Saturday Splash Page #132

 

"An Uneasy Mantle" in Starlord #2, by Timothy Zahn (writer), Dan Lawlis (artist), Bill Oakley (letterer)

We'll see a lot more Star-Lord in a couple of months in Sunday Splash Page, but today we're looking at a slightly more recent appearance of the name. When I say "recent", I mean mid-90s instead of late-70s or early-80s.

I'm not sure why Marvel decided to dust off a character concept that hadn't appeared in 15 years. Trademark issues, probably. Timothy Zahn is best known for various creating the Admiral Thrawn character who appeared in most of the Star Wars novels he wrote. I'm not sure what about the Star-Lord concept appealed to him.

I say "concept", because Zahn ditches the Peter Quill character, in favor of Sinjin Quarrel, a character of his own creation born with telepathic abilities. Among his culture, that marks him for work in justice, except Quarrel's powers are weak, in the sense he can only read your mind if he touches you. There's no indication if his ability is weaker in any way other than distance.

Assigned to an out of the way world of limited importance, Quarrel finds the fabled "Ship" of Star-Lord's. The element gun and costumes are there (none of the little waist-mounted jet pods, however), as is the holographic projection Ship developed for itself when Claremont wrote Star-Lord, but no sign of Star-Lord for many years now. So Quarrel takes on the identity, initially just to protect himself, but later to investigate an aristocrat on the planet he was assigned who seems too successful at taking control.

The story is a bit of a thriller, Quarrel trying stay alive and find evidence to bring down the man he's up against. There's a very large, very pale crime lord who lives in a big tower involved (Space Kingpin, basically, or maybe Space Tobias Whale), and an infiltration that involves deception. Plus, Quarrel has to overcome his reluctance to act as Star-Lord after he learns the source of what the element gun fires.

Lawlis paints the comic, which works better than I would have expected. The action is a bit static, but the plot avoids any kind of extended, running battles in favor of quick sequences where Star-Lord uses the element gun. But Quarrel is an expressive character, and the bright colors are suited to the clean and futuristic settings. There are hives of scum and villainy, but all that is beneath the surface. Appropriate when the hero can see beneath it with just a touch.

Random Back Issues #132 - Elsewhere #8

Bye everybody! We'll be back in 20 pages if it turns out our home planet sucks now!

I reviewed the first half of Elsewhere 2.5 years ago, but today we're looking at the last issue. Having found a doorway back to Earth, Amelia Earhart and DB Cooper step through and find themselves facing a bunch of soldiers and guns.

Kept under observation for a month, an officer with a lot of ribbons on his chest finally explains to Earhart it's the year 2018. While she and Cooper (which we learn from a partially redacted psych profile is not his real name) try to adjust, Earhart spots a native of Korvath talking with a scientist.

A little arm-twisting gets the guy to spill the beans. Some hikers stumbled across a part, the government built a facility around it, stabilized it, and sent troops in. They captured a native and eventually came to an arrangement: the U.S. keeps troops out, and receive an elixir that promotes cell regeneration. Find it hard to believe the government hadn't already gone back on their word and just conquered the place. Or at least given whichever side offered the sweetest deal weapons to help seize/maintain power.

But the scientists did want to study a Korvathian, so this elder sent Gwenore through, and told her beloved, Earhart's pal Cort, a bullcrap story that she'd been abducted. Earhart and Cooper make the scientist take them to Gwenore. Cooper knocks the nerd out, and they try to reach the portal, but encounter some soldiers.

Not much of a problem for Gwenore, and they send her back home. Given a choice between arrest or life free on an alien world, Earhart and Cooper run through the portal, using another grenade to destroy the Stargate-looking thing stabilizing the portal and saving Korvath from the perils of imperialism. Hooray!

Earhart and Cooper reunite with Cort and Gwenore's people. Meyrick, who made the deals with the U.S., chooses exile over what I assume was going to be a painful execution. Have to imagine if the book had continued he would have popped up allied with some new group of troublemakers. And the last we see of Earhart and Cooper is them flying the big gargoyle-looking creatures while Earhart promises maybe she'll tell us about more of their adventures some day. But as CCR once noted, someday never comes. At least it hasn't in the subsequent six years.

{4th longbox, 75th comic. Elsewhere #8, by Jay Faerber (writer), Sumeyye Kesgin (artist), Ron Riley (colorist), Thomas Mauer (letterer)}

Koko - Peter Straub

A group of guys who served together in Vietnam band together a decade later to try and find another member of their group they suspect is committing brutal murders in Southeast Asia.

All of them seem to be doing this as an escape from their current lives. Harry Beevers wants the fame of capturing a burgeoning serial killer. Conor has nothing better to do. Michael seems to be using it to flee a rapidly disintegrating marriage, plus dissatisfaction with a pediatric practice in the suburbs, where he treats the colds of rich kids. The only one who doesn't go is Timo, and that's because he has a restaurant he's trying to save, plus a young lady he's hung up on. He's not doing great at managing the life he's created since the war, but he's trying harder to keep it than any of the others are, even if it's like clutching at sand.

The book has strong parts and weak parts. It's longer than it needs to be - the epilogue, where one character theorizes what happened to their comrade after the final confrontation - feels unnecessary. The scenes written from the killer's perspective are a sort of muddle of things that clearly hold meaning to the killer, but aren't written in an engaging enough manner to make me care. It feels like reading gibberish for a page or two.

There's a lengthy detour in the back third of the book where Michael and a couple of other characters visit Milwaukee, hoping to learn something about their friend to help find him. The information is important in certain regards, but it didn't need nearly as many pages, since most of the trip is them sitting uncomfortably in people's living rooms having awkward conversations that aren't a great read. I would have been satisfied with Straub sending the characters off for a few chapters, and have them summarize their findings when they return (which they end up doing anyway.)

The parts where they're actively trying to find the killer, or have the feeling someone is following them, those parts were tense and interesting. Timo trying to keep his life together, but unable to stay out of the search entirely helped build a connection between him and the reader. Maggie's kind of a fun character, offering an outsider perspective while not trying to simply ignore the war and its effects that, say, Michael's wife does. That said, there were times I wondered if there's an equivalent term to the old "Mystical Negro." "Spiritually Enlightened Asian"? Maggie always seems to know exactly what's wrong with Timo or the other guys emotionally or mentally. Quite why or how she has this remarkable insight, I don't know.

Anyway, a leaner, more focused book would have made for a better read.

'Beevers turned to them with an unblinking gaze. "Some day I'll want you to remember who first said we could all see a lot of money out of this. If we handle it right. Mucho dinero."

"Hallelujah," Conor said. "The Lost Boss is gonna make us rich."'

What I Bought 6/28/2024 - Part 2

Wrapping up June's books with the final issue of a mini-series, and the midpoint of another mini-series.

Black Widow and Hawkeye #4, by Stephanie Phillips (writer), Paolo Villanelli (artist), Mattia Iacono (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - Kind of surprised the symbiote doesn't cover Natasha's hair.

In the present, Black Widow shows up to rescue Hawkeye, Damon Dran hits both of them with hypersonics, but Natasha's able to pull through long enough shut it down so Hawkeye can shoot Dran with arrows made of the symbiote. Seems weird that would do anything, since Hawkeye shoots him with an exploding arrow in the Silver Age flashback and Natasha says that won't stop him. Maybe the symbiote's eating the guy from the inside-out.

The flashback ends with Iron Man smashing into the Soviet embassy to arrest Hawkeye and the Black Widow both for treason. So Natasha stabs herself with an arrow to exonerate Hawkeye and makes her escape. In the present, Hawkeye explains he realized during the diplomat's speech that the guy had been poisoned sometime earlier, so it was too late to stop the assassination. All he could do was kill the guy himself so it wouldn't be pinned on the U.S. government and used as a pretext for war.

The point being, rather than Hawkeye following the trend he and Natasha usually do, where one of them sacrifices themselves to protect the other, Clint asks if she'll accompany him back to the U.S. to help him face the consequences.

In theory, I like the idea of them breaking this cycle of alternating martyrdom, but does it really do any good here? Unless Black Widow found proof of Dran's plan we don't know about, there's nothing to exonerate Hawkeye. All he's got is his word, unless someone did an autopsy and found traces of a poison. Without proof of Dran's involvement in the poisoning, that brings about the result Hawkeye's trying to prevent.

Blood and Fire #2, by Aaron Wroblewski (writer), Ezequiel Rubio Lancho (artist), Es Kay (letterer) - Someone is setting up a very strange Valentine's Day surprise. 

The last remaining samurai squares off against four of the new shogun's men. He gets three before the fourth throws snow in his eyes and slashes him across the torso. Which brings us to where the first issue started, him on his knees, looking about to be executed. But as he tells a vision of his wife and daughter he'll see them soon, they become some angry shadowbeast that demands he fight.

So he does. He makes it home, but home is on fire. His wife and daughter are dead. The shadow insists he kill them all. Which he'll get to, once he's made a funeral pyre. More samurai arrive, and promptly start dying. Is it the last holdout doing the killing? The samurai's definitely around, cutting off horses' legs and a man's head, and by that point, Lancho is drawing him mostly as a shadow. Maybe a few places that aren't shaded so heavily to offer a hint of a nose or cheekbone.

But at least one of the enemy sees a small girl at the edge of the forest, who then vanishes. That guy winds up getting dragged into the forest by something we don't see clearly. It's on the edge of one panel, the outline of either long hair or tentacles, and in the last panel we see of him, there are two barely visible dots - probably eyes - above him further in the background.

The Accidental Detective (2015)

Dae-man (Kwon Sang-woo) owns a comic store, but his real passion is blogging about solving crimes. He constantly closes the store early, or leaves his elementary school aged son in charge, so he can visit his friend Joon-Soo at the nearest precinct.

Then Dae-man goes out drinking with another mutual friend, and that friend's wife is dead in the apartment the next morning. Worse, Joon-Soo had helped her purchase a condo without her husband's knowledge, so it looks bad for him. His hope is that Dae-man can prove his innocence, but that's going to require convincing Joon-soo's boss, burnout former top cop Detective Noh, to let him help.

It's a buddy cop movie, the angry veteran cop with an eager rookie. Noh's got a rep as a badass, which Dae-man is at first awed by. There are multiple slow-motion shots of Noh walking with his long trenchcoat blowing around his legs dramatically in the wind. Which results in Dae-man trying to emulate him, to limited success.

What humor doesn't come from Noh insulting Dae-man (or Dae-man's occasional revenge pranks), comes from how much these guys seem to hate being married. Dae-man's wife is on his ass constantly, not without reason, about actually making enough money to support them and their two kids (she's a private tutor, for Detective Noh's kid, but I guess it doesn't pay enough.) Dae is always groveling and promising to do better, when he's not lying that he's busy at work. Noh mocks Dae-man for looking after his infant daughter, but he jumps when his wife cracks the whip just as readily. Her special ringtone on his phone is a blaring red alert alarm, and the picture is of a snarling tiger.

But the murders are all ultimately about unhappy marriages. Specifically, husbands being angry at their wives, so it's kind of an odd juxtaposition. I guess Dae and Noh still love their wives in spite of the apparent misery of their married lives.

What I Bought 6/28/2024 - Part 1

I had to drive through Illinois over the weekend, always an incredibly boring experience. I forgot that they really want you to know how close you are to road work, but never tell you how far the road work extends. The left lane closes in 3 miles, then 2 miles, then 1, then a half-mile, but nothing about how many miles the left lane is closed, which is what I actually want to know. How long am I stuck at the mercy of the slowest driver?

Blow Away #3, by Zac Thompson (writer), Niccola Izzo (artist), Francesco Segala and Gloria Martinelli (color artists), DC Hopkins (letterer) - Leaving nothing but tracks, shadows, and possibly a dead body or two.

Brynne's fixated on what happened to the mountain climbers. Asking questions, annoying the sheriff, who it feels like Izzo is drawing in the most suspicious ways possible. Face half in shadow, odd smirks or glares. Standing in front of one of Brynne's tables, eyeing a knife while Brynne's back is turned. It's like a blaring siren, to the extent it feels too obvious, though I can't figure the angle, unless it's meant to highlight Brynne's state of mind.

Because Brynne may have handed over copies of all her footage, but she didn't hand over the recorder the climbers had that she found. She's still poring over that, parsing silent looks or the fact Beardo is reading American Psycho, going frame-by-frame through the fight until she determines that when they both went over the side during their fight, one of them either got snagged on something, or was clipped to a safety anchor.

So, even with the sheriff having wanred her of a blizzard, Brynne follows their climb up the mountain (which Izzo does as a 9-panel grid starting in the lower left corner.) She finds some blood frozen on the snow, and a deep crevasse. before she can properly climb in, a rope gets tangled around her foot and she goes in the quick way.

With the one-panel flashbacks we keep getting of some previous project of hers that seems to have blown up, I feel like we're going to learn there was nothing suspicious. But part of that is because we've got basically nothing to go off. Brynne's got some blurry footage from her cameras and a few snippets (at least that's all we've seen) from their camera. None of which points to anything concrete. There's not even a body yet. It's similar to how the sheriff's being illustrated to seem suspicious, while we've got no idea why. The main thing it illustrates now is Brynne has a tendency to draw serious conclusions off little evidence.

All that said, I do at least want to find out what's happening, which is more than I can say for this next book.

Morning Star #3, by David Andry and Tim Daniel (writers), Marco Finnegan (artist), Jason Wordie (colorist), Justin Birch (letterer) - We've gone from gun to ax. Next issue they'll be down to a pointy stick.

Charlie's still missing, but now Marabeth's being chased by a weird version of the park ranger and a bunch of animals that talk in wavy voices balloons with elongated words. Marabeth flees across a river, but finds that weird pile or orange guys her dad and his partner found during the fire in issue 1. 

Meanwhile, Jolene gets briefly menaced by some flaming specter, then a whole bunch of funhouse mirror Charlies appear, also talking in the wavy voice bubbles with elongated words, asking her to help. Help Charlie, help them, help someone else?

This isn't working for me. Maybe the creatures, illusions, constructs, whatever they're meant to be, aren't supposed to be frightening, but it feels like, for how Marabeth flees, and how freaked out it's making Jolene, they should look more terrifying. But Finnegan's art doesn't sell it. The "park ranger", with his face entirely shadowed, and the spots where his glasses would be as white voids almost works. It's at least unsettling, but nothing further.

Maybe these scenes should be taking place at night, maybe it'd be scarier if the colors were darker, I don't know. But the story isn't really helping, either. We know Jolene feels stressed and probably guilty she didn't fight harder to get her husband to stay instead of going to fight this fire, but we still haven't seen much of Marabeth's thoughts, let alone Charlie's (outside the handful of panels in issue 1 that show all these odd things he sees in the world around him.) Does Marabeth resent having to find Charlie, does she envy him, does she worry about losing another member of her family? I feel like any connection or interest I have in the characters is the result of me working really hard to do so, not the result of Andry and Daniel's writing. I don't care much if any of them survive the story, let alone if they figure out what's going on.

Sunday Splash Page #329

 

"The Tax Man Cometh," in Marvel Adventures Avengers #32, by Paul Tobin (writer), Matteo Lolli (penciler), Christian Vecchia (inker), Sotocolor (colorists), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

Welcome to Many Months of Marvel! We'll be rockin' titles that start with "Marvel" all through summer and into the blessed relief of a hopefully grey autumn!

In the mid-2000s, Marvel made one of their periodic attempts at replenishing the dwindling audience with comics aimed towards a younger audience, via the Marvel Adventures line. There were a handful of titles, some of which only lasted about a year (the Hulk and Iron Man titles), while Marvel Adventures Spider-Man ran 61 issues.

The one that got the most mention in the comics blogosphere was Marvel Adventures Avengers. Having a larger cast seemed to offer the writers (mostly Jeff Parker and Paul Tobin, but also Marc Sumerak and Tony Bedard among others) the leeway to go with big threats and concepts that used the entire team, or smaller stories focused on just a few. In one issue, the Avengers might try to stop Galactus from devouring Earth by using the Ultimate Nullifier, resulting in opening up the laws of probability to where they could briefly challenge Big G to a game of baseball for the planet's wellbeing. In another, Hawkeye might show up to join, right as the Avengers keep getting shown up by a second-rate Masters of Evil roster. 

The latter story also involves everyone having a good laugh at Iron Man's expense after the Melter melts his iron pants, as most of the issues take a lighthearted approach. The Hulk gets Bullseye to pay his taxes by walking up behind him and saying, "Pay taxes." The rest of the Avengers try to keep Odin from meddling in Thor and Storm's date, except Odin keeps mistaking Wolverine for a troll and whomping him.

Likewise, the stories are usually done-in-one, and while there can be some good old-fashioned superhero punching action, the resolutions usually involve some measure of out-thinking the threat or otherwise being clever. Spider-Man getting a more first-rate Masters of Evil team to turn on each other once they realize Ultron (less genocidal here, more coldly logical about machine superiority) intends leave them with no real authority after they conquer the world.

Saturday Splash Page #131

 

"A Farewell to Stars," in Starman (vol. 2) #76, by James Robinson (writer), Peter Snejbjerg (artist), Gregory Wright (colorist), Bill Oakley (letterer)

Peter Snejbjerg came on with issue #50, and remained the series artist until its conclusion in issue #80 (ignoring the "resurrected" issue #81 from the Blackest Night event). At that point, Robinson was already a couple of issues into the "Stars My Destination" arc, aka the story where Jack goes into space looking for his new girlfriend's missing brother, the previous, bemulleted Starman.

I've heard the second half of Starman is generally considered the weaker half, with the space arc a prime culprit. And I can see it. Robinson spent the first four year building up Opal City as a major part of the book, then sends the book into space for a year, because he seems bound and determined to tie every star-themed character into the Starman legacy. So they get diverted into the 30th Century, so we can learn the Legion of Super-Heroes' Star Boy is going to become Star Man, and eventually return to the 21st Century under a different name.

Robinson tries to work this stuff into the build-up for the big "Grand Guignol" arc, having Jack help out Adam Strange on Rann, so that Adam will try to repay the favor later, but it does feel like an overlong digression. To say nothing of the detour into Krypton's past to meet Teen Rebel Jor-El..

That said, I do like Grand Guignol (minus the way things went with Nash, the original Mist's daughter.) I can appreciate Robinson trying to bring everything he'd spent 60 issues setting up together - all the foes, the Shade's backstory, the ghost of Jon Valor, on and on - into one big throwdown for the fate of Opal City's present and future. He wanted to do a big story, and I feel like he pulled it off. Made us care about the characters and the stakes enough to justify all the set up and foreshadowing.

Snejbjerg's version of Jack Knight is cleaner, better put-together. He smooths out a lot of the lines and wrinkles, makes the hair less of a rat's nest. Jack still dresses mostly the same, the aviator goggles and the leather jacket, but it doesn't look like he's slept in them for two weeks straight. Jack also lost the tattoos as a result of death by disintegration, followed by resurrection via Rannian science. I don't remember the dying having that much in the way of ramifications for Jack long-term, so I wonder if Snejbjerg just didn't want to have to draw the tats any time Jack was shirtless or in short sleeves.

The book concludes with a few last loose ends, a handful of mysteries Robinson hadn't revealed the solutions to yet. More important, it ends with Jack retiring from the role as Starman, passing the cosmic rod on to Courtney Whitmore, who would take on the name Stargirl. She's kept the title ever since, and Jack's stayed retired ever since. Even the Blackest Night tie-in issue was about The Shade and Hope O'Dare, nary a Jack to be found.

It's perhaps not so surprising in some sense. Jack always insisted he wasn't the kind of hero who was going to patrol. Just a guy who would step up when Opal needed him. And the bargain he made with his father was for Ted to continue exploring ways to use stellar energy to help people outside superheroics. Well, Opal has a new bunch of protectors by the end of the book, and Ted's not going to be doing any further research. It is surprising in that I can't believe someone didn't drag Jack back out in one of the half-dozen revamps DC's done in the last 15 years.

Sometimes the characters get left to their happy endings.

Random Back Issues #131 - Guardians of the Galaxy #21

"Cancerverse" is such inflammatory language. Call it a "Fecundiverse"; that only sounds vaguely dirty.

The last time we looked at the Guardians, they were in the process of failing miserably to convince the Inhumans and the Shi'ar to stop fighting a war that would endanger the very universe. Well, Black Bolt and Vulcan are dead now (hooray!), but not before the Inhumans set off a bomb that tore a hole in space-time continuum, dubbed the Fault.

The Luminals, an irritating band of superheroes that hang out on Knowhere and basically fuck everything up, sent some of their team into "The Fault", and came back infected. The alien tries to attack Moondragon, but she's able to create a telekinetic field to trap it.

The rest of the Guardians arrive, but so do a bunch of followers of the Universal Church of Truth, who think the many-tooth alien squid-thing is their god (due to the particular psychic emanations it produces.) All the excitement of the dumbshit fundamentalists exercising their religious freedom drives the creature nuts and it breaks loose, killing several of them, before attacking the Luminals' leader, Cynosure. The only option Moondragon has is to lure the creature into herself instead.

Now in quarantine, Moondragon's using her telepathy to keep the thing under control. But, it gives her a chance to learn some stuff. The creature comes from a universe on the far side of the Fault. A place where life has won. Star-Lord doesn't get what that means, but he'll have to parse it later. The Luminals are here to be fuck up again!

The creature killed one of their teammates, so they want to "extradite" it. How is not elaborated because Cynosure cuffs herself to Moondragon with something that'll blow them both up without the combination. The Knowhere Council want the creature off the station, but the Guardians are not about to let the Luminals handle that. And fortunately, they've got Drax to claim parental rights, which at least buys the team a few hours.

But since it's all down to whether Moondragon can get the thing under control so they can expel it from her and back into the Fault, Rocket uses the time to jab at Drax about almost sounding like he actually cares about his daughter. Which spurs Drax to go visit, only to find the church loonies kidnapping her and Cynosure. Which gives Drax a chance to do what he does best, kill people. It's going pretty well until the Church's Matriarch does a vaguely Penance Stare-like move and Drax goes into the fetal position.

{5th longbox, 42nd comic. Guardians of the Galaxy (vol. 2) #21, by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (writers), Brad Walker (penciler), Andrew Hennessy and Victor Olazaba (inkers), Wil Quintana (colorist), Joe Carmagna (letterer)}

Blue Highways - William Least Heat Moon

Heat Moon's first, and apparently more popular, book. He was told his position at the university wasn't being renewed, and his marriage was on the rocks, so he set out in his modified van to travel the less-known highways, as opposed to the interstates. Those state routes are usually marked in blue in the road atlas, hence the title of the book.

He essentially circles the country, although based on the map on the inside cover, he never enters Florida or California. You can tell how long ago this was because he makes the trip on his last $246 and 4 gas credit cards. He stops where he likes, or where the weather or fatigue force him to. At one point he's stuck on a mountain in Utah in a blizzard because the road ahead is closed and he can't see enough to turn around. Usually sleeps in his van, which results in him getting repeatedly bothered by cops.

And he talks. To other people, about why they live where they do, or what life is like. Why live in a town in Nevada with a population of four, on a fault line and near a Navy test range? He travels to Selma based on the rather aggressive suggestion of one person, to see if race relations have improved in the decade+ since the bus boycotts and Martin Luther King Jr.'s work. The answer would seem to be, "In some ways yes, but in many ways, no."

But he's also trying to figure himself out. Increasingly as the trip and book progress, Heat Moon questions what he's doing out there. What's he looking for, really, or is he just running away from something? He may have come to some sort of conclusion at the end, though I wonder if it amounted to anything.

The book has a nostalgic air I can't entirely engage with (but does explain to me how the book spent 42 weeks on the New York Times best seller list, as the paperback cover exclaims.) A rose-tinted look at Americana of the early to mid-20th Century, and a scorn for what's replacing it. I can appreciate the desire of many of the people he talks with to preserve their local history, but it often feels like a very selective history being preserved. Not always, as in the visit to Selma - really, most of the "South by Southeast" chapter - you see how people trying to exercise a feeling of greater freedom is met with resistance from the factions that liked the old ways just fine.

Maybe that's an inevitable consequence of a book written specifically about visiting places that are off the main track, where the march of fast food and strip malls haven't reached. He seeks out several towns that exist only as abandoned remains, and in some cases not even that. Of the other towns, many are either dying slowly, or trying to survive as they are, without losing land to power plants or tourist attractions. The people who live in those places do so by choice or lack of alternatives. Either way, they either like it as is, or made peace with it.

But it does start to boil down into a complaining about how things are versus how they were. You can't make money farming except in huge acreages. You can't get real cigarettes anymore (one guy presciently suggests there's a college engineer out there trying to design a cigarette you have to plug in.) The kids don't care about their history or want to walk anywhere any longer. People travel just to get somewhere, without any care for the actual destination. Based on my dad's descriptions of family vacations with his father, that was true long before this book was written, but whatever.

The advantage PrairyErth had was its tighter focus allowed (or forced) Heat Moon to go deeper. It was layered. Here, even when he finds someone that really knows the history of their town, more than just a surface skimming, it's still only one perspective. But even if he took the back roads, he's still on highways. He's still a passerby, so it was always going to be the equivalent of watching through the windshield as he drove through.

'There is one almost infallible way to find honest food at just prices on blue-highway America: count the wall calendars in a cafe.

No calendar: Same as an interstate pit stop.
One calendar: Preprocessed food assembled in New Jersey.
Two calendars: Only if fish trophies present.
Three calendars: Can't miss on the farm-boy breakfasts.
Four calendars: Try the ho-made pie too.
Five calendars: Keep it under your hat, or they'll franchise.

One time I found a six-calendar cafe in the Ozarks, which served fried chicken, peach pie, and chocolate malts, that left me searching for another ever since. I've never seen a seven-calendar place.'

Fall Special: Better Weather, More Comics

I hope the weather is better by September, but if not, at least I'll have more stuff to read from the comfort of my home.

What's new that's coming out? DC has a Plastic Man mini-series I was briefly interested in. Then I saw it was written by Christopher Cantwell. After that Hellcat mini-series last year, he's firmly on my "avoid like the plague" list. Oh well, DC's 2024 goose-egg continues.

Amid all the Venom War crap, Marvel solicited a couple of mini-series, Dazzler (by Jason Loo and Rafael Loureiro), and Avengers Assemble (by Steve Orlando and Cory Smith.) Honestly, in both cases it's mostly curiosity about the overall cast. Dazzler on tour, with Domino, Strong Guy and Jamie Madrox as her crew. Avengers Assemble looks like Captain America, She-Hulk, Hercules, Julie Power, Hawkeye, Shang-Chi, Night Thrasher, Monica Rambeau, Living Lightning and Wonder Man. I feel like that's too big a cast for 5 issues, but what the hell, points for throwing a wide net.

Image has Moon is Following Us by Daniel Warren Johnson, and I don't know that I'll get this, but it caught my eye, so I figure it's worth checking the next couple months' solicits to decide. Mad Cave has Body Trade by Zac Thompson and Jok, about a guy looking for the body of his dead son. It's a revenge story, so I'm sure it'll end with a rumination on the hollowness of revenge, but I can always hope otherwise.

Titan Manga has the first volume of Corpse Blade, a manga set in a zombie apocalypse. I'm not sure about this one, because it's listed as the first volume of three, but the text describes it as a legendary series, which makes me wonder if there were a bunch of spin-off mangas. Not sure I'm up for that. Yen Press has the first volume of Blade and Bastard about a guy who's body was found in a dungeon and resurrected, and now goes back in to retrieve the dead for cash, while trying to find clues to his own past.

What's wrapping up? Commercial Space was solicited by Scout for release in March, but they're resolicited it for September. It's a one-shot, so it would technically end when it begins. I thought I'd read The Boxer was only 8 volumes, but volume 8 certainly doesn't sound like a conclusion, so maybe that info was out of date.

What's left? Quite a bit. Werewolf by Night, Babs, Loop, The Pedestrian and Red Before Black will all be on issue 2. Apparently Red Band wasn't part of the title for Werewolf by Night, it's just some sort of "mature content" designation. Also, probably not good I forgot to check for Red Before Black on the first sweep through, which wasn't a problem for any of the other books.

(I skim through every publisher they list on the Previews website, and when I went past Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, I saw Barb the Last Berzerker, and for a second where I confused the title, I thought Ennis had decided to do a kid-friendly version of Babs. I was just trying to picture him dealing with the restrictions that would bring. "What do you mean I can't have a two-page discussion about how some wizard is a wanker, and precisely how much of a wanker he is?")

Scout resolicited the fourth issue Rogues, while Deadpool is up to issue 6, Vengeance of the Moon Knight is up to issue 9, although the solicit only says "Classified". Which I assume means it's time for Marc Spector's return. Anytime I true to short that book to initials for my notes, I always screw-up and write "VKM" instead of "VMK", so for some reason it's making me think of Vince McMahon.

Oh, and Fantastic Four is up to issue 25.

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)

Elena (Eva Bourne) is kept deep underground in some sort of facility. Barry Nyle (Michael Rogers) will question her each day, trying for some sort of response he only sometimes gets. Elena has abilities. Telepathy, for one. She seems able to change TV channels with her mind. She makes a nurse's eyes explode at one point.

Elena would like to leave, and it seems like something in the facility wants to help. I think it's the glowy pyramid located somewhere in the facility, though the whys and wherefores escape me. The person who founded the place, some "utopia through mind-altering drugs" guy, now a debilitated wreck, thinks of Elena as the future, but doesn't have any clue what's actually happening with her.

The movie is set in 1983, and writer/director Panos Cosmatos definitely tries to capture a late-70s/early-80s aesthetic. Barry's car, the fashions, his mother (I think) watching Reagan on a news program, the computers. The lighting in the facility is often an overwhelming artificial red that reminds me of the room in 2001 that houses HAL's computer brain (or maybe it's the same color as the red dot that was his "eye".) The halls are endless, identical right angles of blank, shiny plastic, but the elevators have that fake wood laminate crap on the walls. The musical score is heavy on synthpop and deep bass notes, the latter especially around Barry. There are security, things ("Sentionauts") that look like a bootleg Daft Punk in the helmet, but the odd look of their outfits evoke the proper era.

A lot of the movie, especially when it's focused on Elena, is given a sort of dreamlike quality. She always moves at a slow shuffle. The film often uses an after-image effect, like there's a ghost of her, trailing her, or in some cases preceding her. She barely speaks, or even makes any sounds. Even when some hideous, straitjacketed thing is trying to gnaw her ankles, she just drags herself away at a snail's pace.

Rogers plays Nyle with this barely contained resentment. Everything he says carries an edge. His mother tells him there's some dinner in the fridge, he can't even bother to look at her when he says, "Oh, that's nice." His speaking at Elena (can't call them conversations) always carry double meanings and threats. The first time we see them interact, when she won't respond, he starts tapping his pen against his clipboard, louder and faster until she gives him a reaction. Then he stops.

There's one flashback, to 1966, which shows what happened to him. Basically, he took something and either met a god on the other side, or became convinced he did. Outside the shots of whirling clouds and a statue of a man that seems to shift medium over time, he crawls from a perfect black circle in a white void, now covered in tar or oil and confronts Elena's mother, as white as the room. I took it that he killed her in a fucked-up mental state (and his black stains her, and her white stains his fingers), but Elena was either already born or they were able to save her.

But then there's the very end, which I'm going to spoil, so if you want to avoid it, watch the movie first, then come back. I'll wait to start in the next paragraph.

Barry's lost it, out of either impatience with Elena or frustration that he's not been recognized as the special one. He doffs his Carl Sagan wig and special contacts, throws on some Noriega puffy leather onesie and goes to kill Elena. Who has escaped, but he had her implanted with a tracker so he follows along. He kills a couple of stoners sitting around a campfire, and finally finds Elena. She won't approach him, so he tries to go to her.

Except his feet are tangled in the underbrush, he trips and smashes his head on a rock. And he's dead. *sad trombone*

I admit, I wondered how the confrontation would play out, since Elena didn't seem to react quickly to anything, but she doesn't do anything here. No indication she manipulated the plants or encouraged their growth. I thought maybe he'd hurt her, or she'd get frightened enough to react like she did when the nurse stole the photo of Elena's parents, but no. Barry's just a clumsy, stupid lunatic.

Which is maybe the point. Whatever ideals the founder had, it was all a bunch of bullshit. They took drugs and Elena's mother died, and Barry's fucked in the head, yet left in charge of the place. The founder is a dying old man who lies in a bed watching documentaries about resorts in Hawaii. The girl he thought was going to save humanity's soul spent her life trapped in a featureless cube, at Barry's mercy (and I can't tell if Barry is jealous of Elena, or he transferred his lust from her mother to her. Probably both.) Elena can barely talk, or function, or do anything. The last we see of her, she's approaching the one home in a suburb of identical houses where a TV's glow can be perceived through the windows.

Weird movie. Visually striking, but weird. And I really don't know how I feel about that ending.

Off on a Tangent

I'm absolutely sure that is not the case.

Volume 2 of DC's Tangent Comics, collects five of the one-shots from that imprint: The Joker (by Karl Kesel, Matt Haley, Tom Simmons and Chris Eliopoulos), Nightwing (John Ostrander, Jan Duursema, Gloria Vasquez, Dave Lanphear), Secret Six (Chuck Dixon, Tom Grummett, James Sinclair, Ken Lopez), Doom Patrol (Dan Jurgens, Sean Chen, Kevin Conrad, Ray Kryssing, Jason Wright, Dave Lanphear), and The Batman (Dan Jurgens, Klaus Janson, Gregory Wright, Comicraft).

Each one is a different type of story. Secret Six is pretty much a "put the team together" story with a bunch of disparate characters happening to run into each other investigating the same thing. Doom Patrol is your classic time travel story where attempts to change the future only bring it about. Joker is a mystery from the perspective of a cop the Joker seems to have taken an interest in, although the reasons for that seem pretty weak once revealed. But I think we're supposed to take it that the Joker's trying to process some trauma in a less-than-ideal manner. Nightwing is kind of a "shadow war/wheels within wheels" story of people vying for power out of sight of everyone else. And Batman is a monster story and doomed romance thing.

The art leans to standard superhero comic style. Grummett and Chen are the artists they've always been, making sure all the visual information is there, easy to interpret and follow. Duursema's the most distinctive, but also the most '90s in look. Lots of busy little lines and questionable proportions and anatomy for the characters. But Nightwing is the least "superhero" of the books, with the backstabbing, manipulation and working in the shadows, so it makes sense to not look like the others.

I've always read that if Klaus Janson is the inker, the art just ends up looking like his. No matter the penciler, Janson's heavy inks overwhelm it and make the look his own. I've read the Wolverine issues Byrne penciler that Janson inked, and I'd tend to agree, it doesn't look much like Byrne's work. Apparently Dan Jurgens is the exception, because The Batman still looks very much like a Jurgens-drawn comic, just with thicker, messier lines than when Norm Rapamund or someone else inks him. I don't know if Janson dialed it back or what.

Since most of the stories are also the first appearance of these versions of the characters, there's a fair amount of exposition or flashbacks. Four pages spent explaining how Batman is a suit of armor controlled by a knight who was tricked into turning against King Arthur by Morgan le Fay, so Merlin condemned him to live trapped within his castle (The House of Secrets) until he atoned. Exactly how he's supposed to do that if he hasn't managed it after several centuries is not outlined, but Merlin's always kind of a shithead, so that tracks. Dude's just pissed le Fay outflanked his withered butt.

Some integrate it into the flow better than others. In Nightwing, Ostrander handles explaining the mysterious magic-using cabal by having one character pass the information along to the President in a dream. With Doom Patrol, since the characters traveled back in time to prevent the Earth exploding, Jurgens just has them explain whatever particular event they're trying to stop as they're trying to stop it.

The re-imagining of the characters and concepts works better for some than others. The Joker as a female vigilante/pest that focuses mainly on mocking or humiliating authority figures isn't bad. Actually, it feels like some of this has been co-opted into Harley Quinn over the last decade (although Harley's got a lot more 4th wall breaking.) Batman as a true dark or disgraced knight, who carries on his mission endlessly because he sees it as the only chance he's got to be free, rather than from a childhood vow to end crime, that can work. Wildcat as a codename for a young lady who transforms into a feral werecat when she speaks her trigger word (Shazam)? Not so much.

All the issues suffer from what seems like a competition between the writers to name-check as many characters or concepts as possible. In Doom Patrol, the teenage daughter of the doctor leading the attempt to change the past says her mother called her "Firehawk" when she was just a kid. It never comes up again, and the young lady demonstrates no fire or bird-themed abilities, so it really feels like just checking a box. Secret Six references a bio-weapon used against Eastern Europe the year before. Codename? Red Tornado. I didn't do an exact count, but I feel like Nightwing wins, especially once the mage "Hex", starts referencing spells called "The Emerald Eye" or "Ring of Oa."

The re-designs vary in how similar they are to their namesakes. Batman's a big red suit of armor, and instead of pointy ears, has a pair of similar-looking (but larger) spines on the shoulders. Still the same emblem, though tilted on its axis. Joker combines bits of Harley Quinn with the Joker, and the poofy-sleeved coat reminds me of some of the Royal Flush Gang.

On the other hand, Hex (real name: Vincent Lord, don't know if that's a reference to something) looks like Constantine crossed with Gambit, and has the same sort of sleazy yet self-assured air you'd expect from a fusion of those two. Plastic Man's a big, shiny, green-faced living polymer that looks kind of like a robot. The look and the name don't fit, but the name does fit his powers and composition, and it was given to him by his government handlers, so I can see them taking a direct, literal approach.

Sunday Splash Page #328

 

"The Face of Mars," in Martian Manhunter (vol. 2) #1,000,000, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Carla Feeny (color artist), Ken Lopez (letterer)

The Martian Manhunter had long stints as a back-up feature in various DC books back in the Silver Age, and a 4-issue mini-series in the late '80s, but he didn't get his own, ongoing solo book until John Ostander and Tom Mandrake took a crack at it in the late '90s.

Ostrander shifts between J'onn's Martian roots and his connections with people on Earth, mostly keeping the book from leaning too heavily one way or the other. It's made easier since the Martians had been established as performing scientific experiments on Earth in the distant past. So J'onn can run into remnants of the White Martians' experiments - drawn in slippery, toothy-ridden form by Mandrake - or even a few Martians that transferred their minds into human bodies and have been doing so for decades or more.

But you also have stories where J'onn has to contend with his brother Ma'alefa'ak, who gets a name that basically implies he's cursed (which she intended as a warning to Ma'alefa'ak), only for him to abduct and torture other Martians until J'onn catches him and his telepathy is shut down. Which leaves him free to create a plague that only attacks telepathic Martians and causes them to burn to death. That would be a great lesson in the danger of self-fulfilling prophecies. You know, if J'onn hadn't been the last Martian left on the planet.

Still, it leads to a lot about how J'onn lost himself in grief for some period of time before being accidentally brought to Earth. Ostrander delves into the nature of Martian beliefs (the Green Martians, anyway, he doesn't diverge from the "ruthless supremacists" mold Morrison stuffed the White Martians into), how J'onn perceives his duty as a "manhunter", things like that.

Those parts work pretty well. Mandrake's art, with those loose pencils and heavy shadows, is well suited for a species of shapeshifters. J'onn's telepathy, combined with some of the stuff he finds in the minds of his enemies, offers another avenue for Mandrake to bring a horror element to the work. It's not a horror book by any means - definitely closer to a detective book - but the nature of the Martian Manhunter's powers means he's going to face stranger, more dangerous things in the course of his investigations.

Likewise, the exploration of J'onn's life on Earth outside being a JLA member is interesting. Ostrander runs with the idea that J'onn has a lot of identities across the world, not just John Jones, private detective. Famous Brazilian authors. A Japanese boy who transforms into a giant robot. A dumb muscle super-villain (who somehow always screws things up for whatever gang he gets hired on to). A cat. It fits not only with J'onn's ability to assume different forms, but with his image of himself as a philosopher, striving to see things from many different perspectives.

One thing that doesn't particularly work is that Ostrander has Ma'alefa'ak kill J'onn's friend and partner, Karen Smith, after "John Jones" finally revealed the truth about himself, but before there'd been any sort of reconciliation or real conversation about it between them. It ends up leading to the DEO (mostly Cameron Chase of the short-lived series Chase) finding a story Smith started writing about the truth about John, and the DEO trying to force J'onn to tell them secret identities of other heroes, but there's never really any reckoning for J'onn about Karen's death, all the times he used his telepathy to make her forget things she saw him do, or where things were left between them.

I like Ostrander's work, but women have an extraordinarily high mortality rate in his stuff, there's no question.

I also don't love giving J'onn a long-standing enmity with Apokolips. It makes sense that Darkseid would want beings with the array of powers Martians have under his control, and symbolically, I can see it. Guy weakened by fire, venturing into a world with fire everywhere. A telepath roaming a planet full of suffering and death, where the inhabitants believe their pain is proof of their ruler's love. J'onn, coming from a people who routinely intermingled thoughts and bodies, as a way of connection and healing, against Darkseid, who wants all thoughts to be his thoughts anyone. Still, it feels a bit like punching out of one's weight class, even for the Martian Manhunter.

Saturday Splash Page #130

 

"A New Knight," in Starman (vol. 2) #3, by James Robinson (writer), Tony Harris (penciller), Wade von Grawbadger (inker), Gregory Wright (colorist), John Workman (letterer)

James Robinson's Starman is a lot about legacy, but it starts with a legacy almost cut short. The eldest son of the original Starman is killed, just an hour or so into his first patrol. There's the younger brother, Jack, but he derided the costume and his brother not long before, so it seems unlikely he'll be able to fill the void, assuming he even tries.

Tony Harris is the primary artist for the first 4 years of the book, drawing around 3 dozen issues. He was spelled periodically by Steve Yeowell, or the guests artists who drew one-shot issues set at some point in Opal City's past. Harris' Jack Knight is a bit of a scarecrow, all wiry limbs and scruffy hair. Sort of a perpetually weary look, with his face lined with deep shadows. Aviator goggles and tattoos, a leather jacket he doesn't wear to his big showdown with his brother's killer because he doesn't want it to get torn up.

Maybe that fits for a character who seems to love the past. Jack's an antiquities or collectible dealer, depending on where the line between the two is drawn. Things with some age, made rare by time or circumstance. Stuff with some history to it. It fits for a book that is so concerned with history, be it Jack's, his father's, the Shade's, Opal City, or even the name "Starman." Everything in the book builds on something from the past, starting with Starman's history with The Mist and expanding from there.

The Mist is probably the main villain of Harris' run. The series opens with an all-out assault on Opal by the original and his two children, Kyle and Nash. From there, it's Nash who engineers another attack later on and haunts Jack for long stretches of the book. Jack makes a trip to New York, teaming up with Wes Dodds and Dian Belmont to track down a memento of the original Mist, all in an act of mercy towards what appears to be a shattered old man. Some of that works better than others - Robinson's build-up of Nash ultimately ends with kind of a wet fart - but it generally serves to highlight the sort of Starman Jack's going to be.

Robinson sows a lot of seeds in the early going, introducing the Starman of the '70s, a Talokkian named Mikhail, plus a gentle version of Solomon Grundy. A theater poster that draws people into Hell, one of whom is a Sherlock Holmes stand-in. The ghost of a pirate wrongly executed. Most don't conclude until after Harris has left, save for "Solly's" arc, and even that only so much as any arc ever concludes for Solomon Grundy.

Opal City itself is a big part of the book, and Harris does his best to make it feel, again, like a place with history. A harbor town, with bridges spanning the waters. Some of the taller skyscrapers, the high-end apartments and business sectors, wouldn't necessarily look out of place in Batman: The Animated Series, albeit a bit brighter. Opal's got some shadows, but it's not that kind of dark. But there's also older neighborhoods, the ones Jack tends to frequent. Smaller structures, stone archways and bridges. Homes that have space for hanging gardens in them, but also steep rooftops with little clock towers scattered about it. I don't know architecture, but Harris' art gives the city some personality.

But like I said, Tony Harris leaves the book after 4 years, right about the time Jack leaves Opal for a somewhat shorter period. . .

Random Back Issues #130 - Black Cat #5

Can I trade it in for Flagstaff, or maybe Santa Fe?

This is the opening chapter of "The Gilded City" arc, the big heist that MacKay's entire Black Cat run (spanning the previous volume) was building to. Felicia, her crew, and the Black Fox have gathered all the pieces they need to break into the vault where the New York Branch o' da T'ieves Guild sends all their stolen goods.

This issue largely boils down to Felicia and the Fox descending through a series of tunnels to the place where they'll use the "dimensional resonator" she broke into Stark's building to make, to help the Randall Gate - whose design she copied from the one in Iron Fist's place - open the doorway they need.

In the meantime, flashbacks! First, to the point when Felicia told Fox that she was going to head out on her own, and that her first heist would be to get her father out of prison. Also, that she was taking the name "Black Cat", a combination of Fox's title and her father's, Walter Hardy, aka "The Cat".

A different "The Cat" from the one that became Tigra. At least, I hope so. That would be weird. "Felicia, your dad appeared to die, but actually, he traveled back in time, became a costumed female crimefighter, then a werecat-woman who was written as extremely horny by Steve Engelhart, and later humiliated by Bendis' latest attempt to prop up a crime boss character."

Anyway, Black Fox reveals 2 critical pieces of information. First, the New York Thieves made a deal with a being called The Gilded Saint. 10% of their take in exchange for immortality. Second, he's dying. He tried to get a lot of different cures, but he either can't get them, or they don't work. Even tried asking Dracula to turn him, but Drac remembers when Fox cheated him in a card game (detailed in an issue of the first volume), then sicced Ulysses Bloodstone on Drac to cover his escape. Dracula would rather watch Fox wither and die than turn him and have the guy under his thumb for an eternity.

I guess at that age, you find your kicks where you can.

Felicia should be getting bad vibes by this point, but Fox is still spooling some line about wanting to go out committing a heist no one else can, so she tells the guys to fire up the Randall Gate. But instead of all that gold landing in their laps, a giant skeleton emerges from a tear in the air in front of Felicia and demands answers. The Fox wants the immortality of the Thieves Guild transferred to he and Felicia, and in exchange, he'll hand over Manhattan (the deed to which Felicia swiped from the Sanctum Sanctorum.)

{2nd longbox, 140th comic. Black Cat (vol. 4) #5, by Jed MacKay (writer), Michael Dowling (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer)}

The Double Human - James O'Neal

This is the second book in a series which is not quite post-apocalyptic, but possibly on its way there? I mean, there is a lot going on in this world that O'Neal works in during what is otherwise about a cop trying to find a serial killer.

Let's see, where to begin? The U.S. has been hit by enough terror attacks of various types that there are five "Quarantine Zones" that are no longer considered part of the country, including what used to be Miami and South Florida. Climate change has resulted in it basically raining all the time in Florida, but somehow, large portions of the state are still above water. There is an entire separate species of hominids that look just like humans, but they live a really long time and they can heal from just about anything. The cop was married to one, but apparently they can't interbreed with regular old humans, so his kids are actually from some jackass that they hoped got blown up in the first book, but is still alive. The Internet barely exists, and a lot of people drive steam-powered cars (which they had to modify by adding a boiler.)

Oh, and apparently there are aliens on their way towards Earth. I mean, that's just kind of in the backdrop, something the characters mention once in a while.

O'Neal lets us know who the killer is early on. So the mystery is, variously, whether the killer is one of these other-human types, whether the cop's suspicion that he changed his name is correct, and whether the cop will catch him before he kills the attractive teacher the cop's struck up a friendship with.

There's another subplot about the cop's friend trying to prove he can be more than just a guy who drives a beat, that's he's got initiative and intuition and all that stuff. He starts out seeming pretty over his head, and you figure he's cooked, but the further into the book you get, the more he starts to demonstrate at least some ability to think on his feet and take chances. Which can take a person a fair distance, I guess.

O'Neal jumps between characters or subplots a lot in every chapter, usually not sticking with one for more than a couple of pages. He also loves ending on cliffhangers. Not just chapters, he'll sometimes end every section within a chapter on a cliffhanger. But everyone being in peril or confronted with startling truths at once dilutes the effect. Which startling revelation am I supposed to be excited to learn? It's better when he parcels out the tension sparingly.

'They were all growling and grunting. Another moved in toward the big light dog and that's when Besslia realized what was happening. They were communicating. Those feral dogs had developed a language.'

Trading Up, Trading Down

With Deadpool having another fight with Crossbones in last week's issue of Deadpool, I got thinking about villains who switched arch-foes.

Kingpin is one of the big ones, at least on the Marvel side. Starts out causing headaches for Spider-Man, eventually becomes Daredevil's #1 enemy. Fisk got switched to a less-prominent character, but gets to be the Big Bad. The one everybody expects to make an appearance eventually.

(Spidey seems to "loan" a lot of his Rogue's Gallery out, like Sandman and Hydro-Man each being part of the Frightful Four at different times, or Electro tangling with Daredevil. But I think those guys really remain "Spider-Man villains.")

I think you could add the Sphinx as a similar case, shifting from the Fantastic Four to Nova (and to a lesser extent, the New Warriors). Except Richard Rider is so many more steps down the ladder from the Fantastic Four than Daredevil is from Spider-Man, it was a downgrade. Nova doesn't have his own title often enough or long enough for the Sphinx to get regular play.

Alternatively you've got Sabretooth. First appeared in Iron Fist, but is now tied heavily to Wolverine. In that case, Sabretooth actually upgraded not only from just another enemy to the Evil Opposite Villain, but ended up tied to a much higher-profile guy.

Count Nefaria was an X-Men foe at one point, but even allowing that Thunderbird died trying to stop him, Nefaria's far and away better known as an Avengers' enemy. If not on the scale of Kang or Ultron, at least he has a couple of prominent stories. (The extreme power upgrade, making him more of a direct threat, helped a lot.)

Crossbones' situation seems most similar to Sphinx, sadly. He was never Captain America's #1 foe. Not even the #1 guy to fight, really, not with Batroc's seniority and fun attitude. But being The Big Bad's Top Goon carries a certain level of respectability. Hell, he whupped Daredevil's ass once (admittedly around the point in Nocenti's run where Murdock had a nervous breakdown and forgot he was Daredevil.) If he's getting tied to Deadpool as Another Killer Who Doesn't Like Deadpool, that is not an upgrade. Deadpool's got plenty of those guys, and every writer is eager to add more.

Vengeance Valley (1951)

Burt Lancaster plays the adopted son of a big cattle rancher, targeted by a pair of violent, stupid brothers angry about their sister having a kid out of wedlock. Note they make no attempt to help provide for or raise the kid (not that she asks them to), they're just here to find and kill the dad, over her objections and refusal to name the father.

It's not Lancaster, rather the birth son (played by Robert Walker) of his adoptive father. Except Walker's married, and a chickenshit, so he won't cop to being the father. Even after his wife (Joanne Dru) figures it out (because Lancaster brought the new mom $500 and Walker just so happened to overdraw with a $500 withdrawal he can't explain.), Walker insists that was to help Lancaster.

Walker plays his role very well, as a conniving, quick-talking, back-stabber. He's got a perfect shit-eating grin, reminding me of the worst coworkers I ever had. The ones who always have an excuse, who find any way they can to shirk even easy duties and don't care if that screws everyone else. Who can never understand why you're making such a big deal about it. They didn't do anything wrong! 

The movie is really about how everyone has made excuses for Walker his entire life, and what kind of person that produces. His dad won't admit the truth about his son to himself. Lancaster knows Walker's a piece of crap, but thinks he owes everything to the old man, so he covers for him. Dru, I think, convinced herself Walker was a better man than he was. Or else got tired of waiting for Lancaster to make a move, because they're clearly interested in each other.

So, to a lesser extent, it's about wondering when Lancaster is finally going to reach his limit with shielding Walker. It takes longer than it ought to, but I think Lancaster takes his frustration out on other people. The idiot brothers, a guy who steals four of their cattle. Lancaster does a fair amount of punching and getting punched, but I wonder if he'd rather be fighting someone else.

The final showdown takes a while to set up, then resolves very quickly, but at least it plays off Walker's established tendencies. He uses the cheapest, readily available goons (the 2 brothers), then doesn't stick around to make sure they finish the job because it's more important to get a head start running.

What I Bought 6/14/2024

My boss is back from his, to be clear, deserved vacation, and I'm very happy. Because it means all the questions and requests he normally deals with stop getting funneled to me.

Deadpool #3, by Cody Ziglar (writer), Roge Antonio (artist), Guru-eFX (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - In the merciless Mustard Yellow Wastes, one man hunts another.

Deadpool and Crossbones fight. Crossbones has a "holoshield" that deflects bullets, although it just looks like a bulky flak vest with his logo on it. If it's supposed to glow or project, nobody told the art team. It is less resistant to swords - sort of, Deadpool notes it takes a dozen stabs to get through, but we see him drawing blood right from the start - and then Crossbones uses some explosives. They are, I assume, strapped to him, but don't hurt at all, while Deadpool's lower half gets separated from the rest of him.

What I'm saying is, there's a lot of stuff where I don't feel the writer and artist are on the same page.

Right as Deadpool's about to get shot in the head, Ellie arrives with some sort of teleporter Power Glove she built from watching online videos and punches Crossbones in the face. And then Deadpool kicks Crossbones through the portal, which now leads to a swamp instead of Ellie's home in Arizona. Back at Deadpool's office, everybody talks. Taskmaster thinks the aspect of rapid healing Ellie got may also have made her a rapid learner? Be better off saying Agent Preston participated in SHIELD's "Take Your Daughter to Work Day," and Ellie poked into something she shouldn't.

It is nice to see that, at the outset, Ellie and Princess are getting along. I expected there to be a measure of jealousy between Deadpool's daughters. We'll see, when Deadpool's in trouble, if he shows more concern for Ellie if that changes things.

On the downside, Death Grip has tracked down, sigh, the Muramasa Blade. The thing Logan had made out of part of his soul that you don't heal after you get cut with it. And Death Grip used magic to break it into pieces. I guess it lets him attack with each piece from different directions. Still, am I never to be free of Daniel Way's terrible concepts?!