The Devil's Own (1997)

Rory (Brad Pitt) is an IRA soldier that travels to New York City to try and buy some Stinger missiles to deal with the British Army's helicopters. A friendly judge sets him up to stay at the home of Tom O'Meara (Harrison Ford), a New York cop.

While Rory is pretending to work construction and cleaning up the boat that'll be used to haul the missiles he's going to buy from a sleazy arms dealer (Treat Williams), O'Meara is doing the family man thing, going to work, trying to get his teenage daughter (early career Julia Stiles) off the phone, or score a little alone time with the wife, Sheila (Margaret Colin.)

We also see how Tom does things as a cop, where he tries to use minimal force, tells a guy stealing radios from cars to throw his gun away so he (meaning the thief) won't get shot. Except Tom stops to collect the gun, and his partner catches up to the guy and shoots him in the back. Tom doesn't agree, but ultimately lets his partner drop the gun next to the guy he shot.

(As there are several scenes where Tom runs, I was able to tell my dad my observation on how strangely Harrison Ford runs. I thought I mentioned it in one of my reviews of the later Indiana Jones movies last year, but apparently not. Point being, Harrison Ford runs weird, like he's trying to run without fully committing to it, or he's got bad plantar fasciatis. My dad's contention is it's not strange, Ford just runs flat-footed, and also never wears sneakers or other athletic shoes. He's always in boots or what I'd call dress shoes but my dad calls "proper" shoes.) 

All that's meant to contrast with what we see of Rory's life. Rory's father was shot at the dinner table by a masked man when Rory was a kid, just for having rumored Republican sympathies. When a team of plain-clothesed guys in cars can't catch Rory, the British military rolls in the armored vehicles and soldiers. One of his comrades is already dying of a gunshot, and when he won't give up Rory's location, an British Intelligence officer shoots him again, just because, basically. 

In Rory's life, being unarmed offers no protection. Relying on the honor of the people against you is a fool's bet. Even keeping a simple photo a friend took of Rory dancing with the sympathetic daughter of the judge that helped him ends up being a mistake, helping Tom pick up his trail. The only choice is to arm yourself and hit back.

And Tom, for all that the movie gestures at the potential for a surrogate father role towards Rory, doesn't get that. He decides to retire over covering for his partner murdering that guy, feeling dirty and unsuited to what he thinks being a cop is supposed to be. Rory's the one who has to retrieve Tom from the bar, and they talk a bit, but you can see Rory doesn't entirely get why Tom is so bothered. Tom's ancestors might hail from Ireland, but he's taken very different pieces from it. The beer, the food, the religion. Things you can take with you across an ocean, keep alive from a distance. For Rory, it's a place to fight for until its free, or die trying.

And then there's Williams' sleazy weapons dealer. Always smug, always trying some line on Rory, who he clearly sees as some dumb hick kid. Rory's got a cause and his anger. Tom's got his family and his own values. Williams just loves money. Tom doesn't want Rory to kill more people, doesn't want to kill Rory. Williams doesn't give a shit. He'd just like to get paid for the missiles more than once, if possible. If killing Rory makes that happen, then kill him. Violence has no meaning beyond getting him what he wants. 

I was a little surprised the movie didn't do more of Rory interacting with Tom's family, but I think it really wanted to keep the focus on Rory and Tom, their differing outlooks on life and violence and what's acceptable as shown through how they spend their time. We mostly see Tom's life during the day, and Rory's at night, though it seems significant the two almost always interact at night. They're traveling in Rory's world, whether Tom knows it or not.

The Terms of the Engagement

Somei Yoshino: Mom Friend, or Probation Officer Friend? 

Volume 6 of Yakuza Fiance starts with Kirishima going to great lengths to start a fight with Shouma. He steals Shouma's lighter - a gift from Yoshino, that says "Stop Smoking" on it - then announces he and Yoshino are dating, so Shouma's place in her life belongs to him now. Then mocks Shouma for refusing to fight him. Just really acting like a dick.

Yoshino has an idea something's up, and Shouma hasn't returned the GPS tracker she put in the stuffed animal keychain she gave Kirishima, so she hunts them down and starts swinging a bat. And missing. The whole sequence is kind of confusing.

Kirishima supposedly picked the fight to try and disguise the fact Yoshino's grandfather kicked the crap out of him (and Shouma) last volume for endangering Yoshino. Setting aside the fact Renji is the reason Kirishima is in Yoshino's life to the point he can endanger her, why bring knives to what only needed to be a fistfight? (Plus, Yoshino knows her Gramps beat them up, so it's a futile effort.)

Then you've got the fact Kirishima supposedly likes getting beat up, but dodges all Yoshino's swings. I get he won't answer her questions about why he did this because he likes her yelling at him, although it runs against his claims of how important she is to him, and how devoted he is. Maybe the masochism even explains why he refuses her order to fix Shouma's torn shirt (Shouma also refuses, so Konishi undermines the notion Yoshino has much control over either of them.) But she was willing to yell and physically injure him, which is apparently arousing to Kirishima, so why dodge?

Konishi does subsequently give Yoshino the upper hand. She knocks Kirishima on his heels by explaining she agreed to be his boyfriend so he'd stop picking fights with Shouma out of some insecurity about his position in her life, relative to her lifelong friend. In her words, 'Shouma's the reason you're my boyfriend. never forget that.'

The real power move comes once they return to Tokyo, when she employs *ominous drums* The Silent Treatment. For three days, she pretends as though Kirishima doesn't exist. It's funny, watching them walk home from school, Kirishima at her heels jabbering the whole way, Yoshino acting as though she's alone. Kirishima soon resorts to desperation baking in an attempt to get her attention. Because, see, this version of punishment isn't fun for him. Which again raises the question in my mind of why he didn't take the hits with the bat.

Once the three days are up and Kirishima understands the land mines that now surround him, they have a conversation about their new relationship. OK, that's a reasonable thing to do. Kirishima asks if they can hold hands, which seems benign. Yoshino even expresses concern about a scar on his hand from an old wound he didn't get looked at. That's sort of sweet. She offers some lotion for his hands, wearing a bizarre facial expression. I can't even guess what Konishi was going for there.

Kirishima proceeds to dump the lotion in Yoshino's palms and licks it. And then she headbutts him, which he takes without blinking. Oh, so now he wants to get hit? It's just another weird sequence all around, even allowing for how fucked in the head I think Kirishima is.

After a brief chapter hinting at infighting within the Kirigaya family (the group Renji's part of), and some hints about creepy scar-face bastard Azami's next plan, there's a school culture fest! Great, I loved the culture fest episodes of Azumanga Daioh! But it's really more about Shouma showing up as an escort for Yoshino's heretofore unseen mother, Hitomi. Hitomi seems like a spacecase and a klutz, but we're told she had a nervous breakdown when Yoshino's dad died and her mental health has waxed and waned ever since, especially if she gets stressed caring for Yoshino. Hence, Yoshino living with her grandfather.

Mostly this serves two purposes. One, showing Kirishima will behave himself around Shouma now, suggesting he's possibly actually listening to Yoshino. Two, offering another hint towards the circumstances surrounding Yoshino's father's death, as Kirishima privately mentions to Hitomi he knows how horrible she must find it, Yoshino staying with the Miyama family. Which makes me think Gaku killed Yoshino's dad in a botched attempt to kill Renji, and that's the thing he thinks he owes Renji for (which comes up in volume 8, whenever we get there.) 

Sunday Splash Page #429

"Mid-Air Collision," in "Mad-Matic" from Akira Toriyama Manga Theater, by Akira Toriyama

In contrast to yesterday's entry, it feels like I bought this more recently than 3 years ago, but the blog posts don't lie. This is an omnibus collection of what was originally a 3-volume release of assorted shorter works Dragon Ball Z and Dr. Slump creator Akira Toriyama did over the years, going back to the late-1970s.

It's fun to see the evolution of Toriyama's style, alongside his difficulties finding a story idea or concept the fans like. His first two strips, Wonder Island and Wonder Island 2, have a MAD magazine feel to them in the short, squat figures and reliance on either pop culture references - the protagonist of the second story is "Dirty Herring" - or what seems like entirely random, absurdist humor. There are two suns in the sky. But one's an egg, with a 3-headed dragon inside, but all their necks are tangled. That kind of thing.

By the 4th entry, Pola & Roid, Toriyama starts to find the groove he'd adopt for early Dragon Ball. Desert settings with lots of rocky spires and plateaus. Plucky but somewhat boy-crazy heroines in swimsuit battle armors and legs that seem long relative to their upper bodies. Dimwitted but (mostly) decent guys who don't know how to behave around a girl that's flirting with them. Joke villains that are either pathetically weak or just kind of stupid. It's mostly comedy, where even the shifts towards action are played as gags. A giant lizard just reading his dialogue without inflection and defeated with a squeaky hammer. A giant fiddler crab challenges the hero - an interstellar cab driver - to rock-paper-scissors. The evil emperor's secret weapon is a rubber band.

One of the bits that's interesting, at least in volume 1, where Toriyama talks about the process for making some of the strips, is how often his work ended up being unpopular. Even after he shifts away from the style of the Wonder Island strips (both duds with the readers), his two Chobits adventures - an inept hick cop who looks a lot like adult Goku meets essentially an alien genie in a flying teapot - in his words, 'failed to garner any fans.'

By volume 2, as he adds a bit more action, though still with a heavy lean towards comedy, you start to see more of his aesthetic in machinery. The hover bikes, the spacecraft or aircraft with the vertical surfaces at the ends of the wings, attached to egg-shaped central cockpits. The idea of "capsule houses" shows up in Tongpoo - a young cyborg crash lands on an alien world while trying to learn the fate of an earlier space exploration mission, and the sole survivor is a ditzy girl - and The Elder is a long chase between a secret agent in a car full of James Bond gadgets and some perverted old sheriff in a jeep drawn in the "squashed nose-to-tail" shape Toriyama uses for so many cars.

The Elder is also where Toriyama starts in with the "creepy old man groping women" stuff, which is, not great. Up to then, he was mostly restricting the pervert humor to young guys accidentally (key word there, accidentally, the hick cop in Chobits being the exception) stumbling on a lady in undress. In those cases, most of the characters are either confused or apologetic.

He flips things a bit in the final entry in the collection, Go Go Ackman, where the demon title character is actively repelled by any hint of female sexuality. He's supposed to be killing people to collect their souls and a convenient gust of wind reveals the lady he'd targeted is wearing a thong? Nope, he's outta there. It's not like Sand Land, where the "demon" characters are far less evil and cruel than the humans. Ackman really does seem to want to kill people, but I guess he's supposed to be young enough - by devil standards - that sort of thing is still icky to him. Or Toriyama just want to draw women in underwear without having them get murdered, in a story ostensibly starring a devil kid out to murder people.

Anyway, some of the entries are stronger than others, but it's fun to see what elements and themes recur and how he mixed and matched them in different ways over time.

Saturday Splash Page #231

"Working Girl," in Zaya, by J.D Morvan (writer), Huang-Jia Wei (artist), Neurobellum Productions (letterer)

Zaya is a retired former agent of a covert group known as Spiral, now living out her days as an artist and mother to twin daughters. But you know how it goes, you're never all the way out. There's always one last job. Zaya gets dragged back in to help stop a killer that used to work for Spiral, and is now targeting them. The operation runs into dual problems of the police raiding the ship, and the killer being more resilient than Spiral expected. Zaya ends up killing him inside her own (sentient) ship, while trying to escape from the cops via hyperspace.

Except when she exits hyperspace, everything is wrong. Her kids are now her sister's, and her sister claims to have no sister. No one in Spiral knows her, or how she can find her way through their secret passages and back doors. The killer is married to Zaya's sister, and starts hunting her down. It's one of those stories where the expert brought out of retirement is betrayed, except Zaya wasn't actually betrayed, she just stumbled into a parallel universe. Which leads to a bizarre bit where she's being hunted by a guy while the same guy's corpse in rotting in her ship. Nothing really ends well.

It feels a lot longer than 4 years ago I reviewed this graphic novel, but the first time I mentioned it in one of my solicits posts was in 2020. Maybe that's why. It sat on my "to buy" list for a while before I found a copy cheap enough I'd go for it. But I also thought Zaya was about a former secret agent learning things about their past, and it's not that at all. Would I have bought it if I better understood what Morvan and Huang-Jia were working towards?

It almost feels like two stories crammed together. You have the hunt for the killer in his bizarrely puffy-looking power suit - it's like he's wearing a giant airbag that's already deployed - and people with cybernetic enhancements and the ability to connect themselves to computer systems via wires plugging in at the base of their skulls. Very Ghost in the Shell.

Zaya reprograms the mind of the ship she's provided, granting it free will in the hopes it'll choose to help and not report anything to the authorities. We're told this act essentially constitutes murder with regards to the initial ship mind, but the new version is totally OK with what Zaya did. No concerns, just happy to be free! Huang-Jia marks the difference by depicting the ship's initial projection of its mind as a rigid black rectangle, a miniature version of the doorway in 2001: A Space Odyssey. After, "Lia" (the name Zaya gives the ship) looks more like a floating mass of translucent tentacles.

(Between the highly organic look Lia's mind gets, and the streamlined and sculpted design of the spaceships, the bulky design of Siegram's power suit is all the stranger. You'd almost think he stumbled in from another universe that had a whole different design aesthetic.)

Then you get the whole parallel universe thing where Zaya can't figure out what's going on, and nobody can figure her out, either. Where you see how universes apparently repeat certain patterns, just with different players involved. Zaya didn't exist, but her twins still do, via her sister and the killer guy, Siegram, who in this world apparently got Zaya's life. Recruited off the streets, trusted bodyguard, partially retired when he becomes a parent. As for the twins existing in both universes, that's because Siegram is apparently the father in both universes, it's just that in Zaya's case, Crazy Killer Siegram assaulted her in a cloakroom, while Retired Bodyguard Siegram wooed and married Carmen.

(The bit about Zaya getting assaulted is a sudden flashbulb she gets in the middle of a fistfight with Retired Bodyguard Siegram. Doesn't get much weight, more like Movran figured out late in the story he needed something to explain the twins existing in both universes despite different mothers, and that was the best he could manage.)

Also, kind of strange Lia was so excited about being free, but agrees to help Siegram take Zaya to a government agency that wants to use people who drifted in from other universes to try and explore the phenomenon. So the government can exploit it, naturally. It's a life of indentured servitude, for both of them. When Lia had interior guns that could absolutely kill Siegram. Then dump his body (and the first corpse) and just run for it. Instead, we got a distinctly unsatisfying ending.

What I Bought 5/27/2026

I finished Trigun today on my anime re-watch project. I forgot how exhausting all Vash's hemming and hawing about not shooting Legato gets. He wants to die, just do it already!

Sorry, reflex. Tomorrow is Trigun: Badlands Rumble, and that's the end of it, minus the first half of a series I bought a few weeks ago. But I haven't watched Ghost Hound yet, so it's not a re-watch.

Generation X-23 #4, by Jody Houser (writer), Marco Renna (artist), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - I'm very curious why they gave the robots hair, but otherwise left them looking entirely mechanical.

Laura, X-Infinite and X-92 (the portal-making kid) are following the guys who took everyone else, courtesy of a trail of blood Gabby is leaving for them. It's kind of funny that she's apparently so used to having a healing factor that she didn't consider that it's a bad thing if she just keeps bleeding indefinitely. 

Although that raises a question. They all got stuck with collars that neutralize their powers, meaning no healing factor, which is what Gabby's counting on for the bleeding. So does that mean the collar has entirely blocked her ability to heal, rather than simply knocking it down to a "normal" level? Because I sure don't have a healing factor like a Wolverine, but any cuts or scrapes I get do stop bleeding eventually.

Laura and X-Infinite get inside the facility, courtesy of X-92's portals and start looking around. But Infinite's more interested in reprogramming those knockoff X-23-bots to kill all the staff of the facility, so he can have it for himself. And then having them overwhelm Laura, so he can have access to all of her blood he wants. Well, he seemed pretty suspect, but I did not see that level of backstabbing coming.

Laura also has a 3-page fight with the weird crab/centipede lady, who we're told has part of the face of Kimura, the woman who used to torture Laura when she was a kid (and who I thought Laura drowned in Tom Taylor's All-New Wolverine.) Granted, all that's organic is her face and half her hair, so there wasn't much to go on, but I would not have figured that to be Kimura in a million years.

Houser tends to script the fights, or Renna's drawing them, to emphasize Laura's speed. Lots of short, broad panels that show the distance she covers, lots of flips and dodges and acrobatics. She's definitely not just charging into the fights and tanking hits (and then complaining about how much healing hurts) like she was in her previous ongoing.

Houser switches the caption boxes between Laura and a mystery person through the issue. Laura's focused mostly on what she can scent, or who she's fighting at that moment. The mystery person talks about paths and outcomes, and reveals themselves at the end of the issue as the time-traveler Laura saw die in issue 1. So I guess she went forward to this point, then back to that point later. 

The Thief - Clive Cussler and Justin Scott

Isaac Bell works for the Van Dorn Detective Agency. Traveling from Europe back to the U.S aboard the Mauretania, he comes across two people being abducted. He breaks it up but the leader of the kidnappers, an extremely agile guy, got away. The two targets, who claim to have figured out how to record visuals with sound that remains synchronized (in other words, talking pictures), are still in danger. Unless Bell can figure out who "the Acrobat" is and shut him down.

It's a Clive Cussler novel so, like all those Dirk Pitt books I read as a teenager, the plot doesn't really slow down. It's sort of a race, Bell trying different avenues to determine who he's up against and to protect the scientists, the Acrobat lurking in the shadows, trying to figure out who he's dealing with and pick his spots to strike. Cussler and Scott jump between characters on a regular basis, so there's always something going on. Either Bell is making some inquiry about the Acrobat or the mysterious "Artists Syndicate" that funds Imperial Films, or the Acrobat is intimidating or killing someone, or something's going on with another detective that's trying to help Bell.

Most of that last part is focused on Van Dorn's rep in Berlin, since the targets know they're being pursued by the German Army, and switches partway between the actual detective, and a precocious teenage girl that's decided being a detective is much better than hanging around her broken home. There's several chapters in the back half devoted to her trying to escape the country and report critical information she's learned. It felt like padding, but this is the 5th Isaac Bell book, so maybe Cussler and Scott were planning on her being a permanent part of the cast going forward, and wanted to establish her bonafides.

There's also a lot of what I assume is accurate historical detail about a variety of things. Thomas Edison's monopoly on cameras and film in the early 20th Century, the conditions in the boiler rooms of coal-powered ships, telegraphs and difficulties with filming in natural light or with recording sound. Apparently Edison's recording devices couldn't pick up a piano being played? Most of it isn't the kind of topics I'm wildly interested in, but it helps to make the world feel more three-dimensional.

One thing where the book differs from Cussler's Pitt novels is there isn't the Bond-esque string of romantic conquests for the lead. That stuff seemed cool to Teenage Calvin, but feels a little silly looking back now. Here, Bell actually gets married aboard the Mauretania to his apparently long-time film director girlfriend, Marion. I'm mildly curious if she typically plays a big role in the plots of these books, or if the size of her part here was due to the focus on movies and filming.

'Isaac Bell spun on his heel, dove under the life net that concealed the trapdoor, and vaulted himself feetfirst through the opening. As his foot grazed the top rungs of the ladder, he pulled his throwing knife from his boot and, without wasting a step of his swift descent, flung it overarm at Christian Semmler's throat.'

A Late of Summer of Possibilities

The August solicitations actually had a lot of new books, from a variety of publishers. Which is nice, except I can't say any of them filled me with an urgent desire to buy them. More like, "Ehhh, well, maybe." Also, Marvel seems to be celebrating a crapload of anniversary issues. Amazing Spider-Man 1000, Thor 800, 65 years of the FF, 60 years of Mary Jane Watson, and so on.

What's new? Let's see, DC has a Deadshot one-shot titled Next Level: One Shot. Do I trust Gerry Duggan to write a Deadshot I find acceptable, following in the footsteps of Ostrander or Simone? Absolutely not, moving on!

Dark Horse has The Big Shakedown, by Jordan Blum, Tim Seeley and Scott Koblish, about a P.I. trying to find a missing person to earn enough to get out of an earthquake ravaged and abandoned Los Angeles. The idea has some potential, but I haven't found that Seeley's writing works for me. Iman Vellani is writing a mini-series called Chachu under Image, with Marianna Ignazzi and Jordie Bellaire on the art, set in California in the late '70s, who wants to help her retired P.I. uncle find his missing wife, who was a missing person he once found.

In post-apocalyptic veins, Image has Sean Murphy's The Last Driver, about a guy who has to make some kind of road trip in a world where human-driven cars are outlawed. The art looks good, but I don't know about Murphy's writing. And Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray are writing a book called Denver, where it's one of the few stable cities to survive rising sea levels, but it may be about fall from within.

In collected edition news, Abrams has the 2nd volume of something called The Undertaker, by Xavier Dorison and Ralph Meyer, about a Civil War mortician and his escapades. I'd have to get the first volume, but I might be willing to do that. Raptura Comics has a collection of Diego Agrimbau and Juan Manuel Tumburus' Nadia and the Nomobots, about one of the last humans trying to continue living in a world of robots that take pills to feel things. Marvel is releasing 2 volume deluxe hardcovers of all their Indiana Jones comics. Would you pay $75 for each volume? Congrats, you're freer with your money than I am.

And in manga news, Viz has the first volume of Boichi's The Marshal King, which is some sort of Western manga, except the Wild West has continued for thousands of years, and one marshal is trying to find some MacGuffin that will help him bring law and order to the land. 

Edit, 5/30/26: Yen Press has the second volume of Dungeon that Surely Slaughters Adventurers, by Douman Seiman, who was the creator of Voynich Hotel. The first volume apparently came out in February, so I guess I need to grab that. 

What's ending? Nothing.

And the rest: As mentioned, August's issue of Fantastic Four marks the 65th anniversary. Batgirl may have gotten the memories she needs to solve the murders, but apparently they're memories she was better off losing. Does Cass need more angst in her backstory?

D'Orc, Generation X-23, and Marc Spector: Moon Knight are all on their 7th issues. They're dealing with, respectively, a swamp monster, a guest appearance by Wolverine, and Moon Knight is trying to form a new Midnight Suns. Midnight Sons? Whichever. None of those light my world on fire.

The Deadman and Junk Punch are on issue 3. The former's solicit suggests Boston Brand is on some perilous journey through the underworld, and the latter, I'm not sure, actually. The cops are trying to shoot the protagonist for some reason. I'd imagine because she keeps punching them in the junk. And Vampyrates is on issue 2.

Ahoy resolicited the fifth issue of Babs: Black Road South, which means both of the Babs mini-series have had trouble staying on a monthly schedule. I don't know if it's Ennis, Burrows, or Ahoy having printing problems, but maybe they should just stop soliciting it as monthly. I think they can ship every other month, so if they just promised that, it would be fine.

So maybe 9 continuing books, although half those titles are on shaky ground with me, and maybe 4 other books, although I doubt even half of those will actually get purchased when the time comes. I don't know what it is. Maybe I'm just in the wrong state of mind these days.