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.)

Random Back Issues #64 - Silver Surfer #13

Ah, just in time for the 3 p.m. Emo Monologue. If we missed it, we'd have to wait for the 3:15 p.m. Emo Monologue!

There was only comic out this week I wanted, and I wasn't driving 45 minutes to get Way of X #3. So, the first issue of Silver Surfer I ever read instead. Englehart's well into the Kree-Skrull war that would run the entirety of his span on the book. But this issue is really more about maneuvering and backstabbing within the respective sides.

We open with three Kree trying to assassinate Nenora, currently running the Empire because the Supreme Intelligence has gone mad from trying to combine blue and pink Kree minds into one within itself. The assassination runs smack into Ronan the Accuser, who promptly kills the three of them, and hurls a little racial invective at the last one before melting his face off at point blank range. A racist, lethally violent cop. Unheard of.

Nenora rebuffs Ronan's attempts to cozy up to her, telling him the Surfer has been attacking their border worlds recently, even after she agreed to let him and Zenn-La remain neutral in the war. Ronan's stoked to see how he stacks up and leaves Nenora to gloatingly monologue about how she's actually a Skrull now in charge of the Kree Empire. Only three people know this, and she already killed one of them, her own lover, and is making plans to deal with the other two.

The other two includes one of the five Skrulls claiming to be the true Emperor, and Nenora feeds him information on where he can score a great victory by ambushing a Kree armada. She assures him the Kree defense shields will be down.

Spoiler alert: They were not down. Word of Kylor's defeat reaches yet another of the five, S'Byill, who sends one of her agents to Earth as part of a big scheme that will play out later.

In other threads, the Surfer has currently teamed up with Nova to find the Contemplator, one of the Elders of the Universe, on behalf of Galactus. The Elders tried killing him as part of some big scheme to cause the end of the universe, so they could be big deals in the next universe like him. Brilliant plan. That's the best they could cobble together with literal billions of years? The Heralds find what's left of the Contemplator's head, the guy having been killed and partially eaten by space pirate Captain Reptyl. Except, Death decreed the Elders can't die after Grandmaster pulled that stunt where he stole her power and tried to end existence in those Avengers Annuals.

After the Surfer spends a few minutes moping over Mantis' recent apparent death, he and Nova set off and come to a world the Surfer recalls having visited before. A Kree border world, which doesn't respond well to his arrival since he was just there rampaging. Ronan shows up and when Nova protests the Surfer's been with her this whole time, he encases her in a bubble of absolute zero and declares 'accusation is punishment', whatever the fuck that means. He and the Surfer fight a bit, Ronan appears to have the upper hand, but gets caught with the old "mentally command my board to smack you in the head" trick. 

 

Surfer says Kree science is impressive, but he's the Silver Surfer, and he and Nova leave to find the imposter. The Surfer's able to track the energy signature to another world, even as Nova wonders how someone could impersonate the Surfer. His look sure, but his power is another matter. Well, they'll find out because the imposter is waiting for them. Meanwhile, Ronan's back on his feet and made some adjustments to prepare for a rematch.

[9th longbox, 240th comic. Silver Surfer (vol. 2) #13, by Steve Englehart (writer), Joe Staton (penciler), Dave Cockrum (inker), Tom Vincent (colorist), Ken Bruzenak (letterer)]

The Mummy (1999)

This is one of those movies I can watch pretty much whenever. It never slows down too much, the cast seems to be having fun with it. Watching Brendan Fraser try to intimidate undead warriors by screaming at them, only to have them scream back is pretty funny. 

Fraser plays O'Connell as this mixture of bravado and weary panic. He's like a louder Indiana Jones, in that he has that same, "Oh hell, I don't want to deal with this," attitude, but he's louder about it. Less able to appear unfazed. Sometimes he grasps how deep they are in this with Imhotep running around stealing people's organs, and other times he's overly confident bullets will solve everything (he is from the U.S. after all). Although even that you can tell is an act at times, either for himself or the others. I mean, what else is he going to do?

Fraser and Rachel Weisz seem to have good chemistry. The scenes where Evelyn is really excited about something, and O'Connell's just watching her in amusement are cute. There's a mutual respect that builds as they get a chance to know each other. She's a bit naive, but not oblivious to danger once she encounters it. He might have been to Hamunaptra before, but he respects her knowledge on the subject. When she tells him they don't need to fight with the Americans over a statue, he goes along with it, even if he doesn't know what she's figured out. She grasps soon enough that he knows about fighting, and tends to follow his lead.

Alex and I agreed that some times, the CGI is pretty good for 1999. I would say when it's not dealing with people (or revived corpses). The sandstorm effects, the masses of flesh-eating scarabs, that stuff looks pretty good. Other things, they were probably better off sticking with practical effects. Like when the one guy loses his eyes, the CGI of his empty sockets looks, as Alex put it, "like he's got a couple of buttholes on his face." The next time we see his face, his eye lids are shut are there's just a lot of red staining around there. The less CGI they have to use on Imhotep, the better. When he first starts moving around his reminds me of that skeleton knight from the MediEvil game on the Playstation 1, except he still has some flesh.

I feel like it's not a great depiction of Egyptians, or maybe Middle Eastern folk in general. The buffoonish warden of the prison, for example, especially with all Jonathan's remarks about his smell. (Although in that book about the British gunboat on the Tigris in World War the captain also complained in his journal about the locals lack of bathing. So maybe that's just a typical ignorant Westerner response? It's a desert, they have more critical needs for water.)

On the other hand, the Ardeth and Dr. Terrence Bey characters are both competent and calm under the fire. They do their best to adapt to the increasingly dire circumstances. Neither one of them is exactly pleased with O'Connell or Evelyn, but they recognize they'll need help to stop this, so set aside being pissed at these idiots to save the world.

Plus, the entire problem is caused by British and Americans deciding they just have to go busting into another culture's history to take it for themselves. Despite repeated warnings, and even some violence, they just kept going ahead until they unleash a mummy. And once things do go wrong, their responses are largely a) run, or b) get drunk.

In the Running for Dumbest Thing I've Posted About

I have no idea how it got started, but I guess there was some brief debate online last week about whether Batman would perform oral sex on his girlfriend. I'd be surprised this became a topic of discussion, but I know too well the sort of madness one's brain can cook up when left to its own devices. If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know it, too. You poor unfortunate souls.

And I'm typing this very late Sunday night while I wait to see if the thunderstorm passing through does dump golf-ball sized hail like Alex decided to text a warning to me about. Like I needed that thought when I was trying to get some sleep before work tomorrow. Anyway, it can be a convenient distraction. 

So, Batman's sex life.

I can't really see him getting away with being so ungenerous in bed. Maybe with women he dates under his "dull-witted playboy billionaire Bruce Wayne" persona. They probably wouldn't be surprised he wasn't anything special in the sack (and might not care if they're interested in his money.) I don't know how many of those ladies he was actually sleeping with, though. Be difficult to explain his disappearing in the middle of the night and returning at sun-up beat to hell. But with the women who know he's Batman? I can't see either Catwoman or Talia letting him slide. I mean, Selina's got claws and a whip and I'm betting Talia keeps daggers or firearms handy as a matter of course.

On the other hand, it's funny to imagine him coming up with excuses not to. Like, 'The Bat-Signal, I have to go!' and he runs off. Or explaining the Joker had him chained up in a deathtrap earlier, and he had to manipulate the lockpick with his mouth, so his tongue's kind of worn out, and could he just take a rain check on that? Next time for sure.

Oh, and there was no hail. Huzzah!

Six Black Horses

Audie Murphy finds himself a horse, only to have six guys find him and accuse him of rustling. One of those guys (Dan Duryea) objects to Murphy getting lynched and helps him escape. While traveling together trying to figure out their next moves, they're approached by a woman (Joan O'Brien) who offers them $1,000 each to escort her to another town. So they accept, even though it's through hostile country, but it's very clear she had other motives behind the offer.

The movie spends a fair amount of time with Murphy and Duryea discussing what each of them might do with the money, what they've done for money in the past, what that does. Murphy's pretty much always worked as a cow puncher, and while Duryea's done the same, he's also worked as a killer for hire, a line Murphy refuses to cross. The nice bit is Duryea's not proud of it, he knows it's ugly work, but it was going to be done by someone, and he had to make a living. He's actually happy they're doing a good thing for this money, protecting someone. 

He's not entirely a good man. There are certainly times, even before we find out he and O'Brien have some past history, where he makes me nervous with how close he gets to her. But he's not all bad, either. Murphy gets the less-interesting role, since there's never any doubt that he's going to do the right thing. There is the question of what he might decide that is, but it's a matter of whether he'll agree to get O'Brien where she says she wants to go, or take her someplace less perilous.

The romance subplot is kinda half-baked. There because I guess they figured it had to be. Murphy's pretty quick to forgive considering he was going to be a pawn in O'Brien's plan at best, collateral damage at worst.

A Leisurely Stroll Into the Heart of Spiders

Is that not a normal outfit for a 15-year-old?

After picking the first 12-issue series for Arana two years back, I thought I'd track down her origin story, which appeared in the same early 2000s relaunch of Amazing Fantasy that gave us a new Scorpion and I think Amadeus Cho.

As far as origin stories go, writer Fiona Avery seems to take the decompressed, Ultimate Spider-Man approach, as Arana doesn't put together her full costume until the sixth and final issue of the story (after the disastrous attempts shown above), though we do see a version that's halfway there in issue five. Not that the pages until then are wasted. Since this is a whole new character, with a power and history not really established previously, there's a fair amount of world-building to do. We have to learn who Anya is as a character (headstrong and protective, impulsive and inquisitive, a little awkward around guys), and what she's found herself tied up in. 

Who is this mysterious group that she's working with now, and what are they after, and what are some of the people like she's working with? Even if it's just that Miguel uses magic, saved her life, and is the dark, brooding mysterious type, and Ted's your typically spastic hacker type, there's at least a little fleshing out of the supporting cast.

 

Since her powers appear to come about as a result of a precise magic ritual that's part of a centuries-old struggle between two shadowy groups, rather than a seemingly fandom spider-bite, it's not just her sort of fumbling about trying to learn about her powers on her own. Instead, she gets to fumble about trying to understand her powers in highly dangerous tests initiated by the gent who's supposed to be her partner.

Mark Brooks draws the first two and last two issues, and Roger Cruz handles the 2 in the middle. Not sure what the reason was behind that division of labor. Brooks' versions are a little more squared off. Broader shoulders, sharper jaws and noses. The shading is a little heavier, more detailed than in Cruz' issues. Brooks' version of Miguel has some dissolute grunge stubble going, while Cruz' looks older and more weary. There's less manga influence in Cruz' work, so the eyes are smaller, which makes them look pinched in comparison. Larry Mollinar and Jeannie Lee handle the color work, which feels a little muddy at times, but does maintain a consistent feel through the shifts in artists.

Still, I can't help comparing this story to Fred van Lente's Scorpion origin story in the next six issues, where the main character is running around in costume by halfway through the second issue. It feels like preamble mostly. Dropping hints towards future mysteries. It's at least presented in such a way that Anya doesn't know much more about what's going on than we do, so she's just as confused. Maybe they already knew there was going to be an ongoing series, so there was less need to hit the ground running.

Sunday Splash Page #171

 

Blink and You'll Miss It," in Dragon Ball vol. 11, chapter 122, by Akira Toriyama

I don't know, what do you say about Dragon Ball? That Akria Toriyama came up with a story, based on Journey to the West, that became the template for a a huge chunk of shonen manga? The cheerful protagonist who loves to eat and fight, who loves a challenge and makes friends wherever he goes has been duplicated or riffed on in so many other series or video games or whatever. The repeated tournament structure, the steady escalation of threats. I mean, Goku starts out having trouble rescuing Bulma from a single pterosaur, and by the end of this stretch of the manga, he's fighting the offspring of a demon who forced the entire world to surrender to him and vowed to destroy a country every year on that day, just for a celebration.

I don't think Toriyama was the first to use those elements, although perhaps using them altogether was a novel idea. But it was the way he did it that seems to have resonated with an entire generation of artists, in Japan and the States.

The series has its issues. Master Roshi is a warning all his own, the archetypical perverted old master, groping girls and trying to get them to flash him. Oolong the shapeshifting pig is the same, although he's at least sort of an antagonist at the start (a pathetic one, but still.) The Mr. Popo character looks like a Sambo caricature or something. So there's things that aren't great, and it's things that could be eliminated at no real cost. The series has plenty of humor without peeping tom shit gone awry, and it wouldn't be that hard to come up with a less offensive design for Mr. Popo.

I've read somewhere the initial World Martial Arts Tournament arc sort of saved the series from being canceled. Which is odd to think of, because up to that point, it had been about hunting the Dragon Balls and running into various semi-comic threats. An evil rabbit that turns people into carrots. A desert bandit who gets social anxiety around pretty girls. Emperor Pilaf and his two beleaguered henchmen. Goku's complete ignorance of almost anything. 

And the series still revolves around that for a time. Goku or someone else seeking the Dragon Balls for one reason or another, and Goku getting stronger in the process. The tournaments are really just a way to showcase the improvements in a series of well-illustrated fights. Toriyama knows how to draw for comedy, exaggerated looks when someone arrogant gets shown up. But he also knows how to draw someone taking a punch and make it look like it hurt.

Random Back Issues #63 - Daredevil #5

Oh, Matt Murdock, I bet you say that to all the girls. Wait, you do? Part of a court-ordered settlement? Yikes.

Last time we looked at Mark Waid and Chris Samnee's Daredevil, Foggy found he he had cancer. In this issue, he dies. But not of cancer!

At this point, Matt and Kirsten McDuffie are operating a law firm in San Francisco, since Matt got disbarred for committing perjury that time he insisted he wasn't Daredevil under oath. And the world at large believes Foggy Nelson is dead, but we know he isn't. This issue explains that.

Sometime before the move out west, Hank Pym's running around inside Foggy blasting any circulating tumor cells he comes across, to try and keep the cancer from spreading. Meanwhile, Matt and Foggy are walking in the park, discussing Matt's decision to admit he's Daredevil, and how this puts Foggy in danger. So Matt wants Foggy to pretend to die of cancer, and continue his treatments in secret.

Matt admits Foggy's family will hate him, and there'll be some explaining to do, but he's sure it'll be fine. Iron Man and Spider-Man are presumed dead all the time. Foggy notes they die big, while he's just going to die.

 

At which point the All-New, Fantastic Frog-Man attacks. Or is it the All-New, Leviathan Leapfrog. Either way, it's a big frog-mech now - expect the Runaways to show up and steal that thing - with mini-guns and chainsaws. And it's after Foggy. Daredevil pursues it into a crowded city street, at which point the pilot tries to bail, fighting desperately to get away. Because there's a bomb in the mech. 

Matt's already freed Foggy, and tells him he's the only one close enough to pilot the suit away and save everyone. So Foggy leaps it into the sky, and gets blown up. Or not, because Hank Pym was listening in and shrank Foggy to subatomic size, then they hitched a ride on some falling debris and drifted more or less gently onto a roof. Ta-da, instant fake heroic death!

 

The truth comes out eventually as part of a big thing with the Owl and the Shroud near the tail end of this run. Charles Soule somehow puts the secret identity genie back in the bottle, I don't know how. I was more annoyed Matt was not only back in New York, in a costume that was depressingly familiar to his '90s, Jack Batlin period costume, but also working for the District Attorney's office. Helping the city imprison people instead of helping keep them out. Delightful.

[3rd longbox, 133rd comic. Daredevil (vol. 4) #5, by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee (storytellers), Javier Rodriguez (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)]

Monkey Business

Cary Grant's a chemist work on a formula for a revitalizing tonic. His boss (Charles Coburn) is eagerly awaiting a successful formula so he can make a play on his airheaded secretary (Marilyn Monroe). He thinks he's figured it out, but really one of the test chimps mixed a bunch of stuff together while left unattended and dumped it in the water cooler. That concoction does make people feel young, and the more he or his wife (Ginger Rogers) unwittingly drink, the younger they behave. It does have the unfortunate side effect of almost throwing a monkey wrench in their marriage, as things they say or do while under the influence have effects that carry forward, mostly in regards to a lawyer friend of Rogers, who clearly wants to break up the marriage.

It's a good comedy, I think because most of the main characters behave with a certain amount of dignity most of the time, so watching them behave foolishly, and really commit to it, works. Even when Grant's playing an absent-minded professor, he still carries himself such that watching him do cartwheels, or take a pratfall while rollerskating with Monroe is just funny. The same with Rogers, who is a mature, loving, helpful lady, but once she drinks the water she starts slipping goldfish down Coburn's pants or jitterbugging up a storm.

Although the funniest bit to me might have been Grant enlisting the neighborhood children to help him capture and scalp the lawyer. Watching Grant hop around with the kids whooping, then shouting, "Jeepers, it's the cops!" and fleeing into the woods is pretty funny. Well, Grant and Rogers' brief paint fight is in the running.

Monroe doesn't get much of a role, the stereotypical bubblehead, who shows up before 9 am because her boss told her to work on her "punctuation". Watching Rogers get wound up about her when she's on the potion is amusing, but Monroe doesn't get to really do anything in response.

Reflections of a Teenage Bat - Spellbinder

I've been kicking around the notion of looking at what Terry McGinnis' most common villains reflect about him since I bought the box sets of Batman Beyond from a coworker of Alex during his years in the Town He Tries to Forget. That was a decade ago, and I just kept putting it off. 

There's three villains that show up three times in the 52 episodes. Maybe four, because I don't remember Shriek showing up a third time, but the episode summaries insist there's one where he buried Batman alive and Bruce and Max have to find him. So maybe I'll get to him, but let's talk about Spellbinder.

Spellbinder's shtick in Batman Beyond is basically he's a disgruntled civil servant. More specifically, a school psychiatrist who gets fed up with listening to teenagers talk about the problems their rich parents will fix while he works for relative peanuts. So instead of using hypnosis to help them reach the root of their problems, he uses it to let them experience their fantasies, while they're actually committing crimes for him. When that first scheme fails, he tries a VR interactive experience thing that is highly addictive, so they'll willingly steal to pay for another turn. His third appearance, he gives up on getting people to steal for him, and instead tricks the police into thinking Batman killed Mad Stan (we'll probably get to Mad Stan the next time I do one of these).

Terry's thing is that he had a lot of anger about a lot of stuff. Probably the failure of his parents' marriage, certainly about his father Warren's willingness to be the good corporate drone and eat shit with a smile. Then Warren's murdered, because he was going to stand up and do the right thing, and there's even more anger. And Terry ultimately, once he's gotten his hands on Batman's suit, uses it and his anger to fight crime. Protect people from people with power who try to abuse it.

Spellbinder obviously took his grudge and his power and used it for himself, which is Villainy 101. He's also a twisted reflection of both Terry's father figures. Warren McGinnis in the sense that both of them are ultimately workers beholden to higher authorities. Spellbinder worked at a school. He's got rules and regulations he's gotta follow. Every few months, he's probably gotta bring something to put out in the break room. Chip in for community coffee even if he doesn't drink it. Be there for school dances and shit.

Terry's dad is a researcher, and a good one. But at the end of the day, he works for Wayne-Powers, and so he answers to a shitbag like Derek Powers. He doesn't have much control over his life. He's forced to do ethically questionable things or risk his job (or his family's well-being.) Warren decided to stand up against his boss, while Spellbinder decided to punch down at his patients. Differing responses to the pressure of being a cog in the machine.

Bruce Wayne is no cog. He's either the one controlling the machine, or by the time the series begins, a person with enough money to remove himself from the mess entirely. But Spellbinder mirrors Wayne in that he manipulates teenagers to do shit for him. His first two appearances are both about Spellbinder getting high school kids to steal for him, so he doesn't have to be at risk. Bruce isn't Batman anymore because he couldn't hack it. Because he didn't think he could actually protect people without becoming something he despised (a killer), not because he wasn't willing to risk himself. And Terry approached him, which makes a difference. 

But Bruce definitely understands what makes Terry tick, and he certainly uses that to his advantage. Terry wanted the chance to bring his father's killer to justice, and he got that chance because Bruce Wayne let him use the suit. Just as Spellbinder can use what he knows about his students to make illusions or hypnotic suggestions that are most effective on them. Terry works better when he has something to push back against, so Bruce is in his ear all the time, giving him that something if nothing else is available. Maybe Terry would have gone off the rails badly without that opportunity, and so Wayne is ultimately looking out for him, while Spellbinder doesn't give a damn about people who are supposed to be able to trust him to help.

Although there's also that episode of Justice League Unlimited where Terry has been Batman for years and is clearly chafing under Bruce forcing him to keep secrets from Dana and do everything Bruce's ways. A universe where Bruce Wayne is a bitter, lonely old man estranged from every former love and protege, with a Gotham even shittier than his was. Basically defeated on every conceivable level. So maybe Bruce isn't looking out for Terry, and is using him as much as Spellbinder does. 

But that episode also said Terry was genetically Bruce's son due to some bullshit Amanda Waller set up to try and make sure there was always a Batman, and that's honestly better left shoved into a dustbin and forgotten.

The third episode is really more about Barbara Gordon as Commissioner, and her doubts about both Bruce and Terry. She knows Terry's Batman, knows why he's Batman. Knows about his anger issues in the past. Knows from experience how Bruce Wayne can twist people around and drive them until they burn out. So it's not hard for her to think Terry could go too far and kill a bad guy. Still, Spellbinder's shifted his style a bit. Still manipulating others, but instead of targeting the relatively powerless, who inevitably lead the authorities (or Batman) right to him, he targets the authorities to send them to Batman. Plays off the fear of vigilantes. Sure, it's fun to see someone in a costume saving lives and punching bad guys, but that's only as long as you agree with who they're punching, and how much damage they're doing. It doesn't take far to tip the perception from "costumed do-gooder" to "loose cannon."

Spellbinder's ultimately the guy with no power for years, feeling put upon and powerless, who then abuses his power as soon as he gets some. (Pretty sure Darkseid made a demonstration like that once on Apokolips by turning his slaves into overseers.) The kind of person teenagers suspect most adults are; ostensibly there to help, but really there to control and condescend to them.

In the Electric Mist

Tommy Lee Jones as a recovering alcoholic cop in Louisiana, investigating the brutal murder of a young woman. Which also ends up tying in to the murder of a black man decades ago, when his body is discovered by an actor during the shooting of a no doubt highly inaccurate Civil War movie. John Goodman's in there as, a former criminal of some sort, who now is getting movies made in Louisiana and figures he's hot stuff now.

It's mostly a typical murder mystery. Detective flails about trying to put pieces together. John Goodman tries to use his influence (money talks) to derail the investigation, and when that fails, people start dying. Potential witnesses, helpful detectives, innocent bystanders. I think it mostly pulls the different plot threads together well. The decades old death never falls out of the story entirely, as Jones will periodically speak to someone about it that leads him a little further on his way.

The unusual bit is partway through, Jones gets a soda dosed with LSD and starts seeing a Confederate general who basically tells him not to lose heart. It continues long after the drugs are likely out of his system. This is apparently a sort of development common to the series of books this is based on. I don't know how much it works here. It is sort of funny the Confederate keeps trying to be supportive, and Jones mostly just thinks he must be nuts to be seeing this guy.

There's sort of a subplot with the actor that found the murdered black man being an active alcoholic trying to be pals and just making an ass of himself all the time. That subplot peters out partway until the very end when the movie does one of those, "so-and-so went on to blahblahblah" bits. Frances McDormand plays Jones' wife, but she seems stuck playing the concerned spouse of a cop we get in most movies of this sort. Not a role with much meat on it.