What I Bought 5/1/2021 - Part 2

I'd hoped to have more comics to discuss in this round, but I couldn't find a copy of the first issue of You Promised Me Darkness, and the first issue of Jenny Zero, which was originally supposed to be out two weeks ago, is only just out today. So one book is what you get.

White Lily #2, by Preston Poulter (writer), Lovalle Davis (penciler), Walden Wong and Diana Greenhalgh (inkers), Alonso Espinoza (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - German bombers are like potato chips, shoot down one and you're hungry for another.

Lilya goes from winning her first dogfight to getting the instructor she beat to take her to bed. Lady who knows what she wants and gets it. It leaves her friend Katya pining, and one of the other pilots, Raisa, jealous. That goes on for six months, and then they're sent to Stalingrad, because most of the air units there are dead. Lilya shoots down a plane in their first real battle, and she Katya, and two other pilots are transferred to the same squadron as Alexi, the instructor she beat. Who Lilya's been keeping up a long-distance relationship with. No time for her to focus on that, because they're really going to get mixed up in the madness of Stalingrad very soon.

Davis continues to use the sideways page approach for the air combat scenes. I think it works better in this issue, because now Lilya's mixed up in huge dogfights with dozens or hundreds of other planes, so it allows for him to simultaneously show the scale of the fight, but have room to focus on smaller details within it. 

It becomes like a vertical double-page splash, where the backdrop is all the other planes flitting around, with Lilya or someone else occasionally in the midground. Then Davis intersperses smaller panels throughout that zoom in on a particular bit of action, or show the perspective from that fighter's cockpit (and he draws some of those panels in the shape of the cockpit glass).

There's also a page where Raisa makes a snide comment about Lilya constantly receiving letters from Alexi, where Davis spends six panels on Lilya pulling out papers, rolling the letter up in them, lighting it, and taking a puff. Then at the bottom of the page, she blows the smoke in Raisa's face. I like the deliberate step-by-step approach there, showing how far she's going for this brief, but satisfying bit of spite.

The bad news is, at the end of the issue there's a note from Poulter that Davis passed away not long after his finished this issue. Which is sad for a lot of reasons, obviously, beyond him not getting to finish this series. That's a low note to finish a review on, but it feels odd to go on discussing the differences in Wong and Greenhalgh's inking styles after that.

Young Sherlock Holmes

Not sure why my dad had this saved as something he wanted to watch. The movie feels the need to run a brief thing at the beginning and end that basically, "Yes, we know this doesn't match the canon established by Doyle's stories, just go with it will ya?" Film equivalent of Silver Age DC's "imaginary story" tag.

Holmes reads notices about two people committing suicide for no apparent reason, and decides there must be foul play. Even more so when one of his mentors ends up the same way. It turns out the victims are being dosed with some hallucinogenic via blowdart, and seeing all sorts of crazy crap. The serpent heads on a guys hat rack seem to come to life and coil around him. Watson is attacked by a crypt full of sweets, although they try to shove themselves down his throat rather than eat him in revenge. Feels like an excuse to show off the finest in mid-1980s special effects, or some props they must have had lying around from an early treatment of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

The mystery is no great shakes. Granting that Holmes is not anywhere near the observational genius he'll become at this point, the movie feels more like a high adventure trying to use a half-assed mystery to get to the action set piece. It's really more a matter of how Holmes and Watson are going to overcome the long odds they're up against as two teenagers with no backup.

It's fine as far as a movie about Holmes and Watson meeting as adolescents and solving their first case together goes. The movie does the bit with nods to significant characters or costuming. Holmes already annoying Lestrade all the time, Watson buying an antique pipe that he gifts to Holmes later, Holmes trying to learn the violin and being annoyed he hasn't mastered it after 7 minutes or something. No early examples of Holmes taking illicit drugs, unless his getting dosed with the hallucinogen is what started him on his path of taking opium.

What I Bought 5/1/2021 - Part 1

I think I had less of a reaction to my second vaccination shot than the first. Better than having a worse reaction, certainly. Now I just have to wait another week or so and I'm free and clear, more or less. Although I really doubt all the people I see walking around with no masks are fully vaccinated, or vaccinated at all, given the state I live in.

Whatever. Humanity being fucked is not news. Here's a couple of first issues from Marvel. More pages than their average comic, but more money, too. Unless you buy one of them in less-than-perfect condition like I did.

The Marvels #1, by Kurt Busiek (writer), Yildray Cinar (artist), Richard Isanove (color artist), Simon Bowland (letterer) - I don't know which Torch Alex Ross is drawing there - guessing it's Jim Hammond - but he's got a creepy smile on his face. Not what you want to see when a burning man's bearing down on you.

Whatever the ultimate plot of this is going to be, at least for this first arc, seems to revolve around a place called "Sin-Cong", which seems to be sort of a stand-in for Vietnam. It's in French Indochina, it becomes a Socialist Republic, Flash Thompson went there while in the military (and saw Daredevil perform in a USO show, which is the most bizarre thing in this issue). It tracks. 

Busiek starts in 1947, with a lady fleeing from the All-Winners Squad, then jumps forward several times from there. To Ben Grimm and Reed Richards (pre-rocket flight, and Ben looking taller than Reed, which seems wrong to me, although I think Ben's been getting drawn as bigger and taller for decades now) investigating a strange giant corpse, to Thor and Iron Man fighting a weird dragon out at sea. All the way up to the present, with Frank Castle killing some drug dealers (one of the few universal constants), and the entire building blowing up. Accidentally for once, when Frank's around. And there are some new characters around, watching and talking in vague and ominous phrases. As you do.

It's not exactly what I was expecting. Which was something more along the lines of the old Marvel Comics Presents. A bunch of short stories about different characters which would gradually interconnect. It seems like it'll still sort of be that, but probably done more seamlessly and less gradually than I was thinking. But Kurt Busiek's a writer I trust to pull off something like that more than most comics writers I can think of. Not likely to lose track of plot threads or get too lost in the weeds. No guarantee every thread will play out satisfactorily, but a solid chance.

Cinar and Isanove don't try to switch up their styles as the story moves through different eras. Even though that's a stylistic approach I like, they made the right call. Keeps the feeling of all these different events being part of the same larger story. Things look like they're all over the place, but they're all connected. Cinar's art is very classic superhero, probably descended from the Neal Adams style. Reminds me a bit of Bagley's (although that might be Isanove's coloring), but with a slightly heavier line. The character's are outlined against their surroundings strongly.

Isanove doesn't muddy things up, keeps them bright and clear without going too high-definition. Busiek says in a text piece at the end of the book that while Marvels was superheroes from the average Joes perspective, this series is superheroes from their own perspective. So things really shouldn't look too wild or bizarrely day-glo. Superheroes see weird stuff everyday.

All that said, this feels like the kind of book that might be better read in collected format. If it continues to jump around like it did in this issue. If it settles in and focuses on one or two threads in subsequent issues, where the reader gets something closer to a full story (that's part of something larger), then that's another matter. And again, that's the sort of thing I'd trust Busiek to manage better than most in these decompressed days.

Way of X #1, by Si Spurrier (writer), Bob Quinn (artist), Java Tartaglia (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer), Tom Muller (design) - I'm guessing "design" means Muller does the text page/Krakoan files things. Also, I got the Skottie Young variant because this copy is somehow dinged up and it saved me almost $2. I can't see what's wrong with it, but hell, I'm not complaining.

So mutants have their happy, sentient island nation, but Nightcrawler's concerned. The younger mutants are daring each other to get killed because you have to experience resurrection. Pixie succumbs to peer pressure and lets a bigot blow her head off with a shotgun at point blank range. To think Nico Minoru missed out on being in a relationship with someone who has worse judgement than her.

There's also the whole bit where, if you were a depowered mutant and wish to be resurrected with your powers, you have to be murdered through brutal ritual combat first. When a young woman is asking Nightcrawler to do it because he's a kind one (meaning I guess he'd just teleport her head off), things are fucked. Unfortunately, Kurt doesn't understand what she's asking, so she ends up with Magneto cutting her to pieces with jagged metal and insisting they can't simply give that gift to people. Why the fuck not? You sure as hell resurrected Pixie in a hurry and she's clearly a fucking imbecile! Oh, and Chuck Xavier thinks his son is up to no-good. Well sure, why not? Maybe he'll make Chuck eat that stupid helmet.

So in theory, Spurrier's writing about Kurt's attempt to find some larger shared ideals Krakoa can believe in. Except it certainly seems to me they've already found them, namely this blind belief they've transcended normal human thoughts, even as they continue to do all the things human societies do. They're going to resurrect dead mutants, but Pixie gets to jump the line because she knows people, and precogs like Destiny or Blindfold get skipped over entirely. They say "kill no human", but then quickly disqualify all sorts of other life from that definition - like artificial intelligences or other genetically enhanced life - so they can kill it. You have to die horribly to get your powers back. Someone can be barred from resurrection for crimes against mutants and humans (Maddy Pryor), but Mr. Sinister and Magneto are walking around free as birds.

They have a faith already, and it's Apocalypse's. The strong survive. Or maybe the present day United States, where if you die because you can't pay your medical bills, it's your own fault for being poor. Which, to be fair, Dr. Nemesis says is what will happen if Kurt doesn't come up with something. No pressure! If I can't stick with this book, it's going to be because I want to see all these characters die horribly. Without being resurrected. Magneto especially. What a shithead. Someone make him eat that stupid bucket on his head.

Quinn's Nightcrawler is a thin, spends a lot of time with stooped shoulders. Even when he tries to lighten things by pranking Magneto, it ends with him slouched again. The coloring tends to shade his face darker, casting a cloud over him because he's troubled or depressed. A lot of characters shown as standing above or over Kurt - Xavier, Magneto, Legion, Dr. Nemesis. Either the ones making things happen while Kurt's stuck and indecisive, or just assholes. Mopey, Depressed Nightcrawler is not my favorite (and I still can't believe they didn't put Nightcrawler in Marauders. It's a book about X-Men being pirates and you didn't include the most pirate-obsessed X-Man of all.)

Also, those Krakoan file pages are straight garbage. They're so wildly different from how the actual drawn pages look that I kept thinking they were ads and skipping right past them. As it is, I could barely bother to go back and read them once I realized my mistake. Why would I want to read an organizational flowchart? I can do that shit at work, if I feel like making experience deep regret about my life choices.

Ultimately, I think both these books can get one more issue, but beyond that, I'm really not sure. I guess Way of X made me think more, but it may have simply crystallized a lot of issues I had with the current direction of the X-books as is. And it's entirely possible everything that bugs me is part of a plan, but do I trust the group of writers to not draw a frankly terrible conclusion. Probably not.

Sunday Splash Page #164

 

"Bullets and Bike Shorts" in Domino (vol. 1) #2, by Ben Raab (writer), David Perrin (penciler), Harry Candelario (inker), Joe Rosas and Heroic Age (colorists), Richard Starkings and Comicraft (letterers)

Welcome to Mercenary May! I couldn't come up with an appropriate alliterative title using "Domino", and the last Sunday on the month will be a different character anyway.

As far as options for this three-issue mini-series went, it was really either this, or the splash page from issue #1 of Domino in a bikini at Carnival. Where the captions describe her as 'having the time of her life', while the art makes her look bored. Or like her mind has left her body.

I don't know what prompted this mini-series to exist, other than it was Marvel in the late '90s (this came out in 1997), and so anything X-adjacent was worth a shot on a floundering ship. I guess not much had been done with Domino's backstory, so they figured it's free real estate. Raab goes the "never before mentioned spouse" approach, as we learn Domino fell for a guy with predictive abilities she was assigned to guard when she worked for, I'm not sure, Department H or SHIELD, or something. A group that has access to Mandroid armors, and least Henry Peter Gyrich in the door.

Domino thought the guy got killed by AIM years ago, but finds out from Puck (who doesn't love Puck?) that isn't the case. Donald Pierce, Lady Deathstrike, and the Reavers play the antagonists, as Pierce wants to put Milo's mind into electronic form so he can use it to dominate world markets or something. I dunno, like Domino, I tuned out when Pierce started monologuing about how Fitzroy's weird Sentinels didn't kill him in that issue of Uncanny X-Men (which is almost certainly more notable for appearing to have been Emma Frost's death).

Raab writes Domino as the sort who likes to banter and throw juvenile insults. She's impulsive and quick to act, which is a little strange, since I remember her playing more of a moderating presence in X-Force. I guess when she doesn't have to keep a bunch of teenagers (and Cable) under control, she lets loose.

At times, she's written as really relying on her luck power to help her somehow, but other times it just seems to save the day when she's not expecting it. Which is good, because she spends most of this story seeming completely outclassed. Her fight against Lady Deathstrike presents Deathstrike as almost like a Terminator, the flesh parts being steadily burned or shot away, increasingly revealing the metal underneath. Domino's barely staying alive, closer to Sarah Conner in the first Terminator than T2.

Perrin gives her the bike shorts and exposed midriff sports bra look above, which, maybe that was her usual look back in the '90s, I don't know. At one point she's wearing a skullcap to keep her hair under control while she infiltrates the base, but it's not like all her chalk-white exposed skin isn't going to stand out like a flare in a nighttime environment.

I own this because it was included in a collection of Domino stories Marvel released to coincide with Deadpool 2, along with next week's entry. From what I understand, it's the more highly-regarded Domino mini-series.

Random Back Issues #58 - The Mighty Thor #362

Sometimes the dice give me a comic nobody's talked about that turns out to be fun to dig into. Sometimes they give me one 500 other comic bloggers have already discussed extensively.

Probably the most famous issue of Walt Simonson's run on Thor (I figure either the Beta Ray Bill issues that started it or the all-splash-page fight with the Midgard Serpent are the other two candidates.) Thor led a host of Asgardian warriors into Hel to recover a bunch of mortal souls Hela isn't supposed to have. Noble as that is, Thor's also trying to avoid dealing with Odin being locked in battle with Surtur somewhere he can't reach. Plus the fact he said some harsh things to Sif while under the control of Enchantress' sister, Lorelei.

The mission's a rough go, as you'd expect when trying to steal from a death goddess. Some of the Einherjar are lured to their doom by visions of their loved ones. Balder's trying to hold it together since he barely made it out of Hel once before, and was a traumatized wreck for months after. Having his dead wife try kill him while proclaiming her hatred isn't helping. Although Thor finds out she lied to help Balder move on from her. Not sure how sound a strategy that is. Thor ultimately challenges Hela to a fight, one-on-one, for the souls. He wins, but she just about pimp slaps the lower half of his face off.

Still, souls won, and Hela having sworn to let them leave, it's time to go. Then Hela pops up, bringing along Skurge the Executioner. He was part of the army, but broke off when he found the Enchantress waiting. Balder reminds him things often aren't as they seem, and Skurge cuts through the illusion, revealing someone named Mordonna. Hela offers Skurge a job sailing the ship of the damned (made from the fingernails of the dead) once it's finished. She's actually hoping he'll attack her, so she can attack Thor and the others without breaking her word. Wonder what she'd have done if he shrugged and said, "Sure, mama always wanted me to be a sailor man."

 

Instead, Skurge blows up her fingernail ship with his axe. Whoops. With Hela now furious beyond measure, everyone beats a hasty retreat, only to find their path barred by all the warriors they've ever slain. Thor leads the charge through, and they're on their way to the Gjallerbru, the bridge that takes them out of Hel. But the tunnels beyond the bridge are dark, not suited for swift travel. They won't be able to stay ahead of the dead in there, not unless someone stays behind to hold the line. Someone brave, and strong, prepared to fight for honor.

Someone like Thor. Or, well, no, Skurge sucker-punches Thor. Nobody's real happy about that, but he explains he's going to hold the bridge instead. He's tired of feeling like everyone jerks him around and plays him for a sap, the Enchantress at the top of that list. So, rather than go back to that life, to letting himself be led around by the nose and losing all his self-respect, he's going out in a blaze of glory. And he does. Not one of Hela's forces gets past him, even at cost of his life. His stand apparently so heroic, that even Hela herself bows to him (and later allows him to leave for a happier realm of the dead, claiming one as noble as he doesn't belong there.)

 

Thor wakes up as they navigate the tunnels. Disappointed he lost his chance to escape his emotional turmoil in battle, but agreeing Skurge needed it more. Get the feeling Thor would not have minded dying in battle there, even though it would have been bad for those souls, and worse for Asgard. Meanwhile, they're almost clear, but Hela's guardian hound Garm is waiting. Too bad he's got to deal with a pissed off thunder god. It takes just one hit, and Thor's glad he didn't let his anger get the best of him and kill Garm, as he still has some role to play in the world's tale.

Safely away, the Asgardians return home to their families and ruined homes, while Thor ferries the souls back to Earth. While there, he's going to get roped into a combination Secret Wars II tie-in/Power Pack team-up. Then he gets turned into a frog. Being turned into a frog doesn't do much to stop him from beating Loki's face in.

We never actually see the extent of the damage Hela does to Thor's face. Either he covers it with a piece of his cape, or its kept in shadow when he shows others. Two drunks that tried mouthing off to him lose their lunches at the sight. Eventually, he grows a beard, which he maintains for the remainder of Simonson's run. DeFalco and Frenz shave it off immediately, revealing his wounds have healed. Skurge pops up again late in Simonson's run, when Thor has reason to settle some things with Hela.

[11th longbox, 117th comic. The Mighty Thor #362, by Walt Simonson (writer/artist), Max Scheele (colorist), John Workman Jr. (letterer)]

Motherless Brooklyn

Edward Norton plays a gumshoe that tries to get to the bottom of his boss' (Bruce Willis, in a brief but pivotal role) murder. Although it's more about why he was killed than who's behind it. It leads into a whole thing about abusing eminent domain, racial discrimination, and the eternal problem of people who think they have "vision" and should be able to run over people. 

Gugu Mbatha-Raw is the main female lead, playing a young law student involved in the fight against gentrification, but also more tied up in the whole thing than she suspects. Alec Baldwin's in here, playing an obnoxious, pushy shithead. Really stretching his range, but hell, he's good at it. Willem Dafoe shows up, playing an idealistic, nearly broken man.

Norton's thing is that his character has Tourette's, although neither he or anyone else seem to know that name for it. I have no idea how accurate the portrayal is. It isn't just swearing at random moments; it seems almost like word association. Where something he or someone else says or does triggers an outburst. Some times it's just muscle spasms or a need to touch the person on the shoulder. And according to him, it gets worse when he's stressed.

Norton makes sure to behave as someone who is used to his, who has developed workarounds, or knows situations to avoid. Knows how to try to muffle outbursts into his sleeve, make it look like a sneeze or a cough. Doesn't go to clubs or places with lots of people if he can avoid it. Apologizes almost on reflex to people. I'm actually surprised how nice most of the people he interacts with are about it. They're usually confused, but for all that he gets punched in this movie, only once is it because of an outburst. And that guy already hit him once before. 

The film is set some time after World War 2, so maybe they think it's from the war.

It's a leisurely paced movie. Norton's working off very incomplete information to start with, so his investigation isn't anything resembling straightforward. Which gets used to flesh out and build connections between characters, gradually reveal the political corruption, and let Norton decide what he's really hoping to accomplish. Some of it is personal, but he's not incapable of empathy.

July is Too Hot to Shake Things Up

July's solicits suggest not a quiet month, exactly, but there's not much in the way of new stuff. Mostly just things I was already buying and will continue to buy.

Marvel, for example, has one new thing I might get, hidden beneath the pile of the X-book stuff, the "Final Annihilation" stuff, and the "Sinister War" one-month Spider-Man event thing. Jed MacKay and Alessandro Cappuccio are doing a Moon Knight series. Taskmaster was a dud, but Black Cat earns MacKay another shot. Beyond that, the aforementioned Black Cat, Black Knight's final issue, Runaways was on a skip month in June, and Way of X (if I'm still buying it.)

DC actually has two things I'm considering. One is the fifth issue of Batman: Urban Legends, because there's a Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain story in there. Not worth $8, but if I can find a beat up copy eventually, I might get it. The other is Blue & Gold, a Dan Jurgens/Ryan Sook Booster Gold and Blue Beetle mini-series. There's some question of whether Sook can stick to a monthly schedule for 8 issues, but Jurgens as writer concerns me more. His work seems technically fine, but I have never gotten excited reading his writing. It's like Cullen Bunn in that there's just something that doesn't connect.

Outside that, the last issue of Jenny Zero from Dark Horse (maybe by next week I'll have the first issue to see if that's going to be relevant.) Freak Snow and You Promised Me Darkness, the latter of which will be in the first half of the conclusion to the first arc. The third issue of Yuki vs. Panda from Source Point. Midnight Western Theatre is going to ship two months in a row, and the second issue of Locust will be out, too. There's also a one-shot connected to that Phantom Starkiller book called Count Draco Knuckleduster, but Joseph Schmalke and Peter Goral. So that's maybe something new.

On the manga front, Square Enix has the fourth volume of Soul Eater Perfect Edition out. I'm a couple of volumes behind yet, but something to keep an eye on. And Vertical has the fifth volume of a series by Aki Irie called Go With Clouds North by Northwest, about a detective in Iceland that can talk to cars. I'd have to go back to find the earlier volumes first, but it's a form of back issue hunting. That's still fun for me, sometimes.

Off Limits

Willem Dafoe and Gregory Hines are a pair of CID men in Saigon. Their attempt to arrest a deserter is interrupted when they're assigned to investigate the murder of a sex worker by an American officer. 

As these things often do, it grows more complicated when it becomes apparent that not only is this not the first of these. A novice (Amanda Pays) in a convent knew each of the victims had a child from an American GI. The militaries already closed down the investigation once before. The Marine initially assigned to investigate decided he was safer on the front lines. Their first witness (played by Keith David) gets blown up, along with the guy assigned to guard him (played by David Alan Grier, was not expecting to see him). Dafoe gets interested in the novice. Scott Glenn pops up as a well-regarded Army colonel (and kind of nuts, got a bit of the Colonel Kurtz in him) who is also a suspect.

Most of the movie is the DaFoe and Hines trying to navigate all the various roadblocks. As you might guess, not everyone in Vietnam is excited to help members of the US military. Not that they help themselves any. They spend a lot of time chasing people, using racial slurs to people's faces, and antagonizing the Vietnamese military police. The draw their handguns at a drop of a hat, and Hinds' go-to threat to unhelpful suspects is to rip their nuts off.

Of the two, I think Hines' character is a little more focused on just trying to make it home alive, which might explain his attitude. He doesn't want to get killed because he was caught unprepared to fight back. Dafoe is, well, Dafoe. He's not as over-the-top as in some other roles, but there's still a fair amount of that intensity he typically brings to roles. But there's also a certain awkwardness, especially when he interacts with the novice. There's one bit where she brings them to speak with the sister of a witness. The sister works in a strip club, and Dafoe is very embarrassed to be sitting there with a couple of nuns, while they're entirely unaffected.

As a mystery goes, it's not that great. I figured out the killer just based on the role the character played in the film. But it's interesting to watch a movie about the U.S. presence in Vietnam that isn't about the fights in the jungles.

Bounty Hunting Is Both More and Less Fun Than You Think

Gonna be one of those kinds of weeks, huh?

Kim And Kim: This Glamorous High-Flying Rock Star Life is the first of currently three mini-series about a pair of space bounty hunters, Kim D. and Kim Q (that's her with the guitar). I've seen comparisons to Dirty Pair, in the amount of immense destruction and chaos they leave in their wake, but I tend to agree with the blurb on the back of the trade that mentions Cowboy Bebop. These two are always broke or nearly broke, and none of their plans and schemes ever seem to go how they hoped. They've each got pasts, both of which Magdalene Visaggio reveals pieces of as the story goes along, and while Kim Q. frequently irritates Kim D., they've got each other's backs.

That, and their spaceship is a beat up hunk of junk. It's basically a VW bus with wings.

The plot is them trying to make some money by going after an extremely high-profile bounty, and getting into all kinds of problems as a result. Unexpectedly, Visaggio kind of lets that thread go with an issue left, the Kims relating the story to a couple of friends and admitting they fell asleep, and everyone was gone when they woke up. So they just assume everything worked out. One of their friends, who works as an assassin, lampshades that being a mistake, but it doesn't seem to come to anything here. Actually, it's been a couple years since I read the third mini-series (Oh Shit, It's Kim and Kim!), but I can't remember there having been fallout from it yet.

I think the plot is mostly incidental, as a way to introduce parts of the Kims' backstories (Kim D. comes from a line of probate necromancers, Kim Q. is the estranged daughter of some asshole that runs a big merc crew), and highlight their characters. Kim D. is a little calmer, more practical, a bit more insecure. When she tries to use necromancy to track down a lead, she's constantly convinced she's gonna screw it up. Which she does, but that attitude can't help.

 

Kim Q. is the one who causes problems. Starts fights, spends all their money on booze, refuses to accept jobs from her father on principle, but encourages Kim to beg her mom to cover their rent. Honestly, she seems like a horrible friend, but I guess she's fun to be around, and she likes to hit things with a guitar. Can't find too many partners like that, I'm sure.

Cabrera's has a flexible, somewhat cartoonish style that fits with the high emotions and occasional weird crap the Kims encounter. Her linework is kept pretty simple. There's not a lot of needless little lines, which probably fits well with Claudia Aguirre's colors. They aren't blindingly bright, although it is a colorful book. Kim D.'s pink Kalashnikov is eye-catching, but not to the point it's distracting. The dark gloom and shadows are saved for when it actually fits the scene. But a lot of the colors are solid, not much in gradients, so lighter cross-hatching or whatever would probably get swamped anyway. 

Most of the characters' fashion senses could be easily described as "show off your abs". The men and women, Cabrera's equal opportunity on that score. It's a like a commercial for The Gap. But given it's a bunch of people living the "glamorous, rock star life", it and the colors, make perfect sense.

 

Plus, as a product of the mid-2000s comic blogowhatchamafloogle, I am obligated to be excited about any comic that has an evil scientist with a body made of famous monkeys, who makes robot gorilla henchmen.

Sunday Splash Page #163

 

"An Empty Monument," in Doctor Strange: What is it that Disturbs You, Stephen?, by Marc Andreyko (writer), P. Craig Russell (artist), Lovern Kindzierski (colorist), Galen Showman (letterer)

I did a review of this when I purchased it back in 2012. I knew it had been a while - I think I bought this around the same time as Triumph and Torment during a Dr. Strange binge I went on - but I didn't realize it had been that long ago.

I don't think I'd change any of what I said in that first review, but looking at the story now, it's interesting how much of a bystander Stephen is in some respects. A bit like the Phantom Stranger is sometimes presented. Trying to nudge things to a proper conclusion through minor words or actions. He's drawn in by Wong's abduction, and Electra seemingly wants his help in finding away around her father's protective ward. A way that all the power that she shares with her sister can be hers, as well as the angel Galtus. She frames it differently, of course, but Stephen learns the truth quickly.

Once he has, though, it turns more into more of a struggle between Electra and her sister. Or maybe Electra and her inner demons. Stephen tries to convince her to make peace, to stop grabbing so feverishly for what's not hers, and she won't. Any such argument reads as either madness or treachery to her. Strange ultimately can't do anything to save the realm, or any of the three inhabitants. He's able to send Wong home, and he escapes alive, or is thrown away by the forces unleashed, but that's about it. At the end of the day, Strange and Wong just got sucked into somebody else's family drama, and that's always messy and unpleasant.

Russell and Kindzierski's artwork is spectacular. All the little flourishes in the architecture, or in the form Stephen's spells take as they leave his fingers. When he's trying to hold something together, they may have more of a rigid, blocky design. Right angles and sharp corners. Or the spell may be an onion-shaped purple mass with little spines sticking out. Just a lot of variety in it. The way dialogue can follow actions through a portal or circling around an important object. I think it's worth finding for the art alone, if you can.

What I Bought 4/21/2021

My work travels this week gave me a chance to hit up a comics store I haven't in a few years. Did better on back issues than new issues, but one new comic to review is better than none. Actually, having seen some of it posted online, I'm not sure whether I want to get Way of X #1 or not now.

Black Knight: Curse of the Ebony Blade #2, by Si Spurrier (writer), Sergio Davila (artist), Sean Parsons (inker), Arif Prianto (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer) - I don't know why Dane has blue energy sparking from his nipple, and the interior of the comics is no help, either.

So Dane's alive, and rather confused and freaked out by it. He sends away the scholar he'd sent for and gets Sir Percy's ghost out to try and explain things. Where he learns Merlin cast some sort of resurrection spell on the material the sword is made out of. Also, that Percy crafted three other items from the stuff, which were supposedly destroyed in some blood river after he chose the sword for himself. Except Jacks, having returned to her professor for help and found him murdered, has another vision of the past and sees someone saved the staff that helps those burdened with wisdom.

Before she can return to Dane and clue him in, Elsa Bloodstone drives a motorcycle through Dane's stained glass window and starts trying to kill him. She's been following a series of murders (including Jacks' professor) that involve a bloodstone somehow. There's a brief fight where Elsa insults Americans taste in alcohol (probably fair, fuck if I know), and our penchant for talking. Those British detective series my father adores would suggest that's pot calling kettle black. Jacks arrives soon enough to keep Elsa from losing her head, or Dane from losing his two best friends (and I'm not talking about the ghost or the weird goat-man servant). And everyone concludes Mordred is behind all this, as he's trying to recover the other items.

I feel like I should enjoy this more than I do. I'm not sure Dane's attitude is helping. There's a bit where Percy is into his spiel with Dane sitting behind him, scanning his phone and pretending to listen. I mean, Spurrier is clearly playing with the idea these two have a long history. That Percy enjoys making Dane jump through hoops to get any kind of assistance, and Dane, having realized he can't get around it, does his best to bear it in his own way. But I'm presumably supposed to care about this exposition dump, so maybe don't have the main character no-sell it.

 

I do like the page where Dane and Jacks are having dinner and Dane is pouring himself wine and Davila has him just keeping pouring and overfilling the glass. Never making eye contact with Jacks, and asking the goat-guy to turn off the news (which is showing Dane's decapitated body from the previous issue) because it's disturbing her. Right, sure it is. The first panel on the next page takes up half of it and is him flipping the table and yelling about why none of them are freaking out he's moving around. The other half of the page is him reacting to Jacks pleading with him not to eat her brains. 

Granted, with that half he does the bit where he repeats the panel exactly (the second one having no dialogue), which I guess we're all supposed to not like now. (There was some bullshit about that online a few weeks back, about some Bagley pages in a Venom issue.) I kind of like it here, because Jacks has just asked Dane how he knows he's not a zombie, and so everyone remaining in the same position kind of works. Dane's trying to figure out an answer, and I think Jacks and Phillip are staying still in case the answer is, "You're right. BRAIIIIIIINNNNSSSS!" and they don't want to set off the feeding frenzy of a crazed undead with a powerful sword.

I don't actually know at the moment whether I'm going to get the next issue. Probably, but there's a bit of uncertainty.

What I Bought 4/14/2021 - Part 3

It snowed yesterday while I was out in the field. In the middle of April. Lovely. A complication I did not need, to be sure. But whatever, here's a couple of first issues. Well, one is a first issue, the other is a one-shot.

Darkhawk: Heart of the Hawk, by Danny Fingeroth, Dan Abnett, Kyle Higgins (writers), Mike Manley, Andrea Di Vito, Juanan Ramirez (artists), Le Beau Underwood (inker for Di Vito), Chris Sotomayor, Sebastian Cheng, Erick Arciniega (colorists), Travis Lanham (letterer) - They didn't have that cover at the store, but it was the one I liked best.

Three stories in this. Fingeroth, Manley, and Sotomayor set one sometime in the first year of Darkhawk's ongoing, where he briefly tries chatting up the daughter of the crimelord he was feuding with for information, then ends up fighting a crooked cop in a super-suit out to kill her. It's fine. Fingeroth works in a lot of angst for Chris about his mother and his little brothers, about trying to do the right thing but really hating Bazin. Sotomayor's coloring makes Manley's artwork look smoother than it did on Darkhawk back in the day. Less heavy on the shading and blacks, bit less of a gritty texture to things. 

Which is interesting. I'm just going off memory but I feel like the title had the look and feel of something closer to a street-level crime book, at least initially. Closer to JRJR on Daredevil than most Spider-Man titles of the time. Which makes sense, given it was mostly about Chris wanting to bring down a particular crime boss, but running into all this other increasingly crazy crap on the way.

The second story, by Abnett and Di Vito is set after Thanos Imperative, with Chris out in space trying to help people. In this case, by killing a bunch of Brood that were trying to set up in a rebuilding settlement. Chris wipes them out, but the locals prove being ungrateful shits isn't exclusive to Earth in the Marvel Universe and complain because the bar got destroyed. Cheng's coloring on the first page looks different from all the others. Almost bright to the point things look washed out. I mostly only noticed because it made Di Vito's work look a bit softer than normal, blunted some of the lines on faces. But it's only on the first page. Otherwise, it looks pretty much as Di Vito's work always does.

 

Higgins and Ramirez wrap things up with a five-part teaser for something. Chris is in the future, getting ready to send back his amulet with all his memories and experiences in the hope someone can stave off the "shadow war" that's about to destroy the universe or something. Oh joy, another one. The common thread between all three stories is Chris trying to figure out who he is. What does being Darkhawk mean to him, what is he wanting to accomplish, and what is he willing to do? I guess by the third story he's figured it out, but it's too late to help.

Locust #1, by Massimo Rosi (writer), Alex Nieto (artist), Mattia Gentili (letterer) - Great, more snow. Can't get away from that stuff.

The story moves back and forth between the present, where a lone man named Max is searching for a child taken by some religious wackjobs, and two years earlier. In the past, he worked on a fishing boat when the first reports of a new disease started to surface. The next time we see the past, he's at his mother's rest home, which has been fortified. But not fortified enough, as one of his childhood friends crawls in, rapidly turning into a giant bug. 

In the present, Max shoots a couple dogs to lure their owner into a trap. Where he dumps some toxic waste on the guy and his remaining dogs, then starts hacking pieces off with a machete to get what he wants. Delightful.

So the first issue sets up a search, as well as the question of how Max got from caring for his mother to seeking this child. I suppose you could add the question of why this happened, but Max feels too far removed from that to find answers. I suspect the "why" doesn't matter much to him, anyway.

 

Nieto's characters all have an aged and well-won look to them. Bags under the eyes, scraggly beards and unkempt hair. The end of civilization doesn't seem to change much for Max in that regard. he might look a little wilder, Nieto might shift perspective to let him loom over someone occasionally, face in shadow, but much the same beyond that. 

The cities, even before the plague, all depicted as dark and quiet. Even the shot of New York City in the past is done from a remove, where the lights on the buildings are so subdued you could easily miss them. Nieto favors overhead shots or long shots, where people are either small or can't be seen at all. It makes everything seem empty, even if it reasonably can't be. Max talks in a flashback about moving his family out of the city, away from the crush and demands, so it seems like he got at least part of his wish. The cities are much quieter now.

Don't Listen

This couple that buy houses, renovate them, then sell them, purchase a big old house out in the countryside. Their son doesn't like it, saying he hears voices that tell him bad things. Soon enough, he turns up floating dead in the pool.

The mother retreats to her parents, but the father stays to try and finish the house (or process the loss). While listening to a voicemail he sent his wife that she claimed was garbled, he hears his son calling for his help. He enlists a guy who's written a bunch of books about ghosts communicating through electrical stuff, and the guy and his daughter (who doesn't believe in any of this) comes along as his assistant.

For a while, the movie feels like it's about grief. The ghost is able to mimic other people's voices, or even their appearance, and exploits this. When the mother returns to the house, having received a call from her son, she sees him disappear under his bed. The father sees his wife and son through a some plastic sheeting. The expert sees his deceased wife. The only one who seems resistant is Ruth, the expert's daughter. As soon as her mother beckons to her, she starts shaking her head and insists it isn't her.

Of course, it quickly becomes apparent the ghost doesn't have to bother with that, since it can attack people directly or even possess them somehow with flies the buzz into the victim's ears. Which makes you wonder why she bothers with all the deception and fanfare. I guess you've got to do something to pass the time when you're dead.

Fair number of jump scares, or scenes that get you to anticipate jump scares. The character sees something in one direction and it disappears. But the camera is pulled in on them so you can't see what's behind them, so when they go to turn around you're expecting a big surprise. They usually drag it out longer than that, and I can't decide whether they keep it going too long, or just long enough. You know it's gonna end badly, but the mounting confusion into terror of the characters is effective.

This movie is set in Spain, and it eventually turns out the house was used by the Inquisition. I thought it was funny the movie seems to argue that while, sure, the Catholic Church probably killed a bunch of innocent people here, this particular person probably really was an evil witch. Oh yes, now she's an angry, murdering, witch ghost. Much better.

What I Bought 4/14/2021 - Part 2

Well, the new battery I got for my laptop seems to be working properly. That's nice. Maybe 3 years is long enough for a computer, but if it still does everything I need perfectly well, why spend a lot more money changing things up when a little will solve the problem?

Today, we've got two fifth issues to look at. One's the conclusion to a mini-series, the other is the start of a new storyline.

Power Pack #5, by Ryan North (writer), Nico Leon (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - The other three kids look varying degrees of worried, but Julie over there on the left just looks resigned. "Oh well, so much for my superpowers."

The kids and Logan's brilliant plan is to convince the Wizard he didn't get all their powers by staging a fight with - high school play special effects - between the kids and "Wolvermean", Wolverine's evil, purple-loving twin brother. I laughed typing that out just now. I'm still laughing, actually. Give me a minute.

OK, I think I'm good. Anyway, seeing such awesome abilities as Julie's "FTL railgun punch" (which does sound pretty cool) gets the Wizard to rush out, ambush the kids, and throw them back in the cylinders he used to steal their powers originally. Except they snuck in last night with Logan and reversed the machines so they steal their powers back. Wizard gets his butt kicked and humiliated, putting everything back in its proper place. The kids use his Agent Aether drone to pretend they still have an official mentor until this stupid law is repealed, and loan him out to other helpful teen heroes.

Like Squirrel Girl! I demand a Power Pack/Squirrel Girl team-up yesterday! Actually two days ago since I'm writing this on Saturday.

 

This mini-series was kind of stupid and silly and I loved it. The whole "Outlawed" thing is depressing and not something I want to deal with, and North and Leon used it just enough to do this weird thing and that's A-OK. Logan cobbling together a purple version of his costume for this farce (and apparently helping the Power kids make versions of their costumes since they normally come with the powers) cracks me up. The ham acting during their "fight", and the credulous media falling for it.

Also, some of the plans the Wizard's shown coming up with involving their powers. The difference between how well Leon draws everything else, and the Wizard's barely-above-stick-figure diagram of how he'll defeat the Juggernaut by using Mass Master's power to shrink down, be swallowed, than attack Juggy's lungs with an axe (note: remember to bring axe). Brilliant.

Black Cat #5, by Jed Mackay (writer), Mike Dowling (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - Is that supposed to a webline or a regular rope she uses? If it's the latter, it's looking kind of frayed.

This entire issue is a lot of talking and set-up, all leading to the big reveal at the end. Namely, that the Black Fox is looking to break into the Guild's vault for a very different purpose than taking all their wealth. He wants to make a deal with the Guild's patron, who is basically what you get if you look up "catacomb saint" on Wikipedia. I was going to say it looked like some skeletal Aztec god-thing, but apparently that would have been an inaccurate cultural reference.

I mean, that's basically it. There's some flashbacks, to Felicia ending her apprenticeship with the Fox and setting out on her. To the Fox seeking Dracula's aid for a solution to his problem, and getting turned away. Turns out Drac doesn't appreciate someone cheating him at cards, then siccing Ulysses Bloodstone on him. Who knew the Lord of Vampires was such a petty bitch? Except basically everyone.

 

Dowling's artwork is more in a realistic style than the other artists the book has had. A lighter touch when it comes to shading, but at times the linework's very minimal. Almost more the suggestion of a person's face than an actual drawing of the face. Not sure if the linework got overwhelmed by Reber's colors, or if it wasn't there at all. It's not my favorite look for the book, although it works for an issue this low-energy, that's mostly talking and people having emotions. Not sure how well it'll serve if there's a fight scene or a fast-moving escape, though. Maybe we'll find out next month.

I guess not every issue can be a winner.

Sunday Splash Page #162

 

"Extra-Dimensional Pharmacology," in Doctor Strange: The Oath #1, by Brian K. Vaughn (writer), Marcos Martin (penciler), Alvaro Lopez (inker), Javier Rodriguez (colorist), Willie Schubert (letterer)

This is one of the first mini-series I can remember getting unexpectedly excited for after I started this blog. I didn't know Brian K. Vaughn from anybody as a writer. I'm sure I'd heard of Ex Machina, but I hadn't (and still haven't) read it. And I don't think I'd come across Marcos Martin's artwork yet, either.

And yet, the combination of an interesting first cover, and a slow week in terms of new releases I was interested in, got me to pick this up. And it worked out pretty well, so I can blame all those crappy Marvel mini-series I took chances on in subsequent years on my good fortune with this one.

(Not really. The blame for those is on my poor judgement as always.)

Vaughn's Strange is an interesting mixture of experience and the arrogance that comes with that. He is extremely skilled and has been through a lot, knows a lot. But there are blind spots that come with that all the same. He underestimates an opponent (and is later underestimated himself), overreaches against a powerful creature that's killed past Sorcerer Supremes, but is able to adjust and recover. He's knowledgeable, but not infallible. He can charge in rashly, and even be a bit cruel when his temper is up. And criticially to the story, he's still very much a doctor of medicine. 

He's also a bit charming - which Vaughn plays up by adding Night Nurse to the supporting cast and eventually starting up a relationship between the two of them - and could be seen as a bit absent-minded at times. Or he's just confident that Wong has his back. He's seen a lot, and so he has a tendency to take a slightly know-it-all approach with people, psychoanalyzing them in a way that could get on someone's nerves.

Martin's version Strange is tall and wiry, more than a bit of Vincent Price to him, I think. He draws the Cloak of Levitation as a long, narrow thing that tends to close tightly around Stephen so that only his head is visible above. But Martin also changes the costume up slightly, in that Strange wears the blue shirt loose over a ordinary looking pair of slacks, rather than tucked under a belt but over a pair of leggings, as was typically the look. Maybe Strange is worried someone will call him on his "casual Friday" attire, and the Cloak wants to spare him the embarrassment.

Really, though, I think Martin, Lopez, and Rodriguez are trying to channel their best Ditko. Never a bad call when we're talking about Dr. Strange, I assume. The scenes where Stephen is in other dimensions, or the mindscape, definitely owe a lot to Ditko's Strange, and Martin's creativity in design is well-suited for it. Wish he'd had more opportunity to go experimental with panel layouts.

What I Bought 4/14/2021 - Part 1

My best week for new comics in months. Maybe over a year. Five comics, plus one from last week. Huzzah! So let's look at a couple of those on this lovely spring day.

Iron Fist: Heart of the Dragon #4, by Larry Hama (writer), Dave Wachter (artist), Neeraj Menon (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - This needs an old Joe Kubert cover-style, "There's no sign of the giant spider, Immortal Weapons!" dialogue balloons.

We find out who the mysterious dragon killer is and it is. . . I have no idea who Brenda Swanson is. The internet tells me she's from the Iron Fist series Kaare Andrews did 7 years ago. Credit to Hama for using all kinds of stuff, I guess. Another person with a grudge against Danny's family, apparently, and she wants some of that good dragon chi. Who doesn't?

Okoye's in the Heart of Heaven and speaks with another dragon who encourages her to look at the big picture and decide what's necessary to fix things. Which is, as Danny and the others find out after another seemingly pointless round of running around fighting undead ninjas, to kill the remaining dragons. I feel like Pei is going to have some objections to Okoye trying to kill her baby dragon, Gork. Which I figure is coming next issue. Danny tries to stop her, there's a lot of arguing about him not understanding what needs to be done to solve the problem.

One thing, among many, I'm confused on is where all these undead ninjas are coming from if that gate Danny pushed closed a couple of issues ago is still closed. Nothing anyone is doing seems to actually be making a difference. I really hope this doesn't turn into one of those stories where a bunch of characters are fooled into thinking they're accomplishing something, because one character is leading them around by the nose.

The design for the dragon from the Bride of Nine Spiders' dragon is terrifying, but appropriate, I guess. Strange none of the others seemed so unique, though. The fight scenes are brief, and like I said, seemingly pointless to the story, but Wachter draws them well enough. The roughness to his line makes the characters look more worn down and weary.

Runaways #35, by Rainbow Rowell (writer), Andres Genolet (artist), Dee Cunniffe (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - This is your life when you pay for magic on the installment plan.

Nico avoids doing something really stupid with Pixie. First time for everything. They find the young mutant, whose mother contacted Krakoa. Jodi doesn't want to go, because she thinks she'll never get to go home again. Oh, but after the first time you die horribly and get resurrected, why would you ever want to leave? Anyway, Jodi agrees to at least give it a try, and Logan agrees to not try and abduct Molly. Chase is also dating an older Gert through the magic of time travel. Er, science of time travel. Whatever.

The most important point - other than Molly remaining safely out of the clutches of the X-books - is that weird guy we see when Nico uses her magic finally got explained to me when Nico explains it to Karolina. There's a magician sealed inside the staff, and in exchange for Nico not having to cut herself to use it, he gets to put a bit of his soul in her instead? Yeah, no way that ends horribly. So, lover's quarrel as Karolina wants to destroy the staff, and Nico doesn't want to give the staff up. Which could be seen as her not wanting to surrender her power, but is also entirely likely about her friends' tendency to die, and magic being a useful tool to bring them back.

I'm still amused by the fact Molly is already taller than Nico. Although looking at volume 2 of the series, Kris Anka didn't draw her that tall. I guess she hit a growth spurt. Makes sense for a 13-14 year old. Anyway, I couldn't help laughing at Nico's expression in the second panel there. So excited about the idea she could trick the magician trapped in her staff for generations. I mean sure, the guy was dumb enough to get trapped in the first place, but given Nico's poor track record of decisions, I doubt she's going to sucker him.

Maybe they could call Hawkeye. When you need someone to trick a powerful being that's not as smart as they think, he's your guy.

Tank Girl

I. . . honestly am not sure what to say about this movie. Having never read any of the comics, I don't know if it's a faithful representation. If it is, I'd say the comics are kind of incoherent.

It takes at least the first third of the movie before Lori Petty actually gets herself a tank. That third does effectively establish Malcolm McDowell and his "Water and Power" district as a bunch of scumbags who enjoy varied forms of torture and murder. It also establishes Tank Girl as a big Doris Day fan. Maybe this was their version of Stanley Ipkiss as being really into Tex Avery cartoons.

Speaking of which, there's a scene that turns into a musical number. The Mask had the bit at the nightclub with swing dancing and Cameron Diaz (or maybe the "Cuban Pete" segment with the police is the better comp), so maybe this was just a thing for '90s comic adaptations. The Rocketeer had a fancy nightclub scene, too, although I don't remember a lot of singing.

Tank Girl's version is a little odd as it comes during what is ostensibly a rescue mission/escape attempt, and stalls that long enough the rescue mission fails miserably, as the person they came to save gets captured by someone else. Honestly, Tank Girl might have a hyperactivity disorder, and if so, the movie definitely reflects that, because I can't figure out what the heck she's thinking sometimes.

Why, for example, during the big attack scene at the end, is she paragliding behind her tank? She could be inside it, especially since she apparently has the only tank Water & Power had, since they seemingly have nothing else that poses any threat to it. You'd think I'd be more used to such decisions from reading Deadpool, but I can usually at least see some form of logic in his decisions, questionable as it may be.

I will say the movie certainly gives a good sense of a post-apocalyptic world where the survivors have latched on to what bits and pieces of culture or entertainment they can find. Water & Power has a fairly homogeneous depressing industrial vibe, but everyone else is living in weird cobbled together hodgepodges of whatever's handy. Old bowling alleys, fridges that would look ancient now, let alone in 3 centuries.

As far as '90s comic movies go, put it well behind Rocketeer or The Mask, but ahead of such luminaries as Barb Wire, Steel, or either of the Schumacher Batman films. Yeah, Schumacher had higher production values and a consistent creative vision, but when that vision is shit, well, just look at Zack Snyder. Having a vision doesn't make it a good vision.

Standards Are Dropping Everywhere These Days

I think King in Black might finally be over. I saw some scans from issue 5 of Venom, amped up on Captain Universe powers shoving Knull into the Sun.

Of course, that was after Venom was somehow able to call Mjolnir to him and combine it with Knull's stupid sword into a battle-axe somehow. Really, I'm just hung up on the notion of Venom - loves talkin' 'bout eatin' brains Venom - holding Mjolnir. Captain Universe powers or no, Venom has murdered kind of a lot of people in his lifetime. Brock and the symbiote both, whether together or separate. Why not just let the Punisher swing it around next?

I shouldn't say that. Donny Cates will probably do it. That man has made remarkable time in landing on my "never buy anything he writes list" alongside such luminaries as Mark Millar. I get the feeling he read a lot of the same comics in the '90s I did, but we came to very different conclusions about what we liked.

I can't decide whether Venom being considered "worthy" is more annoying than HYDRA Captain America being able to use it during Secret Empire. Probably not, if only because with Venom I can at least make the argument it's the Enigma Force doing the heavy lifting on the worthiness. Don't have that out with Nick Spencer's mess.

I feel like this all Jason Aaron's fault, though. He did that whole bit in Original Sin about Thor being unable to lift Mjolnir after Nick Fury whispered in his ear. It turned out what he told Thor was that he wasn't worthy, and that was all it took. Thor no longer felt worthy, so he wasn't. Which I guess means you just have to think you're worthy to wield it, and there you go. Because one thing I can believe is a fascist Captain America thinking he's still worthy.

But it sets kind of a shit precedent. I know Marvel likes to argue that grandiose villains like Thanos and Dr. Doom always lose their ultimate power because on some level they won't admit, they know they don't deserve it, but not every villain can be like that. Some of these guys have got to fully believe they deserve it. I could see The Hood absolutely believing it. Or the Mad Thinker. Norman Osborn in his less lucid moments, where he's not aware of what a piece of garbage he is. Magneto, probably. You get the point. 

Hell, if all it takes is having a stupidly high opinion of yourself, Tony Stark should have been picking it up years ago.

I get needing to go big for your finale, but I feel like positioning the Enigma Force as the counter to whatever Knull represents - the void, or something I think - and giving that to someone using the symbiotes ought to have been enough. Leaning on the "Now this character can use Mjolnir!" for cheap pop is just kind of annoying.

Or maybe I'm just sick of Eddie Brock and symbiote-related stuff. Like I said, Cates and I clearly came away from the '90s with different experiences.

Into the Grizzly Maze

Basically, a big grizzly bear kills people for 90 minutes. As the bear is played by Bart the Bear, I assume he's angry about that time he got suckered and killed by Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin in The Edge. That is a much better movie than this one, although I think that was supposed to be a suspenseful survival film, and this is more like a slasher horror flick.

Part of the problem is they have to make the bear ridiculously clever and sneaky. With The Edge, the humans had no real supplies, and other than Anthony Hopkins' character having read a book on wilderness survival, neither of them knew what the hell they were doing. A perhaps unusually fixated, but otherwise normal grizzly bear is really fucking dangerous to those guys. 

With this movie, you've eventually got a pair of brothers (played by James Marsden and Thomas Jane) who have been hunters and trackers their whole lives. Thomas Jane's character is married to a deaf conservationist (played by Piper Perabo) and sure, being deaf in a forest full of large predators is kind of dicey, but she at least knows what not to do in the woods. They have food, radios, guns, camping gear. 

So the bear has to become almost supernatural to tilt the playing field heavily against them. It catches people by surprise like it's Jason Voorhees, or the damn Predator. It waits until one character is crossing a wet downed log to roar, so the person panics, falls off the lops and rolls down a steep hill. Where they naturally impale their leg on a sharp branch. The movie even has a couple bits where you hear someone firing a gun off in the distance, and then they go silent. Yet it's somehow not very good at actually killing people. Either that or James Marsden has Wolverine's healing factor, because otherwise that bear should have killed him three seconds after he was on him.

(There's also some really shitty CGI in the climactic confrontation. They should have found another route to go that didn't require that, because it just looks awful.)

I'm not sure it's exactly clear why the bear is doing this. We see this one local guide has taken hunters into a protected area (with the sheriff, played by Scott Glenn and doomed the minute they mention he's nearing retirement) and they've killed a lot of bears so they can cut off their paws. The bear also kills a couple of dumbasses that sneak into an area to cut down timber illegally. But the bear also attacks other bears, to the point that all the radio collared bears in the area are literally fleeing to get the hell away.

Billy Bob Thornton's in here as another guide/hunter. He says it's nature being pissed about the poaching and illegal timber cutting. Except we find out he was once almost killed by a bear while in his sleeping bag, but stabbed it in the neck with his knife. Then when he got out of the hospital, he marched into the woods and just killed 20 bears. What the fuck he's doing lecturing other people about pissing off nature, I don't know.

Eyepatches, Handguns, and Young Love

I can't decide if those would work better as lyrics in some sad Alanis Morissette song, on in some screaming Scandanavian death metal.

The battery on my laptop has crapped out entirely, but as long as I keep the computer plugged in it still works, so let's look at the second volume of Atsushi Suzumi's Venus Versus Virus. It's kind of weird, the volume lists the book as illustrated by Atsushi, but doesn't list a writer. Not sure what that means.

The basic premise is there are monsters running around, referred to as "viruses". Some of them look like vaguely human-shaped oily blobs, but some of them can either assume human form or possess someone. There's Lucia, with her mysterious eye patch and the Gothic Lolita fashion sense, who's been fighting them for some time, and Sumire, who Lucia saved recently and has just started training to fight them as well. Sumire seems to have a high sensitivity to the viruses, which both helps her see them and draws them to her, but this volume establishes that she has something else going on, too.

 

When Sumire's exposed to the "antivirals" they make to kill the monsters, it provokes a sort of berserker state in her (one that turns her pupils into little plus signs or crosses and gives her a deranged smile.) One which seems to make her really want to attack Lucia, who is reluctant to harm her. The precise abilities change depending on which she's exposed to, but the end result is always her trying to attack. It's also during the first of these attacks that Lucia's inner monologue suggests either she isn't entirely human, or doesn't consider herself human. That along with a conversation she has with her mentor/Alfred figure later on, make some pretty strong hints about Lucia's father.

In the midst of the three of them trying to get some handle on this weird ability, and Sumire trying to figure out what exactly it wants her to do to Lucia, she meets a guy hanging out in a playground. He's very polite, and nice, and seemingly non-threatening. Lots of those bashful, eyes closed smiles. Almost constantly, in fact. All that smiling makes him seem untrustworthy. He also doesn't seem bothered when another lightning wielding virus shows up to test Sumire. Or when Sumire pulls a gun and tries to shoot her. We already know there's someone watching Lucia and Sumire with interest, so, you know, he's probably evil. More so than even your average teenage boy.

 

Hey, I was a teenage boy once, I know how it is. Although I was more a mixture of sarcasm, false cynicism and apathy than straight up evil. Like Dre said, ain't too much changed.

Also, I don't know how old Sumire is supposed to be - old enough no one thinks twice about her having an after-school job - but between the school uniform she wears and his severe height advantage over her, the age gap feels like it would be questionable? Who knows, she's probably like 15 and he's 17 or something (assuming he's human).

The volume ends on Sumire seeing that Lucia has vulnerabilities as well, and that one lightning-wielding virus possessing Sumire's classmate and getting into their home. At which point Sumire decides to try and put this berserker thing to use. Guess I'd have to get volume 3 to see how that works for her.