Britain's greatest hero, as he's busy getting his ass whooped or made to look like a chump. Like there's a sort of dry humor to it Di Vito's art isn't really suited to convey. I think Di Vito can do physical humor (there was a bit of that in the brief Dan Slott-penned The Thing series, Di Vito drew most of), but if Grist is being sly, the art is instead trying to make everything read straight.

 

When Union Jack's busy getting attacked by Bulldog, Selwyn mentions that apartments in Central Manchester don't come cheap, but then a later panel shows Jack's apartment is upstairs of a Tesco. That Jack's apartment is above a grocery store feels like a joke (shades of The Simpsons' Frank Grimes leaving above a bowling alley, and below another bowling alley), a nod that he's not getting much from the government to begin with. Maybe I'm misreading everything.

Black Cat #3, by Jed MacKay (writer), C.F. Villa (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - So many facets.

So Felicia grabbed that piece of the Yggdrasil Staff, and while her body tears up symbiote dragons out in the real world, the source of the magic is inside her head, making a sales pitch. While he first leads her down what Felicia dubs a 'trauma exhibition', Strange wakes up and is not happy at what he finds. Although the expression Villa gives him as the ghost dog relates the situation is hilarious. I cackled at it.

Seems Felicia has to put down the power willingly to get away from it, and if she doesn't, that will apparently be worse than the King in Black. Yeah, I could see how giving the 'raw power of creation' free reign could be bad. The magic makes its offer to Felicia: Everything she ever wanted. The deaths of all her enemies? Sure. All the wealth, everyone kneeling to her, her father alive and reunited with her mother? Absolutely. Every lover she ever lost back and entirely devoted to her? That's where she draws the line, using magic to make people love her. So she rejects it, breaks free of her mind. But she's still got a little of the power left, and she and Strange are going to have to fight some more dragons. That, thankfully, will take place in the main mini-series, so we don't have to waste any more time on symbiotes.

I feel like Felicia would have balked at the offer sooner. I understand it might have been as effective dramatically that way, but I look at that she's a thief. What she wants, she takes. Why would she want this magic source to just give her everything? If she really wants to get back at Fisk, or Eddie Brock, she'll find a way to do it herself. If she wanted all the wealth, she'd just steal it. The fun is in the getting, not the having.

 

But MacKay's had Felicia make reference to wondering if her crew actually like her, or if her mother even likes her, so I can see how the offer of all that affection would be both what the magic thinks is its trump card, and precisely where she won't go. Because it wouldn't answer the question of whether anyone actually likes her. Or, it would, be the answer would be, "No, because you used magic to make me like you."

We could probably have some fun with analyzing the locations Felicia and the magic have their discussions, but it feels like a big enough thing to save for its own post, whenever I find time to get to it. I do notice Villa doesn't really shift his art style for the paintings showing events from her past. His version of her being badly injured by Venom doesn't attempt to mimic MacFarlane's style, for example. Reber alters his shading on his colors so that everything's a little faded or hazy. Not duller, but softer maybe, less contrast than on present-day Felicia and the magic. Memory being unreliable, or just losing its impact with time, maybe.

Mind of the Raven - Bernd Heinrich

Unlike Gifts of the Crow, Mind of the Raven is focused less on questions of the raven's intelligence, and more on behavior and social structure. Which, to be clear, are good things to have a grasp of it you want to assess intelligence, so you have some idea what you're looking at.

Since Heinrich has studied both wild ravens, and ravens that he took from nests as hatchlings and raised tame, he mixes in his observations and discussions of both. Which is quite handy, because it's a way to see what behaviors are learned from observation, and which are innate. For example, whether dealing with wild or tame ravens, if you add something new to an area they visit frequently, they will react with fear and suspicion. Even if it's food, they may ignore it entirely, or only approach cautiously.

One of the enjoyable parts is that Heinrich talks about all the complications and speed bumps in the scientific process. Something that happens to Heinrich more than once is when the ravens behave in a way entirely counter to what he expects. He sets a tame female loose near a big animal carcass he's provided as a food source. He expects that she'll join the pack of non-mating ravens that roost together at night, then bring them back with her in the morning. Instead, she avoids that roosting pack, staying by herself and trying her best to not let any other ravens find her food source. So he theorizes that ravens roost together so if they can't find food, they can follow another raven that makes a beeline towards some food they found. But if they've already got a food source, there's no need.

The book has a lot of that. Observations about how and when ravens cache food, about the hierarchy of dominance between a group of ravens, and how that translates to everything from calling to feeding to bathing. Interestingly, he wasn't able to determine what induces ravens to bathe. They do so in all temperatures (assuming there's water available), at no set pattern, with no apparent relation to how dirty they might be.

'The three birds flew calmly, wing-tip to wing-tip. As they came closer, I heard the soft gro calls that signified trust and friendship. These three birds were friends, and the idea that a territorial pair of ravens had friends outside the pair-bond that they tolerated, if not invited near the nest, seemed extraordinary.'

What I Bought 3/2/2021 - Part 1

I originally hoped to have these comics in time for this to go up Monday, but that didn't happen. Mail service difficulties of some sort, I guess. We'll get to a pair of Marvel comics on Friday, but for today we've got one mini-series that's wrapping up, and another that's just starting.

Kaiju Score #4, by James Patrick (writer), Rem Broo (artist), Dave Sharpe (letterer) - Don't look at me, Pierson, I'm glad you're dead.

The kaiju fight is on, but Marco figures there's still a chance to crack the safe because Mujara will lose quickly. And for a minute, he's right, and Michelle cracks the safe. At which point Pierson knifes Marco, laughs at his request to let Michelle live, and then dies in an extremely satisfying manner when the monster fight starts back up. Because Mujara didn't get the memo she couldn't win.

Seriously, Broo draws this one silent panel of a bloody smear on the wall and one of Pierson's hands stuck to it, and it was just, really good. Patrick had done a good job making Pierson an entirely unlikable (if perceptive) dick, and Broo helped that along with the obnoxious man-bun and all the sneering faces, and then they gift us with a lovely send-off. Actually, I wish Broo made that panel bigger.

So that's good. Monster fight over, backstabbing asshole dead, safe opened, everything's roses. Except for the little matter of water displacement when the beaten monster retreats to the sea. But Marco comes up with a way to protect the loot and not die. So yes, everything's good. Except for him not feeling as satisfied as he expected. But there's always another job.

I'm guessing Marco's feeling unfulfilled because he's finally completed his dream. He actually pulled off one of his ludicrous heists. But without that to drive him, he's left adrift. You'd think he could appreciate his success a little more, but humans are weird like that. As for Michelle, Marco was apparently right that she wasn't going to leave this life as she said, and she seems to have gotten a taste for more high end jobs. She's gone from being like the little sister on her crew, to setting up jobs and hiring talent. The ability to self-motivate is a valuable one.

One thing I am intensely grateful for is that this actually told a complete story, and didn't set it up as one of those things where the heist has repercussions that cause problems. You know, where Marco and Michelle have now pissed off some other powerful person by stealing his paintings, and must pull off another monster-related job to settle things. There was something I'd read in one of the solicits that made me think that was going to happen, and I was just dreading it.

But, it didn't. So, hooray!

White Lily #1, by Preston Poulter (writer), Jack Nolan (breakdowns), Lovalle Davis (penciler), Walden Wong and Diana Greenhalgh (inkers), Alonso Espinosa (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - They look so happy! Yeah, that's not gonna last.

Lilya Litvak is a Polish Jew in the Soviet Union, who, when the story begins four months after the Nazis invaded, is a flight instructor. Katya Budanova is also a flight instructor, and possibly Lilya's girlfriend. I mean, she offers her a flower (the white lily) to work into the fur collar of her flight jacket, that means something, right? 

They spend their days taking young (male) pilots up in biplanes trying to teach them how to fly. They're both drafted into a new, all-women fighter squadron, although their instructor doesn't seem to think much of training women, and tells them they're really just going to be delivering planes to the front, and that they should dive and flee if they encounter Nazis. 

Well yeah, a Yak-1 against an Me-109 is a huge mismatch. You had to get to like the Yak-7 before it was worth a shit. Anyway, Lilya shows what she can do, and although her Captain (the proverbial old battleaxe of a woman) is pissed, her instructor is impressed.

Poulter works a bit about Lilya's turmoil over her heritage into the story. The Soviet Union has not really been kind to Poles, or Jews. We see in a flashback (as she and Katya recite the Citizens' Pledge) they hung her father right in front of her when she was a child. Her mother is very disappointed in her for helping the Soviets. But I think Lilya figures at least the Soviets are giving her a chance to fight a different group of people who would kill her simply for existing, which is more than the Nazis would do if she were under their control. There may turn out to be more to it than that, but after one issue, I think she just really wants to be able to hit back for once.

It's interesting that while we see Lilya lose her father in her flashback, Katya's is her as a young girl being excited about seeing a plane fly overhead and getting the pilot to wave back to her. Also that her mother didn't approve (and still doesn't, since she doesn't think fighting is work for women.) So Katya might be driven more by her love of flying, and maybe the opportunity to be herself more.

One stylistic thing either Nolan or Davis does (Nolan isn't listed in the credits on the inside cover, but is listed in a small credits box on the 3rd page/title page) during flying scenes, they flip the page on its side, as in the example above. That's how it looks in the comic, like that sideways Spider-Man comic Todd MacFarlane did. 

It's like a widescreen movie, probably to offer more space, the illusion of the open air the pilots are in. The pages are nice; I like that they use the cockpits or gun-sights as panel boundaries. But it's a little awkward when you turn a page, and then you have to turn the comic to keep reading, then turn it back a couple of pages later. Maybe they could have just run that across the top half of two pages, then used the bottom half for either another widescreen panel, or smaller ones if it was time to go back to a more conventional layout.

I'm curious to watch the colors in this as the story advances, because the first issue everything is surprisingly bright and clear and clean looking. But Lilya and Katya haven't been involved in the fighting yet. It's still early days, and I wonder if Espinosa will muddy things up as thing progress. I know Lilya's going to be in action near Stalingrad by issue 3, that's going to be a very different experience from avoiding a single scout plane while on a training run.

Cool World

Remarkably, No Escape Room was not the worst movie I watched two Saturdays ago. All those early '90s comics that had ads for this on the inside cover, and I'd never seen it.

I didn't know how good I had it. I gave up on this after 50 minutes, and that was at least 35 minutes too long. It's like someone decided to do the '90s Image Comics version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, right down to really shitty art and incoherent plot. There's a whole toon world, and a cartoonist in the '90s who thinks he created it, except it already existed in the 1940s long enough to bring Brad Pitt over there right after his mother dies in a motorcycle accident.

Just the parts I saw have all these random digressions into toon stupidity, but not in a way that really tells you anything you hadn't already figured out about the "Cool World", namely that it's a depressing, crime-ridden shithole. The Jessica Rabbit stand-in, Holli, wants into the real world because girls can feel things there? She clearly already feels envy, so I'm not sure what she's missing. The cartoonist guy's been popping over there enough Brad Pitt knows about it, but the cartoonist acts befuddled every freaking time.

It felt like watching an extended Ren & Stimpy episode, with all sorts of nonsensical crap stuffed in that's supposed to be funny, but is really just trying to pad it out. Early strong contender for worst movie I watch this year! At least, I hope I don't watch something worse than this.

You Might Give It the Slip, but Time Catches Up Eventually

Chase Stein being unable to successfully fight anyone is a truly hilarious character trait and I love it.

While I've begun picking up the current volume of Runaways as it comes out, I've also been backtracking to buy the tpbs of the earlier issues I missed. I picked up Volume 1 late last fall, but we're on Volume 2 today, which is largely about growing up. Either being afraid of it, disillusioned by the realities, or just unsure about it. Kris Anka draws a lot of characters looking nervous or uncomfortable, trying to avoid eye contact like it'll save them from unpleasant emotional issues.

Having reunited most of the team in those first six issues, and determined Molly's grandmother was a genetic engineer who created Molly's parents artificially, they're mostly living in the underground base that used to belong to their parents. But Molly still has school, Victor has no body, and Gert is - via the magic of time travel - back after being dead three years. So there are things to address. For one, someone has to be Molly's parents now.

 

Oh. Guess that takes care of that. Now all Molly has to deal with is whether or not she would like to avoid ever having to grow up by eating an enchanted cupcake her best friend received from the Enchantress in the 1960s. And most of the others keep implying that growing older is, in fact terrible, but also that they don't entirely take her seriously as long as she's so much younger than they are.

Against that backdrop, Karolina's girlfriend Julie Power (aka Lightspeed from Power Pack) shows up, only to be repeatedly brushed off or ignored by Karolina. Either Rowell didn't like those two being a couple, because she almost immediately puts Karolina and Nico together, or she didn't feel like keeping Julie as a regular cast member. I guess having a significant other who's actually a successful superhero (as Julie notes, the Runaways kind of suck at saving the day. Their casualty rate probably rivals the Suicide Squad's, if not the Great Lakes Avengers) would probably complicate the stories she wants to tell. When Julie eats the magic cupcake, she immediately starts calling Dr. Strange or Tony Stark, and that is. . . pretty much the opposite of how Karolina's crew runs. 

 

When they're talking, Anka usually drawing them in separate panels, so there's a sense of isolation. When they are in the same panel, they don't seem to be making eye contact. Usually because Karolina's look elsewhere, and more than once that elsewhere is Nico. Triona Farrell colors the backgrounds for those conversations a lot of cool blues. Which isn't unfriendly, exactly, but kind of melancholy. And when it shifts, it's to something red when Julie's starting to get frustrated with how her girlfriend won't share or discuss anything with her.

And in the middle of all that, a Doombot shows up intent on rescuing Victor and giving him a snazzy new robot body. Which Victor very much does not want. We find out why in the last issue in this trade, unless you read that Tom King Vision series, in which case you probably already know. I didn't read it, because all Tom King's stuff seems horribly depressing and/or complete shit, but the magic of the Internet meant I didn't have to. Anyway, Doombot's arrogance and extreme theatricality are a nice contrast to the main cast's constant snark and sarcasm (except Molly, who is enthusiasm personified most of the time.) Plus, this Doombot wears a nice green suit and his hood is part of a big coat (which he sorts of wears like a cape). He generally looks very snazzy and definitely classes up any room he enters. Unless he destroys it when he enters.

Somewhat in the background through all this is Gert's situation. For her, it's as if no time passed, but for everyone else, she's been dead three years. She's closer to Molly's age than Nico, Chase, or Karolina's, all of whom are legally adults now. So she's trying to figure out where she fits. Like everyone else, she has to adjust to a new situation, but unlike Chase or Nico who can have a concrete goal of finding employment, Gert isn't sure what she should do.

Rowell and Anka also take the time to address the fate of Clara, who I think the team picked up during a time-traveling adventure that was part of the frequently delayed Joss Whedon run that torpedoed the momentum of the book for years to come. And things actually turned out well for Clara! She gets a happy fate, which is nice. Again, I don't know if Rowell didn't want to write, or simply didn't have anything planned for her, but either way, this is a perfectly good way to handle it. Somebody should get to have nice parents.

 

I'm sure someone who understood fashion cold go in-depth about what Anka is telling us about each character with the clothes they wear. I am not that person. All I can tell you is there's an interesting variety. Enough that I actually notice, which is more than I usually bother to do with what characters wear. But the characters are mostly standing around talking, except sometimes they sit, so I gotta have something to look at. There's a couple of brief fight scenes, which mostly involve the team getting pummeled, and Anka does fine with those.

One thing that kept tripping me up is that a lot of the pages are set up to be read across the two facing pages, rather than reading down the left page, then the right. I don't know if that's Anka or Rowell, but they seem to favor it more than a lot of creators I've seen, and I ended up confused more than once because I'd start down the page, then have to stop and catch myself. I think the wider horizontal gutters were supposed to guide me, but it didn't work very well.

Sunday Splash Page #155

 

"There's a Void Inside Me. Outside Me, Too," in Dial H #3, by China Mieville (writer), Mateus Santolouco (artist), Tanya and Richard Horie (colorists), Steve Wands (letterer)

I wouldn't describe DC's New 52 as a success. That they abandoned it at least partially by summer of 2015 with the "DC You" branding (and then entirely with "DC Rebirth" a year after that), less than four years in, would suggest they agreed.

There were a lot of factors. DC throwing out their history and legacies, but even more half-assedly than they did after Crisis on the Infinite Earths. So Batman could still have four Robins (in 5 years, apparently), but there could only be one Batgirl (Barbara, naturally). Four Earth Green Lanterns (and Geoff Johns just kept doing the same stories he already had going), but only one Flash (Barry, naturally). 

The Jim Lee redesigned costumes, were to put it politely, too busy. To put it bluntly, they sucked. The claim that things were going to be new, but the majority of the books were helmed by guys who had been writing comics for decades didn't help. I've enjoyed Tom DeFalco's work, but he's not a writer I'd turn to for something new. Then editorial kept driving creative talent off books with heavy-handed oversight. Not much point to putting George Perez on Superman, only to piss him off in less than 6 issues.

Saying all that, it did give me 16 issues of China Mieville's Dial H series, so it wasn't a complete loss. DC canceled some titles 8 months in, and Dial H was one of the replacements. It's one of the few real examples of DC trying to get outside the box, in the sense they brought in a published, award-winning novelist with, to my knowledge, no prior comic writing experience. If you're looking for something "new" and attention-getting to be done with your characters, that's a better bet than handing them to Scott Lobdell.

Mieville dives into the concept of the dials, how they were made, how they work, how they end up where they end up. Gives them an air of body and especially psychological horror. The toll it takes on the person who uses it, to have another entire personality and memory super-imposed over their own, especially one that seems so much greater than them. One of the two main characters (Nelson) struggles to keep track of who he is and what he planned to use the powers to do when he dials, while the other (Roxie) hides whatever identity she dials behind her own mask, costume, and codename, as a way to keep her mind clear.

There was also an entire issue based around the idea some of the dialed heroes are just too culturally offensive to go out as in public unless there's no other option, which was pretty hilarious, and a fair point, given comics' questionable history when it comes to depicting races, cultural trends, sexual preferences, so on.

As far as the designs for the dialed characters, I don't know where the breakdown is between Mieville and his artists (Mateus Santolouco for issues 0-5, David Lapham for issues 6 and 7, Alberto Ponticelli for 8-15), but the designs are great. From the creepy Boy Chimney, to the ridiculous Cock-a-Hoop, to the Glimpse (who is drawn so you only ever see a small bit of him in the panels). There's an essentially sentient mass of plankton that beats the crap out of a whale. Like I said, I don't know who gets credit, but all parties involved did a great job coming up with some interesting designs and powers to go with them.

Lapham's work is probably the closest to a realistic looking, and the two issues he draws involve the least action by dialed heroes, focused more on a Canadian secret agent with powers. Who is basically a guy in a suit, so it works. Santolouco's art is heavier on shadows, characters look more shell-shocked or freaked out by what's going on. By the time Ponticelli takes over as artist, most of the characters are ones used to this dial stuff, and they just looked kind of tired. His art has a grimy texture, and everybody looks older. His linework's also busier than the other two, a lot more extra shading and scratch mark lines, to the point of overdoing it at times. 

Some of that might have been deadlines, because things clearly get rushed at the end. Mieville had a big, universe-hopping arc going, with Nelson and Roxie teaming up with a crew called The Dial Bunch to chase a dangerous "Operator". Unfortunately, DC canceled the book at issue 15, and you can tell Mieville and Ponticelli were scrambling hard to cram enough in to make some sort of a coherent ending. Which they managed, at times quite well. Mieville ends up just alluding to several worlds they've visited along the way, making it seem as though they may have been at this for years. But if they had even another five issues, it could have been so much better.

There was a post-script of sorts, when DC did a "Villains Month", called Dial E (but it was an issue of Justice League, #23.3). It was one of those jam comics, where each page is by a different artist, and it's as much a mess as those usually are. But it did provide a little bit about the fate of at least a couple of the characters.

Random Back Issues #55 - Amazing Spider-Man #281

How long you think Hydro-Man's been waiting to use that one? For that matter, how long did it take him to think it up?

An opportunity to use my "sinister syndicate" label! It's a great day! This is the second part of the first story that actually introduced that bunch. I have a soft spot for them since they formed to improve their chances of making money, rather than out of a desire for revenge.

Silver Sable's put Spidey on the payroll to help her catch Jack O'Lantern, and how nice, Jack called to tell her he'll be at Coney Island at midnight. Sable knows it's a trap, but figures with Spidey along they've got it under control. Now they're up against five super-villains (although Sable's disappointed none of them have a decent bounty on their heads.) Oh yeah, and Spidey's nursing an injured shoulder after he tripped Speed Demon last issue, and Sable hurt both her ankles kicking the Beetle. You know, the guy in the powered suit of metal armor. (She's not coming off as very bright, especially since she's putting a wrap on the right ankle she insists isn't too bad, rather than the left.)

 

Things look bad, but then the Sandman decides to join the party, having heard the commotion. Spidey and Sable dip out, but you know Parker's not going to abandon someone in need, so back they go. Sandman's doing pretty well when he lets Rhino just pass through him, but tries to match him power for power and gets smashed, then scattered by Speed Demon. He pulls himself together in time to go at it with Hydro-Man, as those two apparently really don't like each other. I do enjoy those kinds of petty beefs among villains. It's fun. 

 

Although Sandman describing Hydro-Man as like looking into a 'broken, distorted mirror,' is a bit much. But this is part of that gradual shift to being a good guy Sandman went through for a few years in the '80s and '90s, so I guess he's gotta feel bad about his past behavior.

 

Silver Sable takes out the source of Beetle's sting blasts (his antennae?) and Spidey slams him into a roof, then stops Boomerang. Unfortunately, Hydro-Man's learned turf beats surf and goes for the easier target (Sable) instead. Spidey disrupts his concentration by throwing Boomerang through him, giving her the chance to grab a fire extinguisher and spray it into waterboy, which makes him nauseous? Sure, fine. Unfortunately, Spidey took a serious hit in the back from the Rhino to make that throw. Fortunately, this activates his secret super-power (at least when DeFalco's writing him), The Desperation Flurry.

Sandman gets the drop on Speed Demon (who was already had one foot out the door wondering what it took to stop Spidey), but Hydro-Man gets the webslinger off Rhino and the villains retreat. Sable tells Spidey he's not getting paid because he quit when he chose to come back to help Sandman, but she wonders if Sandman would like a job? (As we saw in Random Back Issues #20, the answer's yes.) That lady is a shitty, shitty boss. Probably deducts funeral expenses from their pay. Spidey tries swinging home, broke and broken, and collapses on a roof before long, wondering if he got a permanent brain injury. Well, that would explain so many things from the late-2000s.

 

In other developments, the "Who is Hobgoblin?" story still isn't finished. Flash Thompson was arrested in a costume, but Robbie Robertson isn't convinced. Then Jack O'Lantern breaks Flash out of jail, thinking rescuing the Hobgoblin will make him a player in the New York underworld. What it actually does is piss the real Hobgoblin off. I don't know how framing Flash was going to work long-term since presumably the Hobgoblin would want to get back out there at some point.

 

The two of them fight from inside Jack's base out onto the rooftops, but it ends inconclusively. Hobgoblin gets Jack with a 'computerized barrage of electro-blasts', but Jack's armor protects him long enough to hit Hobgoblin with a pumpkin bomb, sending him careening into a storefront window. Meanwhile, Flash escaped in the confusion and is wandering the streets, unsure what to do.

The Hobgoblin thing has a ways to go yet, and of course the eventual end (Ned Leeds), ends up being retconned later, but at this point they've been teasing the mystery out for like 40 issues, which is just way too long.

[1st longbox, 60th comic. Amazing Spider #281, by Tom DeFalco (writer), Ron Frenz (story layouts), Brett Breeding (pencils and inks), Nelson Yomtov (colorist), Joe Rosen (letterer)]