Sunday Splash Page #432

"Beauty and the Bowl Cut," in Amazing Mary Jane #1, by Leah Williams (writer), Carlos Gomez (artist), Carlos Lopez (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)

In late 2019, Marvel tried giving Mary Jane Watson her own ongoing series. I'm not clear on the thinking, maybe her fans were getting annoyed by all the focus on Gwen Stacy (albeit an alt-universe version with super-powers), or Marvel just figured there'd be enough carry over from people who bought Amazing Spider-Man to make it work?

Whatever the reason, they tried it. Whether due to sales or shipping disruptions with COVID, the book solicited 9 issues, but only shipped 6. The first 5 were collected into a tpb that I reviewed in November of 2024. Those issues involved MJ being cast as the love interest in a Mysterio biopic that turned out to be directed by the actual Mysterio, posing as auteur director Cage McKnight, who Mysterio suckered into visiting the Falklands to find the perfect penguin to use for the "Jaws of penguins."

MJ decides to go along with this insane idea, and ends up basically saving the film by managing Mysterio's over-the-top temperament, finding them a new backer when their funding gets pulled, covering for the actor playing Spider-Man when he chickens out over a little thing like irate super-villains attacking the set because they don't like their likenesses being used in the film.

(Although Cobra? Stegron? Tarantula? Really digging the bottom of the barrel there, Mysterio. Was Hypno-Hustler considered too cliche?)

Williams leans into Mary Jane's charisma and knowledge of the world of movies as things that keep filming rolling, along with the idea that hanging around Peter Parker has given her a commitment to helping people try to make the best of second chances. I'm not clear on what MJ and Peter's relationship status was, other than they're on good enough terms to talk regularly over the phone, but there's also an element of guilt for MJ that, while Peter knows she's working on a movie about Mysterio, he doesn't know Mysterio is actually the director. She's doing something she believes in, but recognizes there's a risk that it could damage her connection with someone really important to her if it backfires.

While it stretches my suspension of disbelief MJ can hold off the entire "Savage Six" by herself (with some help from robots of the Original 5 X-Men Mysterio built previously for some reason) long enough for the movie to finish shooting, I definitely prefer Williams' writing here to the work she did on Gwenpool Strikes Back, which may be the only other thing she's written that I've read. Meta-commentary humor is a tricky needle to thread, so maybe that's to be expected.

Carlos Gomez's art is very clean and expressive, really capturing the dramatic personality Mysterio has, as well as Mary Jane's range of emotions. When she decides they need to leverage Mysterio being much angrier than the actual Cage McKnight, she hams it up a little to appeal to Mysterio's ego. When their equipment is being repossessed, she plunks herself in the director's chair with a megawatt smile and chats with the repo guys like old friends. When she discusses the risk she's taking trusting Mysterio is genuine about this with a member of the crew, she draws in on herself and stops making eye contact.

I'm not sure what Williams had planned beyond this - I think issue 6 is a premiere for the film back in NYC, so presumably Peter was going to learn the truth at some point - but I wouldn't have minded seeing more.

Saturday Splash Page #234

"Action Figure," in Wild Dog #2, by Max Collins (writer), Terry Beatty (penciler), Dick Giordano (inker), Michele Wolfman (colorist), John Workman (letterer)

Created by Max Collins and Terry Beatty in the late 1980s, when, as mentioned when we discussed The Punisher, the United States loved itself a guy who ran around shooting people who "deserved" it. OK, fine, the U.S. always loves a guy who runs around shooting people who "deserved" it. We're a fucked-in-the-head country.

Wild Dog was sort of a homemade, street-level vigilante. A guy who pulls together a costume from stuff you could buy in stores. Camo pants. A jersey with a local school mascot on it. A hockey mask. He drives around in a pickup truck. No specially modified battle van for Wild Dog! He does however, have a fair amount of guns, a bulletproof vest under the jersey, and a taser built into his glove.

(At one point, a character states Wild Dog's used existing tech to give himself capabilities rivaling Superman. I know they powered Supes down a bit post-Crisis on the Infinite Earths, but let's be real here. Wild Dog hasn't even given himself capabilities rivaling Booster Gold.)

Wild Dog started with a 4-issue mini-series in 1987, revolving around him fighting a, you could call them a terrorist, paramilitary, or revolutionary group depending on your perspective. The "Committee for Social Change" were operating in the Quad Cities area (which is in eastern Iowa/western Illinois, on the banks of the Mississippi River.) They decide to punctuate their statement about tearing down existing political and social systems via killing a bunch of honor roll students, or attacking a military arsenal to steal a bazooka that launches some powerful "fuel air bomb." In both cases, Wild Dog shows up and tears down their existing circulatory systems via some hot lead.

Running through the mini-series is the question of who is under the hockey mask. A local reporter who was rescued in the first issue pursues the mystery as a way to bolster her career, and a government agent suspects one of his three high school football pals - now a police lieutenant, a Pulitzer-winning journalist and an car repair shop owner, respectively - is the vigilante and wants him to work for the government. We get a little bit of their backstories and philosophies to see why he thinks this, and so we can make our own guess. But Collins plays it such that we're left wondering if maybe Mr. Agent Man, Graham Gault, is just trying to throw people off his trail.

The final issue settles the question, as we learn why Jack Wheeler turned to vigilantism and where he got the money to open his shop (and presumably, buy all these guns.) But we're left with the question of what his cop friend is going to do with the knowledge. Turn Jack in, or help him by feeding him info? It's a different approach, keeping the protagonist almost silent and anonymous through most of the story. His motivations only hinted or guessed at based on which suspect you think he is.

The approach does mean the final issue is almost entirely flashbacks that give us more details about Jack. If you figure the mystery of Wild Dog's identity was the most important part, then it's a suitable climax to go back to the very beginning, the detective laying out the sequence of events. If you were expecting a climactic confrontation with the remnants of the Committee, either as they make some final push towards a goal, or just try to eradicate Wild Dog before he does the same to him, it falls flat. I must fall into the second category, because I was underwhelmed by the final issue.

Wild Dog would go on to get a spot in Action Comics during the stretch where it was a weekly anthology title. With the identity mystery resolved, I assume his war on crime took prominence there. I haven't read those, but when Action Comics went back to being a monthly Superman book, Wild Dog got a final one-shot where he was targeted by a guy hired specifically to capture him on behalf of a crime family. Which he did, but the fine print ended up getting the crooks in the end.

I learned about Wild Dog because he got some play in the mid-2000s comics blogosphere. The makeshift costume and taciturn personality seemed to make him someone bloggers liked to point and gawk at. Geoff Johns used him briefly in Booster Gold, as part of the last bit of resistance - with Hawkman, Green Arrow, Pantha and Anthro - in the "bad" timeline where Booster keeps Ted Kord from getting his skull perforated by Max Lord. Spoiler alert: A guy with some Uzis doesn't last long against OMACs and a mind-controlled Superman. There was a version in the Arrow TV show, and I think another version in one of the lousy New 52 Suicide Squad books (I'm not going to look at any of those comics, or even my old reviews, to confirm that.)

Then Gerard Way used the Jack Wheeler, auto mechanic version, in Cave Carson has a Cybernetic Eye, as basically the one friend Cave had. Which was a curious choice, but I guess Way wanted someone who was both out of his depth in subterranean empires, yet largely unconcerned about it as long as he had something to shoot and something to shoot at.

Random Back Issues #171 - R.E.B.E.L.S. #21

I didn't even remember I had a "rebels" tag.

This is a transition issue, as Bedard wraps up loose ends from his "War of the Brainiacs" story and segues into the Green Lantern Corps becoming more hostile towards Vril Dox's L.E.G.I.O.N. The events are related via flashback, as two rookie Lanterns, Altin Admos (the blue guy) and Gorius Karkum (the lady with the tail), relate how their attempt to arrest Dox for not keeping Brainiac in custody backfired horribly.

They told Dox he was under arrest, he told them they had no authority, then Lobo attacked Gorius. Altin admits that because Okaarans love fighting, Lobo's a legendary figure. Gorius tries a containment bubble and Lobo just pushes through, but Altin clocks him in the face and then impales him with a, it can't be a trident, it has 4 points.

Whatever, he impales him, which is just gonna annoy Lobo, but impresses Dox enough he has his son Lyrl give us Altin's backstory. He's a fighting prodigy, who the Okaarans thought would lead them to new glory. Except he joined the GLC, and Dox thinks it's because the guy wanted a challenge. (How we're getting that narration when the Lanterns are the ones telling this story, I have no idea.)

Back to Altin, who's ducking and weaving, but Lobo eventually hits him. Then hits him a bunch more times. Gorius creates a bunch of chains, with apparently enough will behind them Lobo can't break free. So he grabs the chains and swing her into a wall. Altin wants to keep going, but Dox intercedes. From the safety of his force field bubble, because the man's not stupid enough to interrupt one of Lobo's fights otherwise. Dox explains Lobo's working for him to earn money to pay off debts incurred as an Archbishop in the church of the Triple-Fish God. Which I think was part of that storyline with Adam Strange, Starfire and Animal Man in 52? 

The Lanterns are unimpressed with Lobo's commitment to maintaining his credit rating, but now an entire L.E.G.I.O.N. task force showed up, along with news crews. At which point Dox makes the pitch how much better his company is than the Corps. L.E.G.I.O.N. will help rebuild a government, and they work for people who hire them, while respecting those planets' laws, unlike a certain group of blue assholes we all know, who hand out rings to brain-damaged fighter jocks and say "Go nuts!" Oooh, maybe that's a bad turn of phrase, given Hal Jordan's whole, ya know.

Eh, screw him. If he who is without the sin of trying to erase the entire timeline because he's too sad his city got blown may cast the first stone, then I'm set to start pitching.

Vril also takes some creative license by stating Lyrl helped him defeat Brainiac and Brainiac's weapon, Pulsar Stargrave. When really, Stargrave was an actual star Lyrl turned into some kind of super-computer weapon intending to steal all of Colu's super-computer information, only for Lyrl to get outflanked by Brainiac. But who's alive to say different? Not much of anyone that cares to, certainly, and the sales pitch worked, as Altin admits Vril got a dozen more client worlds in the week since the broadcast.

The Guardians state they would have handled Dox in their own way - frown disapprovingly? create a mechanized corps of robo-enforcers? oh wait, they already did that - but now they have a P.R. problem. Honestly hard for me to believe the Guardians even know what P.R. is, let alone care about it. But they're even angrier about what Gorius did to her own people, the Psions! Which was detailed the next issue, and involved Starfire, who had her own bad history with the Psions. 

{8th longbox, 234th comic. R.E.B.E.L.S. #21, by Tony Bedard (writer), Claude St. Aubin (penciler), Scott Hanna (inker), Rich and Tanya Horie (colorists), Travis Lanham (letterer)}

A Sand County Almanac - Aldo Leopold

A Sand County Almanac was a collection of essays Leopold was drafting when he died in 1948. His son finished editing them and published the collection a year later. This particular edition, released in 1970, also includes 8 entries from a separate collection of Leopold's essays, released in the 1950s under the title Round River.

The first 12 essays, totaling about 100 pages in this collection, are a description of different features of a farm Leopold and his family purchased in the 1930s, in a section of Wisconsin known as the Sand Counties. Because the ground is extremely sandy, and generally wasn't considered high-value for agriculture. The essays take different angles and writing approaches. February's centers around the felling of a single aged oak, Leopold describing major events in conservation or biology that took place during the decade of tree growth the saw is currently cutting through.

Meanwhile, July's starts with an early morning walk by Leopold and his dog, and all the things they encounter along the way, then switches to discussing a little patch of Silphium that had survived in the corner of a roadside graveyard until the road department removed the fence and mowed everything, and from there into discussion of relative biotic diversity of his farm versus the campus where he taught and how humans are the only species that can be aware of extinction and maybe that's what elevates us above other creatures.

That train of thought, that Man has this awareness (or maybe capacity for this awareness), and therefore a responsibility to be more thoughtful in how he interacts with the world around them, comes up more further into the book. Usually in terms of how we aren't exercising that responsibility. That the land is seen strictly as something to provide economic value for us, and anything that's value can't be quantified in dollars and cents, is easily dismissed as irrelevant. That everything about how we operate is extractive, and what's more, extractive without understanding how the parts of the system are interrelated.

So we remove all the prairie plants that helped make the rich soil we grow stuff in, then wonder why soil productivity declines such that, even with advances in technology or fertilizers, total yield isn't improved. Especially considering all the soil, and therefore farmable acreage, lost via erosion. That the fledgling conservation agencies of that time keep trying to sell farmers on programs to preserve soil, or preserve plant diversity, but they let the farmers pick and choose which to use. So the farmers only adopt the practices they think will make them money, right now (and usually demand money in exchange for adopting them.) 

I can confirm this was still a pretty regular line of approach in wildlife management a decade ago. If you want the farmers to plant some of their field in native grasses, you've got to show them how that'll help their cattle gain weight in the summer, so they make more when they sell them. Of course, they're trying to pay their bills so they don't lose their land, so I'm not really surprised. Maybe you'd like them to think a bit longer term, but that's hardly a failing exclusive to farmers.

And there are definitely passages in the second half of the book where Leopold's tone comes off condescending towards everyone who doesn't see things like him. He's on a bus in Illinois, and he makes a comment that a farmer is more focused on the fertilizer bill in his pocket that the land around him, or that most of the people aren't paying any attention to the plants they're passing, and would probably dismiss those plants as weeds if they did notice, but these prairie plants are the reason why their farms are so good and so on.

Or that it's all well and good the government designated certain lands as parks or preserves, but they need to stop encouraging people to go there by adding roads (which also serve to break up habitat.) He remarks he doesn't need to be able to actually travel to the wilderness in Alaska to appreciate it, so people shouldn't need to go to these other parks, either.

He wants people to respect nature and understand how many different factors go into it and how often removing one thing - a plant, animal, soil - can have unexpected effects, and so we need to appreciate everything beyond what it can do to fatten our wallets. I agree, more education focusing on those interconnections is good, although maybe he's underestimating how complicated organisms and biotic factors can get, and how much a particular person may have to focus on a specific area to gain any understanding of it. As someone whose work was always more in the field side than the lab side, I'm certainly with Leopold on the value of getting out there and making observations. There are limits to what you can do with that, however. Certainly in terms of what you can quantify. 

I think it helps people to understand that if they can actually go out and see it. Certainly felt like it helped me, and getting to be outdoors was its own reward. Sometimes, depending on the weather and/or number of ticks. But not everyone owns their own land like Leopold did, where they can just go wander around wherever they like, whenever they like. And not everyone can get jobs that pay them to be outdoors, observing nature or carrying out experiments on timber harvest or tree planting strategies. And frankly, a lot of the jobs of that nature that do exist, don't pay enough or run long enough to be a career.

It seems like Leopold expects everyone who can't get their own bit of nature to explore, to simply take the value of it on faith, sight unseen, rather than risk tarnishing it with their noisy, automobile-fueled vacation.

'Land is the place where corn, gullies, and mortgages grow. Country is the personality of the land, the collective harmony of its soil, life, and weather. Country knows no mortgages, no alphabetical agencies, no tobacco road; it is calmly aloof to these petty exigencies of its alleged owners. That the previous owner of my farm was a bootlegger mattered not one whit to the grouse; they sailed as proudly over the thickets as if they were guests of the king.'

Overdue Movie Reviews #13 - Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Fleeing from a botched robbery in toy store, Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) stumbled into an audition to play a private investigator in a movie. Grief-stricken that his friend got shot by some lady determined to defend the sanctity of a toy store's Christmas product, he gave a bravura performance and won the role. Now he's in Los Angeles, getting tips from a real private investigator everyone calls Gay Perry (Val Kilmer), and running into Harmony (Michelle Monaghan), a childhood friend he had a huge crush on.

The case Harry accompanies Perry on ends up with a car in a lake, a dead body in the trunk. Harmony's sister turns up dead, an apparent suicide, though Harmony is convinced otherwise, given she was the one who hired Perry for the case with the body in the trunk. A body which soon turns up in Harry's hotel bathroom.

Harry reconnects with Harmony, fucks it up, tries to to fix it by lying, pisses off Perry, loses a finger, gets it back, sort of fixes things with Harmony, loses the finger again, fixes things with Perry, and ends up shooting a lot of people.

Harry is a creature of the moment. Part of that is he thinks he's clever, although this movie is full of people who think they're constantly making the wittiest comments imaginable. Sometimes they're even right. But he really just acts, in whatever way his emotions seem to dictate that moment. This is a guy who thought trying to rob a toy store to find a particular gift for a kid was a good idea, and when it went wrong, hid in an audition without knowing that's what he was doing.

He throws Perry's gun in the lake without stopping to check whether that's a good idea or not (it isn't.) He's got a lot of bitterness about women, and unleashes a spiel about how women who fuck a lot of guys all have fucked-up pasts, saying this to Harmony, who does, in fact, have a fucked-up past. He's impatient for answers, so he's tries the Russian Roulette interrogation technique on a hired killer, without being able to do basic math.

The, 'It was like an eight percent chance. Eight percent?! Who taught you math?!' exchange was one of those bits that I found as clever as the movie surely thought it was. Point is, Harry never really thinks before he does anything. The thinking comes after, when he has to reflect on how he's messed things up again. And maybe it works out. The final shootout, stationed on and under an overpass, involving a coffin, feels like a situation where Harry is simply reacting. He didn't really plan anything, because there was no time. He just did things, and it worked out. Maybe because it was actions and not words. He didn't have time to say something stupid that could ruin everything.

So it's a pretty good role for Robert Downey Jr. He can play a glib smartass in his sleep, but he's also good at the grief-stricken moments, and these moments of mostly impotent rage. Where's he mad, but he can't really do anything except spout more shit which is likely only going to make things worse. Or he has to backpedal instantly, as when he gets angry enough at Perry to snatch his sunglasses, but picks them off the ground and returns them the moment Perry tells him to.

Monaghan plays Harmony as simultaneously more grounded than Harry, but also more prone to getting blinders on. Harry tends to judge, quickly and harshly, off first impressions of what he thinks is happening. Harmony has actually lived in L.A. for a while, so she actually knows people and what they're like. There's a weary acceptance to her, except when it comes to something personal, like her sister. She has a dry wit, more controlled than Harry's. She picks her spots. She's not grief-stricken over her sister constantly, because she's angry, and she's also trying to decide what to do with Harry. The banter is easy between them, until Harry lets the wrong impulse control his mouth.

But she's also the one most likely to charge ahead without thinking. Harmony's the one that drives the plot, because she's the one convinced her sister was murdered. Harry plays along because he wants to stay close to her, presumably in the hopes he'll get out of the Friend Zone this time. His digging, done to impress Harmony, combines with the work she's doing, to drag Perry back in, largely against his will.

Kilmer's the alternately composed and frustrated center the other two whirl around like untrained puppies on leashes. He actually knows this work, knows how things usually work, knows what things a person should and shouldn't do, as well as what people are likely to do. Like, if they put a murder victim in your bathroom, they probably also phoned in a complaint to the cops. It makes him a bit of an exposition device at times - albeit one delivering exposition with biting commentary - but also keeps the plot moving forward at points the other two would hit dead ends.

It's a funny movie at times, but the plot's overly convoluted. You got daughters, fake daughters, assumed daughters. I didn't really even bother to try and keep track of everything. It's a film more about the style than the substance. There are multiple cases, they're connected. Everybody stands around saying clever lines, or trying to, and some people get shot. Harry's a little dazed the first time he kills someone, though that might be more about the person he let die just prior. By the end, he barely seems to notice how many people he shoots. They're just a body count.

Given that Harry narrates the story, I'd worry about an unreliable narrator, but he's so bad at it - forgetting to explain who people we see in flashbacks actually are - I don't think he could manage to embellish the truth if he wanted.

What I Bought 6/10/2026

The weather's been fantastic the last two days. I'm hoping, without much cause, that it may extend out to Wednesday for our work group's picnic. Which I'm actually looking forward to, because we're a small group, and we keep it chill, and the program director doesn't make up sit through a 90 minute meeting first. Or at all, for that matter.

We're into the doldrums, comics-wise. One book last week, and it's one that is teetering with me at the moment. I thought there was nothing coming out this week, but all of the sudden the 4th issue of Babs: Black Road South popped up on the release list for this Wednesday. Though I probably won't get it until near the end of the month.

D'Orc #4, by Brett Bean (writer/artist), Jean-Francois Beaulieu (colorist), Nate Piekos (letterer) - I'm sure the Death Shield enjoys all that lava upchuck landing on its eye. 

D'Orc's in Boarsmere, once again on the run from angry people with weapons, except this time he's got no shield, no ghost chicken, and no clothes. This is when I learn he keeps his hair in a little topknot/ponytail thing. For some reason, I hadn't even considered D'Orc had hair. Silly, considering he's part dwarf, and they're pretty hairy

He ducks into a fortune teller's shop, and it's through her demonstration of her powers that we see how this came to be. The ghost chicken was offended by all these people hanging out in the local hot spring sans clothes, and annoyed the local duke, who, later revealed the springs were heated by a captive Kaldera, which looks like a buck-toothed dragon. D'Orc freed it, it rampaged, the duke died, the guards blamed D'Orc (rightfully so), and you're all caught up.

This correct recap impresses D'Orc enough to toss down another coin - no one wants to know where he's keeping them - in the hopes of learning about his past. The fortune teller lays out cards for him to pick, then tells him to roll the bones. Which feels like you're mixing two kinds of magic, but it's I guess for a gold piece you get a good show.

One of D'Orc's parents is a berserker. I can't tell if they're wearing anything across their chest that might indicate father or mother, which feels deliberate. The second card says he was born on the battlefield, and that someone is trying to build him the family 'you so desperately think you deserve.' The choice of words, again, feels deliberate.

The third card, however, is linked to the fortune teller. Because it's a picture of her husband, the dwarf D'Orc killed two issues ago (assuming the guy is dead, he fell off a cliff, hardly conclusive.) Because she's the Bone Witch who created Death Shield, and now she's got D'Orc. For what purpose, I don't know. She recites the prophecy, but I can't tell that she's concerned about averting it. And if she's known him since he was born, as she puts it, that raises some questions.

I'm wondering if the dwarf was D'Orc's dad, and the berserker was his mom, and the Bone Witch was really into watching her husband fuck other women. Because the prophecy demanded it! Definitely not because she was into it, no way!

Sunday Splash Page #431

"Full Speed Ahead," in All-New X-Factor #1, by Peter David (writer), Carmine Di Giandomenico (artist), Lee Loughridge (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer)

In 2014, Peter David returned to the "X-Factor" concept for a third time. Having previously written a government super-team of dysfunctional personalities, then a detective agency of dysfunctional personalities, this time he took the approach of a team sponsored by a corporation, Serval Industries. Staffed by dysfunctional personalities, of course.

Polaris is team leader, but swings between trying to mediate amongst the others and getting extremely aggressive at the drop of a hat. (Or a scratch from a cat.) David doesn't ever explain what's going on there, just treats it as something everyone knows about. Even Warlock's dad the Magus knows about her mental instability. I don't know if David intended to delve into it later and the book got canceled first (20 issues, not a bad run for Marvel in the last 20 years), or simply considered it sufficient to establish the fact.

Similarly, he references Polaris attacking Quicksilver at some point prior to the book starting without ever explaining that. Despite this, Pietro joins, because if he didn't join teams of people who tried to kill him he'd have to be a hermit. He's there as a mole for Havok (currently leading the Uncanny Avengers), something Gambit, who decides this is a better gig than teaching at Wolverine's school, immediately picks up on.

Gambit's also apparently King of de T'ieves Guild, and one of his guys rips off Serval, which he pulled off by shackling Danger, Xavier's old sentient Danger Room. Once freed, but with her memories in disarray, Danger sticks around. Serval tries to buy out an up-and-coming company that turns out to be run by Magus, posing as a human, and working with Warlock. So the team visits Doug Ramsey, who is planning to commit suicide to avert dreams he has of becoming an awful villain in the future.

Why does Carmine Di Giandomenico (who draws all but two issues of the series) have Doug waking from these dreams with his eyes and mouth glowing? Why is Doug having these dreams in the first place? Why does he have a goatee in the dreams, wearing some mechanical suit with Doc Ock tentacles a bubble helmet that makes him look more like Trevor Fitzroy? Who knows, it's never explained! But he decides to join, with no indication he thinks this will avert the future, seemingly just because. Warlock decides he'd rather hang with his old buddy (and pine after Danger) than work with his dad, so he joins. Eventually the team emancipates a young girl with mutant powers from her wealthy, mutant-hating father. Without really asking her before doing it, but since her dad wants nothing to do with her (being a mutant) and her biological parents appear to die, she sticks around.

It's a haphazard roster of people who weren't happy where they were, and figured they might as well try this. Quicksilver seems to be there out of some desire to be a good brother to Polaris - David devotes a fair amount of pages to Pietro's moral conundrums and past messes - while Danger doesn't even seem to have a reason. She questions why they're a team, why they're doing the things they do. Then why are you there?! Watsonian, because being around people seemed to help her pull herself back together. Doylist, because David needed a character to be inappropriately blunt and it couldn't always be Pietro.

The antagonists are one-offs, dealt with over 1-2 issue stories. An AIM scientist drawing mutant power into himself to become (briefly) a mutant. A guy calling himself Memento Mori, who has a whole evil organization with loads of shell businesses and lots of power, who actually turns out to be sort of an offshoot of a spell gone wrong. An Egyptian death-goddess reborn in a child's body. Those all basically vanish at the end of their respective stories (the scientist ends up locked in Serval's basement, where the CEO makes a job offer, but we don't see him again.) Even Magus, or the technomancer thief that captured Danger, don't show up again.

If there's a unifying theme, it's each is drawing on someone else's life or strength for their goals. The technomancer couldn't get into Serval's systems alone, so he imprisoned Danger, to I guess draw on her computing power and adaptability. Hoffman is stealing power from mutants to make himself a (big, glowy, shouty) god. Memento Mori's a fringe case, because he doesn't know the truth about how he got the powers he has. His wife had, at the time, feared her own powers and pushed them off on him.

Granted, the Magus doesn't really fit. He willingly changed his approach, to keep the Technarch from extinction. He even employs humans at his company, embracing Warlock's ideas. When Warlock decides to leave, Magus lets him go. (It is really annoying Marvel has two different pairs of characters named Magus and Warlock.)

My guess is, the antagonists were to give the team something to deal with in standard superheroic style, while things were moving in the background with the CEO. Except the book ran out of time. Maybe if they hadn't wasted 3 issues on AXIS tie-ins. Shouldn't have taken half that. Longshot's powers shouldn't even work if he's now constantly using them for selfish ends because he got "inverted" or whatever it was called. Anyway, David reveals at the very end the CEO is connected to Miguel O'Hara/Spider-Man 2099 (also running around in the present at the time, also in a book written by David.)

As mentioned, Carmine Di Giandomenico is artist for all but two of the issues. I appreciate the level of detail in the surroundings, the depictions of Danger and Warlock's malleable forms. Individual cables or external plates are visible, and they shift in different ways as well. Danger largely sticks to turning limbs into cannons, while Warlock opts for more variety, turning into high-tech motorcycles or armor for Doug. One all-business and individualistic, the other whimsical and more cooperative.

I don't feel like there's great flow from panel-to-panel during fights, but the action within each panel is usually well-rendered. Di Giandomenico shows off Gambit's agility with a variety of flips and dodges, while Quicksilver's speed is sometimes depicted by having the movement handled off-panel (he beats Havok in a game of pool in the span of two panels, and we don't see a single shot) or with the light from the uniforms leaving trails in his wake. Quite why the costumes have glow-up parts on the ribs and back of the hands, I don't know.

Not a huge fan of the costumes, really. The color scheme is OK - yellow and grey is an unusual choice, at least - but I don't like the odd lenses Polaris, Gambit and later Cypher wear over their eyes. I guess the right angle lines are meant to simulate a business suit or something, or maybe a vest with the flap you can leave open like some British admiral, but it's kind of an odd choice for a team uniform.

I don't know if David ever played out the things he hinted at after this book ended. I'm guessing not, since it was about some amorphous future for Marvel, and I doubt Peter David had the clout at the time to set the tone for something like that at Marvel. That gets saved for someone's Big Summer Event Comic. Future Tensed. Forced Future. Something short and punchy like that. Plus, Hickman's Secret Wars was lurking in the wings to (briefly) upend the apple cart.