What I Bought 6/3/2026 - Part 2

My coworkers are having a good laugh at my misery as emergency unit chief (or "EUC" as my mom put it.) To be fair, I'm also laughing. If I didn't, I'd be miserable. So I vowed to lead with apathy and cruelty, and feigned disappointment when I got off a lengthy phone conversation and found everybody had left for lunch.

Although when one of my coworkers said it was a mutiny, I pointed out a mutiny is supposed to involve them throwing me out and taking command for themselves. What they did was just desertion.

Marc Spector: Moon Knight #5, by Jed MacKay (writer), Devmalya Pramanik (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - The House has decided it will be the one bringing it down tonight.

Marc charges into the people-eating house with his dragon-sword. The house creates all kinds of greenish, half-formed ghosts or constructs or something. None of which have souls, to the sword's displeasure. All of which are capable of hurting Marc, to Marc's displeasure. Ginnaar swears if Marc gets him to the house's heart, it will drink up its soul, so Marc keeps going. And he finds the heart.

It's Achilles Fairchild, the Asgardian farmboy turned drug lord. Or, it's his body, being controlled by the house. Which explains the door he vanished through in the previous volume. It, and it says its name in The Mansion Ravenous, heard the Midnight Mission's death cries and came looking for the one responsible. Because they're of the same kind, but the Mission is just a child, and the Mansion's a full-grown adult.

Still, the monologuing lets Marc stab it in the heart. To no avail. Ginnaar decides the Mansion would be a better boss, because it can give it back its old form within those walls. It's a lovely image. The dragon, but its form is only partially real. So there are details - the teeth, the claws, some of the scales, but other parts are a swirl of this dull orange that just imposes itself on the page. Marc becomes this tiny white outline in the corner.

So, yeah, Marc's royally fucked, but they let him escape. Because he'll have to come back. With help. That they can also devour. He goes to Clea (since Strange is stuck in Asgard), and she's going to assemble a Midnight Sons, which Marc doesn't remember being a part of. I don't blame him, if Clea's referring to Damnation. I got hold of the complete collection last year. What a pile of shit. The Ewing-written stuff was OK, but the Donny Cates-written stuff was as bad as I'd expect. He wrote Moon Knight (in his "Mr. Knight" persona) as basically Deadpool. I'd blot that experience from my memory, too.

Fantastic Four #12, by Ryan North (writer), Pat Boutin (penciler), Serge LaPointe (inker), Edgar Delgado (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Well, it's happened. Reed's finally acknowledged what an egotistical prick he is and declared himself Emperor.

The aliens that attacked while the FF were in space a few issues ago decide to take a different approach and conquer the planet in the past. The team tries traveling to the point of the change, but only Reed and Johnny are sent back before the others get erased. So it's the two of them, posing as Gauls, helping some Roman legions fight an alien spaceship.

Also, because the attack was sudden, everybody was in bed when the warning came. Which is how we learn Reed Richards wears pajamas that say "Mr. Fantastic" on them. I'm sure this comes as a great shock to all of you, Reed being such a modest guy. 

The aliens also have a superweapon charging that could wipe out all life on the planet if they decide that's the best remaining option. Reed and Johnny must beat the aliens, but not badly enough they opt to go scorched Earth. At least until figuring out a way to neutralize the weapon. Against an alien force that all the non-Fantastic Four heroes in New York apparently couldn't drive back.

But they manage all this by, OK, you've maybe seen articles about those weird metal dodecahedrons that are dated back to Roman history, and nobody's sure what they were for? Reed invented them, because a whole bunch of them intercepting the superweapon refracts its energy into some less harmful wavelength. I have no idea which wavelength. Maybe all the legionnaires got really tan that day. Or got skin cancer. Presumably they didn't become Hulks, or the U-Foes.

To minimize effects on the timeline, Johnny suggests the Romans not tell anybody how they needed 'two weirdos' to save them from strange invaders, because it would make the Empire look bad, and the general vows to crucify any of his men who talk about it. Which, and I agree with Johnny here, was not an idle threat. Johnny is, apparently, less successful getting them to melt down all the "prismatic refractors", but to be fair, nobody talked about them. Except now Sue has to explain to the Archaeological Society that the answer to yet another long-standing mystery is, "The FF did some shit while time traveling."

I kind of groaned when Reed showed the Legion what he needed them to build, because I could see the punchline, but Sue's exasperation made it work. Even if it does sort of fall under the same notion as aliens building the pyramids. Although aliens totally, definitely exist in the Marvel Universe, and have done a lot more mucking around on Earth than building pyramids, so maybe that's not a big deal.  

Black Moon Rising (1986)

Quint (Tommy Lee Jones) steals a cassette tape from a company the feds are about to prosecute for something. Tax-related, probably. It's not a quiet theft, so he hides the tape in an experimental, hydrogen-fueled car that's being hauled to L.A. Except the car gets hijacked by a top-notch car thief (Linda Hamilton), working for a sleazebag (Robert Vaughn) who doesn't respect her skills.

When the back of the DVD case described a futuristic car, I thought this was going to be sort of a cyber-noir thing. Low-budget Blade Runner or something. In my defense, the case made it look like the car was flying. It's actually just smashing through a window. From several stories up, and crashes through the window of a different building, also several stories up. Quint jumped so Dominic Toretto could fly.

Anyway, Black Moon Rising is a heist flick, with several moving parts only vaguely aware of each other. You've got Hamilton, growing dissatisfied with Vaughn's presumption that she owes him and looking for an exit. You've got the cars designers, who rebuff Quint's initial offer to team-up and try breaking in themselves. It ends in vehicular manslaughter and a reassessment of options. Neither of those parties are aware of the other, so Hamilton ends up being the ace in the hole that doesn't even know that's she is.

There's also a rival or competitor of Quint's, played by Lee Ving, who was security for the company Quint robbed and wants the tape back. He pops up maybe every 25-30 minutes to cause trouble for Quint. Mostly in the form of beatings or attempted murder. He's basically an element you're meant to worry about when things are going well. Is Marvin going to show up right now, when things are going well?

This is young Tommy Lee Jones, although I'm not sure he ever looked young, exactly. But that means he's not playing a crochety old man, but a, I hesitate to use "dashing", but charming? Yeah, charming thief. He has an easy smile, and Hamilton is playing Nina as someone frustrated by the lack of respect by her boss (Vaughn plays Ryland as someone who is probably charming, but has gotten so cocky the charm curdled into condescension), so you can see it as stress relief.

Hamilton's playing Nina as intelligent, skilled and professional. She's the one who actually steals the experimental car and out-drives Jones. She figures out the engine extracts hydrogen from water when the mechanics can't. One thing the movie doesn't explicitly state that I think is implied is that Ryland is getting complaints from his buyers about the cars they're receiving. The complaint focuses around damage to the cars, but I think there's an issue that they aren't getting any cars they couldn't get somewhere else. Nina steals a car that's literally one of a kind, and Ryland is annoyed because he can't see any value in it.

That wasn't really the point I was initially driving at. The point was, Nina doesn't abandon those traits once she tumbles into bed with Quint. As soon as she thinks he's asleep, she goes through his wallet, finding out how many i.d.s he has. She remembers he was at the bar where she stole the car, and she knows someone chased her, and Ryland told her someone found their hidden garage, so she's suspicious.

What I Bought 6/3/2026 - Part 1

While in a meeting for something at work I have no interest being part of, we were told they were going to introduce some AI stuff. This after they tested 10 scenarios, and found one 1 where AI actually helped. I asked if we were required to use it, and they said no, if we didn't want to sign the agreement, we wouldn't be able to. Easy enough call for me. Toss that agreement in the trash.

Told my dad this, he suggested I buy in from the start, so I'd be familiar with AI, rather than having to learn it in a rush if they make it mandatory at some point. I have to wonder if he understands me at all. When have I ever shown an inclination to be early adopter of the flashy new bullshit tech thing? Never. Look at me, running a blog on fucking Blogger in the year 2026. I don't need AI to do my work, I wouldn't trust its results, so why use it? To kiss somebody's ass?

The Deadman #1, by W. Maxwell Prince (writer), Martin Morazzo (artist), Chris O'Halloran (colorist), Good Old Neon (letterer) - So is it that Deadman is protecting all those souls by containing them, or that he keeps a little piece of every person he possess or touches?

Deadman's working off his karma or whatever for Rama Kushna by acting as a, otherwordly doorman? Docent of the Afterlife? He's hanging out in a hospice, greeting people as they die or, in one case, keeping a person from dying too soon by, I don't know. One of the nurses passed through him, and he caught a glimpse of a memory of her making rice pudding (with saffron) with her long deceased grandma, and later he held up some "floral-energy chimera" of saffron and a girl's soul went back in her body and her cancer went into remission.

Then Deadman takes the bus home, spies on his widow who lives in a suburb where lots of lost souls turn up, until he has to go greet some biker about to turn into street pizza because of a deer. Except a four-armed, winged demon that seems maybe Hinduism-related given the helmet/crown thing eats part of the soul. Deadman dispatches it - by tearing off its wings after a smaller version of himself crawls out of his mouth and speaks in a different font - but he finds this unacceptable.

So Rama Kushna, who appears as a child of sorts, tells him this is a new job, and he gets a different costume. It's like when David Aja ditched the high collar and plunging neckline on Iron Fist and replaced it with more of a green turtleneck. Except it's red, and Morazzo doesn't give Deadman any sort of mask. I don't dig the look, frankly. It's a little dull for a guy who was a showoff when he was alive.

As first issues go, it's, intriguing, I guess. I don't know that I love it, but I can't say Prince, Morazzo, O'Halloran and Neon didn't do their best to give me my money's worth. It's funny in places, or trying, anyway. Between the 4th wall breaking as Deadman explains stuff, and the spoof of the 4-panel character summary from All-Star Superman. But I feel as though there's going to be a lot of metaphysical or religious stuff that'll fly right past me. Like the thing with the flower, or Deadman with a little Deadman crawling out his mouth (that was really damn weird.) Am I on the right wavelength for this book?

The colors are kind of subdued tones, moreso for the living, but even the spirits don't exactly burst off the page. Morazzo draws Deadman as more gangly than the brief glimpses we get of Boston Brand. Makes him a bit more skeletal, maybe playing up the "dead" aspect over the "man."

Batgirl #20, by Tate Brombal (writer), Stephen Segovia (penciler), Jason Paz (inker), Rain Beredo (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - The chalk outline implies Batgirl has a lamprey mouth. Disturbing, if true.

Someone left a child's body in a warehouse with a note to Batgirl. The ink is from a fungus, the initials of the scientific name are "C.C.", so it's for Cass. And the corpse is in the dress she wore when she killed that one guy for her dad. Which starts triggering memories of a flower swinging back and forth on a chain. Like the flowers they find around the body. Forget-me-nots.

At which point Cass has a seizure and starts remembering some time where her dad had her spar with Bronze Tiger, and things got out of control. Or rather, the Tiger got out of control, to the point Cain tased him to save Cass. Which does not match my recollection of how David Cain - the man who shot his daughter when her guard was down - trained her, but OK. I mean, he apparently let her eat multiple bowls of ice cream, so he must be a good guy!

I felt like Segovia was drawing Bronze Tiger as too much of a tiger-man, in terms of the mask he wore looking more like his actual head, and the huge, clawed hands. But maybe the gloves disguise claws on brass knuckles wrapped around his fingers. Except the gloves have five digits and there's only three claws, so that doesn't make sense. Maybe that's how he was pre-Suicide Squad, but I don't think so.

Tenji tries calling his dad for help, and he just so happens to be in Gotham. As soon as Tenji mentions "Forget-me-nots", Bronze Tiger starts having a seizure, too. Meanwhile, the cops show up - the Bat-family is apparently persona non grata with Gotham cops these days, because Vandal Savage is police commissioner, which is, OK, sure, let's take a Silver Age plot and treat it seriously, the immortal caveman crook is police commissioner, whatever - and Cass is still in her own head, talking to some guy swinging the flower on a chain and with more of them covering his face. Which would be kind of stupid-looking, but I'll give Segovia credit for making the guy's almost-rictus grin terrifying enough to make it work.

There's also a panel where Cass wakes up to Batman standing over her, and another in the dream/memory where it's David Cain. Their postures and our perspective are similar, but she reads entirely different things from their bodies, which was a nice touch. And I guess the things she reads are meant to be contemporary with the time of the memory, because she thinks of Cain as "father", and I'm not sure she's applied that title to him for a long time. But if she's accepting Shiva's her mother, then it wouldn't make sense to deny Cain the same, considering he was actually part of her life for a long-ass time. 

Sunday Splash Page #430

"A Fractured Mirror," in All-New Wolverine #1, by Tom Taylor (writer), David Lopez (penciler/inker), David Navarrot (inker), Nathan Fairbairn (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer)

Around 2016, Marvel killed Wolverine. Marvel, being Marvel, didn't let the concept lay fallow. They pumped out more Wolverine books than ever. Wolverines, about a bunch of characters that weren't that particular Logan, but liked to carve things up with claws, so close enough. Old Man Logan, because some dumbass thought we needed more of Mark Millar's bullshit in the Marvel Universe. And All-New Wolverine, which was about Laura Kinney trying to take on the legacy of her genetic donor. I hesitate to apply the label of "father" to Logan, given how bad he was at it.

Tom Taylor wrote the title, which ran for 35 issues, plus an Annual. It had a host of artists, because of course it did. Pretty much a different primary penciler for each arc. David Lopez on the first six issues, Marcio Takara and Ig Guara splitting the next six, Nik Virella and Djibril-Morissette-Phan on the third story, Leonard Kirk on the fourth arc, Juann Cabal on the fifth, and mostly Ramon Rosanas in the sixth arc, some "Old Woman Laura" thing I didn't keep, as should be self-explanatory given my comments in the previous paragraph.

Taylor's focus is on Laura trying to branch out and build a life, with friends and loved ones, while also moving beyond her past as a weapon. He starts by establishing Alchemax - this was when Alchemax was a thing in the present, rather than just in 2099 - cloned Laura. The clones were implanted with nanites to block their healing factors and lack claws - or so it seems - but the few survivors are trying to take out the ones responsible before they die. Of the four, only one appears to survive, the youngest, named Gabby (later Honey Badger or Scout.)

Gabby's the one constant presence throughout the run, despite Laura often trying to handle things alone to protect her new kid sister. Taylor writes Gabby as very quick to get excited about things and equally quick to judge. She's usually got some funny or clever remark ready, but a lot of Taylor's writing seems to revolve around that kind of quippy dialogue. It probably works here because Laura is mostly subdued. She's the quiet core all the more bubbly or outgoing characters orbit.

Besides Gabby, Maria Hill and Nick Fury (the one they put in the Marvel Universe that looks like Sam Jackson, 'cause Whitebread Nick Fury was/is busy being a Watcher) show up a few times, usually with something they want Laura's help with. Critically, Taylor makes these tasks Laura trying to rescue or help people, rather than kill. In the second arc, they need her to look for several missing SHIELD agents. In the fourth arc, it's a dying alien child who said Laura's name before keeling over of some engineered plague. People wanted her to kill, to take advantage of how much punishment the healing factor would let her take, but now she's using it to save lives.

To that end, Taylor uses the third arc to get rid of the "trigger scent" that sent Laura into berserker furies. As far as I know, nobody's undone that yet. Fittingly, that arc is the one that seems to delve most into previous Laura Kinney stories, as she's being hunted by Kimura, the woman who trained and/or tormented her in the Facility, and Gambit shows up for support, after being a big part of Laura's first ongoing series.

There's also the fifth arc, where a group of people who lost loved ones to various Wolverine-themed characters formed a support group to hunt down and kill them with bullets made of broken shards of the Muramasa Blade. Laura has to convince them she understands what they lost, because she lost part of herself being made into a killer, so she wants to help them by finding and punishing the ones who did that. Which is swell, but doesn't really address the fact she saved Sabretooth, Lady Deathstrike or Daken, who don't have the excuse they were kids when they were slaughtering people, nor have they demonstrated much regret.

But regret never stopped Logan from killing people. Why should the knockoffs be any different?

At times, though, the book feels like Wolverine Team-Up, as every arc has some guest star. Dr. Strange and the Wasp both appear in "Four Sisters", as well as the time-traveling teen Angel, who at least has the excuse of being Laura's boyfriend. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl shows up in the story Marcio Takara drew, which is a fun little team-up about rescuing a squirrel that Laura's actions endangered, and then Old Man Logan and HYDRA-Cap show up in the obligatory Civil War II tie-in. You've got Gambit and Teen Jean Grey in the third arc, plus Tyger Tyger, Maria Hill and Nick Fury, then Laura travels to space with the Guardians of the Galaxy to find the source of the sick alien kid.

It's old hat for the new kid to meet up with established characters and get their stamp of approval. In the '90s, Spider-Man was a lock for a guest appearance by issue #3 in every new Marvel book. But it feels like Taylor spams that particular button. I guess the point is to use people who knew Logan to contrast Laura to her predecessor, but if the idea is her reinventing herself to be someone who protects, then maybe the focus could have been on non-super powered characters that were being saved by her?

I know, that's silly. All supporting cast members must be supers themselves now.

As far as the artists go, I'm always partial to Lopez's art. He's got that clean linework with expressive body language and faces I enjoy. It works with Taylor's tendency to do 3-panel sequences of "action-silent panel-reaction." Laura tells Angel not to hug her until her ribs heal. He pats her head instead. She asks if he did that, he freezes, then acknowledges the obvious. Or Taskmaster catches Laura's kick, talks shit, she extends the claw in her foot through his hand, he screams in pain.

Takara's work is a lot rougher, the characters more blocky, but the art captures Squirrel Girl's cheerful and earnest personality, as well as Gabby's excitement and Laura's resignation that she needs to make things right. Kirk, I think is like Rick Leonardi: He needs a strong inker or his figures get a little like a wax figure left in the sun. Things kind of stretch and elongate abnormally. There are four different inkers in that story, including Kirk himself, and sometimes the details start to slip, but mostly it works. The Guardians of the Galaxy look appropriately alien, if there's slippage, it's when Laura gets emaciated because her healing factor is overworked by the alien plague. Deadpool and Gabby hit it off and are all smiles with each other.

Cabal's work is a little stiff in the fights, but he's good with emotion and he's the only artist I've seen that leans even a little into the fact part of Laura's DNA comes from a stocky, burly man. Laura's traditionally drawn as sort of a waif. Partially (OK, mostly) because it's usually guys drawing the comics for guys and they want the girls to look the traditional sort of cute or hot. But also somewhat so she looks like this unsuspecting girl, who turns into a tornado of murder. It's not as though Cabal gives Laura body hair, or a square head, or hair swooped into little wings, but he does give her more musculature, especially in the shoulders and back, than I can recall most artists doing.

Logan came back eventually, somehow. Laura went back to being X-23. Then she was Wolverine again, at the same time as Logan. Now she's back to X-23, but still dressing like Wolverine? I don't think they've ever given her a brown-and-orange costume like Logan had. It's only ever the yellow-and-blue, or sometimes black-and-red when she's in X-Force mode. I'm not sure what that means, if anything. The artists want to use colors that are more sharply distinct? 

Saturday Splash Page #232

"Batter Up," in Yakuza Fiance ch.24, vol. 6, by Asuka Konishi

As far as I know, Yakuza Fiance isn't finished, but it's been over 18 months since volume 8 was released in the U.S., and I haven't seen a listing for volume 9 in months. So, rather than wait indefinitely. . .

Somei Yoshino is a high school student and granddaughter of Somei Renji, a major figure in the yakuza that dominate the Kansai region of Japan. Renji announces he's looking into Yoshino possibly marrying the grand-nephew of his old friend Miyama Gaku, a major figure in the largest yakuza org in eastern Japan. It's decided Yoshino will live at the Miyama house for a year and get to know this Kirishima.

What she gets to know is there's something off about him. He's a sadist, a masochist, hiding all that behind a polite facade until he gets bored and tells Yoshino she's too normal and boring too interest him and should just go into sex work. Or run home and report to her grandfather what he said so there'll be a turf war and Kirishima might get killed. Yoshino refuses to let herself lose to this guy, but in revealing her inner mettle, shows him a side of herself - read: violent - he finds incredibly appealing. Now he wants to marry her, while she finds him alternately infuriating and terrifying.

Yakuza Fiance is a weird reading experience, because I really like a lot of it. I like Yoshino, who is mostly very polite and even a little socially awkward, but has an explosive temper in the right circumstances. Plus, her hair sometimes covers one eye and I'm a sucker for that a lady with look. I like her childhood friend Shouma, who broods a lot, but has good banter with Yoshino and is generally a sarcastic smartass. Renji's goofball exterior is more of an act than Yoshino's, but it's still funny. Yoshino's friend Tsubaki is the kind of person who just loves drama, and will try to create it if it doesn't happen organically, but she legitimately cares for Yoshino and tries to help her.

There are some funny parts, and a fair amount of hand-to-hand fighting that Konishi depicts very cleanly and with a nice mixture of acrobatic moves and people just wailing on each other with whatever limb is available. There's a mystery Konishi's slowly been peeling back around the death of Yoshino's father, and some sort of internal power struggle in the Kansai crime families that I'm curious to see a resolution to, even if I don't understand all the relationships involved. So much of this book is enjoyable.

Just not half of the co-protagonists. I'm sure Konishi intends for Kirishima to be unsettling. Certainly in the first volume when he makes his abrupt shift in character, but I've never really stopped finding him unsettling. Even as Konishi shows how besotted Kirishima's become with Yoshino, or delves into Kirishima's past to show he's never been able to find someone that really understands him and what he wants, he still creeps me out. He's slipping tracking devices into Yoshino's electronic dictionary, or hacking her phone so he can follow her or track her social media.

And it's not like Yoshino doesn't tell him to stop. She does. Repeatedly. She gets new phones and he's immediately got the unlock code. She can't outmatch him physically, she's not smarter than he is, not savvier than he is, not luckier than he is. The only edge she's got is that he's apparently in love with her enough that she can maybe keep him in line, but, again, it's not like he does what she says all that often. He goes behind her back constantly, and while some of that is due to the real reason she's living with him (which is related to that mystery), I guess I don't expect that to change if the threat passes. 

Kirishima certainly seems dedicated to protecting her, but so does Shouma, who at least tends to keep Yoshino in the loop about what he's doing when it involves her. And yeah, Kirishima seems charming and pleasant towards her, hanging on her every word, but he acts that way to almost everyone, and that's all it is with those other people. An act. The same act he put on for Yoshino, until he got bored. He can say that won't ever happen, but given his whole personality, that's hard to take at face value. Tsubaki sees that he just agrees with whatever other people say, because he doesn't really care. He's just letting them talk, and most people are fine with that. Yoshino knows that he apologizes for things when she yells at him, but doesn't actually stop doing those things. What he says and what he means or does are wildly different.

It's weird, because I know I'm doomed to disappointment. There have been a few bonus chapters that show us glimpses of the future, and Yoshino and Kirishima are living together. This is, somehow, going to work out between them, and yet, I haven't stopped buying the series. The positives, thus far, have outweighed the negatives.

What I Bought 6/1/2026 - Part 2

Unfortunately, my boss is out on various vacations most of this month. It's good he's taking time off. I shake my head in amazement when he mentions he came in on weekends to take care of stuff, given how often he reminds us not to stress overly about things (I am maybe 50% successful at this.)

However, him being on vacation means I become him in the interim, with all the irritating phone calls, e-mails, and other mind-numbing crap that implies. Will I make it to the end of the month without running screaming to the South Seas?

Fantastic Four #11, by Ryan North (writer), Stan Sakai (writer/artist), Pat Boutin (penciler), Serge LaPointe (inker), Edgar Delgado (colorist), Brittany Peer (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - The FF don't fight enough dinosaurs.

The Four are trying to decide what this new Future Foundation they're going to build with Maria Hill will be. If Hill's involved it'll be. . . a disaster! *rimshot* Reed, Sue and Johnny are all disagreeing, but Ben excuses himself from the discussion, claiming he's just the muscle. As opposed to Johnny? I'm pretty sure only one of the two of you qualified to be an astronaut, unless they've revamped Johnny's origin significantly.

Tempers are still high the next day when they find a mechanical T-Rex robbing a bank, and it seems like the FF can't get on the same page, until Ben realizes the robot's got the device Doom used to incite emotions and make people attack at Reed and Sue's wedding. I figured Psycho-Man was trying something new, but no, it's some guy the FF haven't seen in over 500 issues that bought his gear from some "super-weapons" auction. Then Ben tries writing a mission statement for the Future Foundation, and it's about everybody working to better things instead of just the "elite."

Whatever, it's fine. I was here for them fighting a robot T-Rex, although from the solicitation, I was really hoping Crimeasaurus Rex was actually a sentient Tyrannosaur, committing dino-crimes for dino-reasons. Maybe North would have fun with the FF trying to reason with a lizard intelligence that operates differently from a mammalian one, or something. Given that hope, "robot controlled by total loser," is kind of a letdown.

Then there's the Stan Sakai story, which is a pretty standard old-school FF adventure where a building falls into a big hole, so the team travels underground to confront Mole Man. Except he's not the problem, it's just a big creature that likes to dig. The FF work briefly with Mole Man to confront it, then everybody uses their powers and their current location in a plan to defeat it. Then Mole Man tells them to get lost like he's Namor or something. It's pretty close to the distilled essence of the FF, but mostly it's a chance to see Stan Sakai draw them, if that's of interest to you.

Is Ted OK? #4, by Dave Chisholm (writer/artist/letterer) - They shoulda put that cover behind a content warning tag or something.

The lady in the van that seemed to be waiting for Ted and Sarah is doctor Christina Paganini. She wants to destroy Ayn-Styne, because she knows weird stuff is going on there. Because she used to work there. Further explanation has to wait, because Man-Bun Idiot is after them, in an admittedly cool mech-suit, with a bunch of other robots or mech-suits. He catches up and asks Ted to come over and sign a form for paid time-off, or else. Then he does a countdown. When that doesn't work, he brings out the stray cat Ted likes, and starts the countdown over.

Which made me think of Woody Harrelson asking Sam Rockwell to please "go back to 5," when he was trying to get his gun to work in Seven Psychopaths. Ted agrees to surrender, if the cat is given to Sarah (who is maybe remembering this scene while she leaves another voicemail for whoever she keeps calling, this time about how 35% of our memories are shit our brain makes up to fill in the gaps.) Cat released, Ted starts asking Brody what this is about, Brody behaves like a dick, Ted, loses it and releases a massive burst of energy that fries all the mechs. And Brody! Good.

It's a nifty scene, although I was trying to figure out "PPPPPPPPPP" as a sound effect, until I realized on the previous page, he clapped his hands to demonstrate how quickly he died earlier, and the discharge came from that. So it's the tail end of an extended "CLAP" sound effect. Nice work on the layouts, albeit in a way that doesn't lend itself to scanning. A pair of two-page sequences, the first, with the clap, one panel running across two pages, getting shorter as it moves right, while on the second, it gets larger as it progresses. Under each of them, a bigger, irregular 4-sided panel, one of the machines, outlined in blue, the other of dark brown and green wreckage.

And then a few panels at the far right on both pages. In the first two-page sequence, it's 3 panels, stacked on top of each other. Brody's "oh shit!" face, Sarah running with the cat, and the doctor looking on in stunned horror. The second two-page sequence, it's 4 panels, and they're all basically focused on Ted's reaction to what he just did.

After that, there's some sort of answers from Christina about what Ted is, at least in the sense this Noah had something to do with it, rather than aliens. Meanwhile, the reporter follows Noah around, trying to ask questions, or at least question Noah's self-aggrandizing bullshit, without much success on either count. And then Noah takes him inside the Dome, where radiation cooks the reporter almost instantly, but Noah is completely fine. I say that, because I assume the ranting about 'meat-suit husks' and 'spaceship Earth' are everyday shit for this guy.

The yellow tone Chisholm uses inside the Dome seems very similar to what was used in Ted's nightmare at the start of issue 3. And Ted's posture as he rants over the reporter is the same as the blood-covered Ted's in the nightmare as he loomed over a terrified version of himself. What that means? I have no idea.

The Obstacle Course - J.F. Freedman

Set in the first six months of 1957, The Obstacle Course follows Roy Poole, ninth-grader in a little Maryland town. Roy's a smart-ass, a liar, a small-time hoodlum, a king in his own mind. In other words, a teenager. Roy plans to get accepted to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, and some day become an officer who commands a great warship.

To that end, he often sneaks away to run the obstacle course at the Academy on weekends, hitching rides there and back if he can. His parents don't know, neither do his friends. That's the way Roy keeps his life, compartmentalized. He builds model ships, and only his parents and the guy at the model shop know. He robs washing machines in an apartment complex to get the money for the models, and only his pals Burt and Joe know, because they play lookout. He makes friends with a retired admiral, and no one knows, and what the admiral thinks he knows about Roy, save his interest in the Navy, is lies. Surely, this intricate web of falsehoods can be sustained indefinitely.

This was the last book from the pile I grabbed at the book sale in March. I figured, at a glance from the back cover, that the obstacle course was metaphorical. That this was your typical thriller about a man who learned something he shouldn't, and must run through a gamut of foes and danger.

And in the sense that Roy thinks he's the slickest thing ever, that he can be all different things to different people, and everything will work out his way, it is. He doesn't try in junior high because that wouldn't be cool, but it's fine. He'll just start trying in high school to get his grades up enough to be accepted into the Naval Academy. The admiral thinks his grades are better than they are, and that Roy's dad has a good enough job he can afford to send Roy to a military school that would make it easier for Roy to get into Annapolis. Every day is him trying to only show a certain specific face to each individual person, always with the purpose of tricking them into giving him something or thinking he's something more than he is - smarter, tougher, richer, cooler.

Except he either can't see how he's working at cross-purposes to himself, or doesn't care. Roy won't talk about the academy with his parents, won't stop stealing, won't stop picking fights. He tries wheedling homework answers out of classmates, or breakfast out of midshipmen, but he won't stop needling or embarrassing the kids who help him, or insulting the midshipmen who won't.

Halfway through, the fact everything was going to collapse around him was obvious enough I lost interest, so I flipped to the back and starting reading from the last chapter forward. Got through another quarter of the book that way, right about the time things fell apart with the admiral and, in frustration over that, Roy starts being even more hardheaded, burning all his remaining bridges while insisting none of it matters, he's forging his own course.

Which, judging by the last chapter, may be accurate. Roy's played a particular role so long everyone has pigeonholed him as a certain way, and his attempts to step outside it isolated him to the extent there's no choice but to go it alone. I have no idea how that's going to work, because he still seems determined to get into the Academy, but that's how it ends. Roy, alone, sure that he can just keep pushing ahead and he'll get what he wants. I can't tell if Freedman expects me to be impressed, or pity the kid.

'They're my best friends, Burt and Joe, but I'm not going to tell them everything about me. I never once mentioned the admiral or any of that, that's a secret I'll take with me to the grave. What they don't know can't hurt them.

Can't hurt me.'