Sunday Splash Page #438

"Monster Mashed," in Atlantis Wasn't Built for Tourists #1, by Eric Palicki (writer), Wendell Cavalcanti (artist), Mark Dale (colorist), Shawn Lee (letterer)

Lucas Lewis is hiking from Cleveland to Seattle, and nearly gets hit by a dunk driver. He carries the drunk driver to the nearest town, a little burg called Atlantis. Since the driver is the sheriff's niece, the sheriff agrees to let Lewis bunk in his office for the night. Can't have him out wandering the streets, Atlantis has a curfew.

Atlantis also has a vampire problem, as several of them barge into the sheriff's office that night to feed on the poor sap in the drunk tank. Lucas has some supernatural heritage of his own, and after establishing his bonafides (see above), joins the group. Sort of.

Atlantis Wasn't Built for Tourists came out in 2020. To some extent, my buying it was due to circumstance. I didn't know either Palicki or Cavalcanti's work (and I don't know what either has done since this mini-series), and the general concept - stranger finds himself in an odd little town - is not exactly a novel one. But lots of things were a mess in 2020, including comic shipping and distribution, so I wasn't necessarily overflowing with options. Here was this mini-series, the title is at least eye-catching, the concept, if not familiar, might at least have a unique spin, so sure, why the hell not?

Palicki adds a few twists and turns. Lucas is traveling cross-country to confront his father before embracing what he sees as a grim fate he can't escape. The grim fate makes more sense to me now, having played The Sinking City, than it did then. Lewis' mother being from Innsmouth didn't mean a thing to me in 2020. The situation between the vamps and the sheriff is not as Lucas suspects, and the drunk niece isn't what she appears at first introduction, either.

They aren't "gotcha!" surprises, where it feels like they come from nowhere. Even with only 4 issues to work with, there's at least a sense of some sort of build and logical reason for things to happen as they do, which is nice. The main reason for the surprises is people believe what they want to believe. The sheriff looked at a vampire wearing his brother's face, and believed it was still his brother. Lucas didn't catch on to that, because he doesn't see it that way. He knows what a vampire is, and what it isn't, the same way he knows what he's ultimately going to become (though I wonder if that's as inevitable as he believes it to be.) The sheriff looks at Lauren, the drunk niece, and just sees a young girl acting out and flouting the rules.

Cavalcanti's art keeps the story grounded. The vampires are just humans with longer nails and incisors. The most notable feature is probably the eyes being dark voids. What you see with Lucas up there is as strange as he gets, though he can bring the features out at will. For the most part, everyone looks like regular people. Maybe a little too neat - Lucas is one of the few sporting stubble - but the real problem in the town isn't the obvious monsters (though they are a problem.) It's the humans who chose to make deals with them, sacrificing others' lives in exchange for their own safety.

It doesn't feel like a coincidence that shadows are more prevalent around people than places. Large parts of the story take place during the day, but even the night scenes aren't colored or shaded too dark. Dale has no problem going to backgrounds of a solid, daylight color during action scenes, and letting the whole thing be clear and easy to see. Because there's nothing wrong with the town, just the people running it.

The concept feels set-up for future installments. Lucas is waylaid by one of the deputies on his way out of town. She wanted to be turned, live forever, and Lucas ruined that. She figures he owes her, and he can either help, or pay by getting shot. Plus she'll kill everyone in town. So there's the potential for the two of them to travel and encounter more problems and maybe help each other. Because Palicki also nods to there being a lot of different supernatural stuff out there, including a different deputy whose parentage might be as messed up as Lucas'. As far as I know, though, there hasn't been a follow-up.

Saturday Splash Page #240

"Rocket into Danger," in Warlock #1, by Louise Simonson (writer), Pascual Ferry (penciler), Mark Morales (inker), Steve Oliff (colorist), John Costanza (letterer)

And we're on to the second of the three "Marvel Tech" line books. Doug Ramsey died in New Mutants, then Warlock died 30 issues later, presumably to make way for the kewl X-Force era. Some strange hybrid appeared years later, dubbed "Douglock," but turned out to just be Warlock with some of Doug's memories from those times they bonded.

After being used to create the Phalanx - oops - and being used by the Red Skull to take over that Helicarrier that X-51 got blown up stopping from crashing, Warlock's free and on a mission: Seek out and absorb all traces of the Phalanx on Earth. Unfortunately, he soon comes in contact with Esperanza (or Hope), a young girl who seems outwardly fine, but can infect others with the transmode virus. There's also a transmode-infected monkey that Hope befriends and protects from Warlock's half-hearted attempts to absorb him.

The trio face threats on two fronts. On one side, a person called Mainspring, a withered-looking grey guy with a big cranium and what look like camera lens or something fused into his skin. He ran the organization that was experimenting on the Phalanx traces, in some idea of advancing humanity through technology. To them, Hope is a great potential tool, especially when she proves able to infect inanimate objects, which, I guess was not considered possible previously? I don't know, I avoided the Phalanx stuff like a techno-organic plague. Warlock is interfering by denying them the material they desire.

On the other side, a group calling themselves Psi-Cops, led by a woman named Psiren, who Ferry draws as basically Amanda Waller if she shaved her head. Simonson gives her a fair amount of Waller's stubborn attitude and self-righteousness, though lacking the Wall's biting sense of humor. The Psi-Cops run around in white spandex and use various mental powers to destroy techno-organic beings and those who'd use them to endanger Earth. That Warlock also wants to remove all traces of the Phalanx, or that Hope didn't ask to be infected, is irrelevant. They have the potential to create more techno-organic monsters, so they need to be destroyed.

Ultimately, Psiren's younger brother, Psimon, disagrees and helps Warlock and Hope escape. After issue 3, they're on the run from both sides, with Psimon also using his telekinetic powers to help Hope learn to control her transmode abilities. Hope works on not letting her emotions get control of her, Psimon works on his confidence, on not comparing himself to his sister, and pushing his limits. Warlock struggles with guilt over being responsible for the Phalanx that infected Hope, and his own emotions around her and Psimon's friendship. Then Hope gets jealous when first Shadowcat, and then Wolfsbane show up, and Warlock starts acting different (presumably due to the aspects of Doug that imprinted on him.)

Simonson largely avoids jealous spats between the various girls, despite issue 7's cover implying Rahne and Hope were going to fight over Warlock. Kitty's just happy to see Warlock's still alive, and written as old enough to probably not see any rivalry between her and Hope, while Rahne's empathetic enough and open enough with herself to break down Hope's barriers (and also provide a nudge that helps Hope evolve her abilities in important ways.)

Simonson brings in Psycho-Man for one issue because Hope's power is messing with the Microverse somehow, to make everyone work on emotional control (with an assist from special guest-star Spider-Man!) Although Simonson's Psycho-Man is a lot more empty bombast than I was used to. More like a petulant child at times, but maybe the point is he never learned to control his emotions, because his machines do it for him.

Although Hope internal monologues at one point that Warlock barely changed shape once they ran into Shadowcat, it's a matter of degrees. Ferry's artwork is wildly different from Sienkiewicz's. Much rounder, much softer-looking characters, especially Warlock. There are no jagged projections of tiny metal bits jutting off at right angles. Instead, Ferry's Warlock is like a living toon. Highly malleable and using the ability almost constantly. Blimps with hands and feet, a T-Rex, puffing himself up with a Superman-style physique and chest symbol. Even when maintaining the form Hope describes as a 'boring old boy,' he'll still project a fluid-looking tendril from his forehead to interface with a computer.

Simonson keeps the threats coming. Mainspring finds Bastion's (siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh) severed, damaged head in the desert, and after a battle in the New York sewers where it had seized control of one of his robots, Mainspring strips away all the outer layers of programming to get to the core. And that's how I learned Bastion was the result of the amalgamation of Master Mold and Nimrod going through the Siege Perilous back in the Outback era of Uncanny X-Men. I had no idea, and didn't really care, but just throw it on the pile of things I learned I wish I hadn't.

Master Mold of course slips his leash, requiring help from the Avengers, but enough transmode-ing takes place to signal the Technarchy, so Warlock finishes his series - at 9 issues, shortest of the 3 M-Tech books - with a rematch against his father for the fate of the Earth. He wins, with a lot of help from Hope and even the Psi-Cops, and the trio (plus Rhane and the little monkey) decide to stick together and help Warlock remove more Phalanx infection stuff. Which was probably never referenced by any later writers. I don't even know if Warlock showed up in anything between this book (which concluded summer of 2000) and his appearance in the Abnett/Lanning Nova run in 2008, where he'd returned to the Technarchy homeworld (and where Paul Pelletier used Warlock's more classic look.)

What I Bought 7/29/2026

I had to cover for a coworker on an unpleasant task Tuesday, because the boss didn't bother to check if her schedule was clear when he set the time and date. The task was, indeed, a real pain in the ass, but when I saw said coworker on Wednesday, they presented me with a big bag of Skittles, with a note card that read "BRIBE" taped to it. I'm pretty sure bribes are supposed to come before I do the dirty deed, but my coworkers already confused "mutiny" and "desertion" this summer, so clearly, the meaning of words is not a strong point.

Generation X-23 #6, by Jody Houser (writer), Emilio Laiso (artist), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - This issue one of these characters will die! No, wait, sorry. One of these characters won't appear, because they already appeared to die.

The three survivors of the Facility are now living with Laura and Gabby, to mixed results. X-99 has gotten immediately way too online, calling things "mid", and quoting internet memes like nothing happened, to X-74 and Gabby's annoyance. X-92 is using his power to peek in on the lives of Laura's neighbors. X-74 is trying to get her powers under control after blowing up someone she didn't intend to last issue, without success.

So Laura gets them out of the apartment, by taking them to the big tree in Central Park where people left requests for help in Laura Kinney: Wolverine. And there's a family that's planning to leave tonight that needs help! Remarkable timing! Seriously, I thought that was going to end up being a trap by X-Infinite, but there really is a family getting attacked by your prototypical bigots in ski masks with bats. Really, not even any guns?

While the family is protected, it doesn't go great, because none of the X-Generated have ever used their powers in a real world situation. X-99 can't decide what to change into, X-73 blows a car way up into the air and nearly kills people. Something to work on, then. Maybe they can get some practice with their powers cleaning up the unconscious Logan that's bleeding on Laura's hardwood floor.

New artist. Liaso's line are heavier than Renna's. Gives the characters a little more weight, although everyone feels like they've become the same height. I'm pretty sure 74 was significantly taller (and older) than 99 or 92, who were both closer to Gabby's height. That said, the art's expressive enough, which is handy in the first few pages, when Laura is sitting back and observing how the Generated are adapting.

For the fight scene, Liaso alternates between Gabby or Laura assertively kicking bigots in the face, and 74 or 99 mostly looking at their hands and mumbling to themselves while they try to figure out what to do. And when 74's attempt to get involved goes wrong, we get a panel of her standing and staring in horror, followed by panels of Laura rushing in to cut open the car so the passengers can escape. The difference between using your powers for real, and following around in some knock-off Danger Room.

Reel Trash

I saw the writers at Defector discussing this a couple of weeks ago, and since I haven't finished either a video game or book recently, I'm stealing the question: What is the worst movie you saw in theaters?

I put the question to my coworkers and they replied, variously: Lovely Bones, The Time Traveler's Wife, and Fifty Shades Freed. The latter two insisted these were movies they saw while on dates, the former went with friends, and is apparently not a big horror fan.

Alex said Date Movie, though he later tried to add Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but I'm going with the first one he named. His girlfriend responded How to Deal, which she went to with friends.

The responses do highlight the different ways you could approach the question. Alex cited the Rotten Tomatoes scores for the ones they selected, which suggests a lean towards more of the critical consensus of how good the movie was. My coworkers seemed to take the approach of which movie they, personally, enjoyed watching the least.

That's the divide I found myself hung up on, trying to choose my answer. Because I thought of a half-dozen movies. Some are just lousy movies, and others, while I wouldn't call them good by any stretch, at least had some sort of vision or premise behind them. I simply didn't like that premise of vision.

The '90s Super Mario Bros? Bad. Just a shitty mess of a movie. Batman and Robin? Not good, but I can at least grasp that Schumacher had a specific vibe in mind. I have no nostalgia for '60s Batman or "camp" in general, so it didn't work for me. 

If I took Alex's approach, it's probably Super Mario Bros. or Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, though there's a part of me that wants to pin it on Drillbit Taylor, a film I can neither see any reason to exist or for Alex and I to have gone to see it. But my review suggests I enjoyed it in spite of how cliche it was, so I guess I can't play revisionist historian.

Which is fine. I'm ultimately going with the film I enjoyed watching the least, and that's Saw. I don't think I knew the term "torture porn" before Alex dragged me to this, but I did by the end of this movie, and I knew I hated it. It was sadistic to no purpose, and the reveal at the end that the killer was in the room with the two victims the entire time, playing a corpse so perfectly they never noticed, made me audibly groan and nearly roll my eyes out of my head.

Even if the movie succeeded in making the victims truly despicable, and I can't remember why anyone was getting targeted so the movie clearly failed on that score, I just want scumbags to die. So they can't harm anyone else. If I want elaborate deathtraps, I'll read a comic with Arcade in it. At least his shit is colorful and has a hint of twisted whimsy.

So that's my answer.

It's Spooky How Busy October Might Get

October's not looking too bad, depending on where you look. Not much of anything new or promising at the larger publishers. Marvel's a mess, with a bunch of new X-Books I don't care about. Fantastic Four's still tying into DNX, so that's a no-go. DC's trotting out some more new series, but I'm not really interested in a horror-themed Jonah Hex book, or James Harren writing/drawing an Etrigan series. At least the smaller publishers are trying to come through for me.

What's new? Marvel's doing another all-splash page fight comic, along the lines of last year's Marvel All-On-One, except it's Doom All-On-One. Also, they picked Alessandro Cappuccio as artist. He is not someone I'd associate with fight comics, compared to Ed McGuinness on last year's offering. Plus, the book is $8, so unless I can find it cheap down the line - and I still haven't managed that with the previous one - it's not happening.

Ruptura has the first issue of Diego Agrimbau and Pietro's Fergus: Advertising Detective. I can't really parse what's going on, because it mentions the city might be subjected to essentially real-world spam, constant bombardment by in-person ads, and that this is bad. But also Fergus is trying to keep his jinxed friend, who agreed to be a walking advertisement but is killing their value through his jinxed-ness, from being assassinated.

Vault is starting up another round of Corin Howell's Lilith with Blood and Burlesque. I bought the tpb of the first volume in January, I'll get to it in the Monday reviews at some point. Cosmic Lion has Ghostman Haunts Again, but 1) it's $10 (albeit for 56 pages) and 2) I never got around to buying the earlier issues, so I don't really know if I'd dig it.

Titan Comics has a 25th anniversary collection of Mat Wakeman and Jamie Hewlett's Phoo Action. I have no idea what that is, I was just drawn up short by the 25th anniversary of something I've never heard of. And Oni Press has Jonathan Djob Nkondo's Wandering, about one person who roams the endless desert the surface world has become, and another who lives in the cities built underground. Which sound pretty much the same as what we have above ground now, but I guess humans stick to what you know. 

What's ending? Nothing.

And the rest: Marc Spector and Generation X-23 are both on issue 9. Assuming I'm still buying the latter, the cast is on a road trip that goes south. Could they maybe skip the two months of Wolverine guest appearances and jump straight to that instead? Batgirl is still tying in to whatever Poison Ivy's doing to Gotham, while The Deadman takes a trip to a soulless future.

D'Orc's also at issue 9, on the run from a necromancer and looking for the Bone Witch. Didn't we just finish 5 issues of him looking for the Bone Witch? D'Orc, you promised if we got you a Bone Witch, you would take care of it, and now look what happened. Vampyrates is on issue 4, and Chachu is on issue 3. In the latter, things are not going too well in Vegas. Do things ever go well in Vegas? It is a city, much like Peggy Hill observed of Phoenix, that should not exist.

This was actually in last month's solicits, but volume 12 of No Longer Allowed in Another World is out in October. Wanted to remember to mention that this month. 

Deep Water (2026)

A commercial airliner crashes in the middle of the ocean through a variety of factors. Such as, poor maintenance, disregard for regulations by both the captain (Ben Kingsley) and the guy at the x-ray machine for the luggage, and a particularly selfish and conceited dickhead (Angus Simpson) that stored flammable shit in his suitcase.

Despite the best efforts of the first officer (Aaron Eckhart), the plane's belly gets caught on a coral reef during the ditch attempt, upends, and falls to pieces. The survivors are scattered between various sections, dealing with injuries, the sort of poor decision-making that comes with terror, and a lot of really hungry sharks.

You got a hodgepodge of brave stewardesses, two e-gamers that can't confess their feelings for one another, an aggro jock and his more reasonable teammate, a recently re-married couple and the kids each is bringing into the relationship, a grandmother and a dorky guy who repeatedly tries and fails to be cool.

I'm going to tell you right now, Dan the Dickhead dies. That's one thing you'd have to look forward to if, for some reason, you watched this. And he does so without demonstrating a single redeemable trait or action through the entire film. So at least he stayed consistent. No last second recanting on his deathbed!

Alex rented this on Amazon Prime, then called me to tell me to watch it. At the time he was watching, the plane was still in the air. When I texted him after I finished watching it, he responded, 'Yeah, as soon as Ben Kingsley died I knew the budget had gone downhill.'

The breaking up of the plane does allow for a few varieties of peril, except they all boil down to needing to stay out of the water because of sharks. Eckhart, one of the flight attendants, and the stepsister are near the cockpit. The dork, the grandma, the stepbrother and another stewardess are in a submerged section of the tail, as the water slowly rises. The rest are trying to stay in the central cabin, watching the water come in from either end as the reef collapses under them. That's what coral bleaching will get ya, structurally unsound support for your crashed airplane.

Eckhart's character is running from trouble at home, trying to focus on not losing his job by strictly following the rules, and I guess takes the stepdaughter on as a surrogate child to protect in lieu of the son he can't help. Does he break the rules in some of the things he does to try and save as many as possible, and that's his arc? He stops being afraid of failing and acts? Or is it seeing how much the girl misses her family makes him decide to stop running away?

Most of the deaths aren't too surprising, though I did expect the dorky guy, who swam out of the submerged section to try and find help, would make it back to help the grandmother. They had a rocky first interaction, and she kept giving him shit afterward, calling him a "five". As in, "out of ten." Maybe six, if he cleaned up. Yeah, I bet her granddaughter was just counting the minutes until Grandma showed up to criticize her posture.

Props to that one flight attendant for hauling herself into a life raft and applying a tourniquet before passing out. That is a remarkably cool head under pressure. It did seem like we saw a lot of the women get bitten - though not always killed - while more of the guys died off-screen. Not strictly that dichotomy, but it felt like the men we did see die via shark mostly died quick. The women tended to get chomped on the calf or thigh, and maybe they could swim to safety, but maybe they got torn to shreds. Either way, a lot of panicked flailing and screaming. I don't know, just something I noticed.

Animal Control's Out of Its Depth on This One

My dad told me he learned as a teacher to never intercede in a fight between girls. The last time he tried, his shirt pocket got torn off and the assistant principal gave him a lot of shit for some reason. But assistant principals are known to be cocks, so that part's no surprise.

The Case of the Good Boy, the second Bad Machinery collection, again finds the boys - Linton, Jack, and Sonny - and the girls - Shauna, Charlotte, and Mildred - on seemingly unrelated paths that end up intertwining. The boys, mostly spurred on by Jack's desire to solve a "manly" mystery, investigate the rash of baby disappearances in town, which point to some great, hairy beast that lurks in the woods.

Meanwhile, Mildred guts her way through winning a rigged carny game to get a pencil said to make whatever it draws come to life. Only for her artwork to be soundly mocked by Shauna and Charlotte. Then Charlotte's attempt to demonstrate how to draw a dog shows up rummaging through Mildred's garbage. When the boys get a picture of the baby-stealer, it bears a remarkable resemblance to Mildred's attempt at drawing a dog. Clearly, Mildred's fears the pencil's power could be a Monkey's Paw situation were well-founded. Which raises the question of why she was so determined to win it. 

Also, the pencil was stolen in the confusion of the school's cricket shed being burned down. Horrors! The pencil being stolen part, not the cricket shed burning down part.

Allison mixes some of the characters into different combos this time around. Sonny and Mildred are cousins, so they hang out together at one point. Allison has Mildred seize every chance she can to do the things her parents forbid at home. Chocolate in the previous story, video games here. Charlotte spends time with Shauna's little brother, Humphrey, who she coos over and has no problems being seen in public with, unlike Shauna. One consistency, both between Shauna and Humphrey, and Jack and his old sister: the older sister wants nothing to do with the younger brother. Neither interaction is lengthy or deep, but they set up another line of connections between characters that could get used later.

Jack has a bit of a rough go this time, as he gets targeted by a bully, and screws things up with Shauna by getting so caught up in the mystery he forgets to meet her at the movies. But maybe the bullying earns him some sympathy points?

Linton's also riding Jack's ass about the Shauna thing, and between that and giving Sonny grief about being in the Naturecraft Folk (which proves useful in tracking the baby-snatcher), Linton's a pretty unlikable dick for two-thirds of this story. Jack snaps back at him - and inadvertently pushes him over a bridge - while Sonny just absorbs the snarky comments and focuses on beast hunting.

Also, Shauna and Mildred are not entirely on the same page, and Charlotte's left trying to mend fences or be the connective tissue. Something load-bearing. Mildred's issue seems to be that she feels like she's not really included, or maybe she's the third wheel. I did have the impression, reading this volume, that when either Shauna or Charlotte starting jabbing at Mildred, the other joins in. If they're jabbing at each other, Mildred usually doesn't get in on it. But Charlotte and Shauna have been friends long enough to have an entire list of things they aren't allowed to argue about - which now includes magic pencils - so it makes sense they'd have their own patterns. Which admittedly doesn't do much for Mildred's feelings of exclusion.

I don't want to let the review pass without mentioning Shauna's continued dogging of her stepdad for enjoying Velvet Underground. I have no actual knowledge or opinion about Velvet Underground, I just like that she keeps making digs at him about how bad she thinks they sound. Kids will find a weak point and exploit it ruthlessly.

The ending is strange. In some regards, it's treated as happy. Shauna's "dog", which was originally Mildred's "dog", which was what Charlotte drew, gets to go home. But I'm pretty sure the "dog" Mildred drew ate a lot of babies. Which seems horrifying, yet glossed over. Makes reuniting Archibald with his family bittersweet. Unless Allison is making some comment on parents not keeping a closer eye on their kids. Don't encourage helicopter parenting, John Allison!