Overdue Movie Reviews #12 - Jaws (1975)

A large great white shark settles in off the coast of a New England beach town in the summer, as the townspeople are too concerned with losing tourist dollars to close the beaches in the hopes it'll move on to more favorable hunting grounds. After a handful - mouthful? - of people are eaten, the water-fearing police chief (Roy Scheider) sets out on a boat with a crazed shark hunter (Robert Shaw), and a cocky ichthyologist (Richard Dreyfuss) to kill the shark. The shark pretty quickly turns the tables and morale sinks faster than Quint's shitty boat.

Jaws ran all the time on cable when I was a kid/teenager, and I watched it almost every chance I got. When I was bored in various high school classes - which was often - I would make a list of my 20 favorite movies. The list was appalling (1995's Mel Brooks/Leslie Nielsen horror spoof Dracula: Dead and Loving It was usually somewhere around #18), owing to the limited amount of movies I'd seen, and my own, still-forming attitudes about what I liked, or what was good. That said, Jaws was usually either first or second, up against another of Spielberg's offerings this series will address one day.

The story that Spielberg only hinted at the shark for much of the film because the crew couldn't get the mechanical shark to work right is well known, but Spielberg does a lot with suggestion. We barely see the remains of Chrissie, the first victim. A sickly pale hand with a crab crawling over it in the sand, or Hooper picking up the arm, no longer attached to a body, during his autopsy.

Mostly though, we infer. From the panicked whistles that summon Brody, followed by the shot of the deputy turning away as he collapses in the sand, sobbing around his whistle. The way Chief Brody and the boy that was supposed to go swimming with Chrissie slow, and Brody makes the boy stay back. The tray presented to Hooper that contains all that's left of Chrissie is barely big enough for an infant.

Jaws owes some of its DNA to those '50s sci-fi horror flicks. Not just the ones where the populace are menaced by some everyday creature grown large by some method, but the presentation of the shark - again, out of technical necessity - reminds me of Forbidden Planet. The indentations in the soil that marked the Id Monster's footsteps. Tree being shoved aside, or brief bursts of ray gun fire lighting up a distant canyon, but getting steadily closer.

Here it's a tire with a roast hooked to it being taken away that tells of the presence of the monster, and half the dock going with it that speaks to its power. The yellow barrels Quint keeps harpooning into the shark, that never seem to actually wear it down. The tooth Hooper finds in a fishing boat that, like the Id Monster, vanishes before it can be presented to anyone as proof.

Once we do start to actually see the shark, it's blurred, partial views. Rolling onto its side beneath the water before it bites that one guy's leg off, the shark's body almost merges with the murky water around it. The dark eye is prominent, dull and black and lacking in anything we'd recognize as humanity or mercy, and the teeth it'll use to bite almost glow, but the rest is barely discernible. Like the ocean is annoyed by all these jabbering, splashing humans and concentrated part of itself into something to kill them.

I think years of watching Shark Week, seeing actual sharks, has somewhat dimmed the effectiveness of "Bruce" when he starts to reveal himself more often. Even for a stocky species like the great white, the body is stiff, the movement of the jaws awkward. It closes its mouth halfway, like it's chewing rapidly rather than biting great chunks from something, or it started to say one thing and then changed its mind. There's a sense of power, but not necessarily speed or force. Most of the time that's fine; the shark cruises with the confidence of a predator that knows there's nothing in the surrounding sea to challenge it.

It's the reactions of the people that help sell it. Brody's startled jerk when its head breaks the surface right in front of him, his dazed backwards shuffle into the cabin and murmured, 'You're gonna need a bigger boat.' I think the clearest sign of how dangerous it is comes after that, in two stages. First, when Hooper quietly asks Quint if he's ever had another shark act like this, and later, when Quint asks Hooper what he could do with his high-tech gear. These two have been at each other's throats since the moment they met. Quint sneering at Hooper's gear and college learning, Hooper rolling his eyes at Quint's sea tales and machismo. Now, each is scared enough to look to the other for an answer to the problem.

Dreyfuss and Shaw both play guys who are right, and wrong, and kind of arrogant jerks, albeit in different ways. Hooper is much chattier, ready with glib remarks about the mayor lining up to be a hot lunch, or muttered comments that the guys loading too many people into a boat are going to die. He's condescending, but Dreyfuss does it with a smile and a lighthearted tone that says he's amusing himself, that nasal cackle as he strides away after the mayor proves more concerned with a defaced billboard.

Quint doesn't say much, outside the monologue about the Indianapolis that Shaw apparently gave drunk, but most of it he says with a graveness to his tone expressing the person he's speaking to is a fool, or just not worth his time. He dismisses the island for having 'too many captains,' or his curt dismissal of Brody's suggestion that Hooper spend a while tossing chum with, 'Hooper drives the boat, Chief.' He doesn't dress it up, simply states the facts as he sees them. He's survived, he knows what's what, he doesn't care what you think.

Neither is really that concerned about the welfare of the people. Quint, certainly, wants to kill sharks and get paid for it. Revenge for what happened to his crewmates in WW2. Hooper sticks around because he wants to study sharks, and why go to Antarctica if there's a giant-ass great white shark right here? Consider that when the shark finally makes itself known to the trio aboard the Orca, Quint goes for his weapons, while Hooper goes for his camera. Quint's getting paid to kill the shark, no time like the present to start. Hooper wants to document evidence. He laughed at the mayor's insistence he wants to get himself in National Geographic, but he didn't deny it.

And in the middle is Brody. Scared of the water, no knowledge of seamanship. He can't help with the damaged engine, can't tie knots well enough to rig the barrels for Quint. When Quint hands him the fishing reel, Brody holds it like a first-time dad who's about to drop the baby. He can't even get in on the scar-comparing contest. He brought his service revolver, which might be helpful if a mermaid tries to mug them, but is useless against a 25-foot-long shark. Pretty much all he can do is chum bloody fish chunks into the water.

That's his penance, chief of police turned chore boy. He had the chance to cut this short, or at least try, and he let the mayor - never listen to a man who wears suits made of a Captain D's wallpaper - bully him out of closing the beaches until after a second fatality, and even then, only for a few days. He fears what will happen as a result of his cowardice enough to ask his son to take his new boat into the estuary, but he's not stopping anyone else from going into the ocean. He says he left New York City and came to Amity because, 'one man can make a difference,' but what we see of his usual day is he fields complaints from old men about their picket fence getting karate'd, or has guys pushing him to make the street in front of their house a "No Parking" zone. There hasn't been a mugging or a murder in decades, presumably spanning the tenures of multiple police chiefs and deputies. Are you really making a difference if anyone can do it?

He's a man afraid of water, living on an island because, 'it's only an island if you look at it from the water.' And you know he's going to have to go out there, and maybe he knows it, too, long before it happens. In the celebration of people thinking the tiger shark those goobers killed is the man-eater, the mother of the second victim arrives to slap Brody and blame him for her son's death, while the mayor stands off to one side, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else. After, as the crowd disperses, Brody walks down the pier, towards the ocean.

Of course, once they're on the Orca, Amity's no longer an island, it's invisible. There are lots of shots of just the boat, the sea, and the sky. I think, up through the first evening once they've found it, leading into Quint's story about the USS Indianapolis, the shots keep getting longer. The boat gets smaller, the sea and sky get larger. The shark could be anywhere in that vastness, the three men's isolation absolute given Quint's control (and eventual destruction) of the radio.

After that, once the shark takes it upon itself to smite these fools that challenged it, the camera starts moving back in. There's no place to go, the Orca is the only remotely safe harbor they have, and that's about like hiding in an outhouse during a hurricane. Everything around the boat, is controlled by the shark. The only thing the barrels accomplish is letting them see the shark's gaining on them as they run. Hooper climbs into his little shark cage and descends beneath the surface, the knight challenging the dragon in its lair, and his cage is destroyed in seconds. This is not his place, but he survives where Quint doesn't. Luck, or maybe because Quint wanted to die, the stubborn, contrary guy (love that as soon as Hooper tells him the engine can't handle high RPMs, Quint immediately pushes the throttle harder) that's been challenging sharks for 30 years, ever since 800 of his friends got eaten.

So it falls to Brody, with Quint's rifle and Hooper's compressed air tank, to kill the shark as the boat sinks around him. He's resting on the mast, but it's so low that it looks like he's actually floating or laying on the surface of the ocean. If part of the sea solidified into the monster to test him, test his fear of the ocean, his belief he can make a difference, another part of it has given him a bit of solid ground and said, "OK, let's see what you can do." 

What I Bought 5/15/2026

I spent the weekend at my dad's, so expect a variety of older films in the reviews starting next week. On the way up, in between searching used bookstores for his birthday gifts, I hit the comic store. I was only expecting to find one of the two books from last week, and I did, but not the one I expected. That said, it's definitely the one I'd rather have.

Touched by a Demon #4, by Kristen Gudsnuk - Oh jeez, what did this lady think would improve her life? If she could divide her focus better?

Mammon whisks Frons and Pazuzu back to Hell, leaving Wendy to come up with some sort of plausible explanation to the detective about what she just saw, and not incriminate herself as having murdered her family. She is probably not entirely convincing, but no one gets arrested so let's call it a win.

Down in Hell, Mammon isn't pleased Frons abandoned his post. Even worse, Frons started this whole life help agency without going through bureaucratic channels. On the other hand, Lucifer thinks the idea has promise. Frons has already damned 63 souls, including Wendy. If he can damn 3 more, bringing him up to a nifty 66, he'll get a promotion! And the lute he brought with him when he was cast out of Heaven, and subsequently traded for Pazuzu to get her away from her horrible boss

I did enjoy Mammon's complaint that there are souls that are supposed to be getting tortured that aren't because Frons is absent. Just sitting around, untortured, like they're in 'a hotter Purgatory.'

So Frons has a dilemma. He truly wanted to help people, but keeps fucking it up. Should he keep trying, and risk damning more souls, which gets him a promotion and recognition he finds he no longer desires? Does he accept there's no redemption for him?

There's a bit where he's debating what to do and asks Pazuzu and she replies that she was just helping him and, 'I have no moral opinions.' I started go back-and-forth with myself Friday night about which way to interpret that. Which word is the emphasis on, no or moral? Then I told myself there was no difference, then I argued back that there was. Is Pazuzu saying she has no opinions that are moral, as in they're all immoral? Or is it that she has no moral opinions, as in she doesn't even debate or consider morality? The former seems more likely for a demon, but somehow I think it's the latter. Like, morality isn't even something she thinks about. Sure, she hasn't loved how most of their clients turned out, but that could just be because she likes her boss and wants him to be happy, and the failures eat at him.

Anyway, Frons has one final conversation with Father Angelo, although they exchange contact info (which Frons immediately blocks). If the story continues, I think there was going to be something there, because Frons seems smitten. He resumes taking clients, this time an elderly woman who lives alone and is going to die soon. She has regrets, about opportunities missed and whatnot.

Frons could cast a time travel hex, allowing her to relive her life, but chooses instead to help her maximize her enjoyment of the time she has remaining. This, in turn, offers a glimmer of hope that Frons might be able to pull of his own redemption, if he sticks to trying to truly help people, instead of using demonic magic to offer quick-fix solutions. And that's where it ends, Frons, Pazuzu and Wendy as a little group. So Gudsnuk could come back to the story again some day, if she wants. The detective is still lurking, investigating the disappearance of Wendy's family, there's unresolved stuff with Father Angelo, there's no guarantee Bifrons won't still mess things up in the future, or that, if he keeps succeeding it won't start to cause a backlash from the higher-ups.

Sunday Splash Page #427

"Cement Shoes," in Adventures in the DC Universe #6, by Steve Vance (writer), John Delaney (penciler), Roy Boyd (inker), Bob Le Rose (colorist), Tim Harkins (letterer)

And we're back to the start. The first new "A" was going to be A Calculated Man. Turns out it didn't have a splash page, and I decided I didn't want to waste an entry on something where I was just going to complain about the conceit of the series the entire time when it didn't even have a splash page, so out of the collection it went!

As for Adventures in the DC Universe, I think this book was one of DC's offerings aimed at younger readers, like the comics they based on Batman: The Animated Series and the '90s Superman cartoon. Even though the artists sometimes used the character designs from the Timmverse cartoons - the last issue of the series, #19, is a Wonder Woman and Catwoman team-up using the later cartoon design for Selina, with the jet-black costume and the crooked ears - these weren't necessarily set in that continuity.

Issue 14, while using a Flash who seems rather like the overly cocky version from the cartoons, has him challenged to a race by the '90s, leather-jacket wearing version of Superboy. Issue 13 has the Martian Manhunter teaming up (or being saddled with) Impulse. Most of the issues have a lead feature and a back-up, and issue 6's back-up involved Power Girl helping stop a cargo ship full of experimental weapons from making landfall.

I only own a few issues - like the Marvel Adventures line, this series being done-in-ones means it's perfect for picking and choosing issues with an interesting concept - but it looks like Steve Vance, who wrote every issue, usually tried to connect the lead feature and the back-up in some way. Issue 8's lead is Booster Gold and Blue Beetle taking a gig in Hub City and finding themselves double-crossed, while the back-up shows how the Question (reluctantly) bails them in the course of pursuing his own case. Or Aquaman saves that drowning guy, but is too preoccupied with finding Ocean Master to think anything of it beyond surface dwellers dumping garbage in his waters again. In the Power Girl story we learn the guy is actually a fed that was trying to track down the guy who stole the experimental Russian weapons.

Delaney tends to exaggerate for comedic effect, which is what the story asks for, but I'm not sure it's always the best choice. Should it be played for yuks that Aquaman's just floating there, watching this guy drown? He's supposed to be the hero, right? I don't know what I would have made of that if I read this when it came out and I was closer to the target age. But if the story asks for comedy, he provides it. He can draw action sequences, he nails the look of the characters. He and Vance seem like a pretty good team.

Saturday Splash Page #229

"Another of Iron Man's Drunk Monologues," in What If? (vol. 1) #9, by Don Glut (writer), Alan Kupperberg (breakdowns), Bill Black (finishes/inker), Carl Gafford (colorist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer)

These days, Marvel pumps out What Ifs every few years, usually built around the notion that one of their various Big Events would turn out differently. I didn't want to read those events the first time around, so an alternative version isn't much interest to me.

Before that, there was the '90s volume, that ran for 115 issues and was usually about some event or another going differently. Inferno, Atlantis Attacks, The Evolutionary War. Even back then, and even with the writers making sure to explain what was different, I usually didn't care. The big summer events tended to run through the Annuals, and I usually didn't buy those, so they didn't matter much to me. Most of them could best be described as "rocks fall, everybody dies." Marvel Earth, and sometimes the entire universe, always just one hairsbreath away from total annihilation, apparently. 

The second volume did introduce "Mayday" Parker, aka Spider-Girl, so that's one thing it's got going for it.

Before that, the first volume ran for 47 issues across 7 years. I own two of those; besides the issue above, there's #45, by David Anthony Kraft and Ron Wilson, where the gamma bomb explosion links Rick Jones and Banner's minds, and when Rick dies from the radiation, the Hulk goes berserk. Considering the issue costs us half the Fantastic Four and 40% of the original Avengers line-up, you could probably file it under "rocks fall, everybody dies," too. It's fun to break the toys sometimes.

And then there's this issue, where the notion for Agents of Atlas started, which Iron Man showing off some "dimensional transporter" he built that lets them spy on other timelines and worlds. Yes, 30 years before Civil War, Iron Man was invading your privacy under a flimsy pretext. Basically, Jimmy Woo puts together a team to protect (and rescue, when protecting fails) President Eisenhower from Yellow Claw.

The roster is different from what Parker and Kirk would use. 3-D Man's in there (though Parker would eventually add the current 3-D Man/former Triathlon in the very short-lived Atlas series), and while Namora leads them to M-11 (not given a name here, much chattier), she begs off to search for Namor. Who is, presumably, roaming the streets of New York as a bum, waiting for Johnny Storm to singe his beard off. Marvel Boy convinces Gorilla Man to come along by promising to search for a way to make him human again with Uranian science, because Ken's too afraid to even be on the same continent as his wife. The wife who ridiculed his visions of a gorilla?

Glut (or Roy Thomas, since this was his concept, shocking, I know, that Roy Thomas plumbed the depths of forgotten comics history) tries to draw parallels between the characters chosen and the ones Iron Man invited to his little picture show. Gorilla Man and Beast, M-11 and Vision, Venus and Thor, Marvel Boy and Iron Man, 3-D Man and Captain America. The '50s group even call themselves "Avengers", albeit with the absolutely terrible battlecry, "Go, Avengers, Go." Like, holy shit, I'd be embarrassed to shout that and charge into battle. I'd rather yell "SPOOOOOON!" than "Go, Avengers, Go."

Some of them feel like a stretch - 3-D Man's presented as a cocky asshole who likes to wind up Gorilla Man with comments about his smell, which just screams "Hawkeye" - and I can't decide whether Thomas and Glut picked the '50s cast to conform to a current Avengers roster, and that's why Namora didn't stick around, or those were just the Golden Age characters they wanted to use, and they picked Avengers to match.

Also of note, Woo brings them together, it's his arch-foe that's the mastermind behind the plot, he's the one that tracks the villains after they escape with the President, but he doesn't really get acknowledged as part of the team. There's no one pointed to as his parallel among the Avengers. I think Parker makes him the Captain America of the Agents, the driving force that unites them, with enough courage and skill this disparate bunch will follow his lead.

What I Bought 5/8/2026

For whatever reason, the local shop didn't have any copies of Fantastic Four last week. I had Friday off, and during a trip I was making, stopped at another store and found a copy, along with a couple of other back issue projects I'm currently working on.

Fantastic Four #10, by Ryan North (writer), Humberto Ramos (penciler), Victor Olazaba (inker), Edgar Delgado (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Hey, can you try not blocking traffic while killing everyone? I got places to be!

So the Earth's being invaded while the FF are away, and since apparently every other hero on the planet is completely incapable of handling an invasion by some completely non-descript group of purple aliens, the Scarlet Witch, sorry Sorcerer Supreme, has to use Bullseye to aim a spell to bring the FF back from across the universe. Because Bullseye is, apparently, the best marksman on the planet.

Remarkably, this is not the sequence Ryan North is going to write in this issue that most irritates me.

The spell works, the FF are back, with Crazy Other Sue on their heels. The aliens immediately run away, so now it's everyone against Crazy Other Sue. They goad her into trying something while constructing some invisible reflective sphere around her, and Crazy Other Sue is now Comatose Other Sue. OK, fine, kind of anti-climactic that they beat a being that decked Galactus with the old "reflect your attack back at you," play, but sure. Except now, the FF need the Sorcerer Supreme to send them back across the universe. Because they have to save Galactus.

You made me agree with Maria Hill, Ryan North. I may never forgive you for that. But, hey, Crazy Other Sue compressed part of Big G's chest into a singularity, so there's probably nothing the FF can do. Unless Sue tries bending a lot of light into a laser to try and cut it - as in, the singularity - out of Galactus. And unless Galactus, unable to save himself, still has enough power to give her a boost by temporarily Silver Surfer-ing Sue so she can draw in more light. Whatever, point is, Galactus lives. . .to kill entire worlds full of people in the name of, essentially, being too big to fail.

Can you even cut a depression in space-time "out" of something? Shouldn't any attempt to cut a singularity out of someone with light be thwarted by the fact you'd have to cut close enough the gravity would just gobble up all the light you're using? This was not one of North's stronger efforts, and Ramos' art is nowhere near good enough to distract me from that.

Roberto to the Dark Tower Came - Tom Epperson

Roberto is a reporter in an unnamed Latin American country. He gets a phone call informing him that someone is displeased with his recent articles, and if he doesn't leave the country in 10 days, he will be killed. Roberto's received death threats before, but for some reason, this one strikes him as serious. So he decides to leave. He can join his attractive, wealthy girlfriend in St. Lucia.

But an acquaintance of his in the U.S. embassy passes along information that the military is busy carrying out massacres and atrocities against the people in a certain province, to remove any potential obstacles to extracting the hell out of some minerals. Roberto decides he'll pretend to leave, go to Tulcan instead, get evidence, and then write about the whole thing from St. Lucia.

Epperson breaks the book into specific days, each one starting with the title "{insert number} days until the day Roberto is to die." Starts at 10, works down to the day. The story follows Roberto, and only Roberto. We only see the people in his life - his father and (young) stepmother, his college friends, his work colleagues - when they're in his presence.

Epperson does usually dive into their backstories as well as their present situations, most of which revolve around some horrible act committed by one government of the country or another. His grandmother met his grandfather when she had to leave the country for her own safety. A colleague who was abducted by a rebel leader, and later survived a bombing at the newspaper's office. Roberto's photographer friend Daniel, who pretended to believe in Communism to score points with a girl he liked, and spent two weeks imprisoned and tortured by the military. A soldier who was maimed, and is struggling to find something he can do, as well as dealing with the guilt of the atrocities he took part in. 

And most of these people, to varying degrees, have abandoned whatever brought them into trouble initially. The reporter focuses more on fashion and gossip, Daniel now takes photos of celebrities and food. Each of them reached a point, for one reason or another, where they decided it wasn't worth the risk.

I don't know if the point is a shorthand way of explaining why Roberto decides to try and get this story, or highlighting the futility of the attempt. Everyone has been touched by the horrors committed in the country by governments, militias, wealthy landowners, drug cartels. Except perhaps, for Roberto. He's not been arrested and beaten, he's avoided being blown up. Even as the clock ticks towards his death and people all around him die, Roberto remains largely unscathed. So maybe the point was that those people needed someone to tell their stories.

Or maybe the point was it's useless. If all these people have these horrible experiences in their pasts, stretching back decades, if seemingly every piece of ground in the country had some massacre or expression of brutality stain its soil, what good has reporting on any of it actually done? What the military plans is apparently based on something the Sri Lankan government and military did. But people know that happened, the United Nations knows, the famed "international community" knows, and we're told there were no repercussions. No one was prosecuted, no one was made to account. Even if Roberto gets in, gets his story, and escapes to publish it, what good is it going to do?

Epperson dedicated the book to journalists who lost their lives pursuing the truth, so I don't think he was making an "it's pointless" argument, but it sure feels like it. I definitely thought Roberto was an idiot. Well-meaning, but an idiot nonetheless.

The book is tense, Epperson keeping you guessing whether Roberto really will die or not right up to the end. It's less the ticking clock the chapters mark and more because it's hard to tell which direction the threat will come from. There are enough stories in here of people being betrayed by comrades or long-trusted friends, of soldiers dressing up as paramilitary groups to divert suspicion, that it seemed like the danger could come from anywhere. The book does point strongly in one direction, but I kept myself keyed to the possibility that was another misdirection. Roberto is dealing with a lot of people where he only has their word they are who and what they claim to be. And since we're tagging along inside his mind, we don't know any more than he does.

'She's surrounded by religious bric-a-brac. His eye is caught as always by a porcelain figurine of Christ. It's a particularly macabre representation of the crucifixion, blood spilling down Jesus' face from his crown of thorns, his eyes bugging out and his mouth agape as if to say, "Hey, I don't care if I am the son of God, it's no fucking joke being crucified!"'

What I Bought 5/6/2026

Well, we've finished April books, so it's on to selections from May! I was able to get all three comics from last week I wanted, although it took looking in a different shop in another town I happened to be passing through on other business Friday to get the third.

Batgirl #19, by Tate Brombal (writer), Takeshi Miyazawa (penciler/inker), Juan Castro (inker), Mike Spicer (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - Looking at Batgirl charging into battle with a bunch of weapons made from her blood-shadows, all I can think is this power is a lot like having a symbiote, and my distaste for the whole concept becomes clear.

Cassandra fights her way up this big tower, from the inside and the outside, with the help of Tenji, Jaya, and Wu Lin She embraces the power at one point when it looks like her family is about to fall, but Miyazawa really draws it more like Cass just cut loose with her fighting abilities and that blood-shadow sword. She throws some regular old Batarangs, but I can't tell that she's making throwing stars or spears out of the blood.

Whatever, they make it to the top, she summons this Midnight Eye - basically a cloak, one of those broad rice-picking hats (festooned with streamers) and some glowing orange eyes - being her ancestor made the deal with. Even though he agrees she was cursed with this power being active without asking for or agreeing to it, he won't undo the situation. Because rules is rules and deals is deals and really, he's just a lazy bureaucrat.

Which is when Wu Lin makes his pitch, offering himself as a servant to handle things her and in the mortal realm, as well as offering up three living souls (Cass, Tenji, Jaya), in exchange for power. That, of course, is a deal the Midnight Eye is all about, so it looks like Cass and the other two got boned. Cass makes a speech that's half-apology to Tenji and Jaya, half her saying screw it to all this "family" that never did anything for her but place burdens on her.

Wu Lin returns, having dealt with the people that betrayed him in the mortal realm and declaring he's got to let these 3 living souls go, because otherwise things are out of balance. Sure, he's the one who offered them, but that was like 5 minutes ago! He's got an entirely different job now! I can at least appreciate the hustle there. And Midnight Eye agrees to remove the curse - as long as Batgirl agrees that someday she's going to work for him, or she gets cursed again. They return to Gotham, Cass introduces them all to her Bat-family, and that's that.

Does the fact Cassandra said family is what you make of it, which I've been yelling in these review posts for months, and that she chooses not to carry the burdens of this "family" that were never around or never accepted her mean she's going to let the Shiva issue go? Will Tenji stop bugging her about it? Their whole argument over whether to see if Shiva's soul was in the Spirit World and could be nudged into resurrection never really got finished. They just got busy with other stuff.

That's not even getting into the question of how rebirth works in this case. Presumably Shiva would be reborn as an infant, so it'd be years before she could even talk coherently with them. And is she going to have her past memories, or is she an entirely new person? If the latter, does it even matter? She's not Shiva at that point. Never been a fan of reincarnation, frankly. Feels like, with the way people want to play it that you have past memories and you're the same person, just in a new body, you probably stole that life away from someone new that could exist. Instead, it's just you, fucking things up a second time like you did the first time.

Marc Spector: Fist of Khonshu #4, by Jed MacKay (writer), Devamalya Pramanik (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - The first glance I got at this cover, I thought the moon was actually some new design for Marc's hood, or it was billowing in a way that made it look really big and I was not a fan. Then I took a closer look.

This issue is Marc learning from Dr. Sterman about what the rest of the cast got up to when he went missing two weeks ago. In short, they beat up a bunch of villains for answers. That didn't work. Hunter's Moon communed with Khonshu to look for Marc. That didn't work, either. MacKay provides no explanation for that.

Then 8-Ball rushes in, pointing that several buildings are being slowly swallowed by darkness, and nobody other than their crew notices. And the people who lived in those buildings are vanishing, too. The others are skeptical it has anything to do with Marc's disappearance, but this is happening on his turf, so they need to handle for him.

They never came back out, so Marc's going in after them. Bringing along his big, soul-stealing dragon sword. Pramanik and Rosenberg are stretching Marc's cape to Breyfogle Batman and/or Spawn levels of size. On one page, as Marc ventures into the Midnight Mission's basement to retrieve the sword, it's a spiraling staircase - both comics in this post feature that, one going up, the other going down - and the cape trails behind him, making a spiral panel border.

On the last page, as he ventures into this new, haunted building, the cape actually has some threads that seem to be fluttering loose of the cape. Which could either read as the cape is, as part of a holy uniform, more than just fabric and has paranormal properties, or that Marc is, as Sterman suggests, making a mistake marching in there when he's wounded. Coming apart at the seams, so to speak.