A Late of Summer of Possibilities

The August solicitations actually had a lot of new books, from a variety of publishers. Which is nice, except I can't say any of them filled me with an urgent desire to buy them. More like, "Ehhh, well, maybe." Also, Marvel seems to be celebrating a crapload of anniversary issues. Amazing Spider-Man 1000, Thor 800, 65 years of the FF, 60 years of Mary Jane Watson, and so on.

What's new? Let's see, DC has a Deadshot one-shot titled Next Level: One Shot. Do I trust Gerry Duggan to write a Deadshot I find acceptable, following in the footsteps of Ostrander or Simone? Absolutely not, moving on!

Dark Horse has The Big Shakedown, by Jordan Blum, Tim Seeley and Scott Koblish, about a P.I. trying to find a missing person to earn enough to get out of an earthquake ravaged and abandoned Los Angeles. The idea has some potential, but I haven't found that Seeley's writing works for me. Iman Vellani is writing a mini-series called Chachu under Image, with Marianna Ignazzi and Jordie Bellaire on the art, set in California in the late '70s, who wants to help her retired P.I. uncle find his missing wife, who was a missing person he once found.

In post-apocalyptic veins, Image has Sean Murphy's The Last Driver, about a guy who has to make some kind of road trip in a world where human-driven cars are outlawed. The art looks good, but I don't know about Murphy's writing. And Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray are writing a book called Denver, where it's one of the few stable cities to survive rising sea levels, but it may be about fall from within.

In collected edition news, Abrams has the 2nd volume of something called The Undertaker, by Xavier Dorison and Ralph Meyer, about a Civil War mortician and his escapades. I'd have to get the first volume, but I might be willing to do that. Raptura Comics has a collection of Diego Agrimbau and Juan Manuel Tumburus' Nadia and the Nomobots, about one of the last humans trying to continue living in a world of robots that take pills to feel things. Marvel is releasing 2 volume deluxe hardcovers of all their Indiana Jones comics. Would you pay $75 for each volume? Congrats, you're freer with your money than I am.

And in manga news, Viz has the first volume of Boichi's The Marshal King, which is some sort of Western manga, except the Wild West has continued for thousands of years, and one marshal is trying to find some MacGuffin that will help him bring law and order to the land. 

What's ending? Nothing.

And the rest: As mentioned, August's issue of Fantastic Four marks the 65th anniversary. Batgirl may have gotten the memories she needs to solve the murders, but apparently they're memories she was better off losing. Does Cass need more angst in her backstory?

D'Orc, Generation X-23, and Marc Spector: Moon Knight are all on their 7th issues. They're dealing with, respectively, a swamp monster, a guest appearance by Wolverine, and Moon Knight is trying to form a new Midnight Suns. Midnight Sons? Whichever. None of those light my world on fire.

The Deadman and Junk Punch are on issue 3. The former's solicit suggests Boston Brand is on some perilous journey through the underworld, and the latter, I'm not sure, actually. The cops are trying to shoot the protagonist for some reason. I'd imagine because she keeps punching them in the junk. And Vampyrates is on issue 2.

Ahoy resolicited the fifth issue of Babs: Black Road South, which means both of the Babs mini-series have had trouble staying on a monthly schedule. I don't know if it's Ennis, Burrows, or Ahoy having printing problems, but maybe they should just stop soliciting it as monthly. I think they can ship every other month, so if they just promised that, it would be fine.

So maybe 9 continuing books, although half those titles are on shaky ground with me, and maybe 4 other books, although I doubt even half of those will actually get purchased when the time comes. I don't know what it is. Maybe I'm just in the wrong state of mind these days. 

Arabesque (1966)

David Pollock (Gregory Peck) is an American professor in Oxford who gets roped into figuring out a cipher written in Hittite hieroglyphs that a lot of people are interested in. The prime minister of a Middle Eastern nation who asks Pollock to infiltrate the billionaire Beshraavj's (Alan Badel) organization, which is tied to whatever the cipher says, and a general of a rebellion that dresses and talks like he wants to be James Dean. There are various menacing goons and vans following Pollock around.

In the middle of it all is Yasmin Azir (Sophia Loren.) Initially introduced as Beshraavj's mistress, we're immediately given cause to question that when she insists the house Pollock's being kept in belongs to her, though Beshraavj certainly acts otherwise. But she seems very close with the rebel general, and she helps Pollock escape Beshraavj, before going back to the tycoon with a story.

This is, thematically, a sequel to the Audrey Hepburn/Cary Grant movie, Charade, including having the same director, Stanley Donen. Supposedly, they wanted Grant for Peck's role, and Grant turned them down either because (mundane explanation) he wasn't acting as much by then, or (spicy explanation, per wherever my dad read it) Grant and Loren had a thing, but she turned down his offer of marriage.

So you get Peck, who outright told Donen he was no Cary Grant when it came to comedy. This is true. Peck is a little too stiff, the glib remarks don't quite roll out as smoothly. But he's also basically in Hepburn's spot, the ordinary one in the middle of all the duplicity and scheming. Loren is the one with the constantly changing backstory and uncertain allegiances. So Peck gets to be confused and frustrated and occasionally furious when he feels like Yazmin is stringing him along into danger.

Yazmin, meanwhile, is the one that has to try and keep plates spinning. She has to keep all these different men - Beshraavj, the general, Pollock - believing she's on their side, even as they also have to believe she's just pretending to help the others. Loren isn't Cary Grant when it comes to comedy, either, but she has the charm to make it believable, while offering just enough vulnerability to keep the audience from turning on her. You see it mostly with Beshraavj and the general, rather than Pollock, since they're more overtly threatening, the former couching all his threats in vague terms. Badel has this disconnected delivery, almost like he's quietly rehearsing threats or lines he's going to use later, and it just so happens someone else is actually in the room. He always wears sunglasses, at night, indoors, whenever, so he's not making much eye contact, either.

Of course, the movie takes a roundabout approach to eye contact anyway. Doren apparently brought in an additional scriptwriter to punch up the dialogue, and he would, in turn, punch up the visuals. He uses a lot of shots where we see characters via reflections. They talk to each other with their backs turned, watching each other in mirrors, we see them through some magnifying lens that flips the image upside-down.

At one point Pollock and Yasmin flee Beshraavj's chief goon and end up in an aquarium. They hide behind a pillar, but we see them via their reflection in a fish tank, so it looks like they're hiding behind some stone pillars in the tank. Yasmin and Beshraavj have a charged conversation in one of those infinite mirror set-ups, so you aren't ever looking at them as they talk, just an endless series of reflections.

Supposedly all the "punching up" was to disguise that the plot isn't so great, which I agree with. Charade had the advantage - or the foresight - to make the MacGuffin something concrete, an amount of money people found worth killing for. The information the cipher concealed was kept so secret, it could have been anything. I think we're meant to take it as given that, whatever it is, it's worth killing for, but I think the vagueness works against the movie. Pollock isn't really looking for anything, he just needs time where no one's harassing him to decipher the code. So the movie has to keep people on his tail so he doesn't get time, without the plot actually advancing in any way.

No Work Completed During Tournament Time. Or Any Other Time.

There's no infidelity allowed when your mistress is lady Justice, chum. Unless she's in a catsuit and carries a whip. Then all bets are off. 

As I mentioned in Part 5 of the 2025 Year in Review series, Volume 11 of Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General, covering chapters 157 to 171, is my favorite of the series so far. Jin sticks to short stories, two chapters long at the most, focused on the cast in their day-to-day lives and relationships with their coworkers, which is the strongest part of the book, and the source of a lot of the best laughs.

Even when he takes the focus outside RX, Jin follows that, sparing us the bureaucratic nonsense about the Hero League that wasted pages in prior volumes. His one chapter focused on the 3-person "Organization" is Jester assuming his colleagues are busy thinking up ways to break out of jail, when, really, the Professor is busy virtual conferencing with a mad scientist that works for the Hero League, and the crazy cyborg girl is pacified by giving her access to the security feed of Jester's cell. So she can creepily drool over him all day.

Similarly, the Villain League gets a single chapter about the Monster Benefits Society setting up their new base in a different part of the same junkyard where RX is housed, and the women's coalition demanding the boss be isolated because his gelatinous body absorbs and radiates the stench. 

The Hero League get three chapters. One where Braveman's two apprentices see how, let's say "modestly" he lives, and decide to, 'teach Braveman extravagance,' with predictably disastrous results. At one point, they give Braveman a piece of toast with a variety of fancy foods piled on it. Caviar, foie gras, truffles, and son. This is such, culinary blasphemy, as one character puts it, that Jin depicts the food as blurred out, as though it's obscene. In the second, he's assigned as a mentor to another new hero, Esga, who has some weird mechanical fists, is always on her phone, and talks in what I assume is roughly current teen lingo (or Jin's understanding of such.) Posting pictures of Braveman to "Insta", describing herself as 'deffo legit strong', and calling the General "mid." Which earns her a harsh introduction to the world of fighting real villains, or whatever the General is.

Also, the younger characters have started using "paisen" instead of "senpai" when speaking to Braveman. It apparently means the same thing, so I don't really understand why Jin flipped the order of the two halves of the word, but I guess it reflects some shift in the culture. Anyway, the third Hero League chapter introduces a new character, as "Serious Glasses" wants to produce a promotional anime for the League, and this Shozo just so happens to create things he imagines, at the cost of his emotions. Serious Glasses, long accustomed to dealing with unreasonable expectations, passes this on, and utterly destroys the cheerful, eager, and competent young hero. It's just like working in the real creative arts!

All those stories come in a 6-chapter span in the middle of the volume (160-165). The lone RX-focused chapter in there is 164, "Kunoichi Fashion", where GG-Chan undergoes the same horrible experience of Scientist-San offering new, extremely fan-service-y costumes, that the General underwent a few volumes ago.

Everything else is RX doing goofy shit together. In the first chapter, they make way too much mochi to celebrate New Year's, so that's what Boss and Secretary-San start eating for every meal. Until X-Kun makes Secretary (hoping to get closer to Boss this year) conscious of her weight from all those carbs. She crash diets, leaving Boss to handle the mochi alone and get sick from eating some that goes bad. Which leads the rest of the Organization to the mistaken assumption "New Year's Sex" is happening, and no, I won't elaborate.

The final chapter of the volume, "Don't Get Greedy," loops back around to the couple, as RX's recent success has lots of criminal organizations wanting to strengthen ties with them. By offering Boss women, sending Secretary-San into a spiral of insecurity that he'll get a harem. The General makes a typically mixed effort in reassuring her coworker and Boss turns down all the offers. He has Secretary-San, after all. Just so long as he doesn't eat her pudding (not a euphemism.)

The two chapters after the mochi episode involve RX trying to corral a mysterious monster in some virtual world, who demonstrates bizarre abilities. The Henchman and the General are sent in (with the Henchmen given avatars resembling the General, Secretary and GG), and quickly realize it's just some loser sitting at home in front of a computer, going on about purity and virgins. They kick his ass, in the real world and the virtual, the General showing her usual absence of self-awareness in berating him for not respecting people's boundaries and autonomy.

Chapters 166 and 167 are the high point, as Scientist-San creates a Street Fighter knock-off with the RX characters, and the entire organization - really just Boss and the General - get way too into it, and a tournament is arranged. Most of that revolves around how hard Boss and the General are trying to win, Boss using his powers to cheat, the General having trained non-stop for an entire week, all to beat X-Kun's ass. Which, she does, and it's very satisfying, even if the annihilation is so complete we don't even see it. (Also, in what's a bit of a touching moment, Boss plays as Secretary-San, and Secretary-San plays as Boss. Awwwwwww.)

Unexpectedly, Jin turns this into a chance for some actual development in the situation between Braveman and the General, as the latter collapses in exhaustion. She's taken to a hospital, where Braveman was visiting Oobaa-sama. He gets lost, and wanders into the General's room, is mistaken by the nurses for a chaperone (for an unconscious person?) and gets stuck trying to corral the hyper-active, sleeping, General. At which point, she kisses him. Without realizing it happened or that he was ever in her hospital room. But Braveman knows, and it is fucking him up, as seen in the first scan.

In between that and "Don't Get Greedy" is a summer beach chapter. The General invites Eight Foot Tall-Chan to the beach, as an apology for not inviting her to participate in the video game tournament. She just didn't think Eight Foot Tall-Chan (can we not get her a shorter name?) was ready for that sort of violence. (I don't know if this was what Jin always planned, or he realized he forgot their newest member, who joined for the chance to have friends, and scrambled to compensate.) Anyway, Eight Foot Tall-Chan also invited her other friend, the creepy lady the General's beaten up twice already, in the hopes they could still be friends, too. Unfortunately, "Slit-Mouth-San" can't let bygones be bygones, or more accurately, can't let her urge to pursue kids go, and is hurled into the sea.

Sunday Splash Page #428

"Indecent Descent," in Agent of W.O.R.L.D.E. #1, by Deniz Camp (writer), Filya Bratukhin (artist), Jason Wordie (colorist), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letterer)

Not knowing Deniz Camp's work, I made a guess about the tone of this mini-series based off the first cover, where the main character is shooting a robot in the head while scarfing a burger, wearing jeans and a hoodie. I thought it was going to be sort of silly. It is not. 

Philip works for WORLDE, an agency dedicated to either stealing potentially destructive elements, or destroying them. Whether that's a guy from the 25th century looking to use his future science to be a mega-violent hero, or some deranged Russian scientist who created a vast family of robotic children.

Philip's gift is some sort of ability to see the world mathematically, then make that work for him. Like releasing a wind-up monkey toy amid a bunch of armed enemies, counting on it making one of them step back, fire high, and for that shot to cause a massive car wreck that launches a small family sedan into the group of armed enemies, killing them all.

All of that Bratukhin illustrates in great detail, with lots of little scratchy lines and so many dots on faces it's like a pointillist warm-up exercise. It's kind of exhausting just imagining drawing it, and Bratukhin keeps it up for all four issues. Lots of little details in WORLDE's HQ, in the places Philip travels, in Philip's home.

Because Philip uses his skill well enough he's granted certain special privileges. Like time off to go, well, WORLDE doesn't know where he goes (or so Philip's boss, the talking orangutan, says), but we do. He goes home to his family. Which is the ugly side of the mini-series. In every single issue, Philip deals with some weapon or perceived threat that is really just someone trying to protect the family they've created.

And in every one of those situations, he kills them or takes their family away. The Russian scientist is allowed one of his "children", but he's now a prisoner of the WORLDE, expected to build weapons for them. A mother that took some eyes that let her see the future, is brought in alive, but Philip's idea of kindness is to hack the eyes so they just replay a particular happy memory of hers, three times an hour, forever, while she's strapped in a chair in WORLDE's facility. When a kid is mean to his youngest daughter on her first day of school, Philip sends some sort of bomb to the kid's house which leaves the kid traumatized and probably orphaned.

What's that saying, hurt people hurt people? That's Philip to a T. He seems loving with his family, indulgent even. Let's his daughter have two hot dogs even though she got sick last time she ate that much. Let's her watch a violent superhero movie with him, then tries to settle her nightmares. Tries (and fails) to construct a doll house. I have no idea what they think he does for a living, but probably not killing people on the regular for a talking orangutan in a striped sweater vest.

With everyone else, Philip is alternately sarcastic, condescending, and sanctimonious. Especially other agents he's forced to work with, none of whom share his reticence about killing. But the reticence doesn't actually stop him, so as one of the other agents points out, what's the difference if he feels bad about it? He clearly doesn't feel bad enough to do something different. Is consigning that woman to a life reliving a memory of the husband and child another agent killed a mercy?

I lean to "No," but I didn't like Philip very much, which might cloud my judgement. At the end of the day, Philip has drawn his lines fairly clearly. He will protect his family. Everyone else is expendable to that end. Philip also says, in the issue with the mother and her future eyes, that you can't run from the past, because it's always just ahead. The issue is written in reverse order, working backwards through the fight, so the past is waiting on the next page, but it feels significant. Is Philip running from his past as a child raised in some WORLDE "school", but just waiting for more psychic trauma ahead?

I don't know. Camp doesn't show us Philip's childhood, only has characters make vague references to it. All I can go by is what's on the page, and that's rarely someone's past. We see a particular mission one of the other agents went on, mostly because his telling of it doesn't match reality, and when Philip kills the 25th Century cosplayer, Bratukhin draws the image in profile, with dozens of little panels showing past moments of the guy's life, expanding in a cone from the back of the guy's head like blood spray from the exit wound.

I don't even know if Camp wants us to like Philip. It feels like there was more to the story - a new agent called "The Dream" is introduced in the fourth issue, but other than using him to show some of what goes on in WORLDE, there's no payoff there - and it was originally solicited as five issues, before only being four. Maybe there was more coming that would have produced some sort of resolution. WORLDE does something forcing the issue, makes Philip unable to work for them and have his little family. He has to choose. The WORLDE waits for no one, we're told. Why should Philip be any different?

Or maybe not. Scout Comics going down the drain amid a storm of accusations of breaches of contract with the various creative teams might have something to do with that.

Saturday Splash Page #230

"Cubicle Zombie," in Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead, vol. 1, ch. 1, by Haro Aso (writer), Kotaro Takata (artist)

Akira Tendo's a 24-year-old, in his third life-sucking year working for an ad company. Pulling multiple all-nighters, putting in hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime, getting screamed at by his boss, pining after the cute secretary that's sleeping with the CEO on the side. He staggers through days, deep bags under his eyes, barely aware of his surroundings, sleeping among the garbage of whatever quick ramen he ate for dinner at 3 a.m. He might as well be dead.

Then the zombie apocalypse happens, and the complete collapse of modern civilization means Akira doesn't have to go to work any more. He can clean his apartment, enjoy beer, confess his feelings to the cute secretary (who is already a zombie, but oh well.)

Surely though, there's more to do than that? Gradually accepting the notion of his mortality, and that, given the circumstances, it's a more immediate concern than usual, Akira makes himself a bucket list. Though he can only come up with 33 things initially, as he gathers more people to his little group, they start adding to the list.

The 19th volume was released in the U.S. last month, but I stopped after 6. Haro Aso had put together a decent group of 4 characters between Akira, his best friend Kencho, the conscientious and cautious Shizuka, and Beatriz, the German who just loves everything related to Japan. The bucket list concept lent itself to ridiculous adventures, like trying to deliver fish to a sushi chef, or apparently traveling into space in recent volumes. 

Kotaro Takata's pretty good at drawing rotting zombies, and especially when things need to get a little weird. Like volume 2's zombie shark that, thanks to all the zombie humans it swallowed whole, can now move around on land. Because the zombie human's are standing up and their legs extended through the shark's rotting stomach. The art leans a little heavy on the cheesecake, even if you allow for the notion the story is mostly from Akira's perspective and he's single and wants not to be ("meet the woman of my dreams" is item 33 on his list.)

I feel like that's a trend growing steadily worse in most manga, so it isn't exclusive to Zom 100, and it isn't something that, on its own, would cause me to drop the book. Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General is a lot worse in that regard, and I've kept up with it through 12 volumes, and fully intend to buy the 13th. So why'd I let this book go? Partly, I didn't want to commit to a series that long. 

But also, I think the post-apocalypse thing interests me in terms of what people do to survive (I wrote a little about it 11 years ago.) And the whole point of Zom 100 is, you could die any time. You can't content yourself to worry strictly about survival, you have to try and enjoy life. All the characters seem to have dreams of some sort - Kencho would like to be a stand-up comedian, Shizuka really wants to be a doctor - and I assume they pursue those amid all the zany adventures and fleeing zombies. Which is a good philosophy, but ultimately runs contrary to what I was looking for. Going to a casino to win big was not a thing I could picture someone deciding to do in a zombie apocalypse, even allowing for Akira and Kencho kind of being idiots.

What I Bought 5/20/2026

As I glide into a long weekend (followed by a short work week), let's look at one comic from last week, and one from this week. The local store didn't have Fantastic Four again, so I don't know if he's getting shorted on it, or my buying a copy every month wasn't enough for him to keep ordering it.

D'orc #4, by Brett Bean (writer/artist), Jean-Francois Beaulieu (colorist), Nate Piekos (letterer) - Damn, that thing is too ugly to live. But enough about D'orc!

D'orc comes under attack from a Thrawg, which I guess is "Cerebus, but a pug." D'Orc avoids being eaten, though he learns Thrawg's have flammable saliva in the process. This is what's known as "Chekov's Gastric Fluids."

D'Orc then has a soliloquy about how tired he is of everyone trying to kill him, and frustrated it makes him, and that frightens him, because he's afraid if he gets angry enough he'll lose control and kill someone like he did the chicken. The talking shield gives him some reassurance that he's doing good and providing hope. And in the morning, D'Orc wakes up to a bunch of goblins accusing him of working with a different group of goblins, led by the leader's brother.

The shield was supposed to keep watch, but explains they snuck up on him and he can't hear. So how does he know what D'Orc's saying all those times D'Orc has the shield on his arm with the eye facing out?

The brother goblin shows up, and the two sides start to squabbling about which side gets to kill the Thrawg that destroyed their villages. Then the Thrawg shows up and eats all of them. Once it eats Barry the goblin, who was looking forward to going home and rebuilding their villages, D'Orc gets angry and dives inside the Thrawg's stomach, where he uses two stones to make a spark and ignite the drool. So, the Thrawg's stomach acid is also flammable, or are we just assuming it swallows a lot of its own drool? Barry was swallowed whole, and survives the explosion, so he can point D'Orc towards the Silver Witch, and that's that.

Outside of saving Barry, I'm not sure what D'Orc accomplished. And maybe that's enough, if there are other goblins that weren't part of the hunting party that will listen to Barry and get the villages working cooperatively. Otherwise, D'Orc saved one goblin, who is going to rebuild two villages to live in, alone. 

Moonstar #3, by Ashley Allen (writer), Edoardo Audino (artist), Arthur Hesli (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - No no no, you're supposed to attack with the focused totality of your mind, Dani. This is much too scattered.

Dani is inside her own mind, courtesy of the cursed sword. it's sifting through her memories, moving backwards from Krakoa, to her time as a Valkyrie, to her days as a New Mutant. The sword takes the appearance of Hildr (more of less, she's got chalk-white skin and red eyes where the skin around them looks burned), the woman trapped within the sword, and spends a lot of time attack Dani and critiquing her for being weak. Oh, you have to rely on spells to avoid my attack. Oh, you're getting help from the memories of your friends.

It does show how what the sword's told Kyron is a lie. Kyron thinks he's sparing people the pain of losing others to death, by keeping everyone inside the sword. But the sword clearly sees relying on others, or really anything beyond your own strength and speed, as a weakness. Unless this is just meant to dig at Dani, that she isn't capable enough to actually do anything on her own, so she'll give up.

But I don't think that's it, because the sword's been rifling through Dani's memories looking for someone whose soul it can take, if not Dani's. Or someones, more accurately, and it hits paydirt with Dani's parents. Dani gets into the sword's mind enough to see a little of Hildr's true past and what the sword needs for its plan, but the sword's already sent the location of Dani's parents to Kyron. It's a nicely done page by Audino and Hesli. Dani is seeing through Kyron's eyes, so we are as well. And we see things in the reflection of his sword. First Dani, then Kyron (with a similar complexion to the one Hildr is sporting inside Dani's mind) and then the Moonstar family ranch.

And the sword dominates more and more of each panel, as it gets closer to what it wants. Either outcome, because Dani can either go after her parents, or go after the tablet Kyron needs, but not both. I would say, if he hasn't killed them already, simply taken them somewhere, she should just go get the tablet, and make him come to her, with her parents. But it's easy for me to say, not my parents in danger of having their souls sucked up by a sword. 

Wandering Star - Steven Yount

Set in the Texas Panhandle in 1910, Wandering Star shows us a town descending into lunacy over the approach of Halley's Comet, through the eyes of Tom Greer, a young boy in town.

The story actually starts with Tom going to meet Sam and Rebekah Adams, a young couple from Kansas who've come to High Plains (formerly Blind Mule) to re-open a weekly newspaper for a lawyer in town. Another passenger on the train is an emaciated, intense man named Nicholas, who jumps into the referendum on alcohol with both feet, but quickly pivots to proclaiming that the Comet will bring about the end of the world.

Sam tries to act as a voice of reason, but gets branded ungodly as more people decide they'd better hedge their bets. It's only a few weeks of being pious, in much the same way there are plenty of people in town who go to the church meetings about the evils of alcohol, who then turn around and vote against prohibition. Plus, Sam can't even keep his own house in order, as Rebekah grows increasingly depressed living in this rundown shithole of town, putting in long hours running a paper at a loss.

All of this is filtered through Tom's perspective, albeit when he's looking back from some point years down the line. Yount puts Tom at that age where he's both eager to learn, from just about anyone, but also steadfast in his certainty he knows what's what. Sam opens his eyes to new perspectives, especially on all the legends of the West that he's been taught in school. But then there's Tom's mother, prone to jumping onto any new organization or group with great intensity. Which, unfortunately, includes Brother Nicholas' hooey.

So Tom's caught between a man he respects and his mother, and I think Yount does a pretty good job describing the strain this puts on Tom, not aided by all the mental gymnastics Tom performs to both obey his mother's wishes, but not abandon his friend. It's fun watching Tom convince himself that if he talks about all this doomsday stuff with Sam, it could be construed as trying to convert the man, which Nicholas calls on them to do, and that means he's buying in like his mother wants, to try and save his soul.

There are other plot threads that don't really develop into much of anything. Sam's brief return to baseball, which might have been meant as another wedge between he and Rebekah, but I think there were enough wedges, or the Gem Scott murder. I think those are meant to a) provide a bit of additional detail to the world Tom inhabits, and b) to represent part of Tom's transition into adulthood (much like his crush on Rebekah) where things aren't always neatly resolved, and justice does not always prevail.

The book is quite funny at times. Tom's got a quick wit (and a quicker mouth), and the benefit of hindsight means he can get off some decent zingers at just about everyone. Beyond that, it's a matter of how amusing you find people contorting themselves into knots to justify their present actions or excuse their pasts.

"It is time to run these bloodsucking misery merchants out of this town using every means in our power, every weapon in our grasp." The preacher moved to the front edge of the stage and screamed the phrase that became his marching cry: "THE SALOONATICS MUST GO!"