What I Bought 3/30/2026 - Part 1

The anime re-watch has reached Outlaw Star. It's been a while, so I didn't remember it takes nearly a third of the series to really get them out into space in their new ship. We're into April, and I'm almost caught up on comics from the first three months. So let's get to that, with a couple of second issues from early March.

D'orc #2, by Brett Bean (writer/artist), Jean-Francois Beaulieu (colorist), Nate Piekos (letterer) - Can't go anywhere without some guy in a cape showing up and dramatically screaming.

D'Orc tries climbing a plateau to hide from the forces on both sides trying to kill him, only to find a bunch of warriors looking strangely emaciated. Then a bunch of kids with odd masks show up and start stabbing D'Orc with knives that are stealing his time. Then the kids' boss shows up, and he's a time lord and D'Orc won't abandon the kids, so he gets all his time stolen and decays. Oh well, terrible fate averted!

Except the ghost of the headless chicken, thus far useless, is able to possess the time lord and reverse the aging and free the imprisoned orphan army. Then D'Orc insists they restore the time stolen from all those guys who were going to ambush him and remarkably, it doesn't backfire. The warriors don't try to kill him, and in fact agree to look after the orphans. So things are looking up! Too bad there's an angry dwarf on his tail.

So it seems like Bean is leaning towards the idea that the prophecy that D'Orc will destroy the world is going to occur in that he convinces people on both sides to abandon this light vs. dark and fighting to the death, and focus on gentler notions. Of course, there's also this berserker side of him that keeps creeping out, where Bean gives him glowing eyes and which Beaulieu sometimes colors the characters grey against a red background, and other times colors D'Orc red.

Not sure what that's about, and it feels like Bean is hinting more about the shield, or at least its abilities. The time lord thought the shield would make him immortal. Was he going to decapitate himself and exists as a ghost like the chicken?

Touched by a Demon #2, by Kristen Gudsnuk - Quite a disparity between the crying cursed family and the cheerful employees. At least we can see Frons keeps his employees happy.

So, Wendy killed her awful parents and her sickly sister, who was, let's face, going to die as soon as Wendy could stop her parents from using her as an organ farm. But it wouldn't help their salvation attempt to kill the girl, so instead Frons and Zuzu hide the bodies in the graves of some people who died in the 1800s, and give Wendy a job.

First job, get them more business! So Wendy and Elaine - an influencer who died in prison after some product she made go viral killed people - get the business popular on social media. By hawking free pens. Example 1,347 that I don't understand social media.

This does net them one client. Sergio feels he has blown his relationship with a wonderful woman and lost her and his son. So Frons and Zuzu not only help his confidence, but also help him learn to be more considerate and attentive to his wife's feelings. And they found the motel room where his wife and son are living! And she has a restraining order on Sergio? And the cops showed up? And. . .

Look, should I have laughed out loud at how things play out? Probably not. Did I? Obviously yes. I don't exactly know why, it's a horrible fate. Maybe because Frons and Zuzu worked really hard to help him, and Sergio seemed to take the lessons to heart. He was honest and clear about what he wanted, he acknowledged that he wanted to be loved, he wanted to show he was worthy of being loved, it was just too late, and he took things way too far.

Frons, despondent at another failure, wanders to a church. That he can't enter, but the local priest has to smoke outside, so they chat a bit. Father Angelo seems willing to investigate whether a demon could be redeemed, or be penitent at all. Which I guess is the question, does Frons regret siding with Lucifer, or does he just feel unappreciated in Hell and think the grass would be greener on the other side? He does seem to want to help people, but are his motivations the right ones?

Oh, and some cop is investigating Wendy's disappearance, and that of her family. Boooooo, butt out cops! Didn't you cause enough harm to Sergio's family today?

Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned - Walter Mosley

Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned is a collection of short stories, loosely connected about Socrates Fortlow. Scorates spent 27 years in an Indiana prison for killing 2 people. When he got out, now 50 years old, he moved to Los Angeles, and has, as of the point when most of these stories take place, spent the last 8 years living in a two-room shack in an alley.

Mosley has a few recurring characters across the stories - a partially paralyzed WW2 veteran, a young boy named Darryl that Socrates sort of becomes a surrogate father to - but the stories remain focused on Socrates. In many cases, it's about him struggling with the anger and urge to do violence that a nearly-three decade stint of incarceration did nothing to dissipate. "History" is, I think, set during the riots that followed the verdict in the Rodney King trial, and Socrates deliberately keeps himself inside his home the entire time, because he's afraid what he might do if he goes outside and joins in.

But Mosley also uses that story for a flashback to an earlier time in Socrates' time in L.A., where there was a bookstore he frequented that helped him come to a conclusion about who one should be angry at, and who they want you to be angry at, and who is really following the "rules," which he thinks of as acting in ways society deems acceptable, but might in the way most people might think of it. It's a little like the Joker's spiel in The Dark Knight, about people and their "plans", but from the perspective of a man who feels like he foolishly followed those plans and is only now realizing it, rather than the guy bragging about how he's too smart for all that.

The stories also often deal with the difficulties of going through life as a black man, whether that's being hassled by cops, or debating whether it's OK to tell the police you know who's setting fire to abandoned buildings now that people have started dying as a result. Or just the hassles of getting a regular job, or even just getting an application from the supermarket where you'd like to work to try and apply. These often tie back into Socrates' anger, his desire to meet the disrespect or humiliation the world tries to heap on him with violence. Just how much crap can he be expected to take, and how much is the world going to throw at him?

They aren't all like that. In one case, Socrates realizes he's never gone to see the ocean in all the time since he moved to L.A., so he goes to the beach and ends up meeting a couple of people who share a bonfire with him for a time. It's still not entirely cheerful; Socrates is motivated by thinking of a younger man he beat up not long after he moved to L.A., who he's watched slowly descend through life, and that he wishes he'd apologized to, maybe tried to explain himself. And if Socrates would have asked that young man why he didn't get out of there and do something better with himself, then shouldn't he try to do the same? Go somewhere else, even just for a day, and do something different?

Regret is a strong element in the stories as well. Regretting not apologizing to that young man, or writing to a young woman he knew before prison, or that his mother died long before he served his sentence. The regrets gnaw at him sometimes, waking or asleep, in different ways. Which might be why so many of the stories also revolve around him trying to talk to someone younger and maybe set them straight. Maybe he can't help them, but he doesn't want anymore regrets about not trying. 

'C-plus, Socrates thought to himself when he returned to his back-alley apartment. In those days he was still sleeping on three area rugs piled one on top of the other. He wrote the grade down on a piece of paper. For years he gave himself a grade every day. Anytime he wrote down failure somebody had been hurt by those big rock-breaking hands.'

Silent Fools

*Calvin and Clever Adolescent Panda approach Calvin's apartment building.*

CAP: *sets a bucket on the ground below Calvin's balcony* So you finished Now and Then, Here and There?

Calvin: Yeah, it was about as depressing as I remembered. Although I thought 6 of the 8 characters in the opening credits died, and it's actually only 5.

CAP: That's something.

Calvin: Yeah, but I'm not sure I'm happy Abelia survived. Hamdo was a bastard, but he was also a useless idiot. She was the one who made everything actually work.

CAP: Oh. Maybe she'll reform and do better.

Calvin: One could hope, but evidence of such personal improvement is thin on the ground in our world. *pauses at the door* So, you ready for whatever Pollock's got planned?

CAP: *pumps fist* You know it!

*Calvin unlocks the door. It swings open. Human and panda freeze in the doorway*

CAP: I wasn't ready for this.

Calvin: Who would be?

*Calvin's living room is full of people wearing headphones, doing Irish folk dance in their sock feet. None of the dancers acknowledge the two arrivals, simply continuing to jump and thump their heels against his carpet in perfect synchronization.*

Pollock: *steps out of the kitchen* Do you enjoy my present?

Calvin: No.

CAP: What is it?

Pollock: Silent Riverdance.

CAP: Huh? 

Pollock: I heard that the dolt's DJ friend sometimes participates in "silent disco", where everyone listens to the music through headphones while dancing. It's a similar concept.

Calvin: But there are three DJs in a silent disco, so the audience can switch their headphones between the different channels and dance to whatever they like best!

CAP: *watching the dancers* Yeah, this seems like it requires a lot of coordination.

Pollock: Astute observation, Accursed Furball.

Calvin: *pinches the bridge of his nose* I, I, just, *soul-deep sigh of exhaustion* why?

Pollock: Why what?

Calvin: Usually you at least have some half-baked notion about making money off your pranks. Silent disco works because people pay money to come listen and dance to different music and see what the DJs mix and how well they do it. None of that is present here! *gestures emphatically at the dancers with both hands*

Pollock: This is entertainment you hire to watch, not participate in.

Calvin: Who wants Riverdance without the sound of the heels clopping on the wood floors? People like noise!

Pollock: Not people prone to migraines. Should they be deprived of the joy of this cultural dance sensation? 

CAP: You don't like noise, either.

Calvin: Whose side are you on?!

CAP: *backs away* Easy.

Pollock: *sniffs haughtily* I thought you'd be happy. I'm pivoting away from weapons design and energy development towards entertainment.

CAP: Really? *suspicious* Why?

Pollock: There's no future in those fields. Humanity is cooked. So the best thing to do is capitalize on the human instinct to ignore such grim truths by offering distractions in exchange for money. I'm considering starting a series of escape room venues where you can either pay to play, or pay to watch other people play through a two-way mirror. You get to laugh at their failures and stupidity, letting you feel superior without ever getting off your pimpled duff!

CAP: That just sounds like a game show.

Pollock: Yes, but the people playing can pay an extra fee to see the recording of what their audience said, in case they want to get revenge. And for an additional fee, they can rent a room specifically to enact that revenge. We're going to offer a variety of weapons.

Calvin: For an additional fee.

Pollock: You think it's cheap getting an authentic spear made of walrus tusk ivory?

CAP: You leave the walruses alone!

Calvin: Yeah, isn't it bad enough they have to go through life looking like that? All wrinkled and those goofy whiskers and big teeth. . .

CAP: Don't bodyshame them!

Pollock: The panda is right. I only buy walrus ivory from people who use the whole animal.

Calvin: Use it for what?

Pollock: How should I know? I'm in the entertainment business, not raising livestock.

Calvin: It's great to see your sleaze game hasn't lost its fastball, but can you get this out of my apartment before the floor gives way?

Pollock: I suppose, but first I need you to fill out this online survey about our service.

Calvin: My phone can't do that.

Pollock: I'm afraid it's required.

CAP: You can use mine. *hands over phone*

Pollock: But first you'll have to create an account.

Calvin: Password required?

Pollock: At least one number, symbol and capital letter.

Calvin: G-e-t-F-u-c-

Pollock: As long as it meets the requirements.

Calvin: It says system update required.

Pollock: Oh, you must need to update the app. It'll only take a few hours. We're so popular, it really slows down our servers.

Calvin: Nuts to this. *tosses phone back to CAP and stalks past the dancers towards his room* 

CAP: Doesn't that kind of thing increase the likelihood of bad reviews?

Pollock: It's fine, I have five employees dedicated to creating fake accounts and spamming 5-star glowing reviews.

CAP: At least you're not using bots.

Pollock: Of course not! Lit majors come much cheaper. Need less water than cooling towers, too.

CAP: I think you're overdo to get beat up. 

Calvin: No, we're way past the beating stage.

*Calvin steps back in the living room carrying a rifle. The folk dancers begin dancing in unison towards the door*

Pollock: Now hold on, that's a little extreme.

Calvin: Why? You tried really hard to kill me once. With a sword. And armed goons. More than once, honestly. Turnabout's fair play.

Pollock: *backing away* But not on April Fools! That's not the spirit of these things!

CAP: Can't we just hit Pollock with a pie instead?

Calvin: I have no pie. I have nothing in the fridge suitable for hitting someone in the face -

Pollock: He really doesn't, I checked. 

Calvin: - unless you want to use a frozen brick of cornbread. Besides, we did the cake thing last year. And eggs the year before. And pies not too long before that.

CAP: Because it's classic!

Calvin: So is shooting people.

Pollock: Alright, I'm sensing some dissatisfaction with the Silent Riverdance idea. How about this instead: Silent Rodeo.

*Clever Adolescent Panda and Calvin both pause*

CAP: How would that even work?

Pollock: *bullshitting* Well, it's still in the developmental stage. We're considering covering the audiences' ears, so they can only see what's happening in the arena, and have to imagine the screams of pain. Or we'll gag the riders and hold the competition in a mud or jello wrestling pit, for softer, quieter landings.

CAP: That just sounds weird.

Calvin: *lowers the rifle* Yeah, I don't think that's viable as a business.

Pollock: But it got your guard down! Hah!

*Pollock dashes onto the balcony and leaps over the rail. Her right foot lands in the bucket. And won't come out.*

Pollock: What the hell?

CAP: Glue! I told you it would work!

Calvin: *high-fives CAP* When you're right, you're right. 

CAP: Good luck driving your rental car with that on your foot!

Pollock: That's fine! I'll just catch a ride with the dancers! *looks around, sees the van pulling onto the street* Wait up!

One of the dancers: We're off the clock, boss. We're hittin' a bar.

Pollock: I'll pay you overtime to drive me home!

I'm not naming this guy: OK, pile in.We want to run some ideas for the performance past you.

Pollock: *grimacing* Oh, you have notes. Delightful. . . 

Calvin: Wow, Pollock pays overtime. Maybe I should apply for a job there.

CAP: You want to work for your nemesis?

Calvin: If it meant I could retire sooner? Probably. 

Hell is for Heroes (1962)

A company that was really hoping they were getting shipped home, are instead shipped up to a section of the Siegfried Line. Soon after, most of the company is sent to reinforce a different section of the line, leaving just six guys to cover a hill, a much larger Nazi force stationed on the opposite ridge.

You've got Sgt. Larkin, stuck trying to make this untenable situation work. Corporal Henshaw (James Coburn), a bit of a tinkerer. Private Corby (Bobby Darin), the souvenir hunter, and a couple of others that are mostly there to make numbers. Their ranks are supplemented, if you want to call if that, by Homer (Nick Adams), a Polish teen that escaped from a labor camp, desperate to prove he can be a soldier, and a company clerk who got lost with a jeep full of typewriters (Bob Newhart, I know, I was surprised, too.)

But the one to watch out for is Reese (Steve McQueen), who just got transferred into the company after a court martial for nearly drunk-driving a jeep over a colonel. Reese is surly, rude, with a scraggly beard and eyes that regard everyone with hostility. He's the one person actually happier - though that may not be the right word - about going back to the front rather than home. Combat is probably when things are quietest inside his head.

Most of the movie is a cat-and-mouse game, though we only see the U.S.'s side of it, with the Americans trying to fool the Nazis into thinking they're still at full-strength up here. For example, a full company would send a patrol out into no man's land at night, but that would require 10 soldiers, which *counts on fingers*, nope, 8 soldiers total doesn't leave 10 to spare. How to make enough noise to simulate a patrol?

At times, it's almost lighthearted, Henshaw having a bit of a laugh as he using a backfiring jeep to simulate a tank, or the soldiers telling the clerk to pretend to talk on the phone with HQ once they realize the bombed-out pillbox has a hidden mike. But there's always a tension underlying it; these are stall tactics. If the Nazis figure it out before the rest of the company returns, these guys are cooked and they know it. You see it in a brief battle when one member of the squad leaves his foxhole to help the others, because there doesn't seem to be anyone attacking near him. And then more Nazis emerge from the night, and he gets gunned down.

So when Reese suggests a dangerous plan to sneak across and hit the enemy pillbox before daylight, you can figure that some of it is him being eager to fight, to go find trouble rather than wait for it to find him. But he's also not wrong that if they sit and do nothing, and the rest of the company doesn't return in time, it's going to end badly, for them and the rest of the forces in the area if the enemy get wild behind their lines.

The crawl across the minefield is tense, and I really couldn't tell if it was going to work or not until the movie answers it. The climactic battle, in contrast is kind of a dud. Reese's fate was sealed the moment the lieutenant starts barking about a court martial, and in general, it's just not that well-staged, outside a few bits (specifically, the part about using the flamethrower for cover and Reese charging through an inferno)

Hostile Product Recall

Hey, what's this? Can it be? A review of the first graphic novel I bought in 2025, only three months into 2026!

Volume 1 of Jef Bambas' Model: A revolves around a robot that, due to an incident with a weather vane that damages its antenna, stops receiving the command to stay shut down. Making its way out of the storage room, it finds itself in what appears to be a run down factory. Before long he runs into a different model of robot which, given the nightstick it carries, is some sort of security guard.

The remaining five issues are a prolonged chase. First between Model A and that Model B and then, a whole bunch more Model Bs. The story is silent, although Bambas uses caption boxes on two occasions, when the mysterious overseer robot is receiving status updates about all the robots that are being taken out.

Bambas plays the chase like a cartoon, with Model A as Tweety and the Model Bs and Sylvester or Elmer Fudd. Gags where Model A, while evading the attacks of a Model B, causes a girder to get damaged so the entire building falls on Model B. Or gags about Model A hiding in a barrel, looking both ways to confirm the coast is clear, then hopping out and immediately running into a guard.

The factory location provides a variety of settings for those gags. Model A fleeing into a room with only one exit, that turns out to be the arsenal. A stretch of Model A trying to scale the wall of the compound and escape. The Model Bs are building new structures, so there's an issue that's mostly Model A trying to pretend to be part of the construction crew, with all the potential for physical comedy that allows.

Besides the differences in their shapes, Bambas also makes Model A more expressive. Which is impressive for a rectangular prism with one eye. But the bent antenna and the crack in one corner of his casing give him something distinctive. The antenna can flop around as Model A panics and flails. The bent corner causes a crease that acts like an eyebrow when Model A squints at things.

The volume ends with Model A's attempt to scale the wall thwarted by the first Model B he encountered, now significantly more battered. With a bent antenna of its own, it seems to have also gained the ability of more expressions. Like the expression of revenge! 

Sunday Splash Page #420

"Dead Duck Pond," in The Punisher (vol. 6) #19, by Garth Ennis (writer), Steve Dillon (artist), Matt Milla (colorist), RS and Comicraft's Wes (letterers)

The Punisher was originally an antagonist for Spider-Man, a guy who took it upon himself to punish criminals by killing them, tricked by the Jackal into thinking Spidey was a criminal. After that was cleared up, Frank Castle hung around, scuffling with Spider-Man and Daredevil over his lethal approach. But the U.S. loves a guy who shoots people we think "deserve" it, especially if he uses high-powered firearms, so he got an '80s mini-series, which, well, what I remember of it, Mike Zeck's art was really good.

Then Punisher got an ongoing series. And another, and another. And maybe also a quarterly series. Yep, the '90s were banner decade for punishing, but things got stale, so then you got the stunts. Frank is badly injured and gets a surgical procedure that gave him black skin. Went crazy and killed Nick Fury, had amnesia for a bit. Then he died, and there was an "angel Punisher/supernatural hitman" bit. We, uh, we don't like to talk about that.

Then they gave the character to Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon for a 12-issue maxi-series under the Marvel Knights imprint. They took it back to basics, just Frank targeting a crime family, but with a dark comedy twist that let them get away with depicting some excessive violence. Like the issue where Ma Gnucci and her guys hunt an injured Frank through a zoo, and Frank uses the animals to thin out their numbers. Culminating in him punching a polar bear to get it pissed off enough to swat a guy's head clean off his shoulders. Or Ma Gnucci hiring the Russian, a mountain of a guy, who also happens to be president of the Smolensk Daredevil Fan Club and dies, as I believe Wizard put it, choking on man-boob. Wizard loved that maxi-series.

And I guess the fans did, too because Marvel, never one to pass up a chance to run something into the ground, gave Ennis and Dillon an ongoing Punisher series, also under the Marvel Knights label. Except all Ennis could really do was be more extreme with the absurd aspects. So the Russian survives suffocation and decapitation because some military agency put him back together. Oh, but the procedure gave him huge boobs! And the Russian loves them! Or Spider-Man shows up, gets immediately knocked out by the Russian, and the "team-up" is Frank holding Spidey up as a punching bag. Or Frank and Wolverine fight a gang of little people, and Frank runs over Logan with a steamroller.

The one person who might pass for a supporting cast was the pitiful Detective Soap, part of the task force assigned to catch Frank in the maxi-series, now passing info along to Frank and generally being the butt of every joke. I think at one point a story strongly implies, if not outright says, Soap picks up a hooker in a bar that is actually his mother.

The other writers who occasionally took a turn weren't much better. Example, Tom Peyer wrote an arc about a guy outfitting taxis with all sorts of lethal weapons, so it's essentially the Punisher in Twisted Metal. Frank steals one of their taxis, but because he didn't pick up the Daily Bugle's editorial cartoonist, and said cartoonist is black, the Bugle soon has a cartoon about racist cab drivers. The bad guys recognize Frank Castle from a caricature. Like there are at least 2 million scowling, dark-haired white guys in New York City.

Ennis came back after that for the remainder of the book's 37 issue run. Sometimes with Dillon on art, but sometimes Tom Mandrake or Darick Robertson. The only issues I have are this one, where Frank runs into his old neighbor from the maxi-series Joan the Mouse, and issue 28 (by Ennis and Mandrake) where Elektra keeps killing the guys Frank is targeting before he can. I read somewhere once, that was the only Marvel comic that referenced the Frank Miller/Bill Sienkiewicz Elektra: Assassin. It's only a brief reference Frank alludes to in terms of what he's able to learn about her, but apparently every subsequent Elektra writer just kind of decided to ignore that book.

Basically, Marvel Knights Punisher is the comedy bits of Hitman, minus any of the meditation on brotherhood, the human capacity for self-justification, or the cycle of violence. It's just Frank killing lots of criminals, and sometimes it's presented as absurd, so you should laugh.

Saturday Splash Page #222

"Opaque," in The Ray Annual #1, by Christopher Priest (writer), Oscar Jimenez (penciler), Chip Wallace (inker), Pat Garrahy (colorist), Starkings and Comicraft (letterers)

The Ray got one Annual, in 1995. The theme for DC's Annuals that year was "Year One," which for a lot of characters I assume meant a flashback to some tale in their earlier career. In Ray's case, Priest said it had been one year since he learned the truth about himself, and maybe the reality of the life he was living was setting in.

The crux of the story is Ray trying to stop an airliner from crashing. He didn't stop the crash, but he managed to control it enough to save most of the passengers. 112 people, alive because of him. But as Ray sees it, 18 died, also because of him.

Because the one who attacked the airliner was Death Masque, the computer program Ray built and forms with his powers, that's gained independence. Death Masque wanted to teach Ray a lesson, specifically about being concerned with anyone other than Masque itself. Ray's old friend Jenny was coming into town on that airliner, and Ray, worried about the rift he was sensing between them, planned to propose.

The issue is a little confusing, as it hops between the aftermath of the crash and the events leading up and including the crash. Ray's considering getting drunk for the first time, his father shows up and unsuccessfully tries to give him a pep talk. Death Masque pretends to be Happy Terrill once he hears Superman is lingering around the crash (because every passenger is certain they saw Superman saving the day, which Ray is almost relieved about), and asks if he would speak to Ray, because Ray looks up to him. Superman initially declines, then appears to reconsider. Except wait, it was actually Happy using his powers to disguise himself and Ray kicks his ass, revealing him to be Death Masque. Except Ray thinks that's just another trick by his dad. Then Jenny, who Ray notes wasn't among the survivors, shows up, because she missed the flight entirely.

At that point, I wasn't sure Ray's grief wasn't causing him to hallucinate. Or, since she responds to his proposal with "Good-bye," if he wasn't replaying some earlier conversation in his head that actually lead to her being on the plane. Like, that's why she died, moving away from him, and he made one last-ditch play, Death Masque objected, and she died. And then Superman actually does show up, except Ray thinks it's his dad again and well, *gestures to the top of the post* When Ray wakes up, the two of them talk about how hard it is to live up to people idolizing you, but it's something you have to consider, blah blah, Ray doesn't get drunk.

I'm still not sure if we're meant to read the fight as Ray really beat Death Masque, so all his later fears and whinging that he can't do it was wrong, or that Death Masque threw the fight to sell his trick that this was really another manipulation by Happy. Considering Ray loses every other single time they fight directly, I assume the latter.

The point seems to be that Ray still hasn't moved on from his childhood. He's still trying to date the girl that was his best (only?) friend. When the grief over everything gets too much, Ray tries to return to his childhood home, which someone else owns and inhabits now. He's idolizing Superman instead of trying to be the best Ray he can. I don't think that was a necessary story, considering the point of the mini-series was for Ray to embrace his new reality and move forward, but Priest seemed to think it was relevant. Seems undercut by all Death Masque's manipulations.

Maybe Priest just wanted to write Jenny out, since she never appears again. I don't think he really replaced her in the supporting cast. Ray's main girlfriend ends up being a future cop who gives him instructions how to return to his time, and it turns out Ray saved her when she was a little kid and gave her those instructions to give to him, which implies a fairly large age gap, and we mostly see them interact in a future where Vandal Savage did shape Ray into a ruthless corporate type.

But if the point was removing useful voices around Ray so, "ask Vandal Savage for help," seems like a good plan, then mission accomplished?