Saturday Splash Page #252

"Metal-Armed Mutant Jesus," in Soldier X #3, by Darko Macan (writer), Igor Kordrey (artist), Chris Chuckry (colorist), Randy Gentile (letterer)

An early-2000s Cable series about what the soldier does when the war he was raised to fight is over. At some point, Nathan Dayspring-Wet-Summers-Pryor-Conviction-Whatever killed Apocalypse like he was supposed to. Now he lacks purpose, waiting for someone to tell him what to do next. The techno-organic virus is also dead, so he's gradually sloughing off the metal covering on his arm, which he disposes of by hawking up bullet-sized bits periodically.

Blaquesmith, who looks like a shriveled child's corpse and is Cable's old handler/mentor/look, I don't know this guy's backstory (and it's not the real deal anyway), hands Cable a picture of a young girl in Russia and says to find her. So Cable goes looking for Magdalena, a mutant who can heal the sick or injured. Her father exploited it for financial gain, until her mother dragged her back to their native village, where it's all some holy crusade. A holy crusade that will kill her daughter, a gaunt, pale figure who is surrendering her life force helping these people. Mom doesn't care. If Magdalena dies, then she's a martyr, just as the Lord would want.

Cable shows up. An Armenian gang of imbeciles in tracksuits show up, thinking there's money to be made. They drag along Magdalena's pathetic wretch of a father. A crazy hunchbacked man with a metal arm named Geo shows up, pissed at Cable for, I think being all the things Geo isn't. Tall, handsome, having a metal arm actually the right size. Also because the Armenians know a guy with a metal arm killed some of them, and they think it was Geo, so they're after him.

Cable initially responds with violence, while trying to get in touch with Blaquesmith to be told what to do with Magdalena. She nearly dies, then learns how to use her power in reverse, to draw energy from others instead of offering her own. She doesn't become some kind of energy vampire like Sauron, she just doesn't see the point in helping people, when all it brought her was pain. Geo keeps ranting about globalization and the increasing homogenization of cultures into one bland, global burger chain (more or less.) When he's not punching Cable in the face, that is, and sometimes when he is. The gang torture people because they can, and generally behave like idiots of such staggering degree they forget fire is hot.

Eventually, Cable takes a different approach. He rescues Magdalena's mother from the gang by simply walking forward as they shoot. No telekinetic shield, just bullets tearing meat from his body, which is freaky enough they withdraw.

How effective a tactic this was, is fair to debate. The people who wanted Magdalena's healing decide Cable's the one with the power, and when touching him doesn't cure their wounds, decide he's judged them harshly and attack him. Geo is torn limb from limb trying to defend Cable, but maybe he gets to die a hero? Cable takes so long getting his ass up that, by the time they get Magda and her mother together, it's too late for Magda to save her, even if she could have gotten her power to go back the way it was. 

Seems like fewer people would have died if Cable just TK launched the gangsters into the next province, and set them down gently there. Which he probably could do, as Cable apparently decides there's no limit to his powers. He variably makes himself giant, turns a twisted steel girder into gold, gathers bioluminescent algae from some cave that is nowhere in sight to make a man think his hands have been turned to uranium, and physically alters another man into some winged abomination similar to Hulk's old foe The Harpy.

These things are done casually. After Cable drops the TK shield during his martyr walk, Kordrey and Chuckry make no further visible displays of his power. No hand gestures, no glowing energy field. He mostly just looks at something, sometimes not even that, and things change. A plane is stopped in mid-air like a still image. Nothing we can perceive is holding it, there is no visible sign of Cable doing anything, but it's frozen without falling.

Cable's drawn as bigger than everyone around him, but only when he's doing something. Fighting, mostly. Otherwise, Kordrey makes him look confused or frustrated. A guy who doesn't know what to do with himself without a mission. Furrowed brow, pursed lips, vaguely bewildered.

Macan incorporates, or makes up, I don't know what had been previously established, a lot about "Askani" teachings. The idea being Cable hasn't been following them up to now, focused on fighting constantly. It doesn't much have the feel of anything heavily thought out. They say, 'What is. . .is,' as some sort of pardon to the world, before changing it? The creative team's 8th and final issue is set in the future, an old woman and a young boy trying to follow the Askani way, and we're told Cable died at some point doing nothing, and thereby saved the world.

The kid finds that about as stupid as I do. All we're shown is a single page of Cable sitting cross-legged with a bunch of people standing around watching him. Fabian Nicieza would have Cable try to die a sort of death in Cable/Deadpool, burning out his powers in some grand display to inspire the world. Which is not exactly "doing nothing," but Macan never specified what doing nothing was saving the world from. Free real estate.

Macan's entire run is presented as a story Cable sent to reporter (and I suppose prior supporting cast member Irene Merryweather) on a CD, and which she's reading. Which means everything we're reading already happened, and Cable's just now gotten around to letting Irene know, which I'm not sure is the best choice, stylistically. Especially when Cable says things to her like, 'Most women, I'm told, are content simply to exist. It is not so with men. Men need a point.' Again, he's narrating this after the fact, it's not like this is his thoughts before he decided to become Mutant Messiah and save all the blighted souls of the world whether they want it or not. And that's the sort of stupid thing that really needs to be said to someone who can respond properly. If not Irene, Deadpool for sure needed to be there, asking what dumbass told Cable that? Sadly, this came out at the same time as Agent X, so Wade's still assumed dead, and cannot call on the powers of bro-mance to appear.

There are also two low-level SHIELD agents, Jordan and Dragonfly, trying to locate Cable. Jordan because some woman he loved died in some way connected to Cable. Dragonfly because, he was assigned to it? He doesn't care about the job, treating it as a joke. Combined with the leering green and shiny bald pate Kordrey gives him, makes him feel like a cross between Elmer Fudd and one of those old-timey Southern lawyers that like to pull on their suspenders.

The final appearance of all three is when Irene shows up with the CD at their office on the last page of issue 7. The agents already investigated the Russian angle, found Geo's arm, and concluded it was Cable's. Now they're gonna know they were wrong, but with the next issue being the on in the future, there's no follow up, making it all feel pointless.

Karl Bollers takes over a writer the last four issues. Cable hunts a former Special Forces-turned-domestic terrorist, who is precognitive. The guy has blown up jets and other things, as far as his followers know, to draw attention to how they need to get all the non-white people out of the U.S. In actuality, it's because he saw a vision of Cable when his mutant power first manifested, and this is how they meet. He thinks there's no changing the future. That, essentially, his life was on rails from the start and all his power did was let him see the entire track at once. A track that ended with his meeting with Cable.

Cable never disputes this, simply walking away, and the guy, for some reason no longer able to see the future, kills himself. Is Bollers saying the future really is fixed? Odd argument to make in a book starring a character constantly trying to change the future. Or this guy's future was fixed because he believed it, so once he had the meeting he'd pinned everything on, there was no next step?

The final two issues are Cable traveling the world trying to save humans from committing violence against each other, while a mutant teenager is jailed for killing her parents. When the federal court orders her put to death, overruling the state accepting a plea bargain in exchange for a life sentence, Cable busts in. To the prison, and the girl's mind. She's not guilty, but would rather die than let people think her father did a murder-suicide over having a mutant kid. Cable accepts her will and stays in mental contact when she's executed. At which point he hides in a cabin for a while and gets drunk, until Domino calls for help with missing mutant kids. He asks her to bring him big guns. That's how the book ends.

Between this and X-51, I'm not developing a high opinion of Bollers' writing. (He also forgets or ignores the T/O Virus is no longer a problem, having Cable state he's using 20% of his power to control it.) There's a chance, at the end of issue 11, when Cable learns the girl is a telepath and her mental shields initially keep him out. Render his power useless and make him actually talk to her with words. Deal with her person-to-person by removing the power imbalance.

By the start of the next issue, Cable's barging through her mind, brushing off her defenses and getting whatever information he wants. Or he could just act like a deity angered by some mortal's presumption at not following his will. Cool, cool. I see he inherited a lack of social graces from his sperm donor.

What I Bought 10/19/2026

Normally I wait until the last week of the month to order whatever books I couldn't find locally. This month, I ordered them last week. Partly because I have nothing coming out next week, and I was confident the local store would have the two books from this week (it did.) Mostly because the place I order from suddenly had the final issues of two different series I've been trying to piece together in back issue hunts, and I didn't expect they'd be there long.

Chachu #3, by Iman Vellani (writer), Marianna Ignazzi (artist), Jordie Bellaire (color artist), Lucas Gattoni (letterer) - I hadn't realized Leila's hair was that long, but she has spent most of the first two issues sitting down.

The search brings Chachu and Leila to Mina's bar, where Cleo was when she got abducted, though it takes a long time to get even that much information. Most of this is Leila trying to get a better picture of her uncle, and also trying to act like a different kind of adult.

When hit on by a guy that kinda, sorta, if she's drunk would look like a member of the BeeGees, she orders a martini with 4 olives. Because she heard another woman being hit on order it. She gets sloshed after 3 martinis. She's wearing a dress to look sexy, but her uncle didn't give her time to get properly sized. It doesn't stop men from leering at her, and she can't decide how she feels about that, or what they're thinking. I did find her internal monologue that, 'Trying to decode their glances was precisely the kind of childish thinking that held me back,' a curious comment. Does she think adults are supposed to have it all figured out, or that, when you're on the prowl, the motives of those around you don't matter? Because that is a line of thought that could get you in trouble.

We get another version of how her uncle and Cleo met. He ran into her hiding out in this bar, and they decided to run away from their problems together. The bit about him rescuing her was made-up after the fact, and that's what the new movie she's supposed to star in is about. I wonder if this version is any truer than what he told Leila last issue, or if it's tainted by Mina being annoyed Cleo ran from her, to him.

Ignazzi really emphasizes Leila's eyes in a lot of the panels. Compared to everyone else in the bar, there's a lot more of the whites of her eyes visible. That she's being exposed to new things and new perspectives she wasn't prepared for - pity she's so sloshed by the time Mina flashes that photo of her and Cleo, because I'd have been curious about her reaction - but it also makes her look younger than everyone else, whose eyes are narrowed and hardened by time and experience.

I'm not sure what she's learning on this trip, though her uncle told her a bit about Pakistan at the end, assuming she remembers in the morning. Hopefully she's getting something out of it, because they have a lead on the hotel where Cleo's at. Assuming they get there before she makes her own escape. 

Lilith: Blood and Burlesque #1, by Corin Howell (writer/artist), Warnia Sahadewa (colorist), Haley Rose-Lyon (letterer) - Getting a little too elaborate with the umbrella drinks.

Lilith was a succubus or demon or something similar that was banished from their realm, somehow, and has been trying to get back. In the meantime, she makes a career as a model and kills and eats people who mess with her. She met, Penelope, a geeky girl who runs a paranormal bookstore with her brother, Ben, and they have a book Lilith thinks could get her home. Except Penelope already used it once, trying to destroy a horrible creature trying to kill them, and it left a weird scar on her chest. Probably nothing to worry about!

At this point, Lilith is grudgingly working with Michael, another being like her, who was initially out to kill her, but changed sides. Lilith is much less grudgingly working with Penelope on the book, and is maybe figuring out Penelope might want to jump her. (Michael seems to be flirting with Ben, but Ben doesn't seem interested.)

Howell's art shifts between highlighting the attractiveness of the cast, their flawless forms, and a looser, more exaggerated style for the comedic parts. Huge eyes, or a mouth full of shark teeth. You get gory violence where people are torn open and we see their ribcages, and the kind of violence where someone gets punched by another person with steam erupting from their ears, and everyone is fine five seconds later. It's quite a contrast, but Lilith is portrayed as fairly arrogant and self-centered (less so around Penelope), so she just lets her emotions fly, whatever they are.

Sahadewa keeps the feel of the book consistent. The characters' skin are alabaster, like they all fell in the same chemical bath as the Joker, while almost everything else is various shades of red mixed with black. And the red, whether a dress or blood, pops against their skin.

For the purposes of this mini-series, it looks like one thread will be Lilith trying to help save the bookstore (damaged by the monster attack) by posing for a calendar. Assuming she and Michael can survive the other thread. Anniese, who rules the land Lilith hails from, would apparently like to downgrade her status from "banished" to "dead." And she's here in the city. Running some sort of club where she disembowels women while sexy dancing, and the crowd thinks it's all just a show. I know New Yorkers are said to be jaded, but damn, come on people. That's not warm, blood-flavored corn syrup she's bathing in from the luxury of her oversized martini glass! 

No One Remains After I'm Done

Edward's come to a motel near Dormont to meet his estranged wife. She's not there, and someone steals his car. Ed follows on foot, and finds things are very off. Everywhere he looks, people stand in the shadows. Their eyes glow like electric arcs as they watch him, silent and unmoving. All of them hold weapons, but as long as he stays in the light, he's safe. They disappear in the light. Managing that while trying to figure out what's happening and escape Dormont is easier said than done. 

That's what you face in Those Who Remain. Mostly, it's puzzles of how to get Ed from Point A to Point B without walking into darkness. If you start getting too close, your screen will get wobbly, and if you don't back up, one of the shadow beings will insta-kill you.

Given how easy it was to get too close, I was irritated how far you had to inch into most rooms to be able to tell if there was a light switch in reach. We know we have to use them, make them more readily visible!

There's no penalty to death, besides starting back at your last save (the game autosaves.) You don't have an inventory of items to lose. At most, you're carrying one or two things you need to solve how to get around a problem. There's a door in this house with heavy chains over it. You need bolt cutters. You find them, you use them, you leave them behind. The things you need pulse a dull neon green, though you'll still need to dig through boxes, drawers and cabinets to find them. The people of Dormont need more storage units, because they all have too much crap in their houses.

Sometimes to progress you have to pass through glowing doors, moving into a distorted version of where you were. But the shadow beings are absent, offering more freedom of movement. Sometimes you find an item you need. Sometimes you're able to enter a room you couldn't back in the world and manipulate something to help you once you go back.

At times, the doors take you into strange places nothing like Dormont. A series of gorges where massive creatures cross the sky, or a maze of stone walls. It still boils down to puzzles, whether you're figuring out how to activate a switch long enough to make a platform drop to your level, but not stay there, or looking for statues of dogs to drag to an altar.

I've been watching a lot of Backrooms-related stuff on Youtube the last few months, and some settings in here reminded me of that, with the repeating identical rooms. Halls that just loop around and around without taking you anywhere. Doors there one moment, but you look away and they're gone when you look back. That sense you are very much treading in someone else's domain.

Most of the time, there's no ticking clock. You can roam around and keep checking room until you figure it out. Not always, though. There's a creature. Unlike the shadow beings, it isn't hampered by light, nor is it content to wait for you to get close. It roams, with a spotlight for a face, tires and metal protruding from its body like the creature from The Thing had been impersonating a car until seconds ago. It catches up to you, you die. It's not really stealth gameplay; the game has no crouch function, you just try to keep objects between it and you, though I wasn't always clear on how far it could see. You do have a sprint button, so if there's room to run, you may be able to escape temporarily that way.

(Ed figures out what the creature is and why it's after him fairly late in the game, the same point when you learn what he's so guilty about. But when the creature appears two more times later, his dialogue makes it seem he's forgotten his revelation. He's moaning, 'Why is it still chasing me?', and I'm muttering, "We covered that 30 minutes ago, dipstick.")

There's also a sobbing, screaming woman. Her neck is broken, head dangling down her back. No subterfuge will help with her. She shows up, you run and hope you find the right door in time. She catches you, you die. Dormont is not a place to try a trust fall. I nearly gave up during one chase where furniture keeps shifting to bar your path. I kept dying at the point where a bunch of chairs stack up in the way. Rather than go around, you must grab them one at a time and toss them aside. It's not easy to focus on doing that while she's wailing behind you.

The meat of the story is her grief, and Ed's. She and her daughter moved to Dormont, and her daughter was soon the target of three boys' bullying. The boys tampered with Annika's bike and she went off a cliff while fleeing them. The boys' families covered it up. The police chief ruled it suicide to protect his kid. The postmaster made sure all the mom's letters to the capitol got "lost" to protect a nephew. On and on. Many of the places you end up are the boys' rooms or their parents' offices, where Ed finds evidence of the cover-ups.

But Annika's ghost also implores you to understand more, keep searching. One boy is lashing out after his older brother's death, while another chafes under his father's expectations he'll join the military. The fire chief fears he wasn't there for his son because of his work, and is trying to make up for it. For each person, you are given a choice by a dapper-dressed fellow with a metal theater mask for a face. Forgive, or condemn?

(The wailing lady showed up after I condemned the first kid, so I initially thought she was his mom, and this was one of those consequences of your choices the game warned of. Nope.)

There are other points where Ed encounters scattered survivors, and you decide whether to help them or not. Here's a guy in a police car. He needs the keys from inside the station. If you get them, he'll use the headlights to make you a path. But maybe he killed the cop on the ground nearby. The foreman of the lumber yard wouldn't let you in, and even shot at you. Now he needs a light to stay fixed on him to survive. But you need that light to get through, unless you can find another way around. This lady promised to use a postal van to ferry others, then bailed, condemning them to death.

I condemned all the people related to Annika's murder, but tried to save the randos I met along the way. I figured they weren't part of this particular madness, so why let them get it in the neck? Except I couldn't find the right glowing tool to bring down the fence and save the foreman. Eventually I got impatient, and he was shit outta luck. The ending you get depends on those choices, and it really wants you to pick forgiveness, considering I apparently got the "Nightmare" ending. I'm not sure the game was prepared for my approach to decision-making, because Metal Face, while lecturing me on my judgemental actions, made it sound like I killed a couple of people I absolutely did not.

I could try again for a different ending, but I probably won't.

Jules (2023)

Milton (Ben Kingsley) is an elderly man who lives alone in a small town in Pennsylvania. He watches his TV programs, attends City Council meetings to suggest they change the town slogan, and sometimes puts cans of green beans in his bathroom cabinet, to his daughter Denise's (Zoe Winters) growing concern.

One night, a flying saucer crashes into his backyard, crushing his azaleas and his birdbath. Receiving no help from the police or city council, Milton eventually offers the alien (Jade Quon) a blanket and some water, then lets it come inside his house. He figures out it likes apples, accepts the drawings of whiskered creatures it offers as gifts, and watches it repair its ship.

While Denise tries to get her father to consider moving into assisted living, two other seniors in the community, Sandy (Harriet Hansom Harris) and Joyce (Jane Curtin), become aware of the alien (called "Jules" by Sandy and eventually Milton, but "Gary" by Joyce) and start spending a lot of time at Milton's. 

All three are dealing (or avoiding dealing) with being near the end of their lives. What do they have to pass on, and is there anyone that wants it? Sandy's husband died in the last few years, after his mental state got progressively worse in much the same way Milton's is. She tells Jules her daughter lives across the country with her girlfriend, and spend all their time sucking up to the girlfriend's mother, never coming to visit. She tries to set up a elder-teen mentor program. It doesn't go well. I'm not sure Joyce has anyone, as she mostly talks about her time in 'the big city.' So she tries to get involved in everybody's else's lives. Denise looks after her father, but his son never calls because Milton apparently just, gave up on trying to be a dad. 'No reason to keep going at something you're no good at,' he explains to Jules.

It's the kind of movie where characters give lengthy speeches that explain their backstories and motivations. If you figure they haven't had anyone listening to them, it makes sense. Jules never speaks, gives no indication they understand, but appears attentive, which is more than can be said for the City Council. Jules follows Milton around the house, watching him explain the bathroom and that sometimes the hot water takes a minute. When Milton falls asleep sitting up on the sofa, he wakes up laid out, a blanket over him him and his glasses set aside.

I can't decide whether Milton approaches things how he does, in a very structured, repetitive way, because it helps him to keep things organized, or because he simply forgets. Does he keep telling the City Council he thinks they should change the slogan because it really matters to him, or because he can't remember he's already suggested it? Joyce has apparently been stumping for a pickleball court for 4 years, so I can't rule out that he's just persistent.

It takes him a couple days to even bring up the UFO crashing in his backyard, it takes more time beyond that before he brings out a blanket for the alien laying in his yard. Is he forgetting, or does it just take him a while to fit the new information in and do something with it? There's a fragility to how Kingsley plays him, the way he pulls back. During the scene in the doctor's office, you can see him getting frustrated as he can't pass the cognition tests, but also see him withdrawing. Sinking back into the seat as the reality of what he's here for sinks in. There's a reluctance to get close. While Joyce and Sandy argue about what to call the alien, Milton says he's not going to call it anything. It's not staying, so there's no point. He asks Sandy how things progressed for her husband, but won't confirm anything about himself. He starts looking out the window instead, unwilling to face the future ahead.

There's a subplot about the government trying to find Jules, shown mostly through some command center where people in suits listen to every phone conversation for key phrases. Repeated bits where agents are dispatched to an address, someone knocks on Milton's door, and the agents are actually standing in front of a different home. It's mostly to add urgency to the need to help Jules repair the ship (in a truly bizarre way I will not spoil.)

The cops briefly take interest in Sandy after an incident at her house, but that never really goes anywhere, other than me noticing that in Pennsylvania they apparently call them "speed humps" rather than "speed bumps." This is what happens when you let Quakers found a state! The cop thing peters out after that. It's like the movie wanted to establish something about Jules, then realized the fallout would have to involve cops to some extent, and did the bare minimum necessary. The movie's better off when it just sticks to the core of Jules, Milton, Sandy, Joyce, and Denise (who doesn't get a lot to do, but is crucial for showing Milton's not as alone as he acts.)

No Reset Button Available

Not the heroes the world wants, and maybe not the ones they need, but they're what's available. 

Volume 8 of No Longer Allowed in Another World revealed His Holiness has his own unique power. To write a story for the world and, if it doesn't work out like he wants, tear it up and restart from an earlier point.

Which is where Volume 9 begins, Sensei regaining consciousness in the same chapel where he first arrived in Zauberberg. Except Sacchan is with him this time, and Annette is not the bishop who greets them. The duo are resolved to find an appropriate lake somewhere to drown themselves in, and Sacchan does her best to keep Sensei's focus on that goal.

It casts an interesting slant on Sensei and Sacchan's relationship. Up to now, with Sensei's constant interest in death, it seemed like he might be the one pushing for double suicide. With how the initial reunion went, it seemed like Sacchan was almost pleased Sensei's desire to die had diminished. 

Now it seems like Sacchan's calling the shots. Like getting a man to kill himself at her insistence is just a power move. Here, she does all she can to keep him focused on her and their goal of mutual destruction, keeping him from helping Tama with the Death Tree, growing irritated when he speaks with Princess Charlotte. Still, Sensei regains his memories after hearing a song Otto the Bard had already composed in that earlier timeline, and walks away from Sacchan.

That was huge, not so much his rejecting death - having read future volumes, I can assure you Sensei is still intrigued by dying in horrible ways - but the fact he's so determined to find Annette, Tama, and Nir. The man is actually running - on his own two legs! - to find them. More accurately, to find Waldelia at the place they first met. Where she impaled him on her arm, because he's an Otherworlder and she hates them. With her memories blocked, she's back in the mindset, so it's a near thing for Sensei to stay alive long enough to help her through the block.

After some exposition from the Queen of the Faeries - which mostly serves to confirm His Holiness is the one doing this, and it's a bad thing for Zauberberg - Waldelia makes a front assault on the church, while Sensei and Solulu sneak in another route. It's nice because it shows Waldelia's working with Sensei, but she's more focused on revenge for her father than any larger plan. She can't help revealing that her memories are back, which helps the Pope figure out she's a diversion.

Sensei finds Annette, and unlocks her memories with a hug, but the Pope rushes in and tears up this attempt, resetting things to where they were at the end of Volume 8. With a cathedral full of people united solely in their desire to kick his ass. Great planning there, buddy. Two critical reveals here are that Annette is his daughter, and this Rewrite power is doing something to his body (we see an arm that's covered with writing.)

There's also the connection between he and Sensei as writers, and their differences. Sensei tells the Pope that even if things aren't going as you like, a writer must keep going to the conclusion. Also, that he has to be true to the characters, even if their ends are not what he'd like. But what if I really want to kill a particular character? 

Anyway, the Pope's lackey summons up some warps to toss them out, except Annette. I'm curious how the Fallen Angel with armor that is resistant to magic was affected. Shouldn't the magic tentacles just slide off or disintegrate or something?

Also left behind is Sacchan, who used her power to control said lackey, and, out of spite, forms an alliance with His Holiness. With them both determined to either have their way or burn everything, the Pope Rewrites things so the Dark Lord is alive, (still with a big hole in his chest) and Sacchan binds him with her cheat. The armies of darkness are on the march again, and the forces best able to stop this just got scattered everywhere, again. 

Sunday Splash Page #449

"Central Park Ninjas," in Black Cat (vol. 3) #1, by Jed MacKay (writer), Travel Foreman (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer)

Sometimes - too many times, frankly - I cover something in this series that I kept as long as I did specifically to do a Splash Page on it, and then it's excised. Or I sorta like it, but it's not going to force its way onto my list of all-time favorites. Today though, we're looking at a book I loved. Hooray!

The first of Jed MacKay's Black Cat books is a string of heists in service of an even greater heist. Felicia, with a two-person crew of Boris Korpse (tech support/safecracker) and Bruno Grainger (wheelman/muscle), plan to break into the vaults of the New York Branch of the Thieves Guild. No, not "T'ieves", this guild is run by the classy and intense Odessa Drake, not that swamp-rat LeBeau. The woman knows how to properly enunciate, thank you.

This is where some backstory that MacKay adds comes in. Felicia and Odessa are childhood friends, because their fathers both apprenticed under the Black Fox, as Felicia later would (another thing I'm pretty sure Mackay added to those characters' backstories.) The grand heist is Fox's swan song before retirement. It's a tricky job, because the vault is in another dimension, the only known access belonging to the Guild.

Unfortunately, neither Felicia or the Fox are in good graces with the Guild, not they'd hesitate to pull this if they were. Felicia hasn't paid her union dues, essentially, so Odessa is trying (violently) to bar her from work. As for the Fox, Odessa's issue with him is a little more personal.

The book lasted 12 issues, broken into 1 or 2-issue stories focused on different heists. Each heist is about getting something needed to break into the Guild vault. Use the ruined wreck of Xandar the Merciless to infiltrate the Sanctum Sanctorum for the original deed to Manhattan. Arrange an impromptu date with Johnny Storm to swipe a book of Phineas Randall's writings from Reed Richards' bookshelf. Head to Madripoor to steal the second of two paintings with instructions on how to find the right dimension from some guy named "Patch" of all things.

Of course, things never go according to plan. Xandar finds his Star-Stone in Strange's house, which makes him less a ruined wreck and more a Sorcerer Supreme-killing threat. Blastaar drops in from the Negative Zone. Patch is having issues with some little rich psycho. Hovering over it all is Odessa, determined to settle scores with the Fox and collar the Cat, with the raw numbers and resources to make it a viable threat.

MacKay writes Felicia as professional, in the sense she takes pride in being a thief, in following certain codes like watching out for her crew and making sure everyone gets a cut, in not letting anyone steal from her. Who worries whether she can actually keep all her promises to protect them. But she also loves being a thief. Loves the thrill, loves the excitement, loves getting into places no one was supposed to be able to get into and taking things no one was supposed to be able to take.

The last story involves Felicia posing as a tech-writer openly scornful of how Tony Stark refuses to exceed humanity by augmenting himself. That gets her in the front door, because nothing annoys an egoist like Stark like someone publicly disparaging him. She needs a key for an interdimensional lock, and has the specs, but he's got the forge. While Stark's distracted with an old threat she hired, she also makes herself a suit of special armor to pay Odessa a visit, and tangles with Iron Man while she's at it. As she puts it, you steal a sports car, you want to test drive it. You steal a war machine, you want to take it to war.

(As with many decisions made in the heat of the moment, this one backfires. The threat did not dissuade Odessa. If anything, she's more hot for Felicia than ever. And Felicia's ex-girlfriend later got the armor and came after her with it, see Sunday Splash Page #263.)

There's a lot of fun interplay between Felicia, Bruno and Boris. They have certain patterns and routines with each other, like taking turns on who gets to pick music during dinner, or arguing about movies. Boris is the zany one, the mad scientist who knows who Phineas Randall is and thinks Johnny Storm is a phony. Jim Hammond is the one, true Human Torch! Bruno's the loyal meathead, who loves Elvis - music, movies, doesn't matter - and takes a concerning amount of pride in being from Pittsburgh. I mean, what I saw in my one brief visit was nice enough, but at the end of the day, it's just a city.

There's also briefly Sonny Ocampo, ex-con-turned-security guard-turned-investigator for Odessa. Ocampo's determined to get Hardy for costing him his security gig, so Felicia naturally can't help messing with him. But she does advise him to get away from Odessa, and pays him for helping with the Blastaar thing. I thought Sonny was going to be more of a recurring thorn, but MacKay plays it as Odessa just wanting to pressure Felicia from different angles. If that one falters, there's always another.

Because it's a Marvel comic, it cycles through a lot of artists. Travel Foreman is the closest the book has to a regular, covering 6 of the first 7 issues. The heist of the first painting, the Sanctum heist, the FF heist, the issue that explains what Odessa's beef with the Black Fox is. Foreman's work is a lot cleaner than it was on Immortal Iron Fist. Cuts back on the shadows and the excessive cross-hatching, makes it less gritty and dirty. These are classy thieves after all, not some second-rate bunch of window smashers. A couple of times he abandons inking entirely, giving Felicia an almost ethereal look. I'd say it was meant to be when she's most in her element, something beyond a mere thief, but I don't think it's used that consistently.

The other 6 issues are split between Michael Dowling (1 issue), CF Villa (2 issues), Kris Anka (2 issues), and one that's split between Annie Wu and Dike Ruan. Dowling's is sort of an interregnum, where Felicia takes the night off for a date with Batroc, while the Fox is hounded by Odessa's ninjas. (I do wish Foreman, or whoever was responsible, had designed a look for the Guild's warriors not so much like The Hand.)

Villa handles the Stark heist, Anka the Madripoor excursion. Villa draws some really slick armor, while Anka provides Logan with facial expressions I would never have expected. He also makes Felicia's mask more like a couple of "C"s than I've ever seen anyone draw it. Doesn't really make sense as a design. On the other hand, he also draws Felicia a head taller than Logan, and when they decide to bankrupt Kade Kilgore's casino, he draws the hell out of Felicia in a little black dress. Much respect for that; almost went with a splash page of that, but figured it made more sense to go with Foreman, given their respective page counts for the series.

It was the other issue, #8, that might be my favorite. Annie Wu gets the dull, but more emotionally charged, part of the comic to draw, Felicia trying to convince her mother to take a cruise to Europe. So she's not around if Odessa gets really vicious. It's the only time we see Felicia's mother in the series, and it gets into the strain she feels with a daughter that followed her father's footsteps, right down to a mentor she doesn't like.

The fun part is Ruan's half, where Felicia and the Beetle break into Rand Industries to swipe schematics for the Randall Gate, and run afoul of Danny, his apprentice Pei, and her little dragon. Which leads to the Beetle getting smacked around by an aggressive kid who can turn her fist unto like a thing of iron, while Danny enjoys fighting someone not trying to steal his chi or cut off his hands. Even though Felicia gets what she came for, it was funny to see her thrown off her game by someone else having a good time interacting with her, and the comedy of her frustration and Janice's terror were played really well.

I think this book is as close as I'll ever get to exactly what I wanted from a Black Cat series. Even when the book restarts, with MacKay still as writer, it can't catch the same lightning in a bottle, though that may be due to factors outside his control. But we'll discuss that next week. 

Saturday Splash Page #251

"That Old Black Magic," in Spirit of the Shadows #1, by Daniel Ziegler (writer), Nick Cagnetti (writer/artist/colorist), Ferran Delgado (letterer)

Erik Leroux is dead, but before he can spend eternity with his beloved Katrina, he'll be judged on the life he led. Which he can't remember, but a guide hands him a book with all his memories. A book he must present at his judgement. A book promptly torn to shreds by some creature. Now Erik's roaming the Spirit Realm with Elizabeth, another lost soul who lost her book, trying to piece together his book and with it, his past. But there's at least one person in the land of the living that isn't done with Erik just yet.

I bought this 5-issue mini-series on a whim. I didn't know Ziegler or Cagnetti's other work, but the cover was eye-catching, with Cagnetti leaning so heavily into bright, neon color schemes. The story jumps forward and back in time, as we shift from Helena's efforts to get what she wants from Erik's tormentor/associate/prisoner (it's a complicated relationship), Dr. Perkins, to Erik and Elizabeth's travels through the Spirit Realm, to glimpses of Erik's life, told out of order.

Broadly, it's people unable to let go, creating misery for others, who in turn, make their own mistakes. Erik was a musician, Katrina the daughter of the town's mayor, who wanted Erik to stay away from his daughter, and murdered Erik to make it happen. The mayor was also funding Perkins fucking around with undoing death in an effort to have his wife back. As mayors often do, in between ribbon cutting ceremonies for the newest apothecary. Erik is the first success, but it's an Erik determined to get Katrina back, and even more determined to get revenge. They both lose Katrina, then Erik pressgangs Perkins into somehow using women Erik kidnaps to bring Katrina back.

Including Helena's sister, Elizabeth. Which is why Helena's after Erik and Perkins, to the extent that when she learns Erik's dead, she resurrects him with a spell she learned with the idea of bringing back Elizabeth. Only the spell, has a statute of limitations on how long you can be dead. Elizabeth's beyond her reach, so she'll bring Erik back and erase his spirit entirely. It's grief turned to a widening gyre of rage which can only be calmed when people stop thinking of what they've lost.

The book has the feel of an older comic, with the bright, broad colors in solid blocks that jump off the page. The flashbacks tone down the brightness, having a smeared, pastel look. Those events are being watched, not lived, so they're less distinct. Glimpses of the whole.

The art has a little bit of a Kirby vibe. Helena has a special witches hat, the Necrospire, that amplifies her power by feeding off her emotions. The thing sprouts horns in the shape and color of those white bangs she has when she puts it on. The beings who sit in judgement of souls are a color-swapped duo with the Comedy and Tragedy theater masks. The monsters that roam the Spirit Realm, souls that were deemed unfit for the Sacred Realm, are these squared-off misshapen things, with wide mouths and blunt teeth.

The shading for shadows, the contrast between yellow and black on Perkins' face, the almost serrated sides of the shadows themselves, reminds me of '50s horror comics. And that could fit the story, a man dies and learns of the monstrous actions of his past alongside one of his victims. Although I think a '50s horror comic would have had Elizabeth punish Erik, condemning herself in the process, rather than forgiving him and convincing her sister to abandon revenge. Really hammer that point about how self-damaging revenge is.