Random Back Issues #168 - Batgirl #34

Like Batman hasn't been felt up by someone trying the, "sorry, didn't see ya there," trick before.

We got a kid coloring while his dad peers nervously through the peephole at someone pounding on the door. Dad asks his son if he forgives him. Kid says sure. The next page is a crime scene with two chalk outlines. Another weeknight in Gotham City.

Batman's nosing around with his flashlight, but Batgirl's fixated on the coloring book and the kid's chalk outline. She wants to help solve the murders, but Batman tells her she's not ready to be a detective. Does he explain what she's lacking? Of course not.

Next morning at the docks, someone tries to sell electronics with nothing inside. The buyer, blind or not, doesn't appreciate this. As the seller is hauled off, blind guy - called Ving - gets a call the, 'big, blind, furry eagle has landed!' as we see Batman busting heads in the background. Not sure why you wouldn't just say "Batman's here!" at that point. Cassandra's in the holographic training room Oracle has, still thinking about the dead kid. She punches the wall until her hands bleed. Then she punches some more. 

Meanwhile, Ving's assembled all his people and their merch at some warehouse, where they'll lay low for a week or two. This is how they intend to move into Gotham, hide in a panic room any time Batman starts sniffing around? Doesn't seem like that would work, since nobody could count on doing business with them. If you've got hot merchandise, are you going to sit on it until these guys poke their heads back out? But maybe they figure there's so many stupid crooks in Gotham there'll always be someone to deal with.

Irrelevant, though, 'cause when Ving opens the massive safe, Batgirl's inside. Then she's outside the safe, beating the dog mess out of at least thirty guys, while Ving stumbles around. Directly into Batman, who welcomes him to Gotham. When Ving protests it's impossible for them to have known, Bats replies everything's impossible until somebody does it, something Ving said earlier when one of his guys commented that they said it's impossible to move into Gotham. Clearly the guy only heard part of the sentence, it was actually impossibly stupid to move into Gotham. Forget Batman, you choose a warehouse that's name starts with "Two" and then you're dead.

Batgirl's waiting behind Ving, costume spattered with blood, and that's it for him. She wants to know who actually shot the kid. Batman squints at a hair he took from the crime scene and points at some guy that's already unconscious, then scrawls "DNA" on that poor schmuck's head in red marker as the cops arrive.

Cassandra's not satisfied, feeling they didn't do anything. Batman argues they caught the little boy's killer, and he'll face justice. Batgirl's response? 'Not enough.'  What about all the lives saved because these guys will be in jail? Still no. At which point Batman declares now she's ready to be a detective. I don't know, I feel like teaching her to read would be a helpful thing to tackle first. Also, Batman's a detective, and that didn't stop the murder from happening, which is what I think Batgirl really wants.

{2nd longbox, 112th comic. Batgirl (vol. 1) #34, by Kelley Puckett (writer), Daimon Scott (penciler), Robert Campanella (inker), Jason Wright (colorist), John Costanza (letterer)}

May on a Precipice

May solicits didn't present many surprises, other than I didn't see Nova: Centurion. Apparently it's been canceled. Ouch. Combined with two books ending in May, I fear I'm headed for another second-half decline in comics to buy.

What's new? Marvel's Spider-Man/Superman crossover was in the May solicitations, after also being in April's. Not sure if that means it was delayed, or Marvel was trying to get a jump on orders or what. Either way, it's still written by a bunch of people whose work I have no interest in, so pass it over again.

IPI has the first issue of The Matron, by Drew Edwards, David Bowles, Monica Gallagher and Henry Saxon, which follows the daughter and granddaughter of a famous serial killer, trying to live their lives decades later, when a similar string of killings begins. Will I even be able to find copies of this book to try it out? Dunno.

Mad Cave has a solicitation for the tpb of Our Soot Stained Heart, a mini-series by Joni Hagg and Stipian Morian which hasn't actually finished coming out yet, but maybe it will have by late spring.

What's ending? Spirit of the Shadows concludes with issue 5. It was in last month's batch of solicits, but the 4th and final issue of Touched by a Demon is also supposed to be out in May.

And the rest? With no Nova, Marvel is down to Fantastic Four #11 (with a back-up story by Stan Sakai!), Marc Spector: Moon Knight #4, Generation X-23 #4, and Moonstar #3. Ryan North's also writing a mini-series about Dr. Doom trying to go back in time to fix all sorts of past conflicts in an attempt to create a better future, before Reed Richards can do the same.

Which is a very Doom thing to do (if not a very Reed thing to do), but, setting aside Marvel's occasional rules on changing the past just creating branching timelines, can North give Doom a rest for a minute? He spent a damn year on a massive event that was all about Doom, which also involved him manipulating time. It's not even like that was by a different writer; it's the same guy! Maybe instead, he could do a mini-series about the Wizard trying to go back and manipulate time, only he fucks up and erases himself from existence at the end? I'd probably buy that (in tpb.)

Batgirl is maybe wrapping up the story about her having blood-shadow powers, Babs may have acquired and then sold a powerful artifact she really shouldn't have, D'Orc sounds like he's going to get dismembered one way or the other, and the answer to Is Ted OK? is getting more "NO" by the day.

Roofman (2025)

Jeff (Channing Tatum) wasn't doing well financially, so he turned to robbing McDonald's by climbing in through the roof. He got caught, and was sentenced to prison for 45 years on, assuming the movie's portrayal of the robbery in question was accurate, a bullshit kidnapping charge. It was (brief) unlawful imprisonment, at best!

He escapes prison but, stuck until his friend comes up with fake passports, Jeff hides in a local Toys R' Us. Let's hear it for the early-2000s, when you had commercial space options for havens other than Wal-Marts!

The movie spends a little time on Jeff settling into his hidey-hole, learning how to disable the record function on the security cameras - which he follows up by immediately running into the store to grab peanut M&Ms - setting up his own cameras (via baby monitoring cameras), stuff like that. It's through these activities he gets invested in the lives of the employees, specifically Leigh (Kirsten Dunst) and the dickhead supervisor, Mitch (Peter Dinklage.)

I did, when he first announced the store was closing over the intercom, briefly entertain the notion Mitch was an OK guy who really liked working at a toy store. His dismissive attitude towards Leigh's requests for the weekends off when her ex doesn't have custody of their kids, plus implying one of the other employees was at fault for the missing M&Ms because he had a noticeable paunch, put that to rest.

A big chunk of the film is centered around Jeff (or John as he introduces himself) and Leigh's relationship, started after Jeff brings a bunch of toys to her church for their toy drive. Toys he stole from the store where she works, but Mitch dismissed her offer to attend, and didn't even consider her request for a donation, so I guess it was his Grinchiness that's at fault.

The romance parts are the least interesting bits, though to be fair, a lot of them are focused around "John" trying to connect with Leigh's daughters, who are probably stand-ins for his own daughter, whether that's conscious on his part or not. And the movie uses that to highlight Jeff falling into the same patterns that probably got him busted in the first place. He thinks he's not enough, so he showers people with gifts to buy affection. Which takes money, which leads him to commit crimes, and there you go.

His fake passport making friend (LaKeith Stanfield) tells Jeff he's got the "calculating" part of being a crook down, but not the "cold." (Stanfield has the cold, because I'm pretty sure he took a 6-month contract to Afghanistan figuring Jeff would be caught by then, so he wouldn't risk his operation being brought down trying to help the guy.) Instead, Jeff is 'goofy.' And Tatum plays a goofball well. He's not afraid to look silly or cheesy, in a way where you can't quite tell if he's earnest or desperate.

Probably desperate, and trying very hard to delude himself. The part where he knocks out the security guard, then loudly insists it's not his fault reminded me of John Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blank, kneeling over a man he just killed with a pen, insisting, 'it's not me.' This movie doesn't really dive into that, the excuses Jeff made for himself, beyond he thought it was what he had to do to be a "good" dad.

Dunst has the role of the one charmed by this goofy, secretive man, but you can see a bit how past relationship experience makes her wary. Maybe not at first, when she might think the secrets are just him putting on an act. But the longer they date, as he starts with these desperate plays for her daughter's to like him, the more concerned she gets. She commented her ex wasn't present for a lot of things, and I wonder if "John" going overboard with the gifts feels like a different slant on the same trend. He's not going to be around, so he's trying to buy goodwill via his wallet.

The lessons Jeff says he's learned by the end are somewhat undercut by the brief note before the credits that the real Jeff escaped prison two more times after this incident. Maybe he just gets stir-crazy. 

What I Bought 2/18/2026 - Part 2

The anime re-watch wrapped up Gundam Wing over the weekend. That was fun, since I hadn't watched it in at least 15 years. I forgot how quickly things would change. Maybe one episode spent letting us think Heero died after self-destructing his Gundam, a half-dozen episodes on Relena trying to run a pacifist nation she only learned she was the inheritor of like 15 episodes earlier. She surrenders to avoid more deaths, an episode later she's a figurehead queen. An episode or two after that, she's running things for real, only to lose that one episode after. Gundam creators got no time for decompression, clearly (consecutive recap episodes in the middle of the series aside.)

It's Jeff! Meets Daredevil, by Kelly Thompson and Gurihiru - Those might be the most pronounced horns I've ever seen on Daredevil.

It's another collection of brief Jeff stories by Thompson and Gurihiru. Contrary to my expectations, they aren't focused on Jeff working with Daredevil. Their interactions are limited to the first comic, appropriately titled "Daredevil did it," where DD knocks over a statue while pursuing some thief (complete with a big sack with a $ symbol on it, so you know they respect tradition.) Jeff was sitting on a bench eating lunch in front of it, so the cop that comes along arrests Jeff.

Fortunately, Gwenpool and Kate Bishop hire Matt Murdock, and Jeff is acquitted, while Daredevil is sentenced to the community service of picking up all those pieces of statue that have just been lying scattered around the park ever since? So if you always wanted to see Daredevil doing in that a reflective vest. . .you'll have to by the comic because I scanned a different image. Hah!

The remainder of the comic is Jeff in his usual hijinks, most of which involve food. Although he does get mad when he keeps losing a fighting game and hurls the TV through the Hulk's kitchen window, which I can both relate to and think is an unwise choice. There are consecutive strips where Gwen is trying to make Jeff take medicine for some skin rash he's got, but Jeff proves extremely capable at not swallowing the pills. Although all that could have been avoided if Gurihiru simply drew a picture of Jeff's stomach, allowing Gwen to slip through the gutters to drop the pills in there.

It's cute fluff, but that's fine with me.

Generation X-23 #1, by Jody Houser (writer), Jacopo Camagni (artist), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - Maybe it's the angle, but Gabby;s lower body looks majorly elongated relative to her upper body.

Laura and Gabby are protecting a random mutant girl from a bigoted mob. Bigoted, idiot mob, given at least one of them shouts, "Just little girls!" at two girls with very long, very sharp claws extending from the backs of their hands. I'm once again amazed every citizen of the Marvel Universe hasn't managed to accidentally kill themselves trying to gargle bleach instead of mouthwash.

In the middle of the fight, something weird starts happening. Something like stained glass pieces appear from thin air, and as they pass through people, they get switched to, I'm not sure. Gabby thinks she smelled a friend of hers from her days as a sex worker, Kiden, who had time manipulation powers. Except seeing Laura at one point as young girl in a frilly dress, while Gabby looked like some Rob Liefeld creation for a second (sleek, elongated helmet with glowing visor) seems like more of an "unlocking alternate realities," power.

But I never read NYX, so maybe this is how the power worked. Laura follows the scent, finds more of the stained glass, plus a machine with the same claw set-up and hair as her. Beyond that, someone who isn't Kiden, who was looking for Laura, because people are dying from experiments involving mutant DNA. The girl speaks in fragmented and cryptic sentences before aging like she drank from the wrong Grail. Laura tracks her scent to a too-normal looking building, she and Gabby break in, there are more of the robots, and then a bunch of teenagers who are very happy to see Laura.

It feels like Laura is going to assume the teens are victims, while I suspect they're the ones conducting the experiments in order to make themselves more powerful. Maybe Gabby will be more suspicious, maybe not. Houser keeps Gabby as very eager and chatty, while Laura looks after her but plays along in trading jabs occasionally. The way the relationship was written felt right, which is a good sign.

Camagni plays into the characters' personalities by having Gabby be very expressive with her body language and facial expressions, where Laura is more reserved. So Laura will study a "too-normal" building, and all we get are narrowed eyes, while Gabby will stand there with one finger tapping at her lip in a "thoughtful" posture. When Laura tracks the girl's scent back to said "too-normal" building, in a page of her riding a motorcycle through the city, Camagni layers on panels showing the girl's progress as Laura's following the trail to its source. 

Sunday Splash Page #415

"Nighttime Visitor," in Power Pack (vol. 1) #27, by Louise Simonson (writer), Jon Bognadove (penciler), Al Gordon (inker), Glynis Oliver (colorist), Jon Rosen (letterer)

The 4 Power kids - Alex, Julie, Jack and Katie - meet a kind alien who grants them superpowers. So they do what any kid would do, use the powers to protect their dad from evil aliens out to steal the information about a matter-anti-matter convertor from his brain.

Power Pack ran 62 issues, from 1984 into 1991. I assume the idea was a book aimed towards younger readers, with kids their age as the leads to identify with, rather than Marvel's usual late teen/early-20s protagonists. Plus a bit of a fantasy approach. The Kymellians (the kind aliens) look like horses. The kids end up with a talking spaceship named Friday.

Maybe that was the idea. I would have been in that age range, younger than even Katie when the book started, and it was never a book I was interested in. I knew Power Pack from guest appearances in other books. The issue of Uncanny X-Men where one of the Morlocks erases the memory of the kids from their parents because Annalee wants to abduct them to be her kids. Thor's Secret Wars II tie-in, where the Pack help Thor and Beta Ray Bill fight off a Beyonder-amped Kurse.

The one issue I do own was purchased along with those couple issues of X-Factor when I was collecting the Mutant Massacre storyline. The Power kids are friends with Franklin Richards, who had some kind of dream power, and was somehow subconsciously aware of what was happening to the Morlocks at the hands of the Marauders. The kids are friends with Leech, too, so into the sewers they go.

I think, when Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men discussed the Mutant Massacre, they talked about the, maybe it's a tonal disconnect, of positing this story as this brutal extermination of an entire community of mutants by a crew of psychopaths. The Marauders are pushing the X-Men to the limits, driving Colossus to kill, crippling Angel. Then you've got a bunch of kids fighting Sabretooth, who can knock Rogue out cold and tear up Wolverine, and making it out unscathed.

Even wilder, the kids had apparently just switched powers - something I don't think I knew they could do until years after the series concluded. Even when Alex Power had all the powersets during his stint on the New Warriors, I assumed there'd been some kind of accident, not a deliberate move on his part - meaning during Mutant Massacre they aren't even entirely sure how to use the powers they've got. So you have Julie, now with the density power Jack typically has, trying to hit Arclight by condensing her mass into a tiny self, getting backhanded into a wall hard enough to get stuck, Alex can't bring himself to hit anyone with Katie's Energizer powers, Jack can't figure out how to manipulate gravity to glide like Alex, but they all make it out unscathed.

It makes sense the kids would rush to help their friends, and they do save Leech and Caliban by keeping the Marauders occupied until X-Factor shows up. But they seem out of place in the story. Risks of a shared universe, not every story that makes sense for a character from a characterization perspective works from a tone perspective.

Saturday Splash Page #217

"Drive Thru", in Red Before Black #1, by Stephanie Phillips (writer), Goran Sudzuka (artist), Ive Svorcina (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer)

Val is a former soldier, looking for a job from her old comrade-in-arms, Miles. Miles works in drugs now, and there's a lady who was supposed to be establishing contacts for distribution, but decided to keep some of the drugs to sell for herself. If Val wants the job, she needs to eliminate this problem. And Val wants the job, since she's out of prison because an FBI agent thinks she's an "in" to the org Miles works for. For Val to stay out of prison, Leo needs to die. Instead, Val and Leo end up on the run together from Miles, the FBI, even a relative of Leo's that owns a gator ranch.

Val is prone to episodes where the world around her fades, shifts, is overlaid by a jungle. Sudzuka and Svorcina usually depict it in solid colors to start. Red vines twining around Val, tropical birds emerging from a purple chasm tearing apart the ground beneath Val's feet. Eventually it develops into a jungle, dense grass and trees, downed logs, all colored something close to natural. And somewhere in there, someone needs help. Usually it happens when Val gets violent, which is too bad, because being around Leo results in a lot of violence. Though the red tendrils appear during calmer moments a few times. 

Oddly, Leo is able to see the jungle - and thinks it's neat - though Phillips never explains that quirk. Leo has her own trauma, and Phillips shows the parallels in how neither of them got any support or help. Leo was dismissed as making it up by her family and the doctors. Val was turned away by the groups that were supposed to help people who had bad experiences serving overseas. Maybe that's the "why", but in that case, shouldn't Leo have a "jungle" of her own?

But Leo's more manic. She leverages it, in that she acts goofy or flighty to make people underestimate her.  Meanwhile, Val is repressing everything, trying to pretend nothing happened, nothing's wrong, all business. Until she's not. I don't think either character has addressed their problems, but Leo's more accepting of hers?

Phillips puts the work in building the peculiar relationship between these two. Leo seems so eager to have a friend, while Val starts out unsure if she wants to protect Leo, strangle her, or just get far away. It doesn't ever entirely end, because Leo seems so flighty and random to Val, but there's a gradual softening as the two save each other. Phillips slows the plot to allow for quiet scenes between them where they talk about something other than their impending doom. It's during those where we see the tendrils emerge from Val's chest, reaching towards Leo. They don't form into a full jungle, and it's not clear whether Leo can see them.

When the mini-series was coming out, I thought the pacing was off a bit. I think I was expecting more focus on a sort of cat-and-mouse chase between the Val/Leo duo and everyone after them. Spending an issue at Leo's relative's gator farm felt like an odd choice. Leo bringing Val to a spiritualist community, where two old women were waiting to tell Val she needed to stop running from her ghosts, only for Val to die like 10 pages later, felt like an odd choice.

Still does, a little bit, but I think the point is Val has been running all this time and refusing to acknowledge it. Isolating herself, throwing herself into things as distractions. All the people after them are a sideshow as far as Val's issues. Another thing she can use to avoid dealing with her past. So when she faces it, really looks at the guilt she feels, and the opportunity comes to possibly do it right this time, she seizes it. Not really sure where that leaves Leo, but Val's struggle is over, at least. 

What I Bought 2/18/2026 - Part 1

I was, by process of elimination, thrown into this stupid work group last year, for people who lead without actually being in leadership positions. I have no business being there, no idea what I'm supposed to be bringing to it, or taking from it. Which is not a huge surprise, considering the guy who I'm positive came up with it uses idiotic phrases like, "people leaders." As in, "consult with your unit's people leaders." What is that phrase supposed to convey that just saying "leaders" wouldn't? We don't have any dogs or robots at my job!

I'd do my job a lot better if they'd just leave me to it. 

Fantastic Four #8, by Ryan North (writer), Humberto Ramos (penciler), Victor Olazaba (inker), Edgar Delgado (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Sue is rocking a spiked outfit! Be on alert, but also get some popcorn in case she's finally ready to off Reed.

Most of this issue revolves around the notion that a universe is so vast, that you don't even need parallel universes for the same situations or people to occur more than once. So in another section of the 616-universe, there is another Earth-like planet, with homo sapiens-looking folks, including 4 exposed to cosmic rays who develop familiar powers. I mean, OK, seems a bit much to be that similar, but maybe it'll turn out to be another world of Skrulls convinced they're Earthlings.

But in this world, this Sue twigged to the fact her powers go beyond being invisible much sooner, and Reed encourages her to explore the full potential of what she can manipulate. Which seems to be pretty much anything. Magnetism, gravity, electromagnetic energy all that jazz.

Seems groovy, until this Sue has a nightmare of being besieged by enemies. And the fighting she does in her nightmare, translates to the real world. Her forcefields cut off this sorta-Earth from heat, and kills everyone. Except Johnny. There wasn't anyone else with heat powers on this sorta-Earth? Whatever, Sue hides in her guilt for a while, until she convinces Johnny to let her use his heat to perform a little brain surgery on herself.

Props to Ramos on that image, which will no doubt replace the whale in my nightmares. Now she doesn't feel bad about killing every human! Things went downhill from there, and the FF are about to find out just how downhill as they find a battered Galactus and the so-called "Invincible Woman."

Can you actually disable the portion of your brain that feels guilt or regret, but still feel joy, as this other Sue declares? Or is it just the absence of the pain, after weeks of dealing with it, translated by whatever's left of her brain as joy? And does that really mean she'd start going around, attacking people? Although it's a good beat Galactus tried eating her Earth, in which case the FF should really step aside and let this Sue finish Galactus off. Cosmic consonance, my ass.