The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976)

Fed up with the team owner's miserly ways, and inspired by fellow ballplayer Leon Carter's (James Earl Jones) discussion of their needs to seize the means of production, Negro League pitcher Bingo Long (Billy Dee Williams) forms a team of the best players in the league. They travel the country, playing the local teams in whatever towns they reach, the money split evenly between the the players.

In much the same way I watched First Wives Club because it was touted in a post about Diane Keaton after her passing, I found out about this movie in a post discussing James Earl Jones' career. because it's really his and Williams' movie. Richard Pryor is the other big name in the cast, as rightfielder Charlie Snow, but his story is he plans to call himself "Carlos Nevada" and get into the white leagues as a Cuban. 

(There's also a recurring gag of Snow trying to explain how to calculate batting average to Holliday, played by Otis Day, a former player rendered mute by a beanball, and never getting it right.)

But it's mostly about Bingo and Leon, fittingly enough a pitcher and a catcher, albeit on rival teams when the game starts. Bingo's all flash and style, starting each game by facing the first batter with no fielders behind him, why asking the crowd (who chant along with him), 'Who gonna hit my invite pitch?' I have no idea what an "invite pitch" is, for the record. Big smiles, slick talk and charm, and Williams has all three in high supply. Bingo tends to talk before thinking, confident they'll figure things out when they have to, and if not, he'll apologize then. He dreams big, and that's not a bad thing, it's just he's not great at the planning on how to make those dreams reality.

He tends to dodge tough conversations, but he's not without principles. When Holliday gets robbed of their money from a game by their former team owner's goons, Bingo can't exactly bring himself to stand up for Holliday, but he pays everyone out of his own pocket to soothe tempers. though he also gives them Carter's share, without telling Carter until much later.

Carter's more well-read, more thoughtful, as you'd expect from a character played by James Earl Jones. Jones also gets to show a little style and fun. In the first scene, he cracks a home run off Bingo, after telling Bingo he stole his girlfriend. Bingo, of course, tries to play it off like he was tired of her, anyway. Carter's the one, when their former bosses start convincing local ballparks not to let them play, who rides ahead alone on his motorcycle to make sure the next game is still on. He's the one who eventually beats up those goons when they take him prisoner, after escaping inside a coffin.

Although it's Bingo who comes up with the idea of eventually challenging white teams, correctly reasoning the Negro League team owners can't do shit to try and intimidate them. And who convinces the team to showboat and play a bit comical to get the crowd to enjoy themselves more. Maybe white folks won't mind seeing their team lose to black players if they get a good laugh out of it in the process.

I was expecting, given this takes place in the 1930s, that there was going to be more danger as a result of angry white people. Certainly when they arrive for their first barnstorming game and the man who set it up tells them they need to drive down Main Street and put on a show. So you have the entire team, slowly parading down the street past a bunch of sour looking crackers, dancing and strutting and playing music and I was thinking this was about to get real ugly.

(I enjoyed the difference in the pre-game festivities between the black and white games. In the games between the black teams, there's singing and dancing and it's like a party. The white ballparks, there's marching bands playing the national anthem while everyone stands solemnly with their hand over their heart like they're watching a procession for a dead war hero. We crackers can take the fun out of anything.)  

Remarkably, it didn't. The majority of the conflict is from the efforts of the Negro League team owners, specifically the funeral home director - "Sallie Potter" played by Ted Ross - that owns Bingo's old team, to nip this barnstorming, profit-sharing business in the bud. Even though it's his fault, after he told his team he was docking them all a day's pay ($5) to cover the cost of a bus ticket to send Holliday home. Plus docking Bingo an extra $5 for fomenting dissension by pointing out Potter ought to pay for the ticket himself. He pissed off Bingo enough that Bingo listened to Carter, and now he doesn't want to accept the consequences. It's gotta be everyone else's problem. Class issues transcend race. Or race doesn't erase class issues?

(However, gender issues apparently trump class solidarity, as Potter is consistently a condescending dick to the one woman owner of a team, played by Mabel King, when she's the only one smart enough to suggest they take advantage of the drawing power of Bingo's team by scheduling "extradition" games against them.)

I'm a little surprised a funeral home director can afford two goons, but Potter certainly gets his money's worth. They, at various points, intimidate ticket booth workers, rob Holliday, maim Charlie, and kidnap Carter ahead of the big game between the barnstormers and a Negro league All-Star team. They don't actually show the maiming, though there's no question of what they do, or the cruelty of using the roar of the crowd when Carter hits a big home run to mask Charlie's screams as they do it.

It was definitely not something I was expecting the movie to do, since most of the roadblocks Potter had put in their path up to then, the team found ways to work around. Sent someone out on point to make sure their next game was still on, start playing white teams, and so on. This is more overt, not something Bingo can clever his way out of, and it exposes just how shoestring their operation is. Paying Charlie's hospital bill leaves the team unable to pay the hotel. When their attempt to duck out the back fails, they end up picking potatoes in a field for a day (24 bushels gets you about two-and-a-half bucks), to try and get Bingo's car out of hock.

They fail, the car gets auctioned, and two players decide to go back to their old teams rather than work in a field. And then Bingo steals a different, newer, car from the guy who bought his car and flees the town, to Carter's immense displeasure. This, people getting hurt, stealing cars, is not what he signed on for. It's not what "seizing the means of production," means to him.

Jones plays Carter as angry, but in a sort of sour, weary way. Even when Bingo tries jumping on his back to stop him walking away, Carter can't get angry enough to knock his ass out, only shove him away. He thought he was making a dream come true, but it's all falling apart, and it makes him a little sick. It would almost have been better for it to remain a dream, rather than see the reality of it. Especially when Bingo's still making these half-ass apologies with that big grin that says, "You can't stay mad at me, can you?" For Bingo, it was maybe just a means to an end, nothing more.

What I Bought 8/6/2026

With five books coming out last week, I was hoping for better luck than finding two, but by the time I made it back from a 2-day work trip, I really wasn't that inclined to care, versus just getting home and crashing out. So we got what we got.

Batgirl #22, by Tate Brombal (writer), Stephen Segovia (artist), Jason Paz (inker), Rain Beredo (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - I've long suspected Batgirl was no mere mortal, but I never would have imagined she was a bunch of flowers.

Cass is still inside her head, confronted by, I'm really not sure what the version of Forget-Me-Not in her head is. Post-hypnotic suggestion hallucination? Anyway, he wants her to recognize she killed his test subject, but when Cass is able to object, she realizes she's not actually the 8-year-old she appears to be. She can speak, which means she can understand words. Including what everybody was saying in those memories.

I mean, I guess? If we assume her memory is that good for things that happened over a decade ago, then I guess maybe she could retroactively piece things together now that she knows spoken language. I'm trying to envision myself as a child, hearing German, then replaying the conversation in my head a decade later with sufficient confidence I remembered words and sounds I didn't know well enough to now understand them.

Anyway, point being, she realizes she and the other girl, Victoria, became friends, despite the best efforts of their respective teachers. Cain couldn't beat empathy out of Cass, and Forget-Me-Not couldn't erase the actual person inside his "doll." Which is what got her killed, she went on a mission and her true self emerged at the wrong time.

Or maybe she didn't die. The body that started all this isn't Victoria, so Cass is holding out hope. And Forget-Me-Notm who was just hanging out in the basement to be confronted by the rest of the supporting cast, let's slip that someone paid him to do this. Is it a mysterious figure in a blue demon mask Jaya is working for? Well, maybe.

So maybe this is Brombal setting things up for the future, or it's their way of letting Cass confront her past and show how far beyond it she's gone. That she's grown to something more than Cain could ever have envisioned. Which ties back to something Bronze Tiger said late in her first ongoing, that Cain made her a weapon, but she made herself a hero. 

Marc Spector: Moon Knight #7, by Jed MacKay (writer), Devmalya Pramanik (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) -  I hope Marc doing a Wolverine pose doesn't mean we're going back to that stretch where he thought he was Wolverine, Spider-Man, or Captain America.

The Midnight Suns bust into the Mansion Ravenous and quickly come under attack from the dragon Ginnaar, now with a body made from the Mansion itself. Which means Blade's chainsaw is insufficient, despite his claim that everything he does is cool. Sounds like someone's buying into his own hype too much. Robbie driving his giant, burning muscle car through its chest doesn't work much better.

Stall tactics aren't going to get it done, so the drastic measure is - Daredevil?! Yes, with his radar sense and agility, the Man With No Fear dives in, avoiding the dragon's fire. Which is nails, because it's made from a house, so I guess fire would be counterproductive. Seriously though, I like that as a nod to Ginnaar's peculiar nature at the moment. Also, Pramanik and Rosenberg bust out the black-and-white line radar vision look for DD's dive, in panels radiating out from a red outline of DD's head. 

Anyway, Daredevil gets in close and wrenches out the sword that apparently still holds the dragon's sword. Which is a little odd to me. The Mansion couldn't release Ginnaar's soul from the sword? Or maybe it chose not to, to keep it in check. Follow orders, or lose access to a physical form. Whatever, dragon defeated, the Mansion emerges in Fairchild's body and Moon Knight - sells out the others. Offering them up to the mansion as pawns in exchange for his bunch. Not Clea, mind you, the man's not a complete imbecile. But Blade, DD, and Ghost Rider appear to be screwed.

The solicits for upcoming issues kind of ruined the surprise, but it's hard to see how this is a smart play, even if Marc is only pretending to be a backstabber. Which I'm not sure it is. If this is the end of Mackay's stint with the character, he could be setting him back to the guy none of the other cape community trust, albeit because he betrayed some of them to save his crew, rather than because he helped Khonshu conquer the world.

Sunday Splash Page #439

"Hero's (Underground) Journey," in Atomic Robo: Dawn of a New Era #4, by Brian Clevinger (writer), Scott Wegener (artist), Shannon Murphy (color artist), Jeff Powell (letterer)

Been a hot minute since we talked about Atomic Robo, huh? Well, more like 8 years. We left off with Savage Sword of Dr. Dinosaur, the penultimate Robo story released through Red 5. Dawn of a New Era is the last story released through IDW. There were several mini-series in between, none of which had a splash page. Which wouldn't necessarily stop me now, but back then, when I was more rigid about the "splash page" thing, and after I'd spent several weeks on Robo already, was a good excuse to move on.

So what happened in the 5 years between those 2 mini-series? Briefly:

Knights of the Golden Circle: Dr. Dinosaur's "time bomb" (5 nukes he stole, tied together in the shape of a dinosaur) threw Robo back to the 1860s. 20 years on, he teams up with Bass Reeves and Doc Holliday to stop Helsingard from conquering the United States, before Robo's reactor runs out of power.

Ring of Fire: A group called ULTRA has seized control of every super-science organization on Earth, including Tesladyne, under the auspices of saving the world from the Biomega threat. What's left of Tesladyne have to find what's left of Robo, build him a body, and find a way to stop an entire living island without causing nuclear winter.

Temple of Od: Set in the 1930s, Robo's on a mission in Manchuria for the U.S. government, working with Chinese resistance (including old acquaintance Helen McCallister from Deadly Art of Science) to rescue a Chinese quantum mechanics expert the Japanese captured because he figured out how to harness zero-point energy, what Edison called the Odic Force, and which a Japanese physicist has turned into a weapon.

Spectre of Tomorrow: Robo has the new Tesladyne open, which is going to focus on science and not saving the world from random weird shit. Seriously, you guys. Robo means it! To prove it, he's spending all his time holed up in his lab, while Vik and Lang try to deal with Richard Branson's annoying Homeowner's Association Complaints. Then unknown cyborgs start breaking down all over the world, and that leads back to Hashima Island (from The Ghost of Station X) and ALAN.

Which brings us here. One of two big developments is gung-ho badass Jenkins appears for the first time since Savage Sword of Dr. Dinosaur, looking a lot like Cable, with the cybernetic eye and hand. He's taking a break from waging his one-man shadow war against the forces that destroyed Tesladyne because he's worried about an invasion from the Vampire Dimension. He needs Tesladyne to help kick those bloodsuckers in the keister.

The Tesladyne Institute he finds is more of a school, with 3 students - Margo, Ben, and Olivia. Who immediately set to sneaking around the facility and trying to listen in on faculty meetings. As good, curious action scientists-to-be should. More troubling for Jenkins, Tesladyne has just 4 mentors. Great, in theory, ratio for teaching. Not so great for stopping an invasion from an entire planet of vampires.

In practice, it's not so great for the teaching either. Bernard, never entirely over losing the connection he had during the adventure in Hollow Earth (though at least he's past his apathy), is using mapping an extinct volcano as a test for a potential mobile robot assistant for future exoplanet exploration. Then he disappears (as far as everyone on the surface knows.) Vik and Lang (the latter rocking a white beard, making it look like he's aged dramatically since Spectre of Tomorrow) are supposed to be on vacation, but find an incursion from the Vampire Dimension at the particle accelerator. Jenkins? Jenkins is not suitable for young children. Or college-age students. Or anyone, actually.

Clevinger gives Robo a good line when Foley asks, in regards to what Jenkins might be able to teach, what the man does in his off-time. Robo's response? 'Intensifying isn't really an answer, is it?' 

Which leaves Foley, the youngest mentor, to do the teaching. Here, that's mostly about getting them to understand the difference between practical and impractical science. Being asked to design a paper airplane and coming up with a design that requires warp drive and hypothetical materials one Planck width thick is certainly creative, but not useful for getting you an actual paper airplane.

The other big development is the emergence of ALAN 2.0. Robo shot the computer that housed ALAN's brain with, as he put it, a lot of bullets, at the end of Ghost of Station X. But they needed its computing power and manufacturing capabilities to build Robo a new reactor power source in Ring of Fire, and that activated enough sentience for it to upload into some little drones Robo built during Spectre of Tomorrow that helped him keep Helsingard from taking control of ALAN's resources.

The rest of the staff are understandably pissed once they find out, given ALAN was going to use the Earth for fuel and irradiate the rest when he blasted off into space with the power of the hundreds of nukes he stole (and framed Robo for that theft, putting them on the run.) Robo argues this is the original version of ALAN Dr. Turing created, before decades alone in the dark. They can raise him to respect humanity, rather than regard them as a resource to expend if other things appear to take priority.

Lang's extremely hostile reaction is strong evidence Robo might have been right keeping ALAN hidden in his lab while he built him a body and taught him how to control it. When Lang comments it isn't reassuring to have one artificial intelligence vouching for another, everyone else looks either horrified or vaguely embarrassed at such a robo-ist comment. Even Jenkins is standing there with a frown like, "Yeah, that was over the line."

At least this version of ALAN can run if they decide to kill him. Initially he's just a box on a table, looking about like a Playstation 4 with one of those vertical stands. Wegener gives ALAN a much less formidable body than Robo's. Human-shaped, bilateral symmetry, opposable thumbs and all, but wiry (taller, too.) Which may not mean much when you're talking limbs constructed of who knows what metal, but it doesn't hurt. Robo outright says he gave ALAN a body like humans to make them at least somewhat more inclined to accept him, the same reason Tesla did that for him.

Wegener also gives ALAN a video-screen for a face, which can project various symbols. Smiley faces, question marks, things like that. Which is both more and less expressive than Robo's own face. Sometimes it's just a blank screen, which would be unnerving to look at, but Robo can really only show emotion through his eyes and body language. ALAN at least can project basic emotions.

By the end of the mini-series, nothing has been resolved as far as the vampires, or Jenkins' concerns regarding the lack of preparation, but ALAN is the newest student of the Institute, and his classmates seem to take well to him. And this makes Foley a good choice for the mentor, since she seemed the most in alignment with Robo's idea that helping ALAN feel like part of society would make him less inclined to see humanity as expendable.

Whether that's going to work out? Well. . . 

Saturday Splash Page #241

"God's Mistake," in "Future Present from God", in Wanted!, by Eiichiro Oda

I reviewed this 5 months ago, so we won't belabor the point. Wanted! is the collection of Oda's work prior to starting One Piece. It consists of 5 stories, including Romance Dawn, a kind of first draft for One Piece, as it stars a rubber boy with a straw hat named Luffy, who wants to be a pirate, but ends up fighting more dishonest pirates.

Most of the stories revolve around twist endings, and the protagonist, up to that point portrayed as a goofball or not someone to take seriously, turns out to be a badass. Gill Bastar, star of Wanted! spends most of the story either avoiding the many bounty hunters after him for the price on his head, or defeating them through trickery like, "Look over there!" It's only at the very end he turns out to be such a great marksman the ghost of a bounty hunter he killed with trickery moves on to the other side, having realized (if unwilling to admit it) he'll never find someone skilled enough to take revenge for him.

Describing him like that, Gill sounds like Vash the Stampede if he really did turn murderous once pushed far enough.

You get stories with a swordsman whose fixation on disrespect appears to doom a town to destruction via dragon, who in the end exposes a couple of frauds, and kills the dragon in one swing. Or a monk who spends most of the story running in terror from an evil spirit haunting a forest, only to immediately overpower the spirit once he learns it killed and ate his master. Maybe Oda wanted to do the comedy, but still have the cool finish. I'm not sure it really works, as I don't find much of it funny. 

You see his artwork evolve, especially as he gives himself more room on the page by decreasing panels. His lines tighten up and grow thicker, the characters look less sketched and more sturdy and defined. It doesn't hurt his ability to exaggerate expressions, and I think the additional space helps his action sequences.

What I Bought 8/3/2026 - Part 2

I guess Sony honked some people off when they announced they'd cease producing physical copies of their games in the next couple of years. Because Sony has a past record of removing stuff people bought off the electronic store if they happen to lose the rights to it. Which tells me I need to hurry up and buy whatever games I plan to get electronically, then never connect my PS4 to the Internet again. Won't be difficult; I only connect now when I want to see if the most recent sale put anything I want at a price point I'll pay.

The Matron #2, by David Bowles and Drew Edwards (writers), Monica Gallagher (artist), Harry Saxon (color artist), Stephen Kok (letterer) - Somebody needed to ask for help with their markings ahead of the Big Homecoming Game.

Like this first issue, this is split between two threads. Unlike the first issue, the threads take place concurrently, rather than a half-century apart. College students Roz and Samantha leave their classes on a quest for food, followed by a trip back to Sam's dorm room. The two are apparently girlfriends, or at least moving that direction, though Sam has misgivings. Partially because they, as Roz puts it, share two ancestors, six generations ago, but mostly because of the ill will Roz's grandmother bears anyone with the last name Maldonado, including Sam.

This is a valid concern, as we see in the other thread, which focuses on Zina and her diner job. Or her former diner job, as her boss has sold the diner to some gentrifiers who plan to turn the it into a 'gourmet taqueria.' So Zina's fired, but she got 10 months pay as severance, so it's all good, right?

Well, not really. Zina felt like she was family with these folks, but apparently not. And like Michael Jordan, she took that personally. Maybe they shouldn't have asked her to put patties in the freezer right after letting her go. She hears a voice, speaking in a language which Google Translate says is Russian, frost briefly grows around her eyes, and she picks up a meat cleaver. Or the Matron picks up the cleaver, as the font in Zina's voice balloons shifts.

The actual killing is presented by Gallagher as methodical and calm. A single chop to the chest for the guy, then another to the neck for the woman. There's no frantic hacking or slashing. She does respond to Sally's plea to stop, but only to tell her Zina is gone. There is one extreme close-up panel of Zina's eyes, colored in red, but she isn't getting wild. Just stating a fact.

Worth noting that Sam and Roz don't view the change in downtown as negatively as Zina, though Sam had some misgivings about her father's involvement. I imagine the sushi place they have dinner at is probably part of the revamping. Roz is hoping to move forward, that maybe they can leave the mess of the past behind. Zina, even if she's focused on caring for family, is still fixated on that past. The Maldonados are enemies, full stop. So that's bound to be an issue.

Vampyrates! #1, by Fred van Lente (writer), Luca Pizzari (artist), Adam Guzowski (color artist), Jodie Troutman (letterer) -  The exclamation point appears to be part of the official title, so I'm leaving it in.

In this world, vampires rule, and humans are an underclass. And if vampires rule, then they're going to fight over which of them specifically, gets to rule. But whatever war was going on, ended without anyone telling Captain Akeyo to stop attacking what she thought were enemy ships, which are now allied. So she's considered a pirate now.

As it turns out, the war is ending via arranged marriage. The Empress Nira isn't happy about it, but you gotta do what you gotta do. And what her cousin the Duchess thinks she's gotta do is stage a violent coup. Which at least results in the death of Nira's betrothed, but also the deaths of all her guards. I'm not sure who the robed guys that serve the Duchess are, but they're apparently big and tough enough Nira's guards go down like Hand ninjas against Wolverine.

It is a little weird that in one panel, Nira is calling for her guards while wielding two clean swords, but in the next panel, her guards are being slaughtered, and both her swords have blood running down them.

Nira flees, gets wounded with an elaborate crossbow that fires jagged bolts, and only escapes because she lands in the red light district, and all the ladies of the evening are wearing versions of her dress, confusing those hunting her. But they're not the only ones confused. Nira had a human lover (taboo!), a man named Davin who wants to explore some uncharted region of the world. They had a bit of an argument, but he made an offer for her to board his ship and flee. Nira tries for it, but winds up on Akeyo's ship instead, and gets K.O.'ed. Someone wasn't paying enough attention to directions!

 

I am confused why Akeyo would be anchored at the harbor of the kingdom that just declared her a pirate and put a bounty on her head. I guess you don't survive as a captain who actually attacks other ships without being a little bold. Or a bit of a gambler, and Akeyo recognizes Nira from her image on the nation's coins.

Pizzari's art has a but of an Adam Kubert vibe to it, in the squared off jaws, the art that kind of straddles the line between angular and blocky, and the shading. I was a little confused during the fight because it seemed like Nira was using two swords, then one, then two again once she grabbed one of the robed guy's swords. Turns out the sword the Duchess offered her was still sheathed, so the initial second sword was actually just the scabbard. Does raise another question of why the Duchess did that. Attacking from behind during a wedding doesn't seem like the act of someone concerned with a fair fight, but giving Nira a weapon does.

I'll say this, Pizzari definitely draws some stylish pirates. All of Akeyo's crew that we actually see have distinct, often wildly different looks. One of them appears to have a beard that's on fire. Seems like the sort of thing to get looked at, if only so the captain doesn't have to smell burning hair all the time.

Anyway, it's a promising enough start. A pirate with a possible grudge and uncertain motives. An empress on the run with a possible ally if she can find Davin. And there's the mystery of that unexplored region, which van Lente could use in any number of ways. Hideout, source of allies, or possibly a reveal that things are very different in the rest of the world than what Nira or her people imagine.

Escape From Kathmandu - Kim Stanley Robinson

This is 4 novellas, all taking place around Kathmandu and the Himalayan Mountains. They focus mainly on George Fergusson, and George "Freds" Fredericks, a couple of Americans living in Kathmandu, when they aren't making a living guiding people on treks up the mountains.

The two of them meet when George reads a letter addressed to Freds at the hotel where George is staying. A letter from an acquaintance of Freds, another American who fled academia to be a guide, but now needs help rescuing a yeti the research group he guided has captured. The rescue is somewhat complicated by the presence of Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter (and the accompanying horde of Secret Service agents), but they eventually pull it off.

George should serve as a cautionary tale for reading someone else's mail, because now that he's on Freds' radar, the subsequent stories all involve Freds dragging George into one mess or another. Help a reincarnated monk finally stop being considered a disciple by getting him up Everest. Help keep a road from being constructed too close to the valley which holds the fabled city of Shambhala. Keep a project to give Kathmandu an actual sewer system from taking place, because it'll reveal secret tunnels that an underground Nepali government is using to spy on the current Nepali government.

The Nepali government is presented as so massively corrupt, this book made me want to go back and re-read Forget Kathmandu to see how different the perspective of a local was on the government prior to the military coup. Although Robinson published this in 1989, so the situation could have changed quite a bit in the intervening decade.

There's usually some additional element Robinson throws in, though he switches around which is the Chekov's Gun. In the story about climbing, "Mother Goddess of the World," Freds mentions early on that his friend is the disciple to a really strict llama, who imposed a harsh condition to be met before a temple could be rebuilt and the disciple could stop being a disciple. But for much of the story, George and Freds are helping a group of British climbers, who want to stop an expedition searching for Edmund Hillary's remains from potentially finding him and returning his body to England. It's only late in the proceedings that Freds reveals the truth to George.

Which is one of the things I didn't like about the stories: Freds is constantly pulling a bait-and-switch on George. There's always some hidden catch to whatever he asks for help with, and that catch always ends up endangering George's life. "The True Nature of Shangri-La", it falls on George to try and stop this road from being built, and after he exhausts himself trying to navigate the labyrinthine and corrupt corridors of the Nepali government, he gets injured when they end up making the Chinese and Nepali guard outposts near a key pass think they were attacked by each other. And then he nearly dies of dysentery.

And the whole time, he's been catching grief from people for not getting enough done. That's the only one of the 4 stories Robinson writes from Freds' perspective rather than George's, and it doesn't do a lot for my opinion of Freds. He's sort of vaguely concerned for George's deteriorating mental and physical well-being, but in a vague, stoner-beach-bum way. "Oh, George is seeing how things really are in this country and running himself ragged to try and fix things. But he just doesn't get what's really important, maaaaaaaan." You dragged him into this, asshole. It's your problem, but he's the one actually trying to fix it, while you sit around and smoke dope.

It's a bit of a weird disconnect between tone and substance, when I think about it. Even though there is sometimes the threat of death in the stories, the plots are treated as sort of zany. Oops, we've got the Nepali President's personal guard chasing us because George was temporarily insane, let's escape on a mine cart that takes us all the way to a tiger-infested jungle! We helped a yeti escape by dressing him in a Dodgers' baseball cap and teaching him to say, "Namaste"! But, especially in the last two stories, it feels like we're watching George steadily self-destruct, like a jet being flown past its tolerances. Which is not really zany or funny. 

"Germ theory just ain't intuitive, George."

"Neither is religion."

"I'm not so sure of that."

"But why should there be a difference?"

"It may be that the reason for the existence of the universe is a more pressing question for most people than why they get the runs."

What I Bought 8/3/2026 - Part 1

I was on the phone with my dad a couple of weeks ago, detailing all these various headaches from work. A public meeting that would likely go to a hearing. Another public meeting filling in for The Coworker Who Doesn't Understand How Bribes Work, the AI nonsense, some other stuff.

He said, 'Sounds like you've had a rough few weeks.' I replied, 'All that was just on Tuesday.' He laughed. It's OK, that's what I do to keep from going insane.

Is Ted OK? #6, by Dave Chisholm (writer/artist/color artist/letterer) - The smile says good things, but the lightning eyes make me nervous.

First off, this final issue is 40 pages, at no additional cost. The 6-issue mini is 170 pages, total, so Chisholm's trying to provide value for the money, that's for sure. Anyway, after getting a massive hole blown in his chest last issue, Ted awakens in the weird tunnel he's seen previously, and briefly meets a woman named Kim. There are what look like tablets or pieces of paper coating the walls, and touching one lets Ted see someone's thoughts, but also gets him revved up again.

Good thing, because he, Sarah, and the doctor are about to crash. Oh, and Brody, but whatever. They make it out alive, landing in front of the Dome, where Noah is floating and crackling and assuring his legion of adoring imbeciles he's going to protect them from shapeshifting aliens.

Noah's actually in one of those Manowars, except the doc says his consciousness is elsewhere. Ted and Noah throw down, which does not go well for Ted, despite at one point slamming Noah into the Moon. The doc goads Noah into turning on his machine, and then Ted kamikazes himself. Not, critically, to destroy Noah, but because when Noah activates all the other people like Ted by turning on the machine, Ted'd back in that tunnel, where each of those little panels or pages connects to those people. So he can disrupt the paranoia and whatever Noah's been feeding them, if he has any hopeful memories to do it with.

And he does, because of Sarah. Because she was the first real friend he ever had. That prompts Sarah to admit she took this job to run from losing her girlfriend back on the other coast. A woman named Kim. Ted reminded her of Kim, which is why she reached out to him. So maybe they helped each other. 

Ted makes his big play, and Chisholm illustrates the pages of Ted reaching the others as this winding path through deep red panels of enraged people. Except each person gets a blue-white shard in their head, the connection to Ted. And as you progress to the next set of pages, the shards get larger, showing Ted's fond memories. The red fades, gradually overtaken by blue as the others stop feeling as angry. They don't necessarily have to be alone and mistrusting of others.

So they swarm Noah and throw him and his Dome into the Sun to protect the world, rather than making it into some sort of hellscape Noah can either rule or "save.". So his consciousness retreats to his back-up, the doc's missing nephew. but without the machine, his consciousness is sort of metabolized by the kid's. Kim is able to speak to Sarah briefly through what's left of Ted's body, and basically tells her it's great she wants to help people, but she shouldn't feel guilty for enjoying herself, or feel like it's a betrayal of Kim's memory. Which seems to convince Sarah to do something else with her life, to move forward. Though now she's leaving long text messages for Ted, who may not be dead.

The whole "strength of connections" theme makes me wonder about the Dome's significance. Because it has a honeycomb design, lots of borders connecting into something larger and stronger than they would be separately. But it was being used to hide Noah's plans, cover up what he did just to try and feel special, keeping everyone else sealed out and away from his special machine. But The Dome is an inanimate object, not people, so maybe its design isn't meant to be significant.

Or it's just an example of how Noah sees connection, as something to be molded to suit his purpose. He doesn't contribute anything to it, just uses it. Uses the doc's love for her nephew to keep her quiet. Uses empathetic people like Sarah to monitor his potentially useful tools. Keep him shielded from any consequences, by keeping everyone focused on being angry or afraid in other directions.