What I Bought 7/10/2021 - Part 1

So, three books last week. The two for today are both in the penultimate issue of an arc. One of them does a lot more with that than the other.

Runaways #37, by Rainbow Rowell (writer), Andres Genolet (artist), Dee Cunniffe (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - I'm really not sure what everyone is so shocked about in the context of this issue. Although Nico only looks mildly concerned at best.

This issue is almost entirely silent for 16 pages. Then the last two pages have a bunch of dialogue. Yes, that only adds up to 18 pages, because that's how many pages there were in this comic. Swell, right? I think that's the second time this year they've stiffed us on pages with an issue. And Genolet is a good artist, the work is pretty and all. Emotions are clear, even if I'm not always clear on why exactly they're having that emotion. Still, it's not so great it demands to be seen sans any actual talking.

So what did happen? Nico is frustrated about her fight with Karolina about letting a genie steal part of her soul when she uses the staff. Which is, to be clear, a stupid thing to agree to, but they seem to make up. Although some of Karolina's people show up looking for her, whatever that means. Present Gert and Victor find Future Gert and Present Chase making out, and Present Gert is not happy and runs off. Is she not happy about how she turns out, or that she seems fated to end up pining over Chase?

Admittedly, that would be a rough realization to have, but I don't know for sure because nobody says anything. Oh, and Future Gert cries while hugging Victor, which probably doesn't bode well for him.

Gib found someone to offer him sacrifices. Relax, it's cats, who bring him mice. Mice which Doombot must then vacuum up, and why doesn't he build something to do housecleaning? Wouldn't that be beneath a Doom? Also, Alex Wilder is still around, which is probably bad news.

I don't see why this issue needed to go Silent Era, and if you're going to do that, then fucking commit. Don't half-ass it.

Jenny Zero #3, by Dave Dwonch (writer/letterer), Brockton McKinney (writer), Magenta King (artist), Dam (color artist) - Seeing your emotionally distant and deceased father figure in cloud formations is a common coping mechanism.

The government agency is becoming increasingly evil, as they try to intimidate Jenny hotel heiress friend, to no effect. But, their telepath pokes through Jenny's uncle's mind and figures out where she went. And their evil leader orders them to either get Jenny to work for them, or bring her corpse back so they can incorporate her DNA into their stormtroopers. I feel as though that development happened extremely quickly, but to be fair, the comic has largely been focused on Jenny making an ass of herself for two issues as an avoidance technique, so there probably wasn't an opportunity.

Anyway, Jenny's busy tracking down an old associate of her father's, who tried to approach her about training years ago. It's a middle-aged lady who is the master of an entire temple, and she's gonna teach Jenny some drunken master stuff. Well, Jenny's a drunk, so she's halfway there! I think they get approximately one day of training in before the government dorks show up and there's a big fight. And once Jenny gets involved, it's really a "big" fight. I'd see myself out, but this is my blog, and my ass has fused with the chair.

Somewhat abrupt shift into cartoonish supervillainy by the mostly unseen Action Science Police aside, there's actually several bits in here that made me laugh. Ms. Sheratin deciding to call the terribly named Alpha Major "Chad". Aiko's ways of testing Jenny. First, knocking her flat on her ass. An oldy, but a goody. Then throwing a cup of tea at Jenny to catch, only for Jenny to punch it, and both of them being very confused by the other's actions. The dog is as amused by it as I am.

The best might be when "Chad" is trying intimidate Aiko and he snaps his fingers, and nothing happens. You turn the page and all his guys are still down the hill waiting because 'The snow is really giving us hell on the comms', so they couldn't tell if that was a signal. Idiots trying to look cool and failing miserably will always be funny. At least, I hope so. If not, this world may not be worth living in.

So, is the fin on the head for these Ultraman types always a natural growth like it is for Jenny, or is it usually a helmet, like the Rocketeer? I'd always assumed the latter, that it was something added to the costume to look cool, but Jenny actually has a headfin, because either her faces uniform didn't have his helmet, or she opted not to wear it. It looks fine as is, although it's kind of weird how much it seems to cause King to flatten out Jenny's nose when drawn from straight ahead, versus in profile. The bridge kind of disappears.

King does a really good job drawing "Chad" to look like a complete ass. Although I'm not sure I've seen a fictional guy with pink hair who wasn't. This doofus, Quentin Quire, there's probably some others I'm forgetting, but those two are strong date points in favor of my hypothesis. He's wearing a purple band-aid under one eye at the beginning of the comic for no apparent reason. He's not wearing it when they attack Aiko's temple, and there's no noticeable scar. So it's an affectation, and an incredibly dumb one at that.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

I've discussed parts of Terminator 2 several times on here. The scene where the orderlies are so busy trying to restrain Sarah Conner they somehow don't notice the enormous man with the shotgun walking towards them. My concern with the presentation of psychiatry in the movie. It looks like, in a footnote to my review of Poul Anderson's There Will be Time from 2010, I predicted the plot of the sixth Terminator film. Blind hog, acorn, you know how it goes.

Never really discussed the film entirely, though. So, short review, I really like it. Probably more than the original, definitely more than T3 or Terminator: Genesys (I haven't seen the other two.) It's like most sequels, though, in that it wouldn't work anywhere near as well without the first film. Terminator, like Alien, works perfectly well as a standalone film. T2 (like Aliens) relies on the first movie for some of its story beats to land. Sarah Conner being a completely ripped head case doesn't land as well if we haven't seen her as the terrified, confused waitress. It's cool on its own, but the contrast adds something. Same with having the first movie's antagonist become the protector in the sequel, while the new antagonist is an even more advanced machine. March of progress, villain upping its game, take your pick. And both those sequels are more conventional action movies, whereas the originals are more suspenseful. The smaller budgets required more to be hinted at, less shown until key moments.

(Although I've been thinking, Kyle can't bring weapons - or clothes - back because nothing technological or artificial can come with him. The T-800 skates by because it's flesh and blood over metal. Which suggests they could have tried stashing some futuristic plasma grenade inside Kyle's body like he was a coke mule, but anyway, the T-1000 doesn't have any flesh. It's all liquid metal. So how does it make it back unscathed?)

And T2 is definitely less suspenseful. It's a much brighter looking movie (the better to see some very cool stunts and effects), and even though the T-1000 is a move advanced killing machine, there's not the sense of John, Sarah, and "Uncle Bob" really being in severe danger. There's the long stretch after they escape from the hospital until the big shootout at Cyberdyne where the T-1000 has no clue where they are. Which is sort of a silent testament to Sarah's preparation over the years. Contrast that with the first Terminator, where even once Kyle has found Sarah, he seems certain the Terminator will find them again, it's just a matter of time. There's more of a constant background terror that it could show up at any moment, because it's relentless in its pursuit. Almost like a Friday the 13th movie, only instead of a zombie in a hockey mask, it's a killing machine that looks like an Austrian bodybuilder.

Terminator 2 does use the long quiet stretch to some effect to let us see the three heroes interact. I guess a lot of people don't like Eddie Furlong's John Conner (or at least that's the impression I get when I see people discuss the film online), but I'm fine with his performance. I think you have to make allowances for it being his first acting gig, and he's dealing with James Cameron writing dialogue for him. Not quite as bad as having George Lucas writing dialogue for you, but still sub-optimal. 

I think there is a genuineness to the performance. He's an angry, confused, kind of fucked up kid, because he's had a shitty exhausting life with a mother putting a ridiculous amount of pressure on him. The scene when he realizes the Terminator has to follow his orders, how giddy he is at the power that gives him. This thing his mother has told him to be terrified of, is his to command. How awesome. Not quite the same thing, but when I was a kid I definitely thought it would be cool to pilot Voltron, or one of the Power Rangers' Zords. But if I had, that would have ended badly for a lot of people.

He immediately tells the T-800 to get rid of some guy that was only trying to help, because he wants to see his cool toy in action. That turns in a second when he realizes the Terminator's definition of 'get rid of this guy' is "shoot him in the face". A kid gifted incredible power he doesn't grasp the danger of. And you can tell his feelings towards Sarah are mixed. She's his "real mom" and he cares about her. He keeps that photo from the end of the first movie with him, even when he's just going to the arcade. When he thinks she's in danger, there's no hesitation on his part that they have to save her. 

At the same time, there's definite resentment. That he couldn't have a normal life because she's so hellbent trying to get him ready to survive the War Against the Machines. You can hear it when he and the Terminator are working on the truck in Mexico. John talks about the one guy they lived with for a while that was cool, who taught John about engines. Then he sort of scoffs and says, 'Mom screwed it up, of course. Started going on about Judgement Day, and how I was this great leader.' Every time John starts to find some stability, a life like other kids get, his mom wrecks it because she can't stop thinking about the future. Sarah's trying, in her own way, to keep him safe, but she can't see there are things John wants from her he's not getting. 

Linda Hamilton's got this fierce protectiveness in her, almost feral, but she doesn't really know how to comfort her son (she and Arnold sort of swap the traditional gender roles.) She wants to check him for injuries, but then she berates him, calls him stupid, for risking his life for her. She doesn't seem to get why it would be important to her son to make sure she's OK. It doesn't even register. You start to see it breaking through when she's thinking about the T-800 and how, not only would it do everything possible to protect John, it would always be there for him, never lose patience with him. Let him teach it elaborate high-five sequences.

There was an oral history of T2 on The Ringer (which is fun to read, especially Arnold being befuddled he's not killing anybody in this movie), and there's a bit in there from Cameron about how part of the notion he had, and part of the thinking behind having the T-1000 appear as a cop, was to be about how people make themselves into terminators. Where we abandon compassion. Sarah very nearly falls into that. She makes the same mistake Skynet makes. Skynet always acts as though, if it kills John Conner, it wins. There will be no Resistance if he's dead. It might occasionally target his future High Command (Terminator 3), but it's still trying to kill him, too. 

Sarah decides if she kills Miles Dyson, that's it for Skynet. It'll never exist. We already know that's nonsense, because we've seen Dyson works for a big company with an entire team studying the remains of the first T-800. But Sarah's fixated on the notion that all it takes is knocking over one domino, even when the T-800 tells her Dyson is only the one considered most important, not solely responsible. 

(T6 apparently makes it entirely clear that killing John doesn't make a difference, because there's still a Resistance. Resisting an entirely different AI, apparently, so even though Sarah and John did keep Skynet from coming into being, it just got replaced by some other artificial intelligence. Which is pretty depressing. But at the rate things are going, the climate will kill us all long before machines can. Probably do it more efficiently, too.)

Anyway, I like Terminator 2 a lot. The way all the characters come together in the psychiatric hospital, and Sarah's escape in general is fun to watch. The highway chase scene with the helicopter and later, the liquid nitrogen truck (and that was a real chopper flying under overpasses, not CGI, which is terrifying. I couldn't pilot a helicopter under an overpass in Grand Theft Auto without damaging it, and that guy did it for real.) The movie uses Arnold well, Hamilton's aces, I already said I like Furlong's performance. Robert Patrick as the T-1000 gives a good performance. He's got that unsettling intense expression when he's moving. He can drop it occasionally, smile or say "thank you"and have it not reach his eyes, but mostly it's just there, along with all these movements that are just a little stilted. The way he turns his head or walks, or whatever. It could seem like overacting since he's supposed to be imitating people, but he is a machine trying to imitate a person, so he is overacting. Presumably he'd get better at it over time, since I imagine he can learn from experience like the T-800, but he's a brand-new experimental unit. It's still early in the learning curve.

What I Bought 7/6/2021 - Part 4

Over the weekend, I managed to pick up all three comics that came out last week I wanted. So we'll get to those starting on Friday. In the meantime, here's the last two books from last month. Monday was for second issues, but today is for third issues. Trying to get over the hump in their respective storylines.

Way of X #3, by Si Spurrier (writer), Bob Quinn (artist), Java Tartaglia (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - Kurt has interesting DTs.

Kurt gets really hammered at the gala for reasons I'm unclear on, and frankly, don't get a fuck about. In the aftermath, he's wandering around and sees a cloaked figure handing out something to lots of mutants. And it's Stacy X! The comic is 5000% better for me already. Kurt is appalled to learn she's handing out contraceptives, which, well, he is Catholic.I guess he wouldn't agree to using his powers for abortions then. Stacy points out that plenty of mutants have been following the first law about making more mutants, and apparently just abandoning them at a place called the Bower Stacy and some other mutants run to care for them. (It's also a place people can come with partners they want to spend time with, however they define that.)

Bravo Krakoa, great fucking hustle once again. Maybe the first law should have been "make and raise more mutants," asswipes. Anyway, Legion's busy searching for, sigh, Onslaught, and also using his telepathy to short circuit a potential relationship between a couple of young mutants. Onslaught's still on the loose though, so they return to the bar, and it turns out Dr. Nemesis is hassling Dazzler all the time because he's actually really into her. Hell, man, who isn't, but I'm never a fan of the "hostility is a mask for attraction" trope.

So some of the residents of Krakoa are looking after the babies. Which is nice, but it sounds like a voluntary thing, rather than something the Quiet Council established. Actually seems apparent from what Stacy says the Krakoan government hasn't done shit for all its newest citizens, too busy in their dick measuring contest terraforming Mars. So the Bower is like when people start a gofundme to pay their hospital bills, because the U.S. government is a useless pile of shit. Yes, Krakoa has certainly moved beyond "sapien" thinking. Man, it is really hard not to want to see these assholes fall flat on their faces.

You Promised Me Darkness #3, by Damian Connelly (writer/artist), Annabella Mazzaferri (letterer) - Yeah, I got nothing for you.

The Anti-Everything and Sage are both moving their plans forward with 10 days until the big show. The Anti-Everything's plan is to steal power from as many other comet-affected people as he can. Sage's plan, well, Sage isn't saying, other than that his(?) plan is much better. It involves Sebastian getting control over his powers, since he was apparently important to the Anti-Everything's father's plan.

Which has possibly given the Anti-Everything an inferiority complex, or daddy complex. Something like that. We learn that during a flashback sequence to the first time he almost caught up with Sebastian and Yuko, and she used her power on him and his goon squad. Which might explain why that one girl had run off and was living in an alley last issue. There's another flashback before that, to the Anti-Everything finding some other comet types over a year ago and having what I assume was a fight. Connelly draws everything so closely focused on people's face I can't tell much of what's going on. But a character named Igny says she used an energy bomb, sooo, I guess there was an energy bomb.

I get Connelly's not really writing this to be some big superhero throwdown comic. It's more of a, creeping apocalyptic doom sort of thing. The sense of impending horror. Especially since the Anti-Everything seems to take powers by breaking people down and absorbing them into himself. Someone Sebastian and Yuko met was melting, and then she seemed to break into a bunch of little globs. Like the inside of a lava lamp. And when all he's doing is drawing people sitting around talking, it works fine. His tendency towards extreme close-ups is fine.

But man, it would be nice to actually be able to tell what's going on more often. Anytime something actually starts to happen, it's just a mess. The backgrounds are so inky and dark, even if you can distinguish the person and what they're doing, there's no context because you can't tell where they are in relation to anyone else. It's like every person in this comic is in their own separate little world, talking and acting, and sometimes it intermingles with someone else's world, somehow.

Life of Crime

Two small-time crooks (played by Yasiin Bey and John Hawkes) decide they're going to abduct the wife of a crooked apartment developer (played by Jennifer Aniston and Tim Robbins) and ransom her for $1 million. Things naturally do not go according to plan. Problems range from Robbins already having planned to divorce her, to his mistress getting involved to protect her interests, to the guy whose house they stash Aniston at being a Nazi sympathizer and an attempted rapist.

The scene near the end when he does try to assault Aniston is odd, if only because the movie has sort of played things relaxed and almost comical for long stretches up to then. Like he tries to peep through a hole he drilled in the wall and she jams a lit cigarette into his eye and Bey makes jokes about it. Robbins is down in the Caribbean being manipulated by his mistress like a goober. Will Forte plays some associate of Robbins and Aniston's who clearly is trying to have an affair with her. He shows up during the abduction, and then is more concerned that someone might figure out he was there than in telling anyone she's been taken. Aniston is obviously frightened early on, enough she meekly complies with their commands, but it settles into something more amicable after that. 

Hawkes and Aniston have several conversations about his life, and how she's certain that her husband won't pay the ransom. He brings her dinner on a tray and is polite about it. When she removes some of the tape over her mask to cover the peephole and sees his face, he's sort of annoyed, but he doesn't rage at her or make threats or anything. She's their hostage, but it's mostly very chill. Then the movie goes, "Wait, this is actually not a chill situation, she's a hostage, that should be scary." 

However, even though he never actually lays a hand on her, it's not even subtext that Robbins is an abusive husband. When Aniston asks him to let her drive, because he's been drinking to celebrate winning some golf thing at their country club, he drives recklessly while berating her for always keeping track of how much he drinks. He hits her car, then blames her for parking in the driveway. When she shouts she won't ride with him ever again, he marches back to the car and she flinches back as he reaches in to grab his ugly trophy. (He also publicly refers to her as his 'other trophy,' so real winner there.) So a big, drunk asshole snarling at her to take off her clothes is probably not a new experience.

But then the last 15-20 minutes of the movie after the assault are kind of ridiculous, so I don't know exactly what to make of it. It's not quite that everyone's a dumbass or neurotic like Fargo, so it isn't a dark comedy. But it's a little too relaxed or silly in places to feel like a crime movie. Forte's attempts to disguise his presence at the house could come off as sinister, but instead is just kind of pitiful. Comedy. But Bey's character feels like a competent, careful criminal who just picked the right target at the wrong time. Heist gone wrong crime movie. I'm not sure the two halves mix all that well.

What I Bought 7/6/2021 - Part 3

For today, we've got a pair of second issues. Two issue #2s. One I enjoyed, one not so much. So kind of a good head, bad head thing. This post is starting to feel like a Two-Face crime. Hopefully Batman doesn't come smashing through my sliding door to break my face. I don't think that's covered by renter's insurance.

Yuki vs. Panda #2, by Graham Misiurak (writer), A.L. Jones (artist/letterer) - Meteorologists say the "looming panda" storm front will be with us for a while, bringing high temperatures and extended stupidity.

The first half of the issue is to introduce us to Yuki's friends, Madesin and Bernard. "Madesin"? Really? And her father's a pastor. Why would a pastor put the word "sin" in his daughter's name? Especially when it requires such an idiotic spelling? OK, OK, deep breath breath Calvin, focus on other things. Madesin, yeesh, may be in love with Yuki, or she just may be an enthusiastic best friend. Bernard is the sarcastic, delusional one, who is apparently building himself a sexbot? A little frightened to see how that Chekov's Gun is going to go off. Yuki finally arrives carrying a huge backpack as training. Which her grandfather was hiding inside, so he could pop out and take a photo of them being surprised.

If he's that bored, you'd think he'd spend more time with online dating.

The other half of the issue is focused on the panda, who spends it monologing about everything he's gone through over the years searching for the child who bit his ear. This includes working in a call center and raking some trailer trash lady's lawn without her permission. He also gets fired from his job at the hot dog cart because he's so lost in thought he lets them get robbed. Except then he stops the thief as they run off. But he also burns his hot dog cart hat and attacks everybody, so maybe he's not cut out for customer service. And all that takes place in the same town Yuki lives, not that he knows that.

Not to sound like Ian Malcolm, but I was expecting more of Yuki fighting the panda in a book called Yuki vs. Panda. I know, I know, table-setting, character introduction, mood establishment. And the contrast between the two leads is sort of interesting. Yuki clearly never thinks about that day, though it's unclear if she ever thinks about anything at all. She admits she's stopped wondering why her grandfather is training her like this, or to what purpose. She's drifting mentally through life, while being pushed towards an unclear goal. Her expressions are most often dismay or confusion, and the weight of the crap her grandfather puts her through is literally pushing her down.

The panda, fixated on a particular humiliation, drifts physically through life. He has a clear goal, but no notion of how to achieve it. Jones draws the panda as walking through the world with his head down, wide straw hat pulled low. A sort of perpetual gloom or fog surrounds him outside brief moments of peace that are shattered by the next panel. But the world around him is bright and sunny. People are happy and laughing, but all he sees is his own misery. 

And all of that is me talking out of my ass like I was Ace Ventura.

Midnight Western Theatre #2, by Louis Southard (writer), David Hahn (artist), Ryan Cody (colorist), Buddy Beaudoin (letterer) - A skeleton horse certainly looks cool, but I imagine it's difficult to find a saddle that fits comfortably.

The issue opens with a brief scene from Ortensia's childhood, when her father has a disagreement with some men working for him, but tells her to learn how to read people, and that he knows a good man when he sees one. Given how Ortensia ended up, I'm going to guess he's not as good at it as he thinks.

17 years later, Ortensia and Alexander show up at a disturbing church in the middle of nowhere, looking for a missing girl. The preacher invites them in to be saved, although they'll be crucified if they refuse. So they go in, and descend into a crypt full of idiots in robes. Always encouraging, at least, it is if you're looking to re-enact any number of parts of Resident Evil 4. The loonies worship Samual, which is a red-eyed Doberman. Who just seems to bark mindlessly until Ortensia reaches for her gun. At which point it manages to say "BULLET!" So she obliges, and gives it a bullet. Cue the fight scene.

17 minutes later, everyone's dead save Ortensia, Alexander, and the head priest. Who is very happy, because they've sent everyone on to their god. He asks they do the same for him, and she basically tells him to suffer and die slow. But the girl they were after refused to join, so they'll be bringing back a corpse. Mission accomplished?

The best bit in all this is when Alexander initially refuses to go inside because he's convinced going inside a church is bad for a vampire. Which he thinks he was told by someone in Jersey in 1789. His relief when learns Ortensia is right and that's not true, replaced in the next panel by childish annoyance that he's been afraid of churches for three-quarters of a century for nothing was pretty funny. Although, this feels like a Satanist church, so I'm not sure that's the best judge of whether he could go inside, you know a Baptist church or a synagogue or whatever.

Ortensia is a little gentler with Alexander than she was in the first issue. Not a lot, but she reassures him that he can go inside the church, and that she wouldn't lie to him. It's a bit of a softer moment for her, not quite saying she wants him there to have her back, but implying it. Otherwise, Hahn draws her with a fairly neutral expression until there's violence to be done. A distinct contrast from Alexander's increasingly nervous look as they're surrounded and told to kneel. She's trying to follow her father's suggestion. Watch the people she's dealing with, and having judged the kind of people they are, wait for the proper moment to act.

I'm really enjoying these done-in-one stories, and Southard is sprinkling in other things that I assume are going to build to something by the end. For example, that both Alexander and Ortensia have died previously. Not a surprise with the vampire, and maybe not for her, either, given the skeleton horse, but I'm definitely curious.

Sunday Splash Page #174

 

"Lizard Men Improve Any Occasion," in Dynamo 5 #22, by Jay Faerber (writer), Mahmud Asrar and Yildiray Cinar (artists), Ron Riley (colorist), Charles Pritchett (letterer)

The conceit behind is Dynamo 5 was that the Superman of that world was kind of a horndog, and after his death, his widow (a top-notch reporter) tracks down his various illegitimate kids and forms them into a super-team. Each kid ends up with one of dead old dad's powersets - telepathy, flight, super-strength, shape-shifting, or vision powers - and away they go.

Each of them comes from a different situation, and they're spread out in age a bit. Gage and Hector are both still in high school, Livvie's attending Georgetown, Spencer's an adult living in a series of hotel rooms. Livvie's mother is deceased, but her father (the one who raised her) isn't. Gage's parents are together, but he's got two younger brothers. Bridget lives alone, but her parents seem to having periodic falling outs. Faerber has a couple of the parents find out in different ways, with different reactions. The teens have their own trouble adjusting, both to the truth about their father, to having siblings, and to having super-powers and the strain it puts on their everyday lives. Sometimes to the good, like Gage being determined to help Hector talk to girls. Sometimes bad, when the team learns the other side of Spencer's family tree is a lot different from theirs and reacts badly.

Asrar's the artist for almost the entire series, minus this and one other issue Cinar draws at least part of, and one drawn by Matteo Scalera. Since it's a team book, Asrar goes for the team uniform approach, which a little variation. Scatterbrain gets a hood, puts the emphasis on his mental powers. Visionary's got a helmet with a visor that amplifies his powers. Slingshot gets some of the old armpit wings for maneuvering, stuff like that. Keeps them from being too interchangeable. 

Most of the different hero costumes are pretty straightforward, but I think Asrar has a little more fun with some of the villains. Like Brainstorm, the guy in the background of the picture above, who is a big android body with the brains of five human scientists on it (that's what the yellow bubbles are. You'd think they'd hide their brains inside the body, but I guess it's more impressive-looking this way.)

Asrar doesn't do anything too flashy on page layouts most of the time, but each character has a distinct look in and out of costume, which helps them feel like individuals. The fight scenes are well-drawn, and even the characters who take a physical approach do it differently. Myriad is maybe the most acrobatic, using a lot of flips and jumps kicks, whereas Scrap tends to just charge in a throw haymakers. She's stronger and tougher, but she also doesn't have as much experience fighting. When Gage fights physically, he tends to do so like a football player. A lot of tackles and using his size, which is what would come naturally to him by now.

Faerber and Asrar plays with expectations a bit. Maggie, the widow, turns out to have actually been a secret agent who uses being a reporter as a cover, or maybe an additional way to get information. She ends up keeping secrets a lot, and has her own skeletons in the closet. Which is where Maggie's tendency to act like a Nick Fury/college football coach-style hardass backfires a few times. But the series touches on the fact it's not easy for her to work with the living embodiment of her husband's fidelity. Gage, the big jock linebacker ends up with the telepathy, which predictably frustrates him, while Bridget, the extremely pale (but hot) goth girl gets the super-strength.

Faerber shifts things up a lot with some surprises and twists. Takes Maggie out of commission for a few issues, forcing the team to work without her guidance. The surprise reveal of Spencer's mother that throws the team for another loop. The roster changes once, Maggie's past comes back to haunt the team. There were a few things I don't think ever actually came to fruition, like the reporter Bridget briefly starts dating, or her and Spencer being roomies. On the one hand, it keeps the book from getting stale, because things can change at any minute, but on the other hand, it feels like some things get tossed aside without ever exploring if they could be interesting. Maybe Faerber reconsidered after he started and that's why he moved on from those ideas.

Faerber had a few other superhero books he was writing at the same time - Noble Causes, Firebirds, maybe one other I can't think of - and he set all of them in the same universe. Which gives him the advantage of having other books to introduce characters and concepts in, which could then be sprinkled into this book whenever. Which is a nice way to make a book feel like it's part of a universe that's already been going for a while.

The series ran 25 issues from 2007-2009, plus an Annual and Holiday Special. There was another 5-issue mini-series a year or two later, but it was a big alien invasion thing that used not only a bunch of Faerber's other characters but also some other Image characters like Invincible, and I'm not really here for that.

What I Bought 7/6/2021 - Part 2

Somewhere along the line in May, the fourth issue of White Lily came out and I missed it. I only figured that out when the fifth and final issue came out at the end of June, so I'm just going to review both today.

White Lily #4 and 5, by Preston Poulter (writer), Jake Bilbao (penciler), Kumar (inker?), Alonso Espinoza (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - I know it takes some work to heat up engines in a Russian winter, but this seems excessive.

These last two issues cover a lot of ground. Lilya's fiance, Captain Alexi, is shot down over Stalingrad. Unlike Lilya, he doesn't survive. She goes into a depression, reaching the point where she tries to light her fighter on fire while she's inside it. She decides to focus on killing the enemy instead. Death will find her on its own soon enough. Once the Nazis surrender at Stalingrad, Lilya and Katya are sent to be flight instructors. Katya's happy to be out of the line of fire (and have more chances to woo Lilya), but Lilya misses combat. 

The two of them do have one night of passion, but Lilya gets her wish and is assigned to a frontline squadron at Kursk. Katya, loyal friend/pining lover, goes against her instincts and follows. They're starting from square one almost in having to prove to the commander that women can be successful combat pilots (even though both of them are aces already), but they pull off their first mission, which had killed the last four teams that tried it. Eventually though, Lilya's time is up, when she runs afoul of two Nazi aces at once. Katya has a depressing visit home for leave to try and deal with her grief, and returns to the front. As she puts it, she would 'rather fight the Nazis than her mother. At least fighting them would serve some purpose.' She finds the two aces and kills one, but the other gets her. It's unclear if she at least managed to shoot him down. I think they may have partially collided, but we don't see his plane go spinning off into the horizon, so I don't know.

There's a lot in there I didn't cover. The last two issues are almost 65 pages combined. They could have made this a six-issue mini-series and I wouldn't have batted an eye. Lilya being a harsh training instructor. A sequence after Stalingrad where all their male wingmen start treating them like just sexual objects again. Which is a depressing recurring thing. They get some respect when the heat is on, but as soon as things start looking up, they're dismissed again. A bit during Kursk where Lilya and their Captain share Polish and Russian folktales. Katya doesn't get to share one from Lithuania until it's too late for Lilya to hear it.

The section where Lilya falls into depression after Alexi's death, Bilbao uses mostly smaller panels in rows, to show the progression of time. For example, three panels showing a steadily increasing pile of cigarette butts beside her bed. There's also a bit where the speech balloons of anyone speaking around her are just filled with squiggles to show she's not registering what's being said.

I think Poulter should have held off on the dialogue in Katya's death scene. The last few panels, as she's reaching for a blood-stained white lily she placed in her cockpit are kind of marred by all the "GHEH gheh gahuuuuuuuuh" sound effects for death gurgles. I think the fact we saw her take several rounds to the chest four pages earlier and the way she slumps over in the last panel would tell us she was on her last legs well enough. Bilbao's art could convey what needed to be well enough on its own.

Bilbao also manages to shift his art style a bit for the folktale parts, especially for the Captain's one panel story about the bird trying to touch the sun, and Katya's about the girl whose evil stepmother makes her ask the Baba Yaga for the secret of fire. The latter especially, he mimics the sort of medieval storybook picture feel for most of it. Not so much the very end, when the girl has become fire herself and returns for revenge, but Katya's also clearly thinking of Lilya throughout, and especially at that point, so it fits. Reality intrudes on the fantasy.

I really enjoyed this whole mini-series.

In Our Time - Ernest Hemingway

So my dad got me a book of a lot of Hemingway's early writing, basically up through The Sun Also Rises. Many of them I've read, including The Sun Also Rises, but also the articles about getting free shaves at the barber college, or interviewing Mussolini. And from what I've heard, The Torrents of Spring was a mess. His mean-spirited attempt to poke at some more established author that pissed him off, that just came off as pitiful. No thanks.

But I hadn't read In Our Time before, which is a collection of a bunch short stories. Some of them very short, less than a page. Just quick bits about someone being prepared for execution, or about a bullfight. The others are longer, for 4 to 15 pages, about a lot of the same things. A man trying to get away from things by returning to a river he hasn't fished in a long time, and the pleasure he takes from it ("Big Two-Hearted River".) Those stories, and several others are about a Nick Adams, growing up alongside his dad, or trying to ride the rails and the perils of that.

The story that was maybe most interesting to me was "My Old Man", written from the viewpoint of a young boy whose father is a jockey, first in Italy, and then in France. The mixture of a boy's idolization of his father, combined with confusion when he does things the boy can't understand. The limited view and understanding a child has of what's going on around them, the blind spots and the information they aren't privy to. 

I don't know if the writing style in that story is on the track to what became his signature style. Certainly not as much as some of the Nick Adams stories. In those you can see him developing that mixture of short specific sentences and the longer, more rambling sentences that are almost stream of consciousness about whatever. It feels like he leans more to the short sentences, brief statements about how he's going to make coffee a certain way. Like his friend Hop insisted. And it has to be Hop's way completely. Too bad Hop's not here. But he won the lotto and went to collect. Never came back like he said. And so on.

'All around people were saying, "Poor Kzar! Poor Kzar!" And I thought, I wish I were a jockey and could have rode him instead of that son of a bitch. And that was funny, thinking of George Gardner as a son of a bitch because I'd always liked him and besides he'd given us the winner, but I guess that's what he is, all right.'

What I Bought 7/6/2021 - Part 1

Hey, I finally got some comics! There were about six books I wanted out last week, plus one from the week before, and one from May I missed entirely somehow. So we're set into the middle of next week on reviews.

So let's get to it, starting with an Annual and the fourth issue of a mini-series.

Black Cat Annual #1, by Jed MacKay (writer), Joey Vazquez (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - I actually wound up with Travis Charest variant, because that's what was available. It's fine, if not terribly exciting.

Felicia and her crew decide to take an overseas vacation, but are detained in South Korea by White Fox. She needs Felicia to help because some crime boss has got Korea's version of Superman (or Hyperion, whatever) over a barrel and are demanding the country be placed under their control. She's got a whole team of superheroes to face Taegukgi, but she needs someone to help with the criminals. And she took a page from Amanda Waller and jammed a bomb in Felicia's neck. Sorry, nanomunitions.

Turns out, the gangsters aren't blackmailing him, they busted out some Korean Shadow King to possess him. But the guy decided being Taegukgi is pretty cool and killed them all. Whoops. Felicia found him before White Fox, and lifted the nanomunition injector thing and once they trick the guy's mind back into his body, she lets him monologue a bit and then kills him. Not sure how she knew it would only trigger his and hers, but I'm assuming her luck powers would cause the ones injected into her to malfunction anyway.

There's a five-page thing after this about Nick Fury trying to find these people the Infinity Stones are bonded to and getting ambushed by what looks like some version of Nighthawk, going by the silhouette. I don't care about that, so I'm grateful it stayed out of the main story. Not that the main story was spectacular. Felicia feels like bystander for stretches of it, since MacKay's gotta introduce most of the characters (who do sound cool, to be fair). And White Fox has to compel Felicia's help somehow, because otherwise this isn't the sort of thing she'd bother with. Feel like they could have done the thing where she's in the middle of a job and this whole mess erupts around her, but MacKay did already use that when Blastaar showed up while she was trying to swipe a book from under Johnny Storm's nose.

Vazquez gave White Fox a very different costume from the one she was rocking last time I saw her (that Domino: Hotshots mini-series), but it does help distinguish her from Felicia more. And the sort of holographic multiple tails things is a neat touch, even if I can't see any practical use for it. I feel like Vazquez maybe elongates arms too much, or maybe it's just how skinny her draws Felicia's arms that makes it seem that way. I did enjoy the two pages cutting back and forth between Felicia and Fox' fight against the mercenary death cult and the rest of Tiger Division getting pummeled by Taegukgi, even if the ladies costumes naturally get the strategic tearing effect.

Black Knight: Curse of the Ebony Blade #4, by Si Spurrier (writer), Sergio Davila (penciler), Sean Parsons and Marc Deering (inker), Arif Prianto, Chris Sotomayor and Andrew Crossley (colorists), and Cory Petit (letterer) - No Dane, that's the special drink for the pledges, man.

Dane drank from the chalice so he knows lots of horrible things now. Like how Merlin started banishing anything from Camelot that didn't meet the image he wanted it to project, creating a sterile, I hesitate to use the word Puritanical given that wouldn't have existed but Spurrier does, myth. And how all the past wielders of the Ebony Blade tried to convince themselves they could bear up under the misery of what they did for a greater purpose, but all of them broke and became monsters eventually. So after fighting Mordred a bit, Dane drops his sword and lets himself be knifed in the gut. 

Elsa already left because Mordred handed over the chunk of the Bloodstone so she can resurrect her father. After telling Jacks that, as an orphan, she wouldn't understand the importance of family bonds. Elsa Bloodstone for Biggest Asshole of 2021. I mean, I'd expect that from Emma Frost or Monet, but it feels needlessly cruel for Elsa. But it keeps her from persisting in shooting at Mordred, so plot must be served. Mordred grabs up all the enchanted thingamajigs, except the Blade, to form an Ebony Crown he will use to conquer Britain. Between this guy and the villains from The Union, everyone's trying to conquer the British Isles. Hell, they'd probably be better leaders than Boris Johnson.

When Jacks tries to use the sword to stop him, she's reduced to dust. And since she's presumably not of Arthur's bloodline, it won't resurrect her like it did Dane. Meanwhile, Dane (who knew that was gonna happen to her and just let it), crawled off to die in a bathroom. Well, real feel-good issue there. No, seriously. You can always remind yourself you aren't as big a fuck-up as Dane Whitman when you're feeling down.

No, I know, he's seen how it ends, so there's some big twist coming he knew had to play out like this. Jacks will be back, presumably Dane will, too. Maybe Jacks is descended from Merlin, which might explain her ability to speak with the raven. Maybe Elsa pulls her head out of her ass, maybe she doesn't.

Multiple inkers and colorists rarely bodes well, but the art stays solid here. Davila draws Dane as hunched over, like he's being crushed under a great weight (or about to hurl). The only point where he really stands up straight is the moment he decides he's going to let go of the sword. He's not trying to think of or use all the painful stuff to empower the sword. He's made a decision and come to peace with it.

The Devil Below

I could have tried something good, but I watched this instead. 

Basically, this quartet of guys, headed by a couple of geologists, hire this professional tracker or something to find this coal mine and town in Kentucky that just vanished fifty years ago. The locals all pretend there was never any such town and try to drive the group away. One of the geologists insists that it was probably just a sinkhole or the underground coal seam caught fire. There's a town in Pennsylvania that had to be abandoned because of that. The other geologist, who is the token Religious Guy, says they were actually trying to recreate the bore hole the Russians made that went 8 miles down, and found something.

This could all be a very interesting set-up for the five of them ending up in the underground mine, and bad things happen, and hey, is it monsters, or angry rednecks or just that you're wandering around in an underground coal mine that is on fire. Unfortunately, the movie spoiled within the first minute that it is definitely something down there, because we see something grab one of the coal miners right in front of his father. Which takes a lot of the suspense out of it. It becomes just waiting to see how goofy the monsters look.

I thought they'd go a bit more demonic with the creatures, given the title of the movie and Religious Scientist talking about Russia's Well to Hell or whatever he called it, but not really. I guess big leathery wings wouldn't really make sense for a subterranean creature, anyway.

It's a little interesting that the locals are trying to keep it a secret not because they hate outsiders, or want to be able to feed unsuspecting outsiders to the creatures, but because they're honestly trying to keep these things from escaping and they simply don't think anyone would believe or help them. Their methods could use some work, but that was sorta atypical for these kinds of movies.

Scourge of My Wallet, Maybe

Perfectly normal reaction to being in another event thing.

Annihilation: Scourge was a mini-event Marvel released in December of 2019, consisting of six one-shot issues. I passed on it at the time due to a) each issue being $5, and b) half of them being written by Matthew Rosenberg, who put me off his work with that Multiple Man mini-series he wrote. But as a discounted, used tpb, eh, what the hell. Spoilers from here on.

The gist of the story is the Cancerverse from Thanos Imperative is back, but rather than try to force its way into the Marvel Universe proper, it invades the Negative Zone first. Worse (in many ways), the Cancerverse finds the Sentry (or the Void, whatever) hanging out in the Negative Zone, and they team up. So, C'thulu-enhanced power of a million exploding suns. Various heroes get roped into trying to help stop all this. The Fantastic Four, Nova, Beta Ray Bill, the Silver Surfer, each of which gets a one-shot.

Half of the one-shots seem to be about confronting trauma. Christos Gage and Diego Orlotegui's Fantastic Four story focuses on how Johnny Storm has pretty much tried to forget the time he spent dying over and over in the Negative Zone during Hickman's FF run. Which included forgetting the people who apparently relied on him as a leader. I don't know, I don't read Hickman's stuff. Also, Reed's the one who suggested to Bob Reynolds he might be able to separate from the Void in the Negative Zone, which is how the Void (who somehow got all the power, is that how it works with him now?) ends up with the Cancerverse. So yet another fine mess Richards creates which he (and the rest of his family) must now deal with.

I honestly just figured it was the Cancerverse's version of the Sentry to begin with. Maybe they didn't have a Sentry at all. What a wonderful universe, minus the extra-dimensional beings devouring your soul.

Nova (whose story is written by Rosenberg with Ibraim Robertson as artist) has a crapload of bad memories dredged up by all of this. He's spending his days drinking heavily in various cantinas on Knowhere, trying to forget. Now he can't keep running. Not only confronted with Annihilus, but forced to team up with him. And facing the Cancerverse again after he was part of it and escaped once already. He has to not only confront it, he ends up having to let it inside of him again as part of a plan to stop it.

Then there's the other two. The Silver Surfer (by Dan Abnett and Paul Davidson) one could fit in. The Surfer's undergone some changes as the result of some Donny Cates mini-series (I knew who wrote it without looking because the story mentions it involved Surfer fighting Knull, God of the Symbiotes. Who else but Donny Cates?) Surfer is for some reason concerned his changes may be the cause of a great disaster he senses approaching. As it turns out, he's not, because it's the friggin' Cancerverse. But he's forced to actually get off his butt and intervene. He's incorporeal now(?) but he can merge with people, including Bob Reynolds. Both of them are forced to reach out and connect, rather than hiding away somewhere.

The Beta Ray Bill one by Michael Moreci and Alberto Albequerque, I got nothing. He and Lockjaw are hanging out on some planet that loves them, another of Annihilus' ships makes it through a rift the Sentry somehow forced open, the Sentry follows, Bill can't beat him, but he can hit him with Stormbreaker and drive him back into the Negative Zone. Then Bill and Lockjaw have to go to the Negative Zone to get Stormbreaker back. 

I mean, what's the point at all? The Sentry gets into the Marvel U. for about three seconds, then shoved back in. Just don't have him get out, and this story is pointless. Bill serves no major role in the conclusion either, other than being one more hero to try and help. So what's the story saying? That he wasn't really doing anything on that world? That's not totally his fault, since he didn't realize the locals were trying to stage things for him to fight because they liked having him around.

But I'm not really sure why this whole thing exists. The endgame is to destroy the part of the Cancerverse that broke back in. But that only happened in this story. Was it supposed to be some coda for Nova's experiences? He was supposed to die there, but survived once by giving in. So now he has to give in again, to make it vulnerable so it can be killed. Except Annihilus somehow brings him back to life on the last page. I'm not complaining that Rider didn't get killed off in this mess, but it makes it all seem especially pointless.

Of the artists, I'd say the Orlotegui/Juan Vlasco/Erick Arciniega team on Fantastic Four and the Davidson/Matt Milla team on Silver Surfer are the most distinctive. Orlotegui does the most with the Cancerverse versions of characters truly looking horrific, rather than just "they have red eyes and maybe a Venom tongue" that most of the other art teams adopt. His version of Crystal looks normal, except her face is just one giant mouth. (Not sure about the reveal being in such a tall, narrow panel, though. The Thing is his spiky rocks look, but the spikes are placed unevenly and there's extra mouths all over the place. And the entire team is wrapped up in Reed's body, a together forever kind of thing.

The Surfer book is definitely the most colorful. Davidson seems to lean a little more into Kirby Surfer in the length of the board and the width of the shoulders than a lot of other artists I've seen (who seem more towards the Buscema version.) Milla plays with the Surfer's body being black instead of silver now to reflect all kinds of light, and his Negative Zone is a much trippier-looking place. Bright and varied colors all over. Empty space isn't just a uniform black curtain broken up by stars. It's blues and blacks (and sometimes purples and reds) with worlds haphazardly strewn about like someone dumped a bunch of Tropical Skittles on the page. All the other artists draw the Negative Zone as basically looking like out outer space. Davidson and Milla remember it's supposed to a bizarre, alien dimension.

The rest fall into that general range of workmanlike and inoffensive. Not really doing anything that particularly catches the eye. The coloring in the Nova one-shot seems particularly muddy, and I don't if that's supposed to be some reflection of Nova's mindset, struggling with his experiences, or what. The Omega issue that closes the whole thing out is not helped by having Manuel Garcia inked by four different people (Rafael Fonteriz, Cam Smith, Wayne Faucher, and Garcia himself), and three colorists (predominantly Federico Blee, but also Rachelle Rosenberg and Arciniega.) 

Sometimes it makes Garcia's art strongly resemble Paul Pelletier, and others times it looks nothing like him. Some of these folks really favor heavy blacks in their work, shadow everything, others ink it so everyone's lower half of their face looks like an old man's. Where the skin sags around the mouth and kind of wipes out the jawline? Even seems to happen to Ben Grimm in one panel. Half the time it's like they can't keep straight whether Johnny Storm is rocking a beard from one panel to the next.

With shipping, I may have ended up spending about $1.70 per issue on this, and that was probably too much.

Sunday Splash Page #173

 

"Doom is Getting Out of This Clown Show," in Dr. Doom and the Masters of Evil #2, by Paul Tobin (writer), Patrick Scherberger, Jon Burran and Scott Koblish (pencilers), Terry Pallot and Scott Koblish (inkers), Chris Sotomayor and Guillem Mari (colorists), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

A nifty little Doom-centric mini-series from early 2009. Tobin sends Doom all over the Marvel Universe for 4 issues, teaming up with and fighting various super-villains. In every issue, Doom seems to have acquired some powerful invention, magic, or vital bit of information, but his ultimate goal remains unclear until the final issue. And even once we learn what he's seeking, Tobin has a final twist on it at the very end. Basically, Doom gets himself a magic wish, that can be for anything, and doesn't use it to kill Reed Richards.

I know, I was kind of disappointed, too.

I'm not going to tell you what he does wish for, since you can probably find this cheap enough out there. I could see it as a cop-out, since it goes against the obvious thing we'd expect. But I think Tobin puts in enough work up to that point through the first 3.5 issues that I can understand his choice.

Tobin writes Doom as powerful, but not overwhelmingly so, and self-aware enough to know it. Doom's ultimate weapon is, as always, his mind. Doom isn't stymied when his big attack doesn't stop Blastaar or whoever, because that was never the plan. And each step of his quest builds to the next.

Although I think Tobin plays up Blastaar a little too much. I'm not picking that guy in a fight with the Executioner.

Most of the issues are not such an ensemble cast of credits. The art chores are mostly handled by Scherberger, who had worked with Tobin on Marvel Adventures Spider-Man for a while prior to this. Sticks with classic looks for most of the characters, other than giving Selene something a bit more modest. Gotta protect the kids, ya know. I think his attempts to make Doom's mask expressive sometimes make it look goofy instead, but it mostly works. Everything is easy to follow, the inking and coloring aren't excessively dark or busy, so the art isn't cluttered. The story uses a variety of characters and locales, and Shcerberger makes them all distinct and easy to tell apart. Doom's intimidating when he needs to be, but not all the time, because the story is trying to lure us in to understanding or possibly rooting for Doom.

Next week, the last title in the D's.

Random Back Issues #65 - Scout: War Shaman #6

Come on kid, it's obvious the rabbit was hidden under your shirt. You gotta at least get a big hat or coat or something

War Shaman was set several years after Tim Truman's original Scout series. At this point, Emanuel Santana and his two sons Tahzey and Victorio have taken refuge in a community in some caves. Unfortunately, the Army has set up shop in a town nearby. Santana and one of the cave-dwellers, a Jackson Walker observe them from a bluff nearby. Walker says he can "read" the soldiers, that they're tired and plan to set up shop here. He explains most people have such abilities, but misplace them, and his are strongest among the folks in the cave. He tells Santana he's got it, too, but calls it something else. Santana replies he doesn't need a sixth sense to know to get out of the heat, and they return to the caves.

Back in the caves, Tahzey and Victorio find some of the local kids messing with a rabbit. The leader, named Kidd, "mind-kills" the rabbit, which makes Victorio rush out to object. Apparently the cave folks haven't taught their kids about tolerance, because they call the boys "scummies" and mock their dark skin, calling them dirty. Kidd warns he could mind-kill them too, and Tahzey counters that he's no rabbit. As they leave, Victorio holds the rabbit close and viola! It's alive again.

Kidd and his lackeys are stunned, but a pair of religious nuts called The Dead Men saw it and are sure Victorio is the prophesied one to save them from "The Beast." They plan to abduct him, to protect him from his own father. Seems like a good way to get shot, but Santana had history with the man who founded their cult, so they're kind of a sore spot for him.

Back in town, one man beats the hell out of another. The one getting beat up abandoned his post for a midnight rendezvous with their Commander's daughter. Who is actually the President's daughter, but Rosa Winter's adopted her some time after Santana killed the President. Rosa tries to present this as a lesson, but Laura's not too impressed. 

Back in the caves, Walker's explaining how the entire cave system relates to a Hopi story about the creation and destruction of the world. That the creator grew displeased with how humans were fucking up the world, and those with the proper senses were able to find the caves and ride it out until the creator was willing to try again. He says they're currently on the fourth try, and they've taken to these caves to wait for the fifth.

When Santana points out one world was enough for his people, Walker counters that the Hopi were always more creative than the Apache. Maybe, but their creator kind of sounds like a schmuck, to keep trying again even though humans fuck up the same way every time. Santana decides to snoop around town and after killing one guard with a stupid mark over his eye (between this and GrimJack, Truman was really fond of giving people those sorts of tattoos over one eye), confronts Rosa. The two of them have history going back to boot camp, and it's been a complicated thing. 

He finds out Rosa's been through some changes, namely, she might be more machine than human after the injuries she sustained cleaning up the messes Santana created. For her part, Rosa's decided all her problems stem from not killing him the night he went AWOL, and she's going to rectify it. I've heard closure is an important part of the healing process. So is not picking at scabs. Santana's boxed in, but Laura comes to check on her mom and he's got a hostage. He talks about how Rosa's called the Beast and the Butcher, and kills anyone who doesn't fit her vision of what America should be. I'm not sure Santana's hands are clean enough to be throwing stones at anyone. He tells Rosa to take care of Laura, because she's the only human part she has left. Notable that he and Laura are both crying by then, but Rosa's not. Of course, one of her eyes is mechanical, so maybe she has no more tear ducts.

He's out the window and away on Rosa's motorcycle, but before she can hunt him down, a guy named Redwire shows up. Tells her she has her job leading the Army and rebuilding America. Leave chasing 'a rabbit' to a hunter like him. I know Redwire is someone Santana encountered and tried to kill during Scout, but I can't remember exactly who.

[9th longbox, 64th comic. Scout: War Shaman #6, by Timothy Truman (writer/artist), Sam Parsons (painter), Tim Harkins (letterer)]

Batman: Year One

I've never actually read all of Miller and Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One, but I know the gist of it. Bruce Wayne figuring out what it is that he needs beyond all his training. Gordon joining the most corrupt police force in the country and trying to continue to do things properly in the face of all the corruption, threats, and intimidation.

All of that's here, although it feels much more like Gordon's story than Batman's. I don't know if that's just how this adaptation handled it, or if that's how the actual comics are. But Wayne is already almost all the way to where he needs to be. Gordon is further off. He tried to do the right thing, report corruption once, and it got him run out of his previous position, in a situation where Gotham is the only police that'll take him.  So he has to decide whether he's going to do the right thing again, or start looking away. 

At least that's what it feels like it would be, but Gordon seems to know from the first time he sees Flass beat the shit out of a kid on a street corner what he's going to do. He's already taking notes on how the guy fights for the point when they inevitably have it out. So maybe, like Batman, he's not figuring out what he's going to do, but how. That just reporting things to Internal Affairs isn't going to cut it.

Although based on what we see of the Gotham police, it's hard to say they seem any more corrupt than a lot of police we have today. The cop who shoots Wayne during his fight with the pimp by claiming an unarmed man was "gonna do something." The SWAT team that just firebombs buildings without bothering to confirm who's inside, or is willing to go in guns blazing on a guy who has four kids as hostages. Cops using their badges as licenses to kill? Unheard of!

The Selina Kyle subplot feels only halfway finished. It gets as far as her being Catwoman, but she only manages to to go from having all her crimes attributed to Batman, to being called Batman's assistant, and having Batman throw a (gruff) hissy fit over her spoiling his reconnaissance. There's not a point where her actions get her considered as someone of note herself, or where she and Batman have a real confrontation as their costumed selves (there is the brief fight right before the cops shoot him, but neither of them have found their style yet.)

If it wanted to tie things together, instead of Gordon waiting to consult with Batman about this "Joker" person at the end, it could be Catwoman having stolen sufficiently big or important enough people actually take her seriously. As is, her thread feels as though it's just left dangling off to one side of the start of Gordon and Batman's relationship.

The Summer of Big Hauls End with Fall

The September solicits were a real letdown. Just not much out there from almost anyone. I think my eyes had crossed by the time I waded through all the Batman-related stuff in DC's offerings. Boom, IDW, Image, Dark Horse, nothing really caught the eye.

Marvel's not doing so great, either. I didn't see Runaways for the second time in four months. I don't think it ends in August, but maybe I'm wrong. Way of X has segued into some overpriced one-shot called X-Men Onslaught - Revelation, which Spurrier apparently described as a 'season finale.' It really just makes me think about bailing on Way of X even sooner. Which would leave Black Cat (still on its Infinity Heist storyarc), Moon Knight (if the first two issues impressed me), and that Defenders mini-series by Ewing and Javier Rodriguez.

Ms. Marvel's getting a five-issue mini-series, but it's written by Saladin Ahmed, whose Magnificent Ms. Marvel did nothing for me. Ka-Zar's getting a mini-series that brings him back from the dead. I didn't even know he died, but I ignored Empyre, so that's no surprise. Even Kang's got himself a mini-series.

Outside the larger publishers, Scout's doing pretty well. Midnight Western Theatre will be wrapping up, and Locust will be on issue 4. And Karl Kesel and David Hahn have a mini-series about a thief who gets mistaken for a superhero called Impossible Jones. Figure that's at least worth looking at.

There's a second issue of Black Jack Demon out. Hopefully I'll have the first issue by then. And Mark Russell and Ben Tiesma have their second issue of Deadbox out as well. Which brings me up to 8 single issues for the month. Oof.

It's not all bad news. Yen Press has volume 15 of Kiyohiko Azuma's Yotsuba! The first new volume in three years. It doesn't come out until the very end of the month, but that just makes it something to look forward to, right?

In Evil Hour - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Set in an unnamed town along a river, where every morning people wake up and may find a lampoon posted on their door, detailing the gossip of the town about themselves or someone else. The story starts with one man going and killing a young singer the lampoons claim is sleeping with his wife, but it isn't really about who's behind it, or why. It's about how people respond to the whole thing.

The country itself has undergone a shift in government, with likewise shifts in what's considered moral, acceptable, or legal. The mayor, who is just as often referred to as the lieutenant, was sent there to instill order by the current regime, and the town is still considered to be in siege, which grants him certain leeway. And that circumstance gradually emerges over the course of the book. Starting as a background detail and becoming more and more prominent with every comment the mayor makes about wanting to do things legally, while lining his own pockets.

The book doesn't have quite the languid sense of pace I get reading Marquez' other works. Possibly because he jumps between characters often, rather than staying focused on just one or two. It gives a feeling of rushing back and forth across town to make sure we don't miss something important. Which lends a certain suspense, since I wasn't sure at all how this story was going to go.

The mayor and the village priest are the two most prominent characters. Each of them is restless in certain ways. Each of them dismisses the lampoons at first, and later each takes steps to address them that are entirely inadequate and useless. The priest is uselessly focused on trying to make the town appear moral, so that the next priest can get a nice church built, but it would be a surface gleam at best. He's concerned about appearances, rather than what people actually are. The mayor drifts a lot, like he's waiting to be pointed in the right direction. Enjoys casually flexing his power while pretending he's not doing that at all.

By the end, the things people were told they could rely on are of course exposed as useless. The government has not changed - how can it when the man who shot up people's homes is mayor? - and the church is doing nothing other than telling people they shouldn't go to certain movies, or that women shouldn't wear short sleeves. What good does any of that do anyone?

'"That's gossip," the priest said. "you have to legitimize your situations and put yourself out of the range of gossiping tongues."

"Me?" she said. "I don't have to put myself out of the range of anything because I do everything in broad daylight. The proof of it is nobody has wasted his time putting any lampoon on my door, and on the other hand, all the decent people on the square have theirs all papered up."'

The Seeds of Destruction

Feels like the kid summed up the human condition rather neatly.

The Seeds was originally going to be a 4-issue mini-series published through Dark Horse's Berger Books line. Ann Nocenti and David Aja got two issues out, and then it just dropped off the radar. Finally, they released a collection of what would have been all 4 issues last winter.

So, the Earth's on the verge of total collapse. Some people still live in crowded cities, others have gone beyond the wall, abandoning phones and internet and whatnot to scratch out whatever existence they can. Probably the main character is Astra, your typical reporter in fiction who wants to do hard-hitting journalism, but has to give her editor the cheap sensationalist crap that gets views, or clicks, or whatever. And what Astra finds that might do both is Lola and Race. 

Lola's a young woman in a wheelchair. Race is a guy she finds herself growing fond of. Race is also part of a quartet of aliens living out beyond the wall. They're here because someone - it's never revealed who - is pretty sure Earth is about to go belly up. Their job is to gather as many seeds as possible for the Celestial Seed Bank. They aren't conquerors, or grand beings with plans of creating some Eden, so much as they're contractors, hired and sent to do a job. Race and one of the others, Sandy, both note at different times most planets they're sent to haven't gotten past single-celled life, so this was actually sort of a nice assignment.

 

A lot of the book is about choices, what people are going to decide is important. Is Race important enough to Lola to go beyond the wall? Is she important enough to him to go against his team's leader, who is clearly enjoying Earth a little too much. Is the opportunity to write the stories she wants worth Astra outing Lola as the one sleeping with an alien? Her boss argues yes, the public has a right to know there might be alien babies running around, but her boss also admitted that when she was going to write an article about a vampire cult, she created it herself. Basically, tell the lie hard enough it becomes truth.

There are a couple of other bits Nocenti adds in to round it out. A farmer wondering why his bees abandoned their hives, and feeling really bad about having to kill his prize sow. There are also two scientists somewhere, each of them with different ideas about what's going to save the planet, technology or nature. Which feels like a false dichotomy, since you can presumably use technology to help nature along. Technology might help you clear a field of invasive species so you could restore a native prairie full of wildflowers for the bees, for example.

I think Aja handles all the art and color work himself. The book sticks to a black/green-gray scheme. Which allows for high-contrast at times, but also can give things a sickly look. You probably wouldn't think a plant that shade of green was doing very well if you saw it. But it works. Even just the absence of the shadows works. Like when Astra's able to enlarge a photo of some idiot billionaire whose spaceship crashed on Enceladus, and she can somehow make out there's a plant sprouting in his eye socket inside his helmet. Cue Jeff Goldbloom "life finds a way."

 

He uses a pretty 9-panel grid most of the time. In some cases it's only one or two rows of 3 panels, and then a larger panel takes up the other third or two-thirds of the page. It makes things feel very restricted, I guess. Everything is caught in their own little boxes. Disconnected from larger things, maybe. There's a recurring motif of hexagonal grids. Beehives, insect wings, chain link fences, people's tattoos. I don't know what that means. Life falls into particular ordered patterns, and attempts to circumvent that are futile? Even if everyone is trying to isolate themselves, they still are connected? Trying to pretend nothing we do has an impact, and nothing else can impact us is a ludicrous notion? The things some people put stock in are incredibly fragile, while things considered archaic are more resilient than we expect?

I'm just spitballing, I don't really know. But I enjoy trying to figure it out.

Sunday Splash Page #172

 

"Welcome to Earth, Dipshit," in Dragon Ball Z vol. 4, chapter 36, by Akira Toriyama

Yeah, I know, in Japan the Dragon Ball Z manga isn't a separate thing from the Dragon Ball manga, but it is in the collected volumes they released here in the States. Besides, like hell I was going to pass up an opportunity to post a picture of Vegeta getting punched in his stupid face.

Toriyama does the old Five Years Later maneuver between Goku beating Piccolo and marrying Chi-Chi and the start of this. At which point he reveals that Goku's not just a weird kid who had a monkey tail, he's a weird alien kid who had a monkey tail. Oh, and he was sent here as a baby to subjugate this world so it could be sold to someone else, killing all the present inhabitants if necessary.

The story still has a lot of Goku going to some new place to fight new people and learn new tricks, but the periodic tournaments are largely abandoned. So are a lot of the comedy elements, especially during the Androids and Cell Sagas. There are brief bouts of it here and there, though. The brief stretch on Namek with the Ginyu Force, basically a bad guy version of Power Rangers, complete with choreographed poses and what not. Captain Ginyu asking Frieza if he should perform the Dance of Joy (although that was probably anime filler). 

Then the Buu Saga brings some of the humor back. First with Gohan trying to fit in at a regular school, then his trying to be a masked superhero, complete with his own ridiculous poses. After that, there's the brief stretch where Goten and Trunks are the ones on the front lines, and since they're little kids, they come up with stupid attacks. Poor Piccolo gets reduced to playing the straight man for them. Even Buu himself, in his initial form alternates between terrifying and silly. The way he sort of dances around or puffs pink steam out of his skull when he gets annoyed, but then he turns people into cookies and eats them. Yikes.

But most of the series is still fighting, people getting punched in the face or shot with energy blasts. The antagonists are stronger, but at the end of the day I'm not sure that changes much really. Is there a functional difference between Vegeta coming to Earth and being able to destroy and entire planet, and Frieza or Cell showing up and being able to do the same, but even more easily? Motivations, I guess. Vegeta trying to find a way to reach the top of the heap, Frieza for revenge, Cell because he's been designed to be perfect, and he wants to know that he is. And the best way is to beat everyone else.

I admittedly prefer the earlier arcs, the Saiyan and Frieza Sagas. I read a post recently that said Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z could be divided into two halves, at the point where Vegeta first mentions the Legendary Super Saiyan. Before that, the series is all about Dragon Balls. After that, it's all about Super Saiyans, and I think that was part of my issue. Anyone that wasn't at least part Saiyan got sidelined more and more. Maybe if the character that benefited the most in terms of focus wasn't friggin' Vegeta I wouldn't have minded so much, but it was, so I did. Vegeta is the equivalent of the dumbshit police chief in Die Hard, always there to be wrong or make things worse.

Like a lot of people I got into Dragon Ball Z through the anime first, on Cartoon Network late in my high school years. I think a friend of mine mentioned it to me first, and Cartoon Network had finally been added to my family's basic cable package, so I watched it when I could after school. I don't think it was the first anime I'd seen - I know I watched Voltron as a kid, and I remember Sailor Moon being on another network before it was on Toonami, even if it wasn't really my jam - but it was the first one where I understood this was from a different country, and where the series really interested me and made me want to watch more. Granted, that's been more branching into other styles of anime and manga; none of the shonen series that owe something to DBZ have ever come close to interesting me as much as it does (One Piece comes closest, but I feel like that's still more in concept, or maybe the fictional setting in general, than the actual story Oda is telling.)