Saturday Splash Page #245

"Insult to Attempted Injury," in Union Jack #3, by Christos Gage (writer), Mike Perkins (penciler), Andrew Hennessy (inker), Laura Villari (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer)

I bought this 4-issue, late-2006, mini-series in back issues last year. Came up somehow or the other in the comments at House to Astonish, and it wasn't expensive, so I figured, what the hell?

MI5 gets word some new AIM splinter group called "R.A.I.D." wants to establish themselves as the #1 terror organization in the world, after Wolverine hacked up thousands of HYDRA guys in Millar's Wolverine run. R.A.I.D.'s staging a massive strike on England, via a crap-ton of C-list super-villains out to do as much damage as possible. By the time Union Jack's been contacted, there's only 8 hours until it starts. Excalibur is off on assignment elsewhere, and the folks in the U.S. are busy with Civil War.

So, besides Union Jack, you've got former Assistant Director of SHIELD Contessa Allegra Valentina de la Fontaine, banished to the hinterlands of England(?) when Fury fell out of favor and got replaced with Maria Hill. *cackles in disbelief* You've also got Sabra, and a new Arabian Knight. An Israeli and a Saudi. No tension there.

I'm guessing the Knight's new design is Perkins' work. He ditches the turban, in favor of a sleeveless tactical vest and fatigue pants. The flying carpet has been unraveled and turned into the clothes he wears and automatically hardens like armor to any attack, but does not give him the ability to fly, so I guess it was a tradeoff. I feel like the scimitar used to be on fire, which is not in evidence here, outside of one panel where it looks like there are blue flames following the arc of his swing. Being mystical, it can cut anything. Actually, the re-design of the Arabian Knight might have been the point of discussion at House to Astonish. Characters receiving updated, less stereotypical designs perhaps?

Gage positions Union Jack (Joe Chapman version) as a man of the people. His relationship with Spitfire fell apart because they're from different worlds, what with her being landed gentry and him painting houses for a living. I can't figure which of them objected, but if it was him, Joe might be a damn idiot. 

That said, he doesn't care about political divides. If people are willing, he'll take the help. When Contessa suggests that, given his past history of objections to mass murder (that time he turned on Mr. Hyde and teamed up with Captain America), Batroc might be willing to roll on his buddies Zaran and Machete, Joe's up for giving it a try.

He's also not one for compromises. When Arabian Knight offers to let Joe kill him, so he can use the Knight's mystic sword (because the Knight's too concussed), Joe refuses. He's not killing an ally. He also objects to the MI5 guy withholding news of the impending attack from the public. All the more when it becomes clear the politicians got the word, and blabbed to all their wealthy pals. Of course, while Jack does tell people to shelter in place, he's a fool to think they'll listen, creating a lot of gridlock which the villains exploit. But "the people" come to his aid, especially in the big fight against the final threat.

Speaking of villains, besides Zaran and Machete, you've got Crossfire and his Death-Throws, Shockwave, Firebrand, Jackhammer, Boomerang, Jack O'Lantern, Ecstasy, and the Corruptor. Like I said, C-list. More critically in this story, they're all in it for the money. None of it is ideological for them, and against this version of Union Jack, that's not enough.

He's almost suicidally determined to stop them. He gets stabbed in the chest, through body armor, by Zaran, and just keeps choking him until Zaran surrenders. He dares Bombshell to throw a bomb at him when he's so close. Risk ending up scarred because of her revealing costume on the chance his won't protect him. He goes after Jack O'Lantern hard enough the guy decides to run - which seems on point, Jack O'Lantern's always been a chickenshit, no matter which guy is wearing the flaming pumpkin - only to end up run over by a flying car. This after Jack gets repeatedly zapped by Shockwave, before risking electrocuting both of them by cutting open the suit while they were in a puddle of water.

I think Perkins and/or Gage oversells it in the final issue, when a multiple-story dreadnought kicks Union Jack across Trafalgar Square and into a building, hard enough to break some of the stone the building is made of. Jack gets up and stabs a flagpole into an opening created by the Knight and Sabra and hits the liquid nitrogen reserves. As far as I know, Jack is not superhuman.

The final issue is also when Jack puts it together that, though this wasn't an inside job, it had some help getting as far as it did. It boils down to another chance to show Joe Chapman doesn't compromise his ideals, and doesn't find the sacrifice of innocent people to further some amorphous idea of "security" acceptable. Even if it makes him persona non grata with government agencies going forward.

It's funny, the MI5 guy asks Union Jack if he's planning to rush to future crises on the bus. Setting aside I think the UK has a much better public transportation system than the U.S., it didn't look like Jack was getting much help at the start of the mini-series, when he was killing vampires by himself, and apparently spending half his paycheck on silver bullets. But, as a man of the people, maybe Jack can bum rides off delivery drivers and street racers he's helped in the past. It worked for Kim Possible.

What I Bought 9/2/2026 - Part 1

About a month ago, I got an e-mail from Internet Movie Database, telling me my account had been created. While I do use it as a resource for almost every movie post, I had not created an account, so I dismissed it as some sort of phishing scam. Until I went to the site a week later, and it showed me as signed in. Turns out, Amazon owns or is connected to IMDb, so if you have an account with Bezos' Money Machine, they make you one for the movie site.

I deleted the account. I'll decide whether I make an account on a website or not, thanks. Today we've got the first of three comics from this week. I wasn't expecting to find all three at the local store. Two at best, given I hadn't had much luck with FF or Deadman last month. I guess that's the advantage to getting there on a Wednesday instead of a Thursday.

Fantastic Four #16, by Ryan North (writer), Ramon Rosanas (artist), Edgar Delgado (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Think you're a little late with the cover-up attempt, gang. I do like the font as trying to evoke old sci-fi mags or something similar.

The FF are hiding on an alien world until they fix their 1950s-style flying saucer. The intelligent life is technologically around the "dirigibles and phonograph" stage, so I guess it's a Prime Directive thing. Johnny bought a "graphophone" so they can listen to music while they work, plus some clay for Alicia to work with. Which gives her an idea.

Apparently, there was a theory that if you can store sound by carving into a wax cylinder, other things could store sounds when you carved them, like clay. Earth's clay doesn't do this, but the clay of the alien world does. If someone hummed while they carved a vase, the vase stored the sound and it could be played. Disguised, the FF share this discovery with the world, figuring as long as it seems like their own people figured it out, and the locals are the ones who actually test the artifacts, it's fine.

It's not fine. People learn things about the great thinkers, creators, religious figures and whatnot, that they didn't want to know. Fights break out, people start trying to destroy elements of the past. Reed gets the idea if they reveal they're actually aliens and explain a few things, people will calm down. Reed is wrong.

As the FF can't keep the entire world from fighting each other, they try one last time, only this time they lie. Present another invention that "accidentally" reveals them as beings of malicious intent (instead of, let's be kind and said overly optimistic), and are "killed" before they can escape in their saucer. They return to Earth, now having to explain to their kids why it was OK to lie this time. I'm not sure I buy Sue's reasoning that it may not matter in the long run, as I suspect that even if a member of the species rediscovers the truth centuries down the line, there will still be pushback from reactionary forces who don't like having their worldview challenged. But I'm a cynical person.

I was trying to decide what was bugging me the entire issue about Rosanas' version of the Thing. I think it's he gives Ben a neck. His head is too high relative to his shoulders. Although judging by that first panel, the area between his nose and lips looks almost like a dog's muzzle. That ain't helping. Also, seeing him wearing the same costume as the others, instead of just the pants, is weird to me. I know he's done that at times in the past, and I don't blink when he wears sweaters or whatever during his time off, but the snug spandex look just didn't seem right.

Dredging Up the Past. And Fish.

You're sailing to a series of islands, but in the dark of night, in fog too dense to see, you wreck your ship. You wash up in the town of Greater Marrow, where the Mayor has an offer: If you'll agree to be a fisherman, they have a boat you can use. For some reason, the locals don't want the job.

You soon find there's more in the waters around here than just fish. Treasures, sure, but strange lights, too. Monsters. Things in the night that aren't what they seem.

Most of DREDGE is exploring and collecting resources. You putter around catching fish, or dredge for sunken materials. The materials can be treasures - rings, jewelry, sacks of doubloons - or building supplies. Wood, cloth, scrap metal. The treasures, like the fish, can be sold. The materials are for upgrading the ship. Enabling it to carry more lights, more nets or engines. You get all the upgrades of a certain level, then you can get yourself a bigger hull, so you can get the next round of upgrades.

Of course, you must pay to apply the upgrades once you collect the materials necessary to build them, and that's where the fishing and dredging for treasures come in. That's done through timing events. Fishing, there'll be some sort of pattern around a silhouette of the fish you're going to catch, and you hit the button when the cursor is inside the green area (or the yellow, if you want to catch a trophy-sized specimen.) For dredging, there are two concentric circles rotating, with irregularly spaced black bars in them. You hit the button to move your cursor from one circle to the other, avoiding the bars.

You know where to fish or dredge because there'll be disturbed water, bubbles marking activity. You can usually see an outline of what's there, so if you're looking for particular fish, or particular building materials, you can try to pick the right spots, without wasting valuable daylight hours on something you didn't want.

There are also surprises. Good ones! All the fish species have aberrations, mutated versions you occasionally catch. You can recognize those spots because the disturbances in the water give off green blips of light, like the bubbles and sparks from a cartoon mad scientist's latest potion. Eel species that sometimes are a "twinned eel", basically Siamese twin eels. The Three-Headed Cod. An octopus where each tentacle ends in a mouth of razor sharp teeth. OK, that actually sounds like a horrible thing to catch, but you can get more money for it. What are a few fingers when there's money to be made? There's also the option to leave behind crab pots or hang out a trawl net, and just catch fish as you sail, if you want to be lazy about it.

Sometimes dredging pulls up odd mechanical bits called "research parts." You use them to figure out how to upgrade your gear, the specific engines, fishing rods, nets and crab pots. Of course, unlocking the upgraded versions just means you can buy them from either the shipwright in Greater Marrow or the one with a floating dock that services the other islands. Hey, how is it I'm doing all the work, and they're making all the money?

Oh, right, all the shipwrights around here are sturdy women wielding pipe wrenches. I retract my complaint.

I kid, the shipwrights are actually very helpful and frequently show concern when I don't get enough sleep. There are several island chains within the game. Each usually has at least two places you can dock, and usually at least one person is looking for help with something. You know how it goes. Find my photography equipment. Help me reconcile with my brother. Lure in creatures capable of flaying your sanity so I can kill them with a mortar salvaged from a wrecked biplane.

Daytime is relatively safe, save the occasional monster that can damage your ship, if not outright destroy it. Nighttime is another matter. The fog closes in. Even the strongest lights only let you see so far, and where you can't see, your character's mind fills in the blanks. Usually in the least helpful way possible. As a general rule, if you see a wobbly purple-red aurora, try to avoid it. If it lets you.

There's a little dial at the top of the screen that shows the time and whether it's light or dark. If you stay out after dark, an eye starts to appear on the dial. The longer you stay awake, the wider it gets, and if you sail too close to one of those auroras, the eye starts to shift colors and vibrate as your grip on reality slips. I guess it represents your eyes darting about, looking at shadows in panic. Rocks appear and disappear at the edge of your lights, assuming your lights don't shut off entirely. You'll see the lights of other ships in the dark, or enormous, ghostly sharks will surge at you from the fog, tearing through your ship. Man, now I gotta pay to repair that! And if the hull is damaged, something, will dart in through the gap and start infecting your fish, which hurts my profit margin! Stupid ghost sharks!

The broad plot is you meet a mysterious man who lives alone on Blackstone Island, just south of Greater Marrow. He wants you to find certain items. Items that reveal themselves at night, via a pillar of the same purple-red light as the mind-shredding auroras. Items frequently guarded by monsters. The solutions vary in details, but usually require getting something for someone else. Help a researcher by returning her equipment, and she'll construct something to temporarily repel the tentacled horror resting near one item. Catch specific fish to place on altars to recover mystical flames. Avoid little fish that can slow down your ship, while they call for their big mama, who can do significantly more than that.

When you return the items, you get special skills. Haste speeds up your ship, though it risks damaging your engines and messes with your head. Manifest teleports you to the Collector's house, and really fucks with your head. Then there's Banish, which can dispel the visions haunting you, and, well, you get the idea. On the plus side, the slackening grip on sanity is represented by the hallucinations. There's none of the wobbly-screen stuff from The Sinking City that gave me such a headache.

I made the mistake of not asking more questions of the Collector, or I would have known not to spam Manifest as much as I did. Because using it brings you to the attention of things you'd rather not have notice you. Which would explain why, around the time I finally asked, I found myself being chased by a giant, ghostly stingray immediately after using it. Sorry, I didn't get a picture of it. But using Manifest makes it look like your ship self-destructed!

In general, I needed to question characters more often. If someone asked me to find certain fish for them, I would definitely ask for any info they had about them. What kind of water depth they liked, nocturnal or not, stuff like that. But I wouldn't always think to ask, for example, the lady with the floating dock, what she knew about the island chain I just reached. Would have saved myself some grief at Devil's Spine if I did as soon as I found her.

I tended to focus on collecting materials and money to expand the ship, without upgrading much of my gear, the exception being the fishing rods. That was because there are 7 different habitats the fish can reside in (coastal-shallows-mangrove-volcanic-oceanic-hadal-abyssal), and the rods available early on are only suitable for one apiece. I ain't fixin' to carry 7 damn fishing rods, so I put the research parts into unlocking two rods that, between them, covered all 7 habitats. It meant there was no room for the trawl net, but oh well. As long as I had a crab pot, I didn't have to worry about not having the tools to catch what I needed.

On the downside, my engines were weak for a long time. It usually took the entire day to get from the Marrows to any of the 4 major island chains. Which left me with the options of a) resting at some dock for the night, b) trying to sail through the night to get back home, or c) using Manifest to get to Blackstone Island, which was a short enough jaunt from the Marrows to seem manageable at night. You know, outside the increased madness and vengeful ghost stingray. But the fish go bad if you wait too long, and I didn't want to risk blowing a quest and having to catch another fish, so Manifest it was.

Later in the game, I added a couple more engines, and let me tell you, going from a top speed of around 37 km/hr to over 100 km/hr makes a world of difference. I could cover the distance between any two points in the day. If I needed to be out at night, I was fast enough to outrun the night's horrors.

If I were to play from the beginning, I'd probably upgrade the engines as I added more space for them, instead of waiting until the end. I'd also take more time to just focus on fishing and dredging. It'd be a necessity anyway, to get the money to afford better engines. The Collector isn't calling me up and demanding I produce results, so there's no time limit, unless there's some sort of speed run Achievement. (It took me around 190 days, in-game, to get to the endings.)

That said, I didn't feel invested in the overarching plot. Really, I was barely aware of it. There was clearly some weird stuff going on. All the mutated fish, for one. You find bottles with messages suggesting a doomed romance. The Lighthouse Keeper makes cryptic remarks and keeps giving you the stink-eye. Hey, there's a boat a lot like yours, smashed on some rocks near Blackstone Island! What a coinky-dink!

But as I played, I didn't associate that stuff with anything I was doing. It was more like, local color. I figured, maybe if I kept sailing around, I'd find a sidequest that would lead to answers. Obviously the Collector was messing with dark powers, but I didn't have any sense of what his goal was, or if I was anything other than his unwitting dupe.

Again, maybe I needed to ask more questions, but I don't think it impeded my enjoyment of the game. I liked just sailing around, fishing in different spots, seeing what I could catch. Checking out the islands and the assorted weirdos, or searching for little coves or hidden treasures. Trying to use the camera to take nifty photos. Mixed results on that last one, but it was fun to mess with. Reminded me of the more peaceful parts of Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker, even if DREDGE takes place in a much less pleasant climate. A lot more rain, a lot rougher seas, blustery winds that carry those green blips of light like the magic's chasing you.

What I Bought 8/29/2026 - Part 2

I bought Outlast off the Playstation store several months ago. Fortunately when it was on sale, because I didn't get very far before I concluded it wasn't for me. I expected it to be tense, but I didn't realize how frustrated I'd get with the gameplay. I know I don't love first-person perspective for stealth games, but I guess Thief and Dishonored at least giving the option to defend yourself if you blow it blunted the dissatisfaction more than I thought. Not a choice with Outlast. All you can do is run, or hide, and it's just too tense. 

Vampyrates! #2, by Fred van Lente (writer), Luca Pizzari (artist), Adam Guzowski (colorist) Jodie Troutman (letterer) - Kind of wish the bats were forming into the jolly roger, or vice versa.

This issue is mostly former Empress Nira figuring out her current situation. She's on a pirate ship, with a captain (Akeyo) who knows Nira is who she claims to be, and not just some nut. Akeyo has no interest in letting Nira leave, to say nothing of following her commands. That Nira can't place Akeyo - meaning, she doesn't realize Akeyo was serving as a privateer for Nira, who got listed as an enemy because nobody told Akeyo the war was over - probably isn't helping. Or maybe it is. Akeyo could want the person she's angry with to actually remember her, and understand why, before taking revenge.

End result, Nira is part of the crew now. Specifically, part of a gunnery crew, with a little blonde vamp called Longlocks. And she's getting some practice in a hurry, because they attack a ship carrying tithes. Which is to say walking blood bags, aka, humans. There's also an area locked off, but it seems to be full, not of gold, but "rotters." Which I guess are vampires that are dead and mindless? Zombie vampires. Seems like they'd be easier to kill, lacking much in the way of thought or coordination, but still messy.

Fight scenes are brief, mostly implied by a panel of Nira looking on in shock as blood flies. That page is the only one where Pizzari's panels aren't square or rectangular, with the sides parallel to the edges of the page. They're slanted or angled instead, as maybe being this up-close to pirate warfare is unsettling to a coddled royal, even one that's good with a blade.

But Nira ends up saving one of the crew, and took care of the rotters by setting the ship ablaze (to destroy all the bounty posters with her picture on them that she found), so she's made some friends. Now if she can only figure out what Akeyo stands to gain by letting the humans slip away at night in a longboat.

So van Lente's throwing a lot of stuff in, and not necessarily stopping to explain all of it. Which makes sense. Odds are most of Akeyo's crew has seen all this before, and they aren't the types to stop and explain to the "crazy" newbie. But yeah, a lot of place names, a lot of concepts where I'm not totally sure of the context.

Paint (2023)

Carl Nargle (Owen Wilson) is the long-time host of a painting show on PBS-Burlington, known for his landscape paintings (mostly Mount Mansfield, highest point in Vermont), and naming the trees and bushes in his paintings. Also for his big, blonde afro and his brightly colored van, named Vantastic.

When Carl balks at the station manager's (Stephen Root) request he help boost their ratings by doing two shows a day, they bring in a new painter to follow Carl's show, Ambrosia (Ciara Renee). Who, on her first episode, paints a UFO pouring blood onto a tree stump*. Because that's what she felt like painting today. Soon, Ambrosia is the new hotness, and Carl misses all the blind adulation he once enjoyed. 

There are a few scenes of Carl trying to get people to love him again, but mostly it's him slowly - with a fair amount of help from people yelling at him - figuring out what went wrong in his life. He and the station's assistant manager, Katherine (Michaela Watkins), used to be an item, but it fell apart in a sad mixture of emotional neglect and infidelity, from both parties. Neither has moved on. Katherine really runs the station - Root is playing one of his nervous, awkward men, who somehow stumbled into a position he's unsuited for - but she doesn't seem to have found anyone else. Carl is still living in the past. Same haircut, same van, same shirt, same paintings of Mount Mansfield, again and again. Both of them struggle with intimacy, embarrassing themselves in front of potential partners at different times.

Which I appreciated. Katherine is good at her job, but Williams doesn't play her as some hyper-competent person, a complete contrast to a guy who is a walking disaster. She's smart, organized, but a little awkward and indecisive. Like Carl, when it comes to being honest with people, she stinks. Katherine couldn't tell Carl she was feeling neglected, Carl couldn't just talk to her about how her actions hurt him. Now she gets flustered around Ambrosia, blurting things out at inopportune times. Carl certainly enjoys the attention the younger staff members offer, but he gets anxious when one tries to put the moves on him and keeps trying to distract her. He can't just say he's not into her like that. Katherine can't just tell Ambrosia she's still in love with Carl.

There's a scene I like, after Carl's star has completely fallen at the station, where Katherine tries to return one of his paintings without being noticed. And Williams does a great job, the halting way she starts towards his door, then turns back, then dives into a snowbank to avoid being seen. The panicked flailing and instinctive (poor) attempts to hide, her visible terror at the thought of being spotted. You can tell she does not want to have to explain why she's there, maybe because she's not sure of the answer.

Along those same lines, Ciara plays Ambrosia as someone who can be very cheerful and friendly, but is not above getting competitive or frustrated. She's very respectful to Carl when they first meet, even as he's too absorbed in his own world to reciprocate. But when Carl pitches the idea of a fundraiser for the station where each of them paint a portrait of the biggest donor, she's all in. She's not playing the awed newbie for him any longer. Though Carl ultimately humiliates himself there, Ambrosia absolutely wanted to draw a higher bid than him, was frustrated she didn't, and also wanted to finish her portrait first. He threw down the gauntlet, and she was more than willing to pick it up.

As her relationship with Katherine falls apart, Ambrosia grows increasingly moody and spiteful, mockingly doing her own paintings of Mount Mansfield as a jab at Carl. But it's also a plea to Katherine. I can do these paintings too! I'll do as many of them for you as you want! Just forget about him! It's a nice contrast to Carl, who as he sinks into depression, just paints a canvas solid black (it's Mount Mansfield, at night) and seems disconnected from the world, needing several seconds to respond. He withdraws, Ambrosia lashes out, Katherine is just looking for the exit. 

Wilson plays the guy he usually does. Superficially nice, but self-absorbed in that clueless, idiot way a lot of his characters are. He tries to win the station staff back to his side by giving them gifts, but the gifts are just merch with his face on them. But when Ambrosia steps in and mentions she made a unique painting for each of them, Carl doesn't try to stop them from going. He knows it's a nice gesture, even if it burns him up how eager they are to get the paintings and discard his offerings.

That doesn't stop him from driving around town stealing newspapers with a lead article proclaiming him tired and unimaginative, while praising Ambrosia as a breath of fresh air, one of several scenes I found hilarious. Just the pitiful desperation, driving down the middle of a residential street in a van everyone will recognize, screeching to a stop every few seconds to dart out and steal a newspaper off someone's porch.

There were a couple of times I thought the movie was going a direction it didn't. Katherine mentions, while checking the recordings of Carl's old shows still play, that he used to draw a lot more stuff than just Mount Mansfield. Carl responds with some comment about following a dream, which I dismissed as just pap. It turns out to be relevant. I thought the disaster with the fundraiser was going to reveal he'd been painting landscapes so long he couldn't remember how to do anything else. Maybe because I remembered a Bob Ross episode where he mentions he wasn't very good at painting people, so that's why he stuck to landscapes.

The reason turns out to be something both deeper and sadder. It leads him to the Burlington Museum of Art, in pursuit of that dream he alluded to with Katherine. While that trip ended in humiliation, I thought, when he returned to the barn where he kept all his paintings, the trip would have opened his eyes to a new vision of what art could be. We were going to see Cubist Carl Nargle, or Post-Modernist Carl Nargle! And it would turn out nobody wants that. They just want him to paint the mountains. But also, they're tired of him painting mountains. So he would just paint for himself. Something like that.

And he does, eventually, take the advice he received from the museum curator to heart. But first, he flips out and throws paint everywhere, even using his afro like a brush. Which ends in another punchline that made me laugh. That was a pleasant surprise, that the movie was actually funny to me; I was worried it was going to mostly be cringe elements, like much of Dream Scenario, and I would barely be able to watch it. And there are times where Carl starts doing something you can see is going to be hugely embarrassing from a mile off and I had to look away.

But it turned out to be very funny, I think because everyone gets to be a mess in different ways. Stressed from a job they can't do, unsatisfied with the job they've got. Still guilty over a past mistake, or frustrated the person they love won't love them back. Pursuing what they think is a dream, only to find reality isn't as impressive as they hoped. Convincing themselves they're living that dream, when it only works so long as nothing changes, about them or anyone else. And they get to lash out, or act the fool, or be petty, and it frequently backfires. 

* People keep saying it's a painting of a UFO drenched in blood, but it isn't. The flying saucer is clean, all the blood is pouring from the center of it, straight down onto the stump.  

What I Bought 8/29/2026 - Part 1

August has dragged on forever. So sick of this month. It doesn't help that we're experiencing yet another full week of hellish temperatures. Today we're looking at two books from early in this miserable, interminable month.

The Deadman #3, by W. Maxwell Prince (writer), Martin Morazzo (artist), Chris O'Halloran (colorist), Good Old Neon (letterer) - Well, at least he's dressed in the right color for the party.

Deadman descends into Hell to ask Lucifer about the demon he faced in issue 1. For some reason, Rama Kushna makes him take along the ghost kid, Bobby, that tags at his heels in Purgatory. So down they go.

This issue really seems like an opportunity to for Morazzo to do a lot of different stuff. I mean, I'm sure there's some deeper significance to the version of Hell that Prince has opted for, but whatever theological or literary references he's making are lost on me.

So the first level, dubbed "Button", a place for those who, 'let the elevator door close as someone ran towards it calling, "Wait!"', is done like, what I'd think of as the art in a Middle Ages church. Oddly-shaped figures and animals, drawing hair like a depiction of the wind. There's a page of mostly prose that adds a little backstory to the man using the demons to keep himself young, with just one image along the right side of the page.

When Deadman and Bobby reach level 6 "Full Stop", they find the fracking magnate Deadman supposedly sent to Heaven in issue 1. Turns out Lucifer's got veto power, and the guy gets to spend eternity having his organs ripped out and devoured by Cerberus, only to for everything to regenerate. Anyway, there's a page of charts and graphs - this is apparently level 7 - that depict the course of the man's life and show that he should, in fact, be damned. Frankly, it's a messy page, but it figures Hell would be full of people who don't know how to properly organize a powerpoint slide.

The page of the 8th level is all negative space, white outlines against a solid back backdrop, before they reach Lucifer. Who laughs at the idea anyone other than him gets final say on whether someone is damned or saved. Wait, they're letting the Devil decide? What idiot made that system? Oh, right, God. The same moron that allegedly created this fucked-up place we live in. "Lucy" gets a good laugh at Deadman's notion that Rama Kushna wouldn't tell him about this arrangement, so now Deadman's going to yell at God. Good luck with that.

Chachu #1, by Iman Vellani (writer), Marianna Ignazzi (artist), Jordie Bellaire (colorist), Lucas Gattoni (letterer) -  Strong "teen trying to look cool," vibes. To her credit, she's doing a lot better than I would have managed. 

In 1979, Leila has come to Los Angeles. She's starting college soon, but she's really here to look for an uncle she's never met, who left home for reasons no one can agree on (or they won't tell her the truth if they do.) She finds him, he notices her, she panics, her car collides with his wife's car as said wife tears ass away from their home.

They talk, though she doesn't get the answers she's looking for. Well, it wouldn't be a mini-series if it was that easy, would it. Her internal narration, or her diary, whatever form the caption boxes are meant to be, is definitely overdone. 'His mustache sat too politely under his nose - like it was there to chaperone his more boyish features.' It's a nice line, but as my dad would says, veers too far into Raymond Chandler territory. Leila's also obviously trying to appear more mature than she is, thinking of this as some grand adventure of discovery, so it fits.

Leila is woken in the night by a gun in her face. Her Chachu has a visitor, his father-in-law, who is a movie producer, I think. If so, it's in the sense it makes a convenient cover for criminal activities and threats. Hence the armed goons and the midnight visit. He wants to know where his daughter went, because she needs to be there for a big movie premiere.

And while Leila's shaken enough to almost start crying, she's recovered enough confidence by the next day to insist her uncle can't use her car without taking her, too. So it's off to Vegas, where Cleo is visiting old girlfriends when she gets attacked. By people very interested in stealing her wedding ring. Fortunately some lantern-jawed leading man shows up and chloroforms her, so he can carry her to safety. Which is not doing much to dispel Chachu's notion this is all a publicity stunt his father-in-law engineered.

Ignazzi's art reminds me a bit of Chris Samnee's. Not as squared-off, bit softer in the linework, but a similar vibe. Also not as heavy on the solid blacks, but this story isn't quite as dark as some of the stuff I've seen Samnee draw. At least, not yet. I really like how Ignazzi draws Leila, with the huge sunglasses and the coat with the massive fur trim collar. It could be meant as a disguise, but it comes off like a child wearing their parents' clothes. She wants to project the image of an adult, but it just comes off as an obvious act. Her face is also more rounded than anyone else's, her eyes bigger relative to her face. She's still just a kid, but she wants badly to be an adult. Get the answers she thinks everyone withholds because she's too young.

Sunday Splash Page #442

"Cap-Snake," in Avengers Assemble #4, by Steve Orlando (writer), Valentina Pinti (artist), Sonia Oback and Fer Sifuentes-Sujo (color artists), Cory Petit (letterer)

After the whole mess with Blood Hunt, Captain America decided they needed a crew of Avengers that were always ready to respond to any crisis. I'm pretty sure that was kind of what the Avengers were for. Confronting threats no single hero could handle alone? What the hell are the regular Avengers, in the main book, doing if not that?

So Cap's Avengers Emergency Response Squad - AVENG.E.R.S., yes, they turned just the last three letters into an acronym - use the old Avengers Mansion as HQ, and whoever is there when a call comes in rolls out to face it. So, again, it's the Avengers, just more haphazard about who's on duty?

Cheap shots at the concept aside, this wasn't bad. The team is a nice mix of long-standing Avengers and new ones. Besides Captain America, you've got the Wasp, Hawkeye, Hercules, Wonder Man, She-Hulk, Monica Rambeau (going as Photon), Living Lightning, Shang-Chi, Night Thrasher and Lightspeed. A little light on scientists - basically Night Thrasher - and not much magic - basically Hercules - but it's a good blend of personalities, and a big enough roster Orlando can grab a different group of 4 to 5 in every issue to confront whatever the immediate crisis is.

In issue 1, the Red Skull's daughter gets hold of some helm from a goddess of hate, and it starts to amp up Cap, Wasp, and Monica's natural assertiveness until the three of them are butting heads and sniping over who should be giving orders. Shang-Chi's the one with enough spiritual awareness to fight the pull and get them back rowing the same direction.

Issue 2, an entire town is swarmed with ghost apes, so you end up with Cap, Hawkeye, Night Thrasher and Hercules. Herc being a demi-god means he can actually punch ghosts, and apparently understand all languages? Thrasher's the one who detects a lot of cosmic radiation. Hawkeye's the one actually trying to interpret what the apes are silently saying, because of his experience being deaf and all.

The overarching plot is the revitalized Serpent Society is using these crises as cover for smaller heists, and the AVENG.E.R.S slowly figuring that out. Specifically, the Society is stealing weird crap to create some potion that turns people into snake-people, in service of Mephisto (the "true Serpent"), who they now worship. I tend to prefer the Serpents as crooks who work together to improve their odds of pulling off a score rather than cultist wack-a-doodles, but it's not the worst set-up, I guess. Orlando adds a couple of new serpents, including a big one called Titanoboa that Viper treats like some genius of the human mind because he correctly predicted Captain America would throw himself on a vial of the toxin to protect a teammate.

I guess given the usual pinheads that work in the Society, even that basic level of observation is considered noteworthy.

Orlando also makes sure to devote a few pages each issue to interactions between the Avengers at the Mansion, awaiting the next crisis. In issue 2, we get a page of Lightspeed fangirling over the Wasp, and being assured that she can handle being an Avenger, plus a couple of pages of Living Lightning making Shang-Chi watch some apparently terrible movie starring Schwarzenegger and Wonder Man. They're little things, but it's a way to establish personalities and let the characters bounce off each other outside combat.

One thing that doesn't work in the book's favor is the churn of art teams. Every issue has a different artist. Besides Pinti, you have Cory Smith, Scot Eaton, Marcelo Ferreira, and Jose Luis. Most tend towards a more grounded, realistic-leaning style. Nothing wildly exaggerated. Likewise, Oback's colors tend to be muddy and dulled. Nothing leaps off the page and demands your attention.

I don't like that approach for this book. This isn't some gritty, back alleys, espionage-focused squad. It's confronting people dressed as snakes, the ghosts of tormented apes, and groups trying to kill those turned into vampires against their will, with whoever happens to be available. Hercules is hitting people with a glowing adamantine mace. Monica Rambeau is doing a better than terminal velocity crash into the Red Skull's daughter with Captain America's shield. That sort of stuff should lean towards four-color, bright and dynamic art.

This ran for 5 issues as a mini-series, after which it became an online comic. Or Infinity comics, whatever they were calling them. I didn't follow it - see my comments two weeks ago about not being big on reading comics online - so I don't know what happened after.