What I Bought 7/2/2026

I decided July is "fish or cut bait" month for several books. Maybe not the best time for it; there are already two mini-series ending this month. But there were a couple of new books I picked up I intended to decide whether to stick with them, and a couple of others that I think have gotten a fair shot, but need to really sell me on them. So we'll see how that goes.

The Deadman #2, by W. Maxwell Prince (writer), Martin Morazzo (artist), Chris O'Halloran (colorist), Good Old Neon (letterer) - Boston Brand unwittingly dissolved the blood doorway that would lead those souls back to their proper realm.

Deadman needs to know what that demon was, but the only book that would tell him was destroyed. Fortunately, not until after it was read by a guy with a perfect photographic memory, who Deadman and Batman once arrested. For breaking into a museum to read rare books, the man was sentenced to Blackgate Prison. That seems not at all insane.

Deadman tries to possess Batman to get into the prison, but Bats apparently trained his mind to resist such things. Of course he did. Plastic Man was helping Bats with some case involving drug-smuggling mummies, so Deadman takes him instead. As he's getting info, an inmate takes his meds which cause him to turn into a giant plant guy, who deals Plastic Man a mortal blow. Good work, Deadman! OK, fine, he keeps Plas' soul from moving on, and the Bibliophile tells him the creature he saw is from Hell. 

If "The Bloom" is someone I'm expected to know, I don't. Morazzo's got a little Frank Quietly in his art. Mostly I guess the texture of his characters, their faces. Sort of rough, pebbly effect to their skin and wrinkles and whatnot. His Batman definitely tends towards the broad and bulky end of the spectrum. No nimble acrobat here!

The theme of the issue might be "change." The first page is Rama Kushna explaining how souls go through cycles of rebirth, and in each life accumulate good and bad in their karmic ledgers. And Deadman keeps making assumptions about people. He assumes Plastic Man just became a hero on a whim, a flip of the coin, but learns different when he possess him. Gets caught flat-footed by Batman's efforts to not only resist possession, but develop tools to let him communicate with Deadman's spiritual form. He seems to expect the Bibliophile to be some monster, but decides just by looking at him in prison that he's no bad guy. Duh. He broke into a museum just to have new books to read.

(There's also this thing, it was in the first issue as well, that presents people as equations. "Lorna - 3 Nights Sleep = 1/2 Lorna" And in both cases, the person who has been reduced to "1/2" tries something to help, something from their past, and it doesn't work. The equation still comes out to "1/2 Lorna." So you can't fix anything going back? Well, I'm completely screwed.)

So is Deadman changing? If he keeps making assumptions about people, keeps thinking they can't or won't really change? Still hanging on to attachments from a life he can't have? 

Batgirl #21, by Tate Brombal (writer), Stephen Segovia (artist), Rain Beredo (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) -  That's definitely a very cool cover by David Talaski, with the falling flowers and the eyehole as a prison window.

While her friends try to escape the cops - who are called "TUCOs", and I'm offended on behalf of Eli Wallach's character - Cass is stuck inside some mental trigger thing. Dr. Forget-Me-Not wants Batgirl to solve the murder of the little girl, using only what she can glean from her own memories. Which she now has access to all of, even when she was a baby.

Except she (and we) see all the memories from the third person perspective. She's watching herself fight the little blonde girl, who was Forget-Me-Not's attempt to create an ultimate weapon by making a person you can program with whatever identity or thoughts you need.

Forget-Me-Not and David Cain argued about something, which Napolitano (I'm assuming) renders as unintelligible squiggles because Cass didn't understand words at that point in her life. I can't decide if that makes sense, ignoring the question of whether I should be worrying about something like that in a plot like this. I don't understand what birds are saying when they sing, but I still remember what the song sounds like. Cass as she is now could probably piece some of it together from the sounds.

Whatever. She knows the girl was killed with a large knife. She knows she had the knife at one point during a spar with Bronze Tiger, but it disappeared. She knows Cain and the doctor left her and the other girl alone at some point because of the argument. The girl tried to hug her and Cass didn't understand what that was. And so Cass comes to the conclusion she's the killer. 

I'm assuming there's some kind of bait-and-switch there. Not that Cass couldn't have killed someone else before she learned to read body language. More I don't see what it adds to her as a character. She gets to feel bad about killing someone who was victimized at the hands of the person who should have protected her, like Cass was? Plus, Segovia's consistently drawn the killing wound as the big slash the goes diagonally across the entire torso. Would a kid roughly the same size as the victim make a wound like that?

Sunday Splash Page #434

"Bug-mageddon," in Ant-Man: World Hive #2, by Zeb Wells (writer), Dylan Burnett (artist), Mike Spicer (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer)

A 5-issue mini-series released in 2020, World Hive finds Scott Lang still in Florida, now living in an ant-hill, where he has lots of passive-aggressive conversations with the colony's queen, named "Pam." The security consulting business he had during the brief, Nick Spencer-written ongoings a few years earlier is gone. Instead, he takes jobs like locating missing bees for the Florida Beekeepers Association. He patrols once a week with his daughter Cassie, formerly the Young Avenger Stature, now going by the "Stinger" codename she used in Spider-Girl's universe.

In the TPB, Burnett says he used Chris Samnee's Ant-Man design as a basis to model Cassie's costume. I can see it, in how the purple sections are sharply defined by rigid sections of black, but it mostly looks like the MC2 version's costume, with the amounts of purple and black switched and some ankle bracelets I can't perceive a purpose for. Cassie's helmet does get an upgrade later that causes it to sprout Kirby Hat-style antennae that let her project commands to bugs more forcefully. Which someone, I don't know if it's Burnett, Spicer or Petit, depicts as big, brightly colored words that take up most of a panel background.

To Scott's dismay, Cassie wants to move to California to join Kate Bishop's West Coast Avengers roster. Because it's hard for young heroes to get respect, and no one in the hero community is respecting Scott Lang. Not even when his search for the missing bees leads to The Swarm, the Nazi made of bees, who's on the run from several other creatures made entirely of types of arthropod, acting on behalf of the "Bug Lords", who decided they've had it with these damn primates thinking they run the planet.

The Bug Lords look like something that might have crossed over from a kaiju flick, especially once they get some Pym Particles. So maybe it makes sense Scott looks vaguely like Ultraman when he's fighting them in the final issue. Spicer makes them bright, almost neon, colors so they jump off the page, or maybe just dominate it, since they take up most of the page. Their emissaries, Thread (silkworms), Tusk (beetles) and Vespa (hornets) are a lot cooler. Burnett gives them body characteristics and styles that fit the types of things they're made of, but also draws them so you can see how they're comprised of lots of smaller bugs.

It's funny to think Mike Allred did a Fantastic Four run that culminated in Scott Lang kicking Dr. Doom's ass and showing how awesome he was, and within a year, it might as well never have existed, because a movie came out, and Scott's been written as a well-meaning (if he's lucky) loser ever since. Thanks, Paul Rudd!

This story does not break that trend. Again, Scott's living in an anthill. Not some miniaturized science lab next to an anthill. Not even a miniaturized trailer next to an anthill. Just, in the anthill, storing his Pym Particle capsules with the colony's eggs, getting nagged by the queen. Burnett draws him with constant stubble and bags under his eyes, and Wells has Lang act awkward, panicked, or stick his foot in his mouth all the time. (Though Wells writes Spider-Man as even more of a goober, getting jealous and snippy because the Black Cat seems to like Scott, and not even because they bonded as fellow thieves, which I would have at least found sort of understandable. Clearly a guy Marvel should let write Amazing Spider-Man for several years!)

That said, Wells does play up one aspect of Scott's character I've always appreciated: he actually cares about the bugs he asks for help. I never saw much of that in Pym, who has a detached perspective that seemed to treat them as test subjects, and Eric O'Grady flatly did not care. Controlling bugs meant he had a ready supply of cannon fodder to die for him. Lang names them, worries when the ant he flew (Chumley) to track the Swarm disappears, gets angry when a bee he enlarged to close a cave entrance gets devoured from the inside-out. The bugs, even when Pam is frustrated with Scott, seem to like and respect him. Enough to help him against a would-be world conquering insect guy.

There's probably something in there about how the bugs judge Scott by what's in his heart, what he intends, possibly something they can pick via the nature of how the helmet allows him to communicate with them. Meanwhile humans are judging him by what he looks like and how successful he is at what he tries to do. Although you'd think insects, especially colony species where every member of a hive has a specific role to fill, would be less forgiving of, "I tried my best, but I failed."

Scott also lets Cassie face the main bad guy herself, because he swiped her helmet and she feels like she needs to be the one who gets it back. Scott is worried and keeps almost jumping in, but when she tells him to wait, he listens. He shows faith in her abilities that the Avengers don't show in him. But it impresses Cassie, which is more important to Scott. At least until the next time he starts feeling insecure.

Saturday Splash Page #236

"The Congregation," in Werewolf by Night (2023) #1, by Derek Landy (writer), Fran Galan (artist/colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer)

A one-shot released in the fall of 2023, revolving around Jack Russell, aka the Werewolf by Night, and Elsa Bloodstone, arriving independently at a ominous castle in the mountains of Colorado. Both are seeking Doktor Nekromantik, and a young woman he's abducted to sacrifice to some nefarious purpose.

Landy contrasts the duo's via internal narration through the story. Jack's is overwrought and dramatic, while Elsa's is breezy and flip. Jack makes his way up the mountainside and tears his way through the creations of Nekromantik that bar his path, while Elsa simply skydives out of a plane in which she hitched a ride, that was owned by some vampires she subsequently killed. When the two run into each other in the castle, Jack spends three caption boxes thinking about how people - like him - let Elsa's attitude slide because she's so pretty, and he could have loved her, if he thought he deserved to be happy. Elsa's caption is, 'He smells of dog.'

The situation they find themselves dealing with is more complex than they expected, as Nekromantik is after revenge, but not against either of them. They're far too late to save the young woman, and Jack spends the last page moping how that's another person he failed, and his life is violence, while Elsa's internal narration insists that it would bother her, if she thought about it. But why do that, when life is so hard already? They reach the same endpoint, but draw different conclusions from it.

Other than the last few pages, which take place the following morning, the story is set entirely at night, and Galan goes with a limited and stark color scheme. Everything, save the glowing red eyes of the shadow creatures Nekromantik made, is colored some variation of black, white, or grey. It allows for a sharp, high-contrast look that plays up the shadows.

Except for Elsa, who is Technicolor in a world of black-and-white (the scenes in the jet before she reaches the castle are also in color.) A bit more bronzed than you might expect for someone who spends her time hunting monsters at night, but her clothes, her hair, the flash of red if she uses the Bloodstone, all of that is in color. It sets her apart from everyone and everything else in the story, including Jack. 

Which is something to explore. In terms of color, Jack is treated as the same as Nekromantik, his monsters, and the thing he seeks to summon, while Elsa is not. Why? Simply because she's still human, despite the weird alien rock in her palm she got from her caveman father? Jack is human, at least some of the time. Is it something about purpose, that Jack and Nekromantik were each driven by some stronger motive, duty or revenge, while Elsa at least gives the outward appearance she's just there to make monsters go boom? I don't think it's a matter of the others being driven by baser instincts, because Jack keeps narrating about how he's trying not to lose control and just tear things to shreds, so he's clearly resisting those urges.

What I Bought 6/29/2026 - Part 2

I almost never get $10 bills back in change. Because yes, I buy most things with cash. It's a chemical affliction. Whether it's a automated checkout thing or a good old human cashier, I usually receive two $5s instead. Which seems odd. Why bother with two bills when one will do? Did Trump do away with $10s because Alexander Hamilton's not even a President, not like Ben Franklin?

Babs: The Black Road South #4, by Garth Ennis (writer), Jacen Burrows (artist), Andy Troy (colorist), Rob Steen (letterer) - This feels like the sort of thing Babs will give Izzy grief about endlessly.

Our protagonists survive sledding off a cliff on a frozen barbarian and end up in a great sea of - well, let's not discuss what they're floating in. Babs is still playing cagey about her prior trip, though she's starting to suspect the Samwise stand-in has to be behind all this. Troy washes the whole sequence on the sea in this dull greyish murk that just looks nasty. Like the air would have a tangible texture that clings to you, and it would be awful.

About the time Izzy points out the Orb couldn't have been destroyed, because otherwise all the great evil in Mordynn would typically get sucked into a great hole, they notice Lilith Lazuli isn't dead. Or, she was, but the eldritch properties of the land brought her back. Sort of. She's about as articulate as your typical zombie, but she gets them to shore.

Where they're met by an army of pig-men mercs, working for the angry little hobbit. He hauls them off to some camp, rather than the tower where the great evil is sort of sulking and doing not much of anything. Because the hobbit's working on his own, to get the Orb. Which shouldn't be possible, unless someone had formed a soul bond with said Orb. Someone like Babs.

I think the thing that surprises me is that she'd actually think she could get away with selling it. Just seems like the sort of thing where any person eager to get their hands on it, is also the sort of person you couldn't trust to honor the terms of whatever deal you made with them. Hmm, maybe she'd been drinking when she made the arrangement. 

Is Ted OK? #4, by Dave Chisholm (writer/artist/letterer) - See? The doc agrees with me, last month's cover was nausea-inducing.

Dr. Paganini explains what's going on with Ted. She had a theory that human consciousness is stored somewhere other than inside your brain, but a place our brains access. A place with enormous storage capacity, and enormous energy potential. And Noah thought that could be a way to create true artificial intelligence. "Artificial intelligence", in the sense that he created a human body artificially, with no animating mind or spirit, and needed something to make it go.

They tried somehow linking the bodies to people who were dreaming, allowing access to what she called "Soul Space" through a shared doorway. It worked, and didn't require ten simultaneous nukes going off, which was the other notion she had for how to open a doorway into that space.

Except the further along things got, the more she sees that Noah's not after whatever she and the other scientists think he is. He wants to have an artificial human, but it needs to be able to use that Soul Space energy to do cool stuff. Like a lightning punch! Well sure, if I built an artificial person, I'd want them to be able to do cool shit. She figures out he's trying to build a video game character. Literally. The character in the game Ted plays before going to sleep each night. Who dies and is reborn with a different cool power.

But when things aren't going the way he'd like, Noah shifts to the nuke option. Being rich enough to have your thumb on the scale of several militaries helps. And that explains the Dome, if not how Noah was able to stand in a radioactive nightmare without issue. Unless he's given himself an artificial body and is drawing off that space as well.

The further into the story the Doc gets, the more Chisholm shifts how Noah is presented visually. He starts out positioned on the ends of panels, usually at the same level and size from our perspective as Dr. Paganini. He's sitting a lot, he's smiling, the colors are soft. Once the work begins, the colors shift to colder tones, like flourescent lights in a hospital. Noah tends to stand, and more than that, he tends to stand in the middle of things. Often stepping between our view of him and Dr. Paganini, making her smaller, pushing her to the edge of the panel, into the gutters. He's not asking about her work with interest, or promising that money won't be a problem. He demands she fix things, or insults "Soul Space" as a stupid name.

Having learned he was intended to be some next-gen human war machine, that his love for cats and paranoia are the result of Noah's capricious whims in how the "manowars" were programmed, Ted is ready to pack it in. He should just be destroyed. Sarah objects, making a whole spiel about Ted and who she thinks he is and that he doesn't get to give up. Ted comes around, decides it's time to stand up and be counted, and that doesn't go well.

I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop with Sarah. I'm not sure what that shoe will be. The person she keeps leaving voicemails for was someone Noah killed along the way? One of the dreamers, one of the mercs. That she's a dreamer, and all this is her and Ted sharing a consciousness? I can't quite buy that she's faking all this and is secretly loyal to Noah, because I don't think weren't meant to believe her internal narration is lies, even if it's remained vague who she's talking to. She's definitely projecting something about that person onto Ted, which he could end up seeing as a betrayal, if it's never really been about helping him, so much as him being a proxy for someone else she wished she could help. 

If These Walls Could Talk - Stan McNeal

This is a collection of stories revolving around the 4 consecutive seasons the St. Louis Cardinals made it to at least the National League Championship Series in 2011 through 2014. Sort of. Because it also includes a section on the 2022 season, when Albert Pujols came back for his last year and became only the 4th player to reach 700 home runs.

It more or less ignores the all the seasons in-between, minus some of the sections that discuss Adam Wainwright, since he was on the team throughout. Granted, the Cardinals didn't experience a ton of postseason success in the 2015-2021 years, but they did win 100 games in 2015, and they did make it to the NLCS in 2019, and they won 17 games in a row during the 2021 season to make the playoffs. And it isn't like the 2022 team was in the postseason for long, either. They lost a best-of-three series to the Phillies, in two games.

It's an especially odd reading experience because I guess, this being a revised edition, McNeal put the most recent stuff at the beginning. So you get the section on 2022, and then you jump backwards most of a decade, and keep working back from there. Each year is broken up into shorter pieces focused on a specific player or coach.

So in 2011, you've got a few pages on Matt Holliday and his injury issues, another few pages on Albert Pujols coming back from a broken bone in his wrist in 17 days (I forgot just how fast that dude recovered from injuries), Colby Rasmus getting traded for pitching, Chris Carpenter carrying the pitching staff (and behaving like an asshole on the field), David Freese's postseason heroics, Allen Craig's less-heralded postseason heroics, Lance Berkman's comeback year, Tony LaRussa's last season before (briefly) retiring, and Pujols signing with the Angels in free agency.

(McNeal titles that last one, "Pujols Takes the Money and Runs", which is certainly one way to describe Pujols exercising his right as a free agent to sign the contract he believes pays him the full value he's worth, after years of playing on one that paid him far less than his production merited because the collective bargaining agreement grants the Cardinals all the leverage in negotiations for the first 6 years of his career.)

But even within that style, McNeal usually doesn't confine a piece to strictly what the player did that season. The parts where he dips into the past - Holliday failing to catch a fly ball in the 2009 NLDS, David Freese not playing baseball at all for a year after he graduated high school - make sense, as part of the journey to whatever McNeal's really driving at. But he also discusses the player's later seasons and career trajectory, like Freese's continued injury problems after 2011 and how he was eventually traded.

A lot of the stories are ones I already knew from following the team, although there are details in there I wasn't always aware of. Shelby Miller and Joe Kelly being the best man for each other's weddings, and having a bet over whether either could get a hit off the other the first time they faced off after Kelly was traded to Boston (Kelly won that bet.) I'd forgotten about Holliday having to leave a game because a moth flew in his ear and he couldn't dig it out with his finger (and apparently attempts to sit in dark room, with just a little light coming through a crack in the door failed to entice the moth, because its head was too far in to see the light.)

It feels like there's a narrow sweet spot for this. You have to care about the Cardinals to begin with, but not in such a way where you were consuming enough writing about them at the time these events were taking place. Otherwise you know most of what you're reading already. Unless the reader is looking for the nostalgia fix, which is an impulse I can understand. 

'Matt Holliday went for $100 in 2011 but had dropped to $75 by 2014. Michael Wacha, on the other hand, jumped from $5 in 2013 to $70 in the 2014 Winter Warm-Up, following his breakout October. David Freese had an even greater one-year increase, going from $5 to $75 following his dream postseason. Matt Carpenter cost $40 in 2014 just two years after being free. Jon Jay, meanwhile, had been a model of consistency. In 2014 his autograph was priced at $20 for the third straight year.'

What I Bought 6/29/2026 - Part 1

The weather has turned miserable here in the last few days, in the usual manner of being hot, with a humidity that is nearly suffocating. At least it waited until the end of June to start. Really couldn't hope for better than that. Definitely will miss actually wanting to be outside for the next couple of months. Suppose that leaves me more time for comics, so let's get into the last few holdouts from June, starting with a first issue.

Junk Punch #1, by Paul Tobin (writer), Javier Olivares (artist), Francesca Vivaldi (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer), Colleen Coover (artist/inker/colorist/letterer) - Something about the color of her outfit, combined with the big smile makes me keep thinking I'm looking at Squirrel Girl. Maybe it's that the guy in the spacesuit near her butt resembles a big, fluffy tail?

Clara Castanelle has, as she explains to one of her victims on page 2, a chemical affliction that makes her compulsively punch people in the junk. When she's not doing that, she's getting drunk, feeding peanut butter to pigeons so bug-eyed I think they were crossbred with pugs, having orgies, and maybe, possibly, helping people with problems. If a fortune cookie tells her to.

The problem of the moment is someone stealing goals. Not life goals, but goals in soccer games. As in, the ball is flying towards the net, then swerves off into the sky for no apparent reason. Information gathered by a couple of her allies - a fortune teller named "Medium Cotton", who walks around in cowboy boots, underwear and a turban, is prominently involved - think a crime lord named Silverhand is behind all this. But, Silverhand's knows Clara's investigating and has upped the apparently preexisting bounty on her head so that she's the #1 target in the city, instead of #7.

My main takeaway from the first issue, is I may not be on the right wavelength for this book. Tobin and Olivares are clearly going for absurd, but it's not hitting with me for some reason. A guy named "Joey Bagoducks", who ends up with one of his ducks trying to assassinate Clara, only to turn out to be a dude in a duck suit after she punches him in the junk, that's absurd. Obviously. And people who try to assassinate her shout "ASSASSIN!" in a very different font (though Esposito uses that for several different words or phrases during the issue.)

But I spent most of the issue metaphorically scratching my head and wondering what I was looking at, instead of laughing. Maybe it's that things are too random, or maybe it's just Clara that's too random. She's goes from agreeing to help find the stolen goals, to forgetting what she was doing a page later, to flipping a coin to decide whether to enter a bar, then entering before the coin hits the ground, to having an orgy two pages later. The junk punching thing feels less like a chemical affliction, and more like something she does just whenever it catches her fancy. Which is true of everything else in her life.

Olivares and Vivaldi making Billowing City a cramped, dingy-looking place. Buildings stretches high above and almost obscure the sky entirely, but they aren't gleaming or impressive feats of architecture. Mostly lots of cheap neon lights and dirty streets, but lots of people. Wide variety of colors and outfits, but nothing garishly bright. Like everybody is so fully flying their freak flag they all kind of cancel each other out. 

Something Big (1971)

Colonel Miller (Brian Keith) is a cavalry officer about to retire, and his wife Mary Anna (Honor Blackman) is on her way to the fort to make sure of it. Unfortunately, there's Joe Baker (Dean Martin) to contend with. He's a dude from Pennsylvania that came out West to do "something big," which really means he's been having fun playing outlaw. But the woman he's supposed to marry (Carol White) is tired of waiting and on her way.

So it's now or never for the something big, which involves robbing the treasure hoard of Mexico's most famous bandit. For that, he wants to acquire a Gatling gun. The guy who has the Gatling gun (or will have it) wants a woman. You see where this is going. Baker is holding up stagecoaches, looking for a woman he feels would be appropriate according to the Scriptures, and eventually meets Mary Anna. I'm not aware of the Bible speaking of trading a person for a Gatling gun, but maybe it's a different edition. The Sleazy Bastard Edition. Meanwhile, Miller and his chief scout (Ben Johnson) try unsuccessfully to figure out what it is Baker's planning, beyond "something big."

My dad had autotuned his TV to turn to this because he'd never heard of it. He was not impressed, with any of it. It's more comedy than action movie - the first real action is over an hour in, when Miller catches up to Baker and beats the crap out of him for abducting Mary Anna - but it's not funny. There are some odd characters, but the movie is content to coast on the existence of their quirks, rather than have anyone do something that might prompt laughter. Here's a two-woman gold mine operation, and they're really horny! Baker's future brother-in-law walks around playing bagpipes and dressing like a Scotsman (while his sister speaks with what sounds like an Irish accent)!

The movie starts with a, I think bounty hunter, complaining to Miller that Baker killed his partner (for kicking Baker's dog.) When Miller makes it clear he doesn't care and won't do anything, the cranky guy vows to find someone with a 'fine, delicate hand', to write him a letter to Washington D.C. about this. The guy reappears only at the very end of the movie, still vowing to write the letter. He doesn't try to hunt down Baker, he doesn't try to hamstring Miller, nothing.

Baker has this whole convoluted plan about getting the gun, but he's also hijacking whiskey as a bribe to a local tribe to join his attacking force. Then he rides into town in broad daylight, the brother-in-law playing the bagpipes the whole time. But, having tossed the element of surprise (which it turns out he didn't have to begin with) in the garbage, he keeps the Gatling gun under cover, and half his guys are dead before he gets it into action. Fortunately, none of the bandit's men know how to duck.

Dean Martin expends no particular effort, all lazy charm, easily punctured. Keith seems to be trying to talk without moving his lips for some reason. Honor Blackman's carrying a high-class sensibility and ego, but is somehow taken by Martin's bullshit enough to encourage her husband to let him take the Gatling gun and try his stupid plan. That didn't make any sense whatsoever. He's been exhibiting the same sleazy, Gambit-esque "charm" since he held up her stagecoach, and she wasn't impressed then. And Keith agrees, but not because he's got some plan to recover the gun, arrest Dean Martin and the bandit all at once, just because she asked, I guess.

I'm legitimately disappointed. There were enough elements for either a good comedy Western, or a good action Western. The potential was there, I think the actors had it in them, but what they were given to work with was just kind of trash, and they didn't or couldn't elevate it.