What I Bought 1/15/2025

Diamond filed for bankruptcy apparently. I know that doesn't automatically mean death in business, but it doesn't seem like a good sign. It isn't the worst thing for the distributors to have competition, rather than a monopoly. But I did like being able to go to one place and check out all the comic publishers and what they were offering. Found a lot of books I probably wouldn't have otherwise. Oh well, it's out of my control, unless I get stinking rich and suddenly decide I want to be a businessman (the latter is far more improbable than the former.)

Laura Kinney: Wolverine #2, by Erica Schultz (writer), Giada Belviso (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - I guess the back of the claw can't cut.

Elektra asks Laura to let her handle the transfer of a mutant kid. Laura declines. The buyer escapes with the kid, who has the mutant ability to explode, so that's not good. Elektra and Laura alert Mayor Luke Cage (that's weird to type, but preferable to Mayor Wilson Fisk or Jonah Jameson) that the kid is going to be used in the middle of a protest against Cage repealing Fisk's anti-vigilante laws. Cage asks Laura not to get involved. Laura declines. Then she nearly starts a fight with a bunch of protestors, and the kid blows up. Great hustle, Laura.

So, in a continuation of last issue, Laura's very angry and taking it out and everyone. Especially anyone advising her to exhibit patience, caution, good judgement, you name it. It's funny to watch her complain that people think she heals instantly, but gunshots take time to heal (and still hurt), without considering that maybe the way she's fighting is why her healing factor is having so much trouble keeping up. Laura knows how to be silent and sneaky, I've seen it in other stories. She's the one choosing to leap into every fight yelling and hacking away like she's in a particularly lucid berserker fury. She jumps on top the getaway car instead of maybe slashing through the tires to slow it down.

And now it's literally blown up in her face - assuming that last page wasn't some sort of fakeout - so we'll see if that prompts some sort of reflection or adjustment. Or maybe she'll just keep barging ahead, trying to help people to escape her frustration with how Krakoa fell apart. Either/or.

Avengers Assemble #5, by Steve Orlando (writer), Jose Luis (penciler), Oren Junior (inker), Sonia Oback (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Cap-Snake, he's gonna get you! Cap-Snake, he's. . .I don't know where I was going with that.

It's the Avengers against the Serpent Society (plus Cap-Snake.) That's it, that's the issue. The key seems to be the Avengers do demonstrate teamwork and cooperation, where each member of the Society fights on their own. Anaconda's clearly not going to be able to hold Hercules, but no one leaps in to try and blind him or poison him for the time he is caught. Meanwhile, because Hawkeye's holding back against Cap-Snake, Night Thrasher steps in to get Cap-Snake off his back. Which frees up Hawkeye to give She-Hulk some back-up against Titanoboa.

This feels like a place where the mini-series needed more space, because as unfamiliar as some of these characters ought to be with each other, you'd expect teamwork not to come so easily without practice. Also, speaking of Titanoboa, I kept expecting a surprise reveal on that guy's identity. He's strong and large, and able to shrug off punches from She-Hulk and attacks from the Wasp and Photon. But he also keeps boasting about how well he knows the Avengers and their tendencies. Which made me think it was some typically more cerebral villain who ganked Pym Particles or something. But if it's supposed to be anyone we've ever heard of, Orlando's not telling.

Wonder Man deals with the Serpent's Tears by. . .inhaling the lot of it, reasoning that he's not really flesh and blood, so it might not affect him. Given Pit Viper claimed it would affect the soul as well, the fact Simon's gamble works out would seem to imply certain things about his existence. I guess all the dying and returning has to have some drawbacks, depending on how critical you think a soul is.

Maybe Pit Viper can expound on it, if he's in any state after the one-two punch of feeling shocked that Mephisto might have sold him a bill of goods (shocked Pikachu face), and getting his body crushed by Lightspeed's rainbow trail. I though that trail was just light, immaterial, not solid like the trails that follow the bikes in TRON. Learn something everyday, too bad so much of it is of little use.

Past Time - Jules Tygiel

The book is a series of essays about baseball and the U.S. Not how baseball shaped the country's culture, especially given that the team owners are so often reluctant to embrace new things. More how the sport's changes reflect the attitudes of a given time.

So Tygiel might have an essay about Bobby Thompson's game-winning home run against the Dodgers in 1951, and how more people than ever were experiencing the game via radio and even the newer medium of television. Then he'll discuss the challenges faced in trying to adapt to a new way of describing a game to fans, and how many of the team owners resisted broadcasting games, as they many resisted airing them over radio, because they believed fans wouldn't come spend money at the ballpark if they could just listen (or watch) at home.

Which is a far cry from the state of things today, where it's all about TV (or streaming) money, and once teams have that guaranteed money locked in, a lot of them don't see any need to, you know, put together a team that would bring fans to the park by being good enough to compete for a championship.

Some of the essays are more interesting to me than others. Chapter 6, "Unreconciled Strivings," was a brief, but informative look at the Negro Leagues and the various challenges they faced. The push to have more of the teams owned by black people rather than white, and how hard it was to get a stadium of their own, rather than being stuck renting say, the Yankees' stadium when they were on road trips. At the same time, the teams were often trying to encourage white fans to come to the games (mostly without success), to get bigger turnouts. That Sunday games were the only ones that tended to draw big crowds, because that was the only day most black Americans had free to go to games. So teams scheduled a lot of double-headers on Sundays, and unofficially encouraged teams to make sure their best pitchers were available for Sunday games. The push-and-pull between wanting baseball to be integrated, but also not wanting to lose these leagues that were uniquely theirs.

In contrast, I didn't find Chapter 3, "Incarnations of Success," useful or persuasive. It details the rise of four players: Charles Comiskey, Connie Mack, John McGraw, and Clark Griffith. Each later became a manager, and still later, owned their own teams. Each of the four during their playing careers joined various movements to get better pay for the players, or break the reserve clause that meant one team held their rights for as long as it wanted, only to start pushing to reduce player salaries once they were on the management side of things. But that wasn't terribly surprising, and I'm not sure it really highlights anything specific about the United States in the first decades of the 20th Century that wasn't true in lots of other places across the globe and at different times.

I'm not sure the book would be of any interest to a non-baseball fan. It probably isn't in-depth enough about broader history to entice someone in that regard, and the writing can be fairly dry. The amount of humor or energy is reliant on the quotes or anecdotes Tygiel pulls from for each essay.

'Baseball did not appeal to Americans, as many have suggested, because it took less time to play than cricket or townball. The architects of the game deliberately adopted an out and inning structure designed to compress play into the time available for games.'

What I Bought 1/11/2025 - Part 2

Last Friday, once I got through a nerve-wracking drive to work in the snow that had me (not for the first time) questioning my life choices, I took a break for a walk at mid-morning. I got about two steps out the back door before being reminded that the frozen precip the previous weekend never melted back there. Slipped on the ice beneath the fresh snow and got to test the structural integrity of the back of my skull against the ice. Results: inconclusive.

In the meantime, here it is: The last comic from 2024. A first issue, no less. Oooh-la-la. We'll start up the Year in Review posts next Monday.

Laura Kinney: Wolverine #1, by Erica Schultz (writer), Giada Belviso (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - If you're not going to kick too, why even bother extending the toe claws?

Laura is not really settling into life after Krakoa. When she finds a place in the tree base the X-Men had in New York where people have been leaving letters asking for help, she decides to focus on that. So, that's the basic plot: have Laura try to help mutants now that there's no safe island nation. In this case, she's looking for a boy with the ability to give people different emotions, who was taken away from his sister. 

Laura finds the boy, but also finds the ones controlling him are mutants, too, which really pisses her off. I had pictured her as too jaded to be surprised by the notion of mutants exploiting each other for personal gain. But I wasn't keeping track of what she got up to on Krakoa, so maybe she really bought into the notion of mutant solidarity and is angry to see that fall apart.

Angry enough she's just bulling ahead into everything like the Juggernaut. She gets torn up and tossed around a fair bit, because she's fighting stupid. She didn't make any attempt to figure out what she was up against, just charged in and started slashing. She accuses a mutant who created a small safe space for mutants in Dubai of doing so out of guilty conscience. Guilty over not moving to Krakoa? Probably worked out all right for her. Laura does apologize later, though the vague way Polly uses the term "benefactor" makes me think that's going to be a big reveal at some point. By the end of the issue Laura's pursing another letter right into a fight with Elektra.

It all makes it look like Laura's just trying to keep moving so she doesn't have to deal with what losing Krakoa meant to her. Keep busy, do concrete things like helping specific people. Don't think about the people she couldn't protect from ORCHIS. (I'm honestly afraid to ask about Gabby/Honey Badger/Scout's current status.)

Belviso's art reminds of Humberto Ramos'. Mostly in the elongated faces (especially the mouths), and the elongated and angular limbs. The people Belviso draws aren't nearly as oddly proportioned as Ramos' would get, but it has that same sort of feel. I'm not sure if that's a good thing; I was never a Ramos fan (going from Mark Buckingham to him on Peter Parker: Spider-Man gave me whiplash worse than cracking my head on the ice did.) But he clearly has his fans, and Belviso's can handle the quieter moments fine from what I saw here. I'm less sure about the action sequences, which could be a problem if Schultz is going to keep having Laura pick fights.

Three Strangers (1946)

A lady (Geraldine Fitzgerald) approaches two strangers (Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet) separately, and asks them to try a ritual where if 3 strangers ask a favor of an idol of Kwan Yin (goddess of fortune and destiny) at the start of Chinese New Year, she will grant it. In this case, it's a sweepstakes ticket related to a highly-touted horse that will run in a big race later that year. Fitzgerald hopes the money would show her husband she can stand on her own, which will convince him to return from Canada. Greenstreet thinks the money would help him get a spot in an exclusive club for lawyers. Lorre just wants to buy his favorite pub.

They take part, agreeing to split the winnings if their ticket is chosen and the horse wins, but it will be some time until any of that happens. So in the meanwhile, the movie moves between what each of the three get up to in the interim. Fitzgerald's husband returns, but only to request a divorce, as he met someone else in Canada. What seemed like a sort of flight of fancy takes an uglier glint as you see how fixated she is on her goals. Fitzgerald gives her an increasing hint of mania as she tries to make what she wants a reality.

Greenstreet returns to his practice, especially handling the funds of a wealthy widow, who communes with her husband's spirit. He plays it as a skeptic with high regard for himself, and little for anyone else beyond their opinion of him. Lorre gets mixed up in a warehouse robbery that ends in the murder of a police officer and has to go into hiding with one of the other culprits while the ringleader is on trial. He's very relaxed, in a pickled haze that enables him to remain unconcerned, and in a bit of surprise, clear-headed in bad situations.

The movie is similarly structured to On Our Merry Way, although the three stories are slightly more interconnected. Only slightly, as Fitzgerald, Lorre and Greenstreet don't overlap or interact outside the beginning and end of the film. But there is the connection of the legend and the sweepstakes ticket, and how the characters try to get their desires even before they know if the ticket will work out. The movie had a chance to at least tie the thread of Fitzgerald's husband more neatly into the conclusion, and passed it up. Missed opportunity.

As it is, two of the characters are undone by their particular obsessions, and their inability to cope with the reality they won't get what they want. Meanwhile the third shows more fortitude and integrity than anyone would suspect, and is, in a way, rewarded for it.

What I Bought 1/11/2025 - Part 1

Well, I hoped to have these books this time last week, but various winter storms gave the postal service some trouble, so they arrived Saturday. I miss when I looked forward to snow for the time off from school and sledding and whatnot, whereas no I dread the snow because I have to drive to work in it.

Red Before Black #3, by Stephanie Phillips (writer), Goran Sudzuka (artist), Ive Svorcina (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - I didn't need to see a visual representation of Leo's browser search history.

After a flashback where Val is turned away from a support group for veterans because she's a woman, which may mark the first time she experiences her weird "mind forest" thing, we return to the present. Where Leo's driving with Val unconscious in the back, while Leo listens to Fifty Shades of Grey on audiobook. Thankfully Val wakes up and nearly strangles Leo, prompting an abrupt stop and exit of the car.

Then Val has another episode, and again, Leo can see the "magic jungle" too. Which doesn't seem to bother her, but confuses Val quite a bit, until she rushes off towards a voice she hears calling for help, and nearly gets flattened by a big rig. They stop at a gas station, the bald doofus from issue 1 tries to kill Val in the bathroom (because the bad guys know she's working for the feds, though the feds are now trying to hunt her down, thinking she's gone fugitive on them.)

Val ends up shooting the bald doofus, because Leo has her own flashback to a scene with her dad when she was a teenager, I'm guessing. I'm also guessing, given the wavy voice balloons and the faded colors used for that episode that it's Teen Leo calling for help that Val has somehow been hearing. Like their minds are connected by a subconscious thread via trauma?

Either way, Leo now knows Val was originally sent by the feds to get in close to Miles, so at least there's more honest in the impromptu partnership.

Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu #3, by Jed MacKay (writer), Domenico Carbone (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Remember Marc, it's seltzer water and lemon for blood. What am I saying? No way Marc does his own laundry. Probably foists it off on Jake.

Marc and Tigra's conversation about not hiding the fact her old lover is back from the dead will have to wait, because Drug Guy's henchlady just killed the Midnight Mission with her magic sword. Which means there's nothing to stop the cops from barging in and trying to arrest Moon Knight.

A Moon Knight who is very pissed off you just killed his magic home. Plus an Avenger pissed off her boyfriend's been hiding shit. Plus two vampires. Plus a reformed super-villain (8-Ball qualifies, barely), who probably still enjoys beating cops. Point is, this goes badly for the cops.

Still, they can't fight all the cops; it's not productive, so they run to the place Moon Knight fought and killed a guy in the first issue of the Ellis/Declan Shalvey run, where they're able to hook up the TV to learn the dealing of this new drug has been pinned on them. Dirty cops, you gotta love 'em! That doesn't sound right.

So they're fugitives. Seems to be a pattern with today's selections. Hopefully MacKay will spend some time on how the different members of the cast adjust to that. Feels like it would be more of a problem for Tigra or Badr (I assume this is going to cause issues for his medical practice) than some of the others. Plus, it probably enforces more close contact between some of them than is probably safe (Soldier doesn't seem to like 8-Ball, for example.) There's things to play with there, if MacKay will do it.

Carbone's artwork is less rigid than Cappuccio's. The looseness makes the characters look more rumpled, less put-together or composed than they usually are. Which is a good approach at a point when things are falling apart unexpectedly for them and they've lost the security of their home.

Sunday Splash Page #357

"Some of That Old-Time Religion," in Midnight Western Theatre #2, by Louis Southard (writer), David Hahn (artist), Ryan Cody (colorist), Buddy Beaudoin (letterer)

My favorite mini-series of 2021, following Ortensia Thomas, gun-for-hire, and Alexander Wortham, Revolutionary War soldier-turned-vampire. Southard starts each issue with a few pages of Ortensia as a blonde pigtailed girl trying to start up a home with her father in Oregon in 1848, culminating in the men her father hired killing him and sacrificing her.

The majority of each issue, though, is focused on Ortensia (now looking very different) and Alexander at various points through the 1860s. Each of those is its own adventure, often, but not always, involving them dealing with something supernatural, unholy, or just plain strange. I'm not at all sure what the thing they fought in issue 4, which Hahn draws initially a shriveled thing that subsequently Hulks out once it wakes up, was supposed to be.

Those sections aren't in chronological order, as issue 1 is set in 1868, and all the others are set in various earlier years. Which allows Southard to allude to certain things - such as Alexander's complaint in issue 1 about how they'll never reach the coast at this rate, or the preacher in issue 2's remarks about Ortensia - that don't make sense until later issues.

Despite the threats often revolving around cults or creatures that feast on humans, the tone of the stories is kept surprisingly light. Ortensia is unfazed by almost everything they encounter, and Alexander complains mostly about how little he enjoys violence and could they just try a peaceful discussion for once?

Maybe that's a strange approach, but as we see how Ortensia's past unfolded, her blase attitude makes more sense. She's seen worse, she's experienced worse. It also matches Hahn's art, which keeps the violence mostly (but not entirely) bloodless and definitely not graphic. Alexander isn't depicted as a brooding, terrifying creature of the night, but as a well-dressed man, who politely asks the bartender where he could find some livestock, because he's terribly thirsty. Even when he's drawn backlit, wings spreading from his back and only the glint of his eyes visible as men try futilely to shoot him to death, he's yelling at them to stop shooting him, rather than vowing death or anything of that sort.

Plus, it gives the two leads more opportunity to talk, which gives Southard more opportunity to play their personalities off each other. Ortensia's grim determination, where she tends to stay focused on what's straight ahead of her, against Alexander's nervous glancing around as they walk into danger. He's been a vampire for far longer than Ortensia's been what she's become, but he seems to be clinging to his survival instinct a lot harder.

Saturday Splash Page #159

"Early Retirement," in The Silencers #2, by Fred van Lente (writer), Steve Ellis (artist), Dae Lim Yoo (colorist)

A 4-issue mini-series from the early 2000s about a group of super-powered enforcers for a crime family. Their long-time leader with electric powers, Cardinal, is out of prison, and planning to secretly retire to run a flower shop. But there's a new drug on the street that turns users into difficult-to-kill monsters in crablike exoskeleton armor, and whoever is behind it is trying to kill the team.

The Silencers are mostly damaged goods, people with powers that are sometimes dangerous to them. Missile 21, the big flying guy, wears that metal suit that makes him look like a battering ram not just because its useful for hitting things, but because otherwise the velocity he flies at would break his neck. Most of them were scooped up at loose ends and turned into weapons by your standard mobsters. The black suits and ties, the bullshit about family, which roughly translates to keeping your mouth shut and going to prison to protect the bosses.

The Silencers themselves are a group of nutcases and sadists to various degrees, cheating on each other, backstabbing each other. Most of their casualties come as a result of that, rather than anything their enemies do. Stiletto and Kid Chaos were a couple of runaways brought in as new recruits, and while they seem close-knit, Kid Chaos is sleeping around behind Stiletto's back, and Stiletto's whole Dragon Lady look is just a disguise for a scared, immature kid. It's a nice bit of teamwork by Ellis and van Lente, how the designs sometimes match the characters' personalities, and sometimes contrast them.

Of course, the crew's main advantage is the cops and the costumed heroes are all written as such morons I half-suspect Garth Ennis ghost-wrote this thing. Van Lente even gives Cardinal a big speech when the heroes (who Ellis draws a thinly-veiled allusions to DC or Marvel's big names) finally catch up about how the "heroes" will never fight real evil because it's so easy to see them coming.

Then Cardinal takes them all down because, even though they've fought and captured this guy with electric powers many times, they all decided to just stand in a plainly visible puddle of water. The book's cynicism means it fits with the era when it came out, but coming to it 20 years after the fact, it just felt tired. Superheroes don't make real change, yeah yeah. Sometimes you need a group of bastards to get things done, uh-huh. Sir, I believe that horse has been successfully turned to dog food.