Sunday Splash Page #417

"Power-less Pack," in Power Pack (2020) #4, by Ryan North (writer), Nico Leon (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

In 2020, Marvel was going to do another event about government overreach, this time targeted at teen heroes, who would have to either knock off being superheroes, or accept an adult hero as a "mentor." Called Outlawed, the event got kneecapped by the disruptions in distribution (among other things) from COVID.

There were a few tie-ins, but a lot of stuff got canceled. From what I can tell, the most notable moment was Cyclops, now able to remember the time his teenage self was brought to the future, declaring the Champions were under Krakoa's protection. But really, when the best moment in the event involves Cyclops doing something (admittedly) cool, you know it was a bum idea.

That said, besides the Champions, Power Pack were probably the perfect group to put in the crosshairs of this sort of foolishness. Ryan North does have Alex try to argue that, due to time spent traveling the new multiverse (post-Hickman's Secret Wars) with the Future Foundation, he's actually old enough to qualify as a mentor to his siblings, only to be shot down by some bureaucrat fascist on the grounds time dilation due to multiversal travel doesn't count. Although this was around the same time as Rainbow Rowell's Runaways, when Julie was dating Karolina Dean, who was a college student by that point, so it seems like Julie ought to have counted.

But it sets the tone - if the mini-series starting with another Katie-drawn intro to the Power Pack, outlining their powers and general deal didn't do that already - that North may not be taking this entirely seriously. The kids' efforts to find a mentor focus first on Frog Thor - who became a character separate from the "Thor turned into a frog" bit in Simonson's run at some point - and eventually settle on some guy we've never heard of, Agent Aether. Who encourages the kids to use their various powers to generate electricity to help people.

Except Agent Aether's the Wizard, whose machines are actually draining the kids' powers into him. Oh, and he sold the electricity they created to a multinational company to make himself money. In other words, the Wizard finally found his proper level as a villain: A schmuck who cons desperate kids and commits petty fraud. Only took him 60 years, but congrats on finally recognizing his place in the hierarchy.

There's probably something North's pointing out, about how dangerous it is to give an adult responsibility for a kid just because they were able or willing to register an identity in a government database. That's all the Wizard had to do, cook up a fake look and make a show of being helpful. Whoever was in charge of the government department didn't do any sort of vetting, either from laziness or understaffing. 'He's an adult, wears a costume, good enough. Next!'

Still, the Wizard's an idiot, so all it takes is the kids, with some help from Wolverine, pretending they actually had more power than he thought, to goad him into throwing them back in his machines, which they reversed ahead of time, so they'd drain the powers back out of him. Continuing with the notion of North not taking this seriously, Logan responds to a written request left at the Krakoan Embassy by showing up at the Powers' home, where the kids claim he's a special tutor who helps kids from early elementary to college. Their dad remarks he looks just like that X-Man, Wolverine, but is otherwise OK with "Professor Brucie Mansworth" tutoring his kids.

Maybe North's point wasn't how half-baked most attempts to "protect" children via government intervention are, but that parents are incredibly stupid and nobody should be procreating? Anyway,  to sell the notion the kids still have powers, Logan stages a battle against them as "Wolvermean", Wolverine's evil twin (which Leon and Rosenberg depict as a palette-swapped, arts-and-crafts version of Logan's costume.) The battle ends up televised, with the scroll at the bottom wondering if violent video games are helping kids be better at fighting crime? I enjoyed all of that, found it hilarious.

There is some nonsense in the fourth issue about how, when the Wizard drained their powers, some part of his selfish, misanthropic nature leached into the kids. Julie posits this because Katie is angry adults put them in this position. Plus, she tried to fry the Wizard with the last bit of power she had and nearly killed a forklift driver. But, Katie's got good reason to be pissed.

And not just at the Wizard. The intro was part of her plan to finally tell their parents about their powers (North references her previous plan to do this in the mini-series we looked at last week, which may be one of the only times I've seen those mini-series get referenced by something in-continuity, for whatever value that term has at Marvel these days), and Katie got overruled by her siblings again. Now her powers were stolen by a bad guy that only got his hooks in them because of poorly thought out nanny state bullshit, and her siblings are dismissing her feelings, telling her she doesn't really feel that way. That seems like a bird turd cherry atop a cow shit sundae.

That said, the generally lighter tone lets Leon add in a bunch of humorous touches. The Asgardians have a sign that tell visitors, no, they don't know where Frog Thor is, and are insulted you think he's an acceptable substitute for their ruler. The Wizard's HQ has hand-drawn plans for how he'll beat other villains, like Juggernaut, with his new powers. He might be a worse artist than Katie, so I guess he didn't swipe that along with her powers. The team beat Taskmaster and Jack and Katie can't resist poking him with sticks while he's down. Each issue is from a different kid's perspective, and Jack filters a lot of his perception through his dream of having a social media account dedicated to his adventures. So we get panels of Alex using his powers presented as videos to click on, with titles like, 'BLACK HOLE IN BROOKLYN??? Video footage PROVES it happened!'

Saturday Splash Page #219

"Party Down One," in Real Hero Shit, by Kendra Wells (writer/artist), Amanda Lafrenais (color artist)

Prince Eugene Edouard Emmanuel D'Pasha, heir to the Kingdom of Marble, sporting a set of horns that suggest unusual parentage on at least one side of his family, is feeling a little bored. He spies an ad from an adventuring party looking for a fighter, and joins up. 

Eugene is a good fighter, but energetic, easily distracted, and constantly horny, managing to exhaust each of Michel, Hocus, and Ani in various ways. Still, when they reach a town where people keep going missing and the local church may be involved, he doesn't shy from a fight, or from asserting his authority as Prince to make certain the guilty party will face repercussions.

Wells throws in some backstory for each party member, and has them interact as a group and in various pairs to let the personalities show through. For example, Ani is the most abrasive, but there's an ease to how Michel and Hocus react that shows they're familiar with her personality in a way Eugene is not.

Wells sets up a few things that likely would pay off in subsequent adventures - Michel having been hunted in the past, Ani's fury at how people like her who gained magic without praying to a deity were exterminated, Michel's warning to Eugene that if he rules, his hands will become bloody - but as far as I know, there hasn't been another volume released.

I posted a longer review 3.5 years ago. Doesn't feel like it was that long ago, but time flies. 

What I Bought 2/28/2026 - Part 2

I spent most of last Friday on the road. Driving to Alex's, driving to his gig 300 miles away, driving back, then driving home, on about 1 hour of sleep. To be fair, that's more than I usually manage when he drives, but I still basically flopped on my couch as soon as I got home 8 a.m. Saturday morning. Next I knew, it was noon, and I was basically useless the rest of the weekend.

I don't intend to do anything like that this weekend. In fact, maybe I'll just sleep the entire weekend. That sounds fantastic.

Babs: The Black Road South #2, by Garth Ennis (writer), Jacen Burrows (artist), Andy Troy and Lee Loughridge (colorists), Rob Steen (letterer) - I don't know what Babs and Barry are looking at, but the horse is appalled.

Babs and Izzy pursue the questing party that's got all their money with the aid of a punch-drunk dragon. Who passes the time telling about how he used to be quite the fighter, with all the riches and women that came with it, until all the blunt force trauma put his career on the downslope. Then he confused one of his ladies for a sheep, and well, look, it's awful he ate her, but I don't think it's accurately described as toxic masculinity, as the other ladies accused, and which Babs and Izzy agree. He's got CTE and no depth perception, for fuck's sake!

Also, I imagine a dragon's metabolism is a real bear to keep fed. As in, a whole bear is something they'd probably like to eat, given the chance. 

Whatever. They catch up to the questing party in the town everyone stops at before continuing on to die in Mordynn. Babs is very concerned about being recognized, and reluctant to talk about her past experience. But she offers enough, combined with a flashback at the beginning of the issue, to know Ennis is parodying Lord of the Rings. With Babs in Sean Bean's spot, I believe, since everyone else is accounted for. Babs leaves Izzy to talk the body count, I mean, party into letting the two of them join, as their only hope to get back their money is make sure these goobers actually complete the quest and return with significant loot.

Yeah, I wouldn't bet on it, either. Especially since what appears to be the only other survivor of the faux-fellowship is lurking in the shadows, and the years don't appear to have been kind to him. 

Dust to Dust #7, by JG Jones (writer/artist), Phil Bram (writer), Jackie Marzan (letterer) - Back in the mid-2000s, there were these awful TV commercials for this local church. They always ended with, "Family Worship Center, it's a church on fire!" From a marketing sense, just terrible. However, it was great for my mood, Alex and I laughed our asses off. Still do. The only good thing organized religion in the United States, quite possibly the world, has ever produced.

The masked killer is getting down to business now. The baseball player fooling around with the preacher's daughter, in the church? Dead. The preacher's daughter, too. Then it's immediately to the farmhouse where the photographer's staying. It turns into an awkward fight of her, an old man in a wheelchair, and his wife with her frying pan, all against a guy in a gas mask.

Jones uses tall, narrow panels during the struggle, usually breaking up a single setting into discrete pieces that each center on one character. A panel of the old man trying to use his cane to stand, another of the killer with his machete, holding the photographer by the hair. A third of the missus coming in hot with the skillet, concluded by the start of her swing.

A chaotic, uncoordinated and ultimately, somewhat successful, fight for both sides. The killer doesn't manage to get the photographer, but does manage to escape with some of her photos. All because the sheriff couldn't haul himself out of the bath fast enough to do anything. Jeez, this guy ain't exactly impressing me, especially as he still thinks it's the moonshiners who've been dead for a couple of issues now.

The rest of the issue is spent on the rainmaker setting up his equipment while the Mayor looks on. The Mayor's brother is helping, which puts the two prime suspects for the killer in the same place, so I thought Jones and Bram might do something to hint at a head injury for one of them, after the frying pan, but no. It's getting difficult for me to figure this story is actually going to resolve next issue. Especially after the preacher chucks a rattlesnake at the rainmaker, causing a flinch and misfire of the device, which lights the church on fire.

I at least appreciate the preacher's own self-righteousness getting his place burned down.

Feeling Shifty

Mr. Shifty involves a silent, teleporting guy who infiltrates a hi-rise tower. As you find out from his tech support, Nyx, the tower is owned by Chairman Stone, who stole MEGA Plutonium. You've got to steal it back via teleporting and punching.

Every level is a different floor in the tower (or under it.) The view is topdown, enabling you to see the layout of the halls and rooms in your vicinity. You can also move the camera a limited distance with the right thumbstick, to peek ahead. There's usually some objective you're trying to complete on each floor. Reach a security terminal to get more accurate blueprints, destroy a certain machine. Sometimes you're just trying to make it to a different elevator to take you to the next floor.

There are lots of hazards in your path. The goons ramp up from guys with handguns, to shotguns, to machine guns, to flamethrowers and grenade launchers. There are big dudes who just punch, but take an extra hit (3 instead of 2) to knock down, women with dual pistols who seem to have limited super-speed (after the first time you hit them, they do a very fast backwards dash to escape your punching range), and vaguely ninja-ish women who can zip into your face faster than you expect. There are also exploding barrels, automated machine guns and missile launchers, and laser traps. So many laser traps. Chairman Stone must have loved the first Resident Evil movie. 

All of that in a variety of configurations. However, friendly fire is a thing, so you can often get the opposition to eliminate itself. There was one particular room, in the last level, where I had my most success when I stuck to safe spots as much as possible, and the moving lasers mowed down most of the enemies. Just don't get caught in the blast radius, because Mr. Shifty is a real glass cannon. One hit and you're down. Most enemies' weapons have laser sights, so you can tell where they're aiming and, you know, not be there. But with how much ordinance is flying around sometimes, that can be difficult to track. Fortunately, the game restarts from the room you died in, rather than the start of the level, but at the same time, when you finish a level, it tells you how long it took, and how many times you died.

Seeing I died 59 times on level 16 was disheartening.

You also have a limited number of teleports you can use at one time, highlighted at the bottom of the screen as five boxes. You recharge, but it sure feels like, when you've exhausted your jumps, it takes forever for even one to recharge versus how quickly it happens if you're just recharging from 4 to 5 available teleports. The teleports are aimed with a little cursor that swivels and moves as you do. Range is limited, so some levels involve puzzles where you have to figure out how to get from A to B when the most direct hallway is separated from you by a thicker than usual wall.

Fighting fills a meter just above the teleport capacity display. When it's full, and you're about to get shot, you enter a sort of bullet time where everyone else slows down. So you can get clear and hopefully knock out several enemies in the few seconds before it drains.

Almost everything in the environment is destructible. On the one hand, this is dangerous. If you aren't careful, an enemy might have a strong enough weapon to just destroy the wall between you and keep firing. Though again, helpful in terms of friendly fire. However, this means there are all sorts of things you can use as weapons. Not guns - Mr. Shifty considers guns to be a coward's weapon, not like teleporting behind someone and punching them in the skull - but broken pipes, staffs, keyboards, the heads off marble busts, sodas from the drink machine. Chairman Stone has a lot of Greek or Roman statues with tridents or shields that you can pick up and hurl. Then pick up and hurl again. (You can't Captain America the shield, or maybe I just wasn't doing it right.)

I at least understand those as a design choice; Stone's a wealthy guy who thinks he's hot shit. I'm less sure why he has boat oars displayed on the walls everywhere, but hell, they make for good cannon fodder smacking.

Mr. Shifty is a game that, when it's going you well, you feel super-slick and accomplished. The one-hit-kill nature of the gameplay means that can vanish in an instant and, at least for me, once it was gone, it was hard to get back. One death seemed to wreck my timing. I'd start dying repeatedly in the same room. So it can be anger inducing sometimes.

What I Bought 2/28/2026 - Part 1

Had a dream early Monday morning where I was locked in an airtight room with a window in the door. I could feel myself running out of air as I managed to break the glass, at which point water started to pour in. Managed to tear the opening wider, which let in more water, but seemed to drain the hallway of the Gothic mansion I was in fast enough I didn't drown or asphyxiate. Nice when dream logic works in your favor.

I didn't find everything from January and February I missed, but I found most of it, so let's get started.

Spirit of the Shadows #1 and 2, by Daniel Ziegler (writer), Nick Cagnetti (writer/artist/colorist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - Play something lively, my man, it'll be funny. 'Cause you're in a graveyard.

Erik Leroux is dead, and finally reunited with his love, Katrina, in the Sacred Realm. Or not, because he has to pass through the Spirit Realm first and be judged. To be judged, he needs a book that documents his entire life. It'll also help him remember, since his memories are a little fuzzy. Too bad a creature grabs his book and shreds it, but Erik manages to find some pages that show him and us his life.

At first, it feels like Ziegler and Cagnetti are going for the approach of starting at the end, then flashing back to how we got there. Except Erik's time in the Spirit Realm is interrupted with activity back in the living world, where a doctor buries Erik, only to be captured by a traveler that turns out to be a witch named Helena Hextress. She's after Erik because he's responsible for her sister's death. No, her sister isn't Katrina, but Katrina's fate is tied to what happened.

Erik being dead is only a minor inconvenience to Helena, who turns the doctor into a wooden figure, then resurrects Erik with a spell she originally learned to revive her sister. But you've got to use it quick, and it took her too long to learn it. Cagnetti depicts the resurrection as a giant, ghoul-mouthed, alternate color version of Spirit of the Shadows bursting from the Spirit Realm's ground and swallowing Erik. Gotta be up there with resurrection via enormous, wish-granting dragon in terms of unique ways to do it. That's where issue 2 ends, Erik alive again (and not for the first time), but not aware what danger he's in, with the book of his life (what he collected of it) still in the Spirit Realm, with Elizabeth.

I'm curious whether Erik will remember his life now that he's alive, or if Ziegler and Cagnetti intend to flesh out the rest of his life via Elizabeth continuing the search for Erik's pages. In which case, Erik's time in the living world would be focused on him trying not to be killed by Helena. The being that explained the rules to Erik within the first few pages of issue 1 asked him a question he said was the basis of the judgement: Did you lead a moral life? Based on what we've seen in the first 2 issues, the answer is no, so Erik probably needs to stay alive long enough to reverse that trend (if he can), while Elizabeth learns things that would probably turn her against him.

Cagnetti's art feels very Kirby-influenced at times, though maybe that's just Helena's hair. But the squared off buildings and blocky protagonist has a similar vibe. The shading on the faces, narrow smudges of black here and there, has is more what I associate with '50s horror comic (or Black Jack Demon.) Which makes for a contrast with the vivid, solid block colors of the Spirit Realm scenes, which feel closer to a Ditko Dr. Strange book. Like two different stories taking place in the same book. I won't say it doesn't work, if I take it that the ultimately Earthly motivations Erik had pushed him into this supernatural situation (somehow.) It's just noticeable in a way I find distracting sometimes.

The Running Man (2025)

Ben Richards (Glen Powell) needs money for his sick kid, so he applies to appear on a Network show, and Network show, to make said money. Just as long as it's not The Running Man. He's very angry, so the producer (Josh Brolin), thinks he'd be great for The Running Man. Richards is desperate enough to accept and quickly learns TV is, gasp, fake!

Not in the sense that people are trying to kill him, or that he can make big bucks if he can stay alive. Those are both real. But in the sense the show lies about how he got to this point, and when he sends in the required daily videos, they fake them to be more incendiary. And at a certain point, the show starts working to keep him alive, at least so long as the ratings are good.

I can't decide if Powell, or maybe it's the movie in general, overplays the "angry" thing. It feels like too much, but the commercials and the other touches Edgar Wright puts in the movie - the clips of the obnoxious "Americanos" show, the videos by "The Apostle" - make the film feel like it's meant to be a satire, Robocop-style. If so, maybe having Ben Richards be a comically angry man, who responds to everything with either acerbic comments or violence, is a good choice. He tried to be a good man, it got him nowhere, now he's pissed off all the time.

Still, the performance puts me in the mind of what Robert Downey Jr. said in Tropic Thunder when watching the play version of Simple Jack. When Powell dials back on the anger throttle, it allows the audience to connect. The moments where Powell is allowed to show Richards' humanity through trying to help people, whether it's offering money to get a sick kid some medicine, or trying to talk a dementia-addled old woman out doing something that will get her killed, those make me root for the guy more than when he's screaming into the floating cameras. Even the bits where he's being funny in the daily videos he's supposed to send in convey his anger in a more relatable way. 

Brolin's excellent as this complete scumbag, who is always selling. The conversation near the end, where Powell asks if "they", meaning his wife and daughter, are OK, and Brolin legitimately can't figure out who Powell means until he spells it out. Even though Richards got into this to make money for them, even though that's what Brolin used to convince him. Because it was never anything other than a lever to get what he wanted, a promising contestant. If it didn't work, he'd have tried something else until Richards agreed.

There are some nice scenes or pieces of the film. I think the one I found most disquieting was the part with the two kids who got Laughlin. Them standing on either side of Buddy T (who I kept thinking was a CGI de-aged Ernie Hudson, sorry Colman Domingo!), stone-faced while holding the flamethrowers they used, was unsettling. They're not even happy to be on TV getting cheered for, might as well be telling them it's oatmeal for dinner tonight.

The part where Richards is in the trunk of a car, only aware of how badly things are going via the discussion he can hear and the way he's being bounced around, that was a nice bit. Michael Cera walking Richards through his secret room - 'this is where I make handmade soap, as far as you know' -  that was good. I enjoyed a lot of the cat-and-mouse between Richards and the Hunters in general, Richards mostly running for his life, taking out pursuers by sheer dumb luck as much as anything else.

The people he meets along the way were crucial for me to be pulled into the film. They living in the same world as Richards, but they've chosen different approaches to survive than "angrier than Vegeta with a permanent case of hemorrhoids." Whether it's Molie with his business selling TVs that, 'don't watch you back,' or The Apostle sharing the truth about the Network shows through underground tape distribution, or Amelia sneering at the "welfs" who watch The Running Man while insisting she's an open-minded person. Some of them try to address the problem, some put their head down and focus on the ground in front of them, some don't see a problem at all until they see a faked video of themselves leaning out a car window screaming for help.

Making Preparations to Set Sail

Wanted! is a collection of Eiichiro Oda's work prior to One Piece. Which, if this volume is comprehensive, consists of 5 stories. That's including Romance Dawn, the last entry in the book, which is kind of a dry run/first draft for One Piece, as it consists of a kid in a straw hat named Luffy with rubber powers, who wants to be a pirate. It doesn't get as far as Luffy actually recruiting a crew; he saves a young girl who was trying to protect her friend (who is a magic bird) from some creepy-looking guy with weird powers.

Yeah, that guy.

All the stories have comedic elements to varying degrees, and fall into different genres or styles. WANTED! is a Western, with a legendary gunman being haunted/annoyed by one of the bounty hunters who failed to kill him. The lead, Gill, spends most of the episode trying to run away or outsmart his pursuers, or yelling at the ghost to shut up as it plots his demise. Future Present from God is set in the modern day, about a pickpocket that God intended to kill for being a negative to society, but God fucked up and now said pickpocket has to keep a department store full of people from dying in a meteorite impact. Ikki Yako follows a cowardly monk (named Guko, and there's a monk named Ginko from a series called Mushi-shi. I don't know if Oda was spoofing that, or it's just a coincidence. He says he just thought a monk manga might be fun to do) who gets roped into trying to vanquish an evil spirit terrorizing a village.

Monsters is the closest to an entirely serious story, as it involves a swordsman who poses as a courageous hero, but actually uses a town's terror at an impending dragon attack as a cover to rob everyone's homes after they flee. There's another swordsman, Ryuma, overly serious and quick to anger, looking for the greatest swordsman in the world so he can challenge them. But he seems like an idiot, and managed to piss off the entire town because it seems like his fault the dragon's coming.

One thing the first 4 stories have in common is late surprise twists. That Gill was never actually in any real danger from the dangerous bounty hunter after him, because his skills are far greater. The thief pulling a fast one on God, Guko seeming like a talentless coward for 90% of his story, then becoming a badass at the very end. Monsters has a last page reveal about the true identity of the mysterious swordsman "King," that Ryuma's looking for. Romance Dawn's the exception, as Luffy shows off his powers about halfway through, and had already told us in a flashback he ate a mysterious fruit, albeit without telling us what it granted him.

The other thing I notice is the newer works tend to have fewer panels. WANTED! runs 6-8 panels a page, in a variety of layouts, for basically its entire length. Meanwhile Romance Dawn is almost entirely 4-6 panels, minus a handful of pages near the end with only 2 panels. Those are usually pages that involve someone getting hit, so the reduction in panels might reflect a shift towards more action-oriented stories. The 2-panel pages start to appear in Monsters, where Oda understandably seems to want more space to draw a guy leaping at the jaws of a dragon.