Random Back Issues #172 - The Spectre #57

This is the 8th issue of The Spectre to appear in Random Back Issues. God's loaded my dice.

Or maybe not, as the issue begins with Spectre finding the Pearly Gates busted open, and nothing behind them! No angels, no souls, no God. The Spectre and Jim Corrigan have been having their differences recently, but they both want to get to the bottom of this.

Corrigan suggests pounding the pavement, question some suspects. First to Limbo, where an extremely skeletal Deadman is hanging around, watching a bunch of shadows traverse a foggy canyon. Spectre explains God's missing, and Deadman busts a gut, to Spectre's displeasure. Deadman says his god, Rama Kushna, is still around, and he doesn't know the Spectre's God 'from spit,' but it ain't here.

Next stop, Hell. Two angels, Remiel and Duma, are running things, because Lucifer abdicated. Remiel is trying to reform Hell, make it a place souls are redeemed through torment. It's not going great. 'Whip them with love,' apparently being a difficult concept to get across. Duma is zoned out, ignoring Remiel to the point the latter considers murdering the former. 

Spectre kicks in the doors, wishing to speak with the Lord of Hell. Duma, finally showing some life, kneels before him and offers the Key to Hell. The Spectre barely resists, claiming he's no creature of Hell, which Remiel thinks is crazy talk. The Spectre can freely enter Hell, but not Heaven. Michael forced his compliance, and Spectre was given a Sisyphean task to complete, walk the Earth until evil is no more. Well, when you put it that way. . . God sounds like kind of a dick. Maybe it's good he's missing.

Or maybe not. When Spectre delivers the news, the demons go into a frenzy, calling him a liar and attacking him. Which does not go well, and makes the Spectre suspect Hell is behind it, until Remiel points out the demons are afraid. They exist in opposition to God, so if God's gone, will they cease to be? Oblivion terrifies even a demon. I guess Remiel never talked to Jason Lee's character in Dogma, since that guy preferred non-existence to Hell.

At a dead end, the Spectre departs, leaving Duma to cry over Michael's disappearance (I guess Duma loved Michael?), the demons to sulk back to their various fiery pits, and Remiel to remark that for the first time, he feels like he's truly in Hell.

Lucifer's enjoying retirement on a beach in Australia, watching the sunset. Must be nice to have a job that offered retirement benefits. He's unperturbed at Spectre's claim of God's absence, so Spectre sets out to question the pantheons of "lesser" gods. This will involve him barging into places he's not welcome and throwing his weight around like an asshole. Which could either be representative of Corrigan's style of police investigation, or the behavior of Christians throughout human history. Meanwhile, Lucifer sits on the beach, remarking the Spectre should have stayed and watched the sunset. 

{10th longbox, 70th comic. The Spectre #57, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Carla Feeny and Digital Chamelon (color artists), Todd Klein (letterer)}

False Flags - Stephen Robinson

Robinson's focused on Germany's "auxiliary cruisers," merchant ships or freighters that were re-fitted to be combat capable, then sent out under the colors and flags of other nations to prey on shipping. Robinson notes early in the book that, according to the Hague Convention, this was entirely aboveboard, so long as the ships raised the Kriegsmarine flag and removed all false insignia before they started firing. They could have the guns ready to fire before then, but as long as they didn't pull the trigger, it was totally cool.

There are four vessels Robinson focuses on: Orion, Pinguin, Komet (which reached the Pacific through Arctic Sea with help from a Soviet icebreaker) and the Kormoran. They operated in this role only through 1941, primarily in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, though some of the ships saw action in the South Atlantic and around the Antarctic. The Pinguin captured basically an entire fleet of Norwegian whaling vessels in the span of a couple of months. Great for the whales, probably not so great for Norway.

Although Robinson emphasizes that the goal of the raiders was not simply to sink or capture as many ships as possible. Rather, the point was to make it too hazardous for freighters and other merchant ships to travel alone, and to restrict the routes they could take. A convoy can only travel at the speed of its slowest member, so forcing more shipping into convoys, along more circuitous routes that hug friendly coastlines, reduces the amount of shipping that reaches Britain.

Which doesn't mean the raider ships don't want to do direct damage. Robinson tends to move chronologically, shifting between ships in each chapter. He uses remarks from the various captains' logs and memoirs, or articles and letters of the crews, as well as the comments of some of the prisoners from captured ships. Generally speaking, the raiders seem to have treated prisoners fairly well. Better than the blockade runners the prisoners were sometimes transferred to for transport back to Germany.

The comments also provide a sense of the captains' personalities and expectations. The captains of the Orion and Pinguin both clearly expected this to be like the raider activity in the First World War, where they could raise their flag and command a ship to stop engines and not transmit a warning, and everything would be orderly. Instead they find that a lot of these ships try to escape, broadcasting warnings about raiders and firing back (inaccurately) with whatever guns they were loaded with. (Norwegian and Greek ships seem to still, on the whole, surrender quietly, while British ships, unsurprisingly, do not.)

In contrast, Komet's Captain Eyssen didn't waste any time with that sort of "gentlemanly warfare." He raises his flag and fires some shots and tells the ship to surrender or it'll be sunk. If it doesn't surrender, it gets sunk. Period. Of course, Eyssen comes off as generally over-agressive and high on his own supply, usually at the wrong time. He gets it in his head to not only sink all the Dutch supply ships picking up phosphate at Nauru (OK), but, since the island has no defense, to shell the factory and the port as well, basically trashing the place. Except he disguised his ship as a Japanese vessel, and Japan got a lot of phosphate from Nauru, so he kind of pissed off one of Germany's allies. Later, he decided to sink some ships near the Galapagos Islands, which were within the "Pan-American Neutrality Zone", which pissed off the U.S. at a time when we were still not "officially" at war with Germany.

Robinson includes a lot of maps showing the route a given ship traveled over a certain period of time, with markers indicating places where they captured or sank a particular ship, or laid out a minefield. There are several times where ships lay mines, mostly around Australia or New Zealand, and while they don't sink many ships, once their presence is known, those countries' navies have devote some of their limited warships to dealing with that, rather than protecting convoys from U-boats and battleships. Which doesn't go so well for a couple of the raiders when they run into cruisers, but that's the risk of trying to draw your enemy's attention. Sometimes you get actually do get their attention.

'Wehyer had to first rendezvous with the Regensburg in the Marshall Islands to refueled before heading to the Carolines. After passing Santa Cruz, Wehyer decided to disguise the Orion as the Japanese freighter Maebasi Maru and the crew painted characters on the hull copied from a Kodak advertisement produced in Yokohama.'

The Set-Up (1949)

Robert Ryan plays a boxer. Not a great one, not a title holder. A small-timer, who fights once a week in a cramped gym, with a ring so small it sometimes looks as though a fighter could stand in one corner and connect with their jab when their opponent was in the opposite corner. His wife (Audrey Trotter) wants him to stop, but he won't. Not yet. But tonight he's facing an up-and-coming boxer, Tiger Nelson (Hal Baylor), and Ryan's manager and trainer each took money for him to lose in the 3rd round.

We missed the first 30 minutes finishing up Something Big. With this movie coming in at 73 minutes, that's a considerable chunk. By that point, Ryan's in the tiny locker room the collective group of challengers for the night are sharing, and his wife is roaming the neighborhood with a ticket to the fight, silently debating what to do.

The film switches between those two threads as each of the other fighters heads to the ring. We don't see their fights, just the aftermath. One fighter comes back bruised and with a swollen eye, shaken and being harped on by one of the trainers or medics. Another is carried in unable to remember who he is. Through it all, Ryan's sitting and watching and trying to prepare himself. Telling the trainer needling the loser to knock it off, nodding along with the fighter who is sure he can win, because all it takes is one chance. 

Meanwhile, Trotter is moving, seeking a distraction but finding reminders of what she's avoiding everywhere. She doesn't talk much, just walks, and wrings her hands, and the longer she walks, the fewer people are around. Until she's alone on a bridge, watching trolleys pass by on their way someplace else. Does she stick with a guy who keeps going out to get his brains pulped, or leave? Ultimately she's got to make that choice.

The fight is a wild thing. Ryan ignores his trainer's advice to stay and at a distant and wades in, throwing (and taking) punches like Rocky Balboa. It doesn't look good. The kid is landing a lot more punches, though my dad noted that when Ryan lands a hit, it always staggers the kid. But the ref is either bought, or just uninterested in enforcing the rules. Ryan takes at least two low blows, with no reaction. The kid rakes at his ears at one point, and later, when he's sent Ryan to his knees, doesn't retreat to a neutral corner. Instead he hovers, and throws another punch as Ryan starts to stand.

Sometimes when Ryan's knocked down, the camera maintains its position outside the ropes, but at least one time when he's flat on his back, it switches to looking down at his face, like it's the ref counting him out. Although the shot I really liked was right before the start of either Round 2 or 3. His trainer and manager have stepped back, but Ryan's still on the stool, leaned against the corner post, solid black background. He's all alone, more than he knows, and the only way out is forward. The view switches to looking over his shoulder at his opponent, already up on his feet, hands raised, corner full of people that have his back.

During the fighting, the camera also keeps showing us certain members of the crowd. A blind man who has someone describe the action, and at one point is cheering for the kid to closer Ryan's other eye. A middle-aged woman shouting for someone to "kill him!" She doesn't care who gets killed, as long as she sees it. A younger guy that gets really into it, throwing jabs and flinching like he got punched. A heavyset guy who is eating something different each time we see him. Early on, most of them are scornful of Ryan - we hear someone in the crowd call him "grandpa" - but they're ultimately just as happy to see him lay out the kid.

(I joked with my dad the middle-aged woman was really yelling at the vendor, telling him to keep feeding that guy until he popped.)

And there's the gambler, with his irritating lady who makes big bets because she knows the fix is in. Too bad for her nobody told Ryan until the fight was already going. Too bad for Ryan, the gambler won't accept that explanation. It's a quick shift, Ryan back in the locker room, getting congratulated by the medical staff, all weary smiles as he wonders where his guys are. And then the gambler walks in, the medic leaves, not in a hurry, but he won't meet Ryan's eyes.

Which is when it all starts to hit Ryan how bad this is going to go. He was ready to walk into the ring and face a boxer who was supposed to be younger, faster, stronger, better than him, but he's not ready for this. Now he tries to run, but just like in the ring, there are no other exits. He's got to walk forward into another fight he's not going to win.

What I Bought 7/2/2026

I decided July is "fish or cut bait" month for several books. Maybe not the best time for it; there are already two mini-series ending this month. But there were a couple of new books I picked up I intended to decide whether to stick with them, and a couple of others that I think have gotten a fair shot, but need to really sell me on them. So we'll see how that goes.

The Deadman #2, by W. Maxwell Prince (writer), Martin Morazzo (artist), Chris O'Halloran (colorist), Good Old Neon (letterer) - Boston Brand unwittingly dissolved the blood doorway that would lead those souls back to their proper realm.

Deadman needs to know what that demon was, but the only book that would tell him was destroyed. Fortunately, not until after it was read by a guy with a perfect photographic memory, who Deadman and Batman once arrested. For breaking into a museum to read rare books, the man was sentenced to Blackgate Prison. That seems not at all insane.

Deadman tries to possess Batman to get into the prison, but Bats apparently trained his mind to resist such things. Of course he did. Plastic Man was helping Bats with some case involving drug-smuggling mummies, so Deadman takes him instead. As he's getting info, an inmate takes his meds which cause him to turn into a giant plant guy, who deals Plastic Man a mortal blow. Good work, Deadman! OK, fine, he keeps Plas' soul from moving on, and the Bibliophile tells him the creature he saw is from Hell. 

If "The Bloom" is someone I'm expected to know, I don't. Morazzo's got a little Frank Quietly in his art. Mostly I guess the texture of his characters, their faces. Sort of rough, pebbly effect to their skin and wrinkles and whatnot. His Batman definitely tends towards the broad and bulky end of the spectrum. No nimble acrobat here!

The theme of the issue might be "change." The first page is Rama Kushna explaining how souls go through cycles of rebirth, and in each life accumulate good and bad in their karmic ledgers. And Deadman keeps making assumptions about people. He assumes Plastic Man just became a hero on a whim, a flip of the coin, but learns different when he possess him. Gets caught flat-footed by Batman's efforts to not only resist possession, but develop tools to let him communicate with Deadman's spiritual form. He seems to expect the Bibliophile to be some monster, but decides just by looking at him in prison that he's no bad guy. Duh. He broke into a museum just to have new books to read.

(There's also this thing, it was in the first issue as well, that presents people as equations. "Lorna - 3 Nights Sleep = 1/2 Lorna" And in both cases, the person who has been reduced to "1/2" tries something to help, something from their past, and it doesn't work. The equation still comes out to "1/2 Lorna." So you can't fix anything going back? Well, I'm completely screwed.)

So is Deadman changing? If he keeps making assumptions about people, keeps thinking they can't or won't really change? Still hanging on to attachments from a life he can't have? 

Batgirl #21, by Tate Brombal (writer), Stephen Segovia (artist), Rain Beredo (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) -  That's definitely a very cool cover by David Talaski, with the falling flowers and the eyehole as a prison window.

While her friends try to escape the cops - who are called "TUCOs", and I'm offended on behalf of Eli Wallach's character - Cass is stuck inside some mental trigger thing. Dr. Forget-Me-Not wants Batgirl to solve the murder of the little girl, using only what she can glean from her own memories. Which she now has access to all of, even when she was a baby.

Except she (and we) see all the memories from the third person perspective. She's watching herself fight the little blonde girl, who was Forget-Me-Not's attempt to create an ultimate weapon by making a person you can program with whatever identity or thoughts you need.

Forget-Me-Not and David Cain argued about something, which Napolitano (I'm assuming) renders as unintelligible squiggles because Cass didn't understand words at that point in her life. I can't decide if that makes sense, ignoring the question of whether I should be worrying about something like that in a plot like this. I don't understand what birds are saying when they sing, but I still remember what the song sounds like. Cass as she is now could probably piece some of it together from the sounds.

Whatever. She knows the girl was killed with a large knife. She knows she had the knife at one point during a spar with Bronze Tiger, but it disappeared. She knows Cain and the doctor left her and the other girl alone at some point because of the argument. The girl tried to hug her and Cass didn't understand what that was. And so Cass comes to the conclusion she's the killer. 

I'm assuming there's some kind of bait-and-switch there. Not that Cass couldn't have killed someone else before she learned to read body language. More I don't see what it adds to her as a character. She gets to feel bad about killing someone who was victimized at the hands of the person who should have protected her, like Cass was? Plus, Segovia's consistently drawn the killing wound as the big slash the goes diagonally across the entire torso. Would a kid roughly the same size as the victim make a wound like that?

Sunday Splash Page #434

"Bug-mageddon," in Ant-Man: World Hive #2, by Zeb Wells (writer), Dylan Burnett (artist), Mike Spicer (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer)

A 5-issue mini-series released in 2020, World Hive finds Scott Lang still in Florida, now living in an ant-hill, where he has lots of passive-aggressive conversations with the colony's queen, named "Pam." The security consulting business he had during the brief, Nick Spencer-written ongoings a few years earlier is gone. Instead, he takes jobs like locating missing bees for the Florida Beekeepers Association. He patrols once a week with his daughter Cassie, formerly the Young Avenger Stature, now going by the "Stinger" codename she used in Spider-Girl's universe.

In the TPB, Burnett says he used Chris Samnee's Ant-Man design as a basis to model Cassie's costume. I can see it, in how the purple sections are sharply defined by rigid sections of black, but it mostly looks like the MC2 version's costume, with the amounts of purple and black switched and some ankle bracelets I can't perceive a purpose for. Cassie's helmet does get an upgrade later that causes it to sprout Kirby Hat-style antennae that let her project commands to bugs more forcefully. Which someone, I don't know if it's Burnett, Spicer or Petit, depicts as big, brightly colored words that take up most of a panel background.

To Scott's dismay, Cassie wants to move to California to join Kate Bishop's West Coast Avengers roster. Because it's hard for young heroes to get respect, and no one in the hero community is respecting Scott Lang. Not even when his search for the missing bees leads to The Swarm, the Nazi made of bees, who's on the run from several other creatures made entirely of types of arthropod, acting on behalf of the "Bug Lords", who decided they've had it with these damn primates thinking they run the planet.

The Bug Lords look like something that might have crossed over from a kaiju flick, especially once they get some Pym Particles. So maybe it makes sense Scott looks vaguely like Ultraman when he's fighting them in the final issue. Spicer makes them bright, almost neon, colors so they jump off the page, or maybe just dominate it, since they take up most of the page. Their emissaries, Thread (silkworms), Tusk (beetles) and Vespa (hornets) are a lot cooler. Burnett gives them body characteristics and styles that fit the types of things they're made of, but also draws them so you can see how they're comprised of lots of smaller bugs.

It's funny to think Mike Allred did a Fantastic Four run that culminated in Scott Lang kicking Dr. Doom's ass and showing how awesome he was, and within a year, it might as well never have existed, because a movie came out, and Scott's been written as a well-meaning (if he's lucky) loser ever since. Thanks, Paul Rudd!

This story does not break that trend. Again, Scott's living in an anthill. Not some miniaturized science lab next to an anthill. Not even a miniaturized trailer next to an anthill. Just, in the anthill, storing his Pym Particle capsules with the colony's eggs, getting nagged by the queen. Burnett draws him with constant stubble and bags under his eyes, and Wells has Lang act awkward, panicked, or stick his foot in his mouth all the time. (Though Wells writes Spider-Man as even more of a goober, getting jealous and snippy because the Black Cat seems to like Scott, and not even because they bonded as fellow thieves, which I would have at least found sort of understandable. Clearly a guy Marvel should let write Amazing Spider-Man for several years!)

That said, Wells does play up one aspect of Scott's character I've always appreciated: he actually cares about the bugs he asks for help. I never saw much of that in Pym, who has a detached perspective that seemed to treat them as test subjects, and Eric O'Grady flatly did not care. Controlling bugs meant he had a ready supply of cannon fodder to die for him. Lang names them, worries when the ant he flew (Chumley) to track the Swarm disappears, gets angry when a bee he enlarged to close a cave entrance gets devoured from the inside-out. The bugs, even when Pam is frustrated with Scott, seem to like and respect him. Enough to help him against a would-be world conquering insect guy.

There's probably something in there about how the bugs judge Scott by what's in his heart, what he intends, possibly something they can pick via the nature of how the helmet allows him to communicate with them. Meanwhile humans are judging him by what he looks like and how successful he is at what he tries to do. Although you'd think insects, especially colony species where every member of a hive has a specific role to fill, would be less forgiving of, "I tried my best, but I failed."

Scott also lets Cassie face the main bad guy herself, because he swiped her helmet and she feels like she needs to be the one who gets it back. Scott is worried and keeps almost jumping in, but when she tells him to wait, he listens. He shows faith in her abilities that the Avengers don't show in him. But it impresses Cassie, which is more important to Scott. At least until the next time he starts feeling insecure.

Saturday Splash Page #236

"The Congregation," in Werewolf by Night (2023) #1, by Derek Landy (writer), Fran Galan (artist/colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer)

A one-shot released in the fall of 2023, revolving around Jack Russell, aka the Werewolf by Night, and Elsa Bloodstone, arriving independently at a ominous castle in the mountains of Colorado. Both are seeking Doktor Nekromantik, and a young woman he's abducted to sacrifice to some nefarious purpose.

Landy contrasts the duo's via internal narration through the story. Jack's is overwrought and dramatic, while Elsa's is breezy and flip. Jack makes his way up the mountainside and tears his way through the creations of Nekromantik that bar his path, while Elsa simply skydives out of a plane in which she hitched a ride, that was owned by some vampires she subsequently killed. When the two run into each other in the castle, Jack spends three caption boxes thinking about how people - like him - let Elsa's attitude slide because she's so pretty, and he could have loved her, if he thought he deserved to be happy. Elsa's caption is, 'He smells of dog.'

The situation they find themselves dealing with is more complex than they expected, as Nekromantik is after revenge, but not against either of them. They're far too late to save the young woman, and Jack spends the last page moping how that's another person he failed, and his life is violence, while Elsa's internal narration insists that it would bother her, if she thought about it. But why do that, when life is so hard already? They reach the same endpoint, but draw different conclusions from it.

Other than the last few pages, which take place the following morning, the story is set entirely at night, and Galan goes with a limited and stark color scheme. Everything, save the glowing red eyes of the shadow creatures Nekromantik made, is colored some variation of black, white, or grey. It allows for a sharp, high-contrast look that plays up the shadows.

Except for Elsa, who is Technicolor in a world of black-and-white (the scenes in the jet before she reaches the castle are also in color.) A bit more bronzed than you might expect for someone who spends her time hunting monsters at night, but her clothes, her hair, the flash of red if she uses the Bloodstone, all of that is in color. It sets her apart from everyone and everything else in the story, including Jack. 

Which is something to explore. In terms of color, Jack is treated as the same as Nekromantik, his monsters, and the thing he seeks to summon, while Elsa is not. Why? Simply because she's still human, despite the weird alien rock in her palm she got from her caveman father? Jack is human, at least some of the time. Is it something about purpose, that Jack and Nekromantik were each driven by some stronger motive, duty or revenge, while Elsa at least gives the outward appearance she's just there to make monsters go boom? I don't think it's a matter of the others being driven by baser instincts, because Jack keeps narrating about how he's trying not to lose control and just tear things to shreds, so he's clearly resisting those urges.

What I Bought 6/29/2026 - Part 2

I almost never get $10 bills back in change. Because yes, I buy most things with cash. It's a chemical affliction. Whether it's a automated checkout thing or a good old human cashier, I usually receive two $5s instead. Which seems odd. Why bother with two bills when one will do? Did Trump do away with $10s because Alexander Hamilton's not even a President, not like Ben Franklin?

Babs: The Black Road South #4, by Garth Ennis (writer), Jacen Burrows (artist), Andy Troy (colorist), Rob Steen (letterer) - This feels like the sort of thing Babs will give Izzy grief about endlessly.

Our protagonists survive sledding off a cliff on a frozen barbarian and end up in a great sea of - well, let's not discuss what they're floating in. Babs is still playing cagey about her prior trip, though she's starting to suspect the Samwise stand-in has to be behind all this. Troy washes the whole sequence on the sea in this dull greyish murk that just looks nasty. Like the air would have a tangible texture that clings to you, and it would be awful.

About the time Izzy points out the Orb couldn't have been destroyed, because otherwise all the great evil in Mordynn would typically get sucked into a great hole, they notice Lilith Lazuli isn't dead. Or, she was, but the eldritch properties of the land brought her back. Sort of. She's about as articulate as your typical zombie, but she gets them to shore.

Where they're met by an army of pig-men mercs, working for the angry little hobbit. He hauls them off to some camp, rather than the tower where the great evil is sort of sulking and doing not much of anything. Because the hobbit's working on his own, to get the Orb. Which shouldn't be possible, unless someone had formed a soul bond with said Orb. Someone like Babs.

I think the thing that surprises me is that she'd actually think she could get away with selling it. Just seems like the sort of thing where any person eager to get their hands on it, is also the sort of person you couldn't trust to honor the terms of whatever deal you made with them. Hmm, maybe she'd been drinking when she made the arrangement. 

Is Ted OK? #4, by Dave Chisholm (writer/artist/letterer) - See? The doc agrees with me, last month's cover was nausea-inducing.

Dr. Paganini explains what's going on with Ted. She had a theory that human consciousness is stored somewhere other than inside your brain, but a place our brains access. A place with enormous storage capacity, and enormous energy potential. And Noah thought that could be a way to create true artificial intelligence. "Artificial intelligence", in the sense that he created a human body artificially, with no animating mind or spirit, and needed something to make it go.

They tried somehow linking the bodies to people who were dreaming, allowing access to what she called "Soul Space" through a shared doorway. It worked, and didn't require ten simultaneous nukes going off, which was the other notion she had for how to open a doorway into that space.

Except the further along things got, the more she sees that Noah's not after whatever she and the other scientists think he is. He wants to have an artificial human, but it needs to be able to use that Soul Space energy to do cool stuff. Like a lightning punch! Well sure, if I built an artificial person, I'd want them to be able to do cool shit. She figures out he's trying to build a video game character. Literally. The character in the game Ted plays before going to sleep each night. Who dies and is reborn with a different cool power.

But when things aren't going the way he'd like, Noah shifts to the nuke option. Being rich enough to have your thumb on the scale of several militaries helps. And that explains the Dome, if not how Noah was able to stand in a radioactive nightmare without issue. Unless he's given himself an artificial body and is drawing off that space as well.

The further into the story the Doc gets, the more Chisholm shifts how Noah is presented visually. He starts out positioned on the ends of panels, usually at the same level and size from our perspective as Dr. Paganini. He's sitting a lot, he's smiling, the colors are soft. Once the work begins, the colors shift to colder tones, like flourescent lights in a hospital. Noah tends to stand, and more than that, he tends to stand in the middle of things. Often stepping between our view of him and Dr. Paganini, making her smaller, pushing her to the edge of the panel, into the gutters. He's not asking about her work with interest, or promising that money won't be a problem. He demands she fix things, or insults "Soul Space" as a stupid name.

Having learned he was intended to be some next-gen human war machine, that his love for cats and paranoia are the result of Noah's capricious whims in how the "manowars" were programmed, Ted is ready to pack it in. He should just be destroyed. Sarah objects, making a whole spiel about Ted and who she thinks he is and that he doesn't get to give up. Ted comes around, decides it's time to stand up and be counted, and that doesn't go well.

I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop with Sarah. I'm not sure what that shoe will be. The person she keeps leaving voicemails for was someone Noah killed along the way? One of the dreamers, one of the mercs. That she's a dreamer, and all this is her and Ted sharing a consciousness? I can't quite buy that she's faking all this and is secretly loyal to Noah, because I don't think weren't meant to believe her internal narration is lies, even if it's remained vague who she's talking to. She's definitely projecting something about that person onto Ted, which he could end up seeing as a betrayal, if it's never really been about helping him, so much as him being a proxy for someone else she wished she could help.