What I Bought 3/30/2026 - Part 2

Alex invited me along for another weekend jaunt to Chicago in a couple of weeks. Let's see, the first time I did all the driving and wound up on an entirely incongruent sleep schedule as him and everyone else. The second time I got friggin' motion sickness or something from the Uber driver we used getting back from dinner one night. Am I doomed to disaster, or is third time the charm? Find out in a couple of weeks. Assuming I survive.

Spirit of the Shadows #3, by Daniel Ziegler (writer), Nick Cagnetti (writer/artist/colorist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - Great, Bunnicula leveled up its vampiric powers to include wings.

So Erik's back from the dead - again - thanks to the witch that wants revenge for killing her sister. The sister who is still wandering the afterlife, gathering the pages of the book of Erik's life. Which is how we learn that his previous return was by the same doctor the witch attacked previously. And once Erik was back, he was deadset on reuniting with Katrina, only to find she'd married in the 2 years that passed. So he killed her husband, and showed off his corpse to Katrina. That went as well as you'd expect.

Hellena, however, is more interested in the fact the doc is the one who knew how to resurrect people. So she traps Erik in some magic bubble and rushes off the combine her magic with the doctor's science and - Erik escapes the bubble, disrupts the spell, and rather than Hellena's sister being resurrected, a bunch of ghosts start rising from the graveyard. Whoopsie.

Nobody could let things go in this world, apparently. Erik kept trying to either get back to Katrina or bring her back, causing more harm in the process. Hellena keeps trying to get back her sister, hurting others in the process. Katrina's father - who apparently killed Erik - is back as a ghost and ready to kill Erik again. Maybe the Doc realized it was a mistake bringing back Erik, but that didn't stop him from helping Erik use more women in his experiments. Nobody lets go, and nobody learns anything. Cyclical, except the orbit is widening, and the damage is spreading wider.

I am curious to see if any of these ghosts end up with weird powers, considering there's been no explanation for why Erik came back looking like he did, or why he can make a glowing green violin that produces notes that knock back supernatural creatures.

Is Ted OK? #2, by Dave Chisholm (writer/artist/letterer) - That's a strange choice for a design on your sunglasses. Most people just go with a skull, or a flag. 

I don't have the first issue yet, which is too bad, because apparently Ted either spontaneously combusted or flat out exploded. But he's OK, folks! In that he's up and moving around again the next day, to the confusion of Sarah, who was assigned to watch him. She's either not doing a good job, or doing too good a job, because Ted notices her following him, but recognizes she tried to help him.

So they talk, because Sarah thinks he needs a friend. Ted thinks the company he works at is actually staffed by aliens. And when things happen like his computer's mouse bleeding when he clicks too hard, or him finding a mysterious silo somewhere inside, you gotta wonder. But also, Sarah is able to see him no matter where he goes, thanks to something her computer is connected to. And there are worm like things that can possibly do something to specific memories in your head if you name what you want focused on?

It's all weird, is what I'm saying. There's a big guy with a manbun (never a good sign) that works with Ted and tends to loom threateningly. He also speaks in the sort of generic phrases that seem ominous when Chisholm constantly draws the guy so we're looking up at him. 'I'm sure we'll meet again soon.' that kind of thing. Still, Ted slips the leash long enough to see some things he's not supposed to, then get tranq darted. I'm not sure what they were, even looking at them, or I'd describe them. I'm as confused as Ted, which is probably a good move by Chisholm.

Although the issue ends on some reporter interviewing - and I use the term loosely, the reporter talks for 21 caption boxes or voice balloons, across 2.5 pages, without actually asking a question - some tech mogul trillionaire who somehow saved the world from some horrible devastation wrought by some terrorists in the Ukraine. The fact the tech mogul points out the guy hasn't asked a question 17 balloons in doesn't make it less annoying, but there it is. The mogul's got some big announcement, but whether that's going to be bullshit (probably), or something to do with what Ted found, I've got no idea.

Chisholm also uses a heavily orange color scheme for the tech mogul parts, after mostly sticking to greens, purples, and a sterile, whitish-blue for Ted's workspace up to that point. Without seeing the first issue, I don't know if there's significance to that. It's not quite the same shade as the clip we see of Ted on fire at the start of the issue - that orange has more red in it - or in the above panel - which has more yellow - but it's got a similar fire/sun vibe to it. So is fire going to be significant? Fire of knowledge? A Prometheus-type thing, where Ted learns something and is punished for it? Or is Sarah the one that's going to learn that awful thing, and it's about Ted?

Sunday Splash Page #421

"Working Man," in The Punisher (vol. 7) #19, by Garth Ennis (writer), Leandro Fernandez (penciler), Scott Hanna (inker), Dan Brown (colorist), Gent (letterer)

Eventually, Marvel started up a MAX imprint, essentially comics with content that wasn't for kids. Nudity, graphic violence, various slurs and profanity. All on the table, and Garth Ennis got to write a Punisher book under this label, which meant no more cartoony violence about feeding people to zoo animals, no more goofball Russian with huge melons, no more arcs making fun of how stupid and useless costumed heroes are compared to a Hard Man with a Gun, Doing Hard Things (the most tedious of Ennis' various hobby horses.)

Ennis set Frank Castle loose in our world, more or less. There are no superheroes, no superpowers, save Frank's impossible ability to never kill anyone he doesn't intend to. Well, that and money, but that's always a superpower. In addition to the various organized crime types, the Punisher deals with crooked U.S. generals, slave traders, unscrupulous corporate scumbags, a group of women he made widows. Although that last group all died at the hands of their old friend, who they fed into the metaphorical woodchipper of marriage to a sadist mob guy. Ennis is very good at setting up antagonists that are horrible enough I'm fine watching Frank Castle extra-judicially murder them.

It probably also helps that many of them are connected to the levers of power in one way or another that my cynicism tells me that people like them - and they surely exist in this world, in one form or the other - will never face any real consequences from the legal system.

But it's the version of Frank Castle that Ennis presents here that interests me. In Ennis' telling, it's not just one thing that makes Frank Castle the Punisher. Not just his military service, not just his family's death at the hands of a mob shootout. Nor was it an immediate thing, like flipping a switch, but a gradual accumulation of factors until Frank felt he had to act. As one character in "Widowmakers" remarks, 'You're a soldier, so you gave yourself a mission.'

Some versions of Batman strive to eliminate all crime, so no little kid will lose their parents because they took a shortcut through the wrong alley, and may even think it an achievable goal. Ennis' Frank Castle does not, his outlook realistic in a very nihilistic way. Near the end of "The Slavers," when, having obliterated one operation, Frank thinks to himself that he could never stop it entirely, any more than he could stop the flow of heroin, or the tide from coming in. All he could do, was maybe make them pause for a moment. Frank gave himself a mission, but it's one that only ends with his death. (Or the human race going extinct, as in Punisher: The End.)

It's a difference Ennis explores in "Widowmakers", where we also have Jenny Cesare, out for revenge against her sister and her friends, and Detective Budiansky, who has a rep as a cop who ignores regs when he thinks someone needs to act. But when Budiansky seems like he wants to murder someone in revenge for his wife being shot (but not killed), all it takes is Frank asking if Budiansky wants to end up like him for the cop to withdraw. He still has someone to lose. Jenny gets her revenge, but with all the people she was after dead, she has nothing left. She's not going to go on killing criminals forever like Frank, but she can't see anything else. Frank has no one to lose, and in his mind, what he does isn't revenge, it's killing people who need killing, however he defines that, wherever he comes across them. There are always more, so the mission continues.  

And while it's a mission Frank chose initially, it's one he's locked into now. He might be able to take a break for a time, but he knows that at some point, he would see something in the news that would make him take action. And he knows what that means for himself. Even if he wanted to live a normal life, he can't. He's too fundamentally changed now for all that. His life - maybe existence is the better word - is all about death. Too many bullets are in the air around him for anyone to survive his presence for long. And that plays out in the series. There are 10 stories in Ennis' 60-issue run, and no character other than Frank lives past a 3rd story. Three strikes - if you're lucky - you're out

Micro and the CIA guy who hopes to recruit Frank die in the first arc, though the CIA guy's assistants, O'Brien and Roth, make it out more or less intact. More than you can say for mob schmuck Nicky Cavella's lackeys, Ink and Pittsy. Cavella and Roth's luck runs out in their next appearance, "Up is Down and Black is White." O'Brien survives that, as does her ex-husband, CIA prick and general scumbag Rawlins, but neither make it through "Man of Stone," and neither does General Zhakarov or his top guy, Dolnovich (like Rawlins, key fixtures in the third arc, "Mother Russia," though none of them actually met Castle then.)

Barracuda survived one encounter, but made the mistake of accepting the chance at a rematch. The generals who pulled the strings on Rawlins and Barracuda didn't meet the Punisher in "Mother Russia" or "Up is Down and Black is White," but once they do, it ends swiftly. Yorkie Mitchell shows up in 3 arcs, but only in flashback in the third, because he got killed. Budiansky only shows up in one arc, ditto social worker Jen Cooke. They get far the fuck away from Frank and everything he represents at the first opportunity. Even Nick Fury doesn't risk the odds, appearing only in "Mother Russia," and "Valley Forge, Valley Forge."

Near the end of "Long Cold Dark," after Frank describes a scene of O'Brien looking briefly free of the demons that haunted her, he says, 'Memories like that, I try to kill. But you can do something with it, if you like.' Castle tries very hard to take emotion out of the equation, whether because it makes him sloppy, or because it makes him realize what a hellish prison cell he's made his life. The fact he still has that memory to relate to O'Brien's sister speaks to his inability to bury that part of him. Ennis likes to present things that drag it out of Frank.

Children in danger a couple of times, ones Frank can save the way he couldn't save his own. Nicky Cavella trying to throw him off by digging up the bodies of Frank's wife and children and pissing on them. Maybe even the generals sending a team of elite U.S. soldiers after him in "Valley Forge, Valley Forge." Guys who believe in serving the same things Frank believed in once. Threats, certainly moreso than the mob guys, but not one Frank can declare needs punishing. But also not a threat he wants to allow to stop him. That's what makes it a little different. With the children, or Cavella's nonsense, Frank's response is simply violence, but more brutal. Rather than calmly shoot someone, Frank dismantles them. Barracuda is left as something barely recognizable as human.

The soldiers, he can't do that, and there's only so far even he can go against that many highly trained guys that he won't kill. Ultimately, he doesn't really fight his way out, so much as survives for being unapologetically what he is. The generals try to pretend at still being soldiers, or caring about anything but saving their own asses and their post-career seats on various corporate boards. Frank is the Punisher, full stop. He doesn't compromise, he doesn't quit, he doesn't pretend. One of the soldiers, upon seeing the remains of an attack the Punisher made, compares him to the Xenomorph. 'I admire its purity.' And for the most part, he's not wrong. Even the Punisher's compassion often expresses itself through violence.

The book went through several pencilers over 60 issues. Lewis Larosa, Doug Braithwaite and Lan Medina each drew one arc. Goran Parlov drew three (with Howard Chaykin drawing the first part of "Long Cold Dark" for some reason, his work looks nothing like any of the others, let alone Parlov's), and Leandro Fernandez drew four arcs. I think Fernandez is the best of them. Larosa and Medina each lean a bit too much into photo reference. Budiansky sometimes looks exactly like Sam Jackson, and Larosa is clearly cribbing from Clint Eastwood for Castle, to the extent it gets distracting.

Parlov's art is exaggerated and cartoonish enough it feels like it would have been a better fit for the Marvel Knights book. The Punisher is running around with forearms like Popeye in some of those panels, and the level of violence Punisher and Barracuda inflict on each other isn't far from what Punisher and the Russian did (though Parlov's art makes it look more brutal than Steve Dillon's, though maybe that was just the more lax hand a MAX book got.)

Leandro Fernandez seems to strike a nice balance over the course of "Up is Down and Black is White", "The Slavers", and "Man of Stone." His characters look tough, or craven or arrogant or whatever, but in a grounded way that you could see real people looking like that, without any obvious famous people being lightboxed into the panel. He can do the shocking or graphic violence, make a person who truly looks like they've been through hell, but not go so over-the-top it knocks me out of the story entirely. (There were some panels Parlov drew where I had to stop and sort of shake my head. "What did I just see? Jeez," kind of thing.)

Brown's colors likely help with that. He tends to keep the figures in more muted tones, often almost washed out skin color. These are not people who go around in daylight. It's their surroundings that are lit up, like the world is on fire, which makes for a stark contrast.

Ennis left the book in 2008, after 60 issues. Surprisingly, Marvel didn't cancel the series and renumber it. Instead they kept it going and Gregg Hurwitz became the writer. I gave him two issues and concluded I really didn't need to read any more Punisher comics. And that's stayed true for the 18 years since, but Ennis wrote some other Punisher stuff at the same time as the ongoing, so that'll occupy the next two weeks.

Saturday Splash Page #223

"Insertion," in RASL #12, by Jeff Smith

RASL was, I think, Jeff Smith's next book after he finished Bone. It ran 15 issues across 4 years. I remember a little discussion of it, here and there, on the comics blogosphere back when it started, but not enough to where I had any idea what it was about. I was pronouncing the title in my head like "wrassle", and assumed it was some sort of fight comic. It is not.

"RASL" is what people call Robert Joseph Johnson, who worked as a research scientist for a covert government project with his friend, Miles, and Maya, Miles' wife. Who Rob was sleeping with. Rob began to have concerns about the project and, unable to convince Miles to scrap it, sabotaged the whole thing and escaped via a different project. One that enables him to cross "The Drift" into parallel universes. Now Rob makes a living stealing things - like paintings - for people by slipping into those parallel universes, stealing the version that exists there, and coming home.

The series starts with Rob landing in the wrong universe after a heist, then getting attacked by a reptilian-looking guy that seems able to track him. After 2 years the government's caught up, and they want their stuff. Specifically, they want some journals that belonged to Tesla that were supposed to stay locked up, but Rob got hold.

Tesla is woven all through the book. Smith brings in the Philadelphia Experiment as an attempt to create the magnetic torsion field Tesla proposed as an invisibility cloak of sorts, but it actually moves things through space (and time.) The project Miles, Maya and Robert are working on is an idea Tesla had to draw power from the planet's ionosphere. Most of issues 6 and 12 are a Tesla biography. His rise, his "war of the currents" with Edison, his "World System," using the power of the Earth itself for a dozen different things (Rob says a test of the World System in Long Island is what caused the Tunguska event in Siberia.)

I think the idea is Tesla had these ideas, but initially only partially understood what he was dealing with. Once he gained a better (though likely still incomplete) grasp, he backed away in horror of the potential danger. Rob and Miles have repeated the cycle decades later. They were fascinated by Tesla and his work, but thanks to Tesla's journals, Rob now knows how bad an idea this is (though not bad enough he'll destroy the journals.) But he can't convince Miles, and won't show him the journals as proof, because he thinks that will only spur Miles on. He doesn't trust his friend, and maybe that's because Rob knows he's been a shitty friend himself.

That said, I don't understand the significance of the non-verbal, emaciated little girl that keeps popping up wherever Rob goes. He meets a guy at an abandoned gas station in one of the universes who claims the girl is God, but *shrugs*. She saves Rob's life late in the book, by getting repeatedly shot, where as one version of her falls, another completes the next step, then falls as it's killed, and so on.

There's an ongoing debate between Rob and Sal, the agent chasing him, about whether these are distinct parallel universes (Rob's position), or just shadows Rob is creating by traveling to them (Sal.) I think we're meant to take Rob's position as accurate, or at least more humane, but Rob's actions don't match his words. He uses the other worlds as a way to make money, and treats versions of people he knows back home as interchangeable. In his universe, Rob has a sex worker friend/acquaintance/hook-up named Annie, but if he's not in his universe, he'll visit an Annie in whichever universe he is in, if she happens to live in the same place and do the same work. When Sal kills "his" Annie, Rob tries to protect that other one. He's treating them like spares, or a resource (in this case, salve for his guilty conscience), not much different than what he says the government will do if they get his work and try to strip-mine the other worlds for resources.

(This probably ties into an old discussion we see Rob had with "his" Annie at one point. Rob is fond of saying it's never to late to fix things, but Annie points out Rob never actually fixes anything, he just patches over them. He tries breaking things off with Maya, but won't come clean with Miles. He can't protect his Annie, he just latches onto another one.)

Also, Sal tells Rob the reason they never meet themselves on these jaunts is they "subsume" that universe's version. Sal seems very concerned about being unique, simply by the fact of his existence, so he can't accept those other universes may be equivalent to his. (To the extent Rob cares about "unique," I think he would define it by what you do, rather than the mere fact of existence.) And, assuming Sal's correct, that result runs against the idea of the other universes as distinct. Why are Rob and Sal always taking over the form of the Rob or Sal of the universe they've reached? Why are they never pushed aside, to exist separately, or caught in the back of the mind of the one they've merged with?

Though it does make me wonder if that's why Rob was having blackouts at one point. He thinks it's because moving through the Drift is hard on the body, and he was doing it too many times in a short span, but I don't know. Supposedly his universe is the only one where Tesla lived long enough to try and develop the World System idea, but he doesn't know how many realities there are, so he can't be sure. Maybe there's another Rob out there, running the same race.

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)