Sunday Splash Page #433

"Crystallized," in Amethyst (vol. 4) #2, by Amy Reeder (writer/artist/colorist), Gabriela Downie (letterer)

Released in 2020, Amy Reeder's Amethyst mini-series was about, I'm not sure. Not to believe in fairy tales, because things are rarely that simple? "Lies my parents told me?" Everybody loves to see a winner fall?

Given the sheer number of reboots, resets, re-brandings, whatever, I have no idea the specifics of Amethyst's situation in 2020. Reeder seems to incorporate the original Princess of Gemworld mini-series, but maybe nothing after that. Certainly nothing about Amethyst being a Lord of Order, which is one good thing. On the other hand, maybe there was some stuff from Bendis' Young Justice book reflected here? There's no explanation, for example, about why Amy's a blonde in all the flashbacks, but sports lavender hair here. But I sure wasn't reading a Bendis-written team book in the late 2010s, so I don't what, if anything, made carried over.

What we've got is, Amy's Earth parents are alive and aware she's a princess from another world. They're proud of her, even if Amy finds it embarrassing and can't wait to return to Gemworld. Where she finds her kingdom destroyed, and all her people missing. Worse, all the people she thought were her friends turn their backs on her requests for help, throwing in a lot claims about how they always suffer in Amethyst's battles, and then she just flies off on her horse, and they have their own problems. Basically behaving like a bunch of citizens of Marvel Universe's Earth.

Reeder increases the variety between the kingdoms. The citizens of Turquoise have four arms now, Aquamarine is much more of an undersea kingdom, the people sporting smooth blue skin. Sapphire is more of a Blade Runner look, with towers and neon lights and tubes that can transport you places (sometimes against your will.) 

Amy manages two allies: a young woman from Turquoise named Phoss (with a giant caterpillar named Stan, because Phoss' girlfriend thinks Earth is fascinating), and the alleged prince of Aquamarine, Maxixe, who rides on a narwhal. The further things go, the more Amy learns all those stories she was told about House Amethyst being the beloved protectors of Gemworld were lies. Not that Dark Opal wasn't a threat, more her parents weren't fending him off from the goodness of their hearts. 

And yet, in the '80s Amethyst books, everyone is always expecting Amy to handle everything. Yeah, she asks for help, but she's also always on the front lines, trying to deal with the problem, whether it was Dark Opal, or Fire Jade, or that creepy little Chaos kid. And it cost her plenty, even if some of that is no longer in continuity. But the Gemworld motto is, "like parents, like child," and so they all assume she's like her parents and expecting them to bow and scrape.

Reeder does write Amy as more than a little conceited, prone to making demands or ignoring suggestions from other people. So it won't surprise you that she's terrible at diplomacy. Again, these people she's asking for help have been expecting her to bail their asses out since she was 13, and even if she's older, she's not that much older. Reeder draws her as still a little gangly and awkward, all her expressions are big ones because she's not used to moderating her emotions. She never had to, other people handled the calm stuff, she handled the hitting stuff. So it's hard for me to judge her for being hurt they all tell her to hit the road.

(Also, somehow, the initial outfit Reeder gives her, while more successfully evoking "magic princess" than the '80s look, is somehow less practical for someone leaping around swinging a sword. High heels, a big flowy dress she has to hike up to try and run. I guess she was planning on a fancy party. Eventually she switches to something with actual boots and leggings, maintaining the shades of purple color aesthetic, but making it less eye-searingly bright.)

But hitting the road, rather than flying over it, exposes Amy to more of the "true" Gemworld, which is important for her to grow as a person. Apparently Gemworld, like me with my Skittles, segregates their different gems. Except for one ostracized community, called The Banned, who use all different types of gems and are generally being run out of one kingdom or the other.

End game, Amethyst saves her people, defeats Dark Opal, gets no help from most of the kingdoms that used to be her friends, learns her birth parents are dicks, but finds a new community of people who want her to lead them. Although I would have liked some explanation from the person from Emerald who said Amy was a natural at being a king. Because she fought? Because she tried to protect people who couldn't protect themselves? There are certainly worse qualities. Either way, Amy accepts and messy, happy-cries about it. 

Saturday Splash Page #235

"Out of the Box," in West of Sundown #1, by Tim Seeley and Aaron Campbell (writers), Jim Terry (artist), Triona Farrell (color artist), Crank! (letterer)

Dooley O'Shaughnessy's an Irish immigrant deeply regretting getting involved in the American Civil War. As it's only 1861, he's got several years of it to go. Unless he dies in battle. Or happens to unearth a vampire who tried to sleep out the conflict in a grave.

Remarkable though the odds are, it's the third thing that happens, and Dooley spends the next decade as Constance der Abend's loyal assistant, helping her to slake her thirst on the corrupt or wicked. Robber barons, child killers, highwaymen, people like that. Until someone burns her home, and the native soil within her coffin, forcing Constance to return to the place of her birth. A town sits there now, Sangre de Moro, and it's home to its fair share of monsters.

The book ran 10 issues, split into 5-issue arcs, in 2022 and 2023. The first arc was Constance (or Rosa, as her birth name) trying to get some soil from where she was born, and finding her birthplace now home to some strange cult. She and Dooley are also pursued by Frankenstein's Monster and a creepy little scientist by the name of Griffin. The Monster found God and decided the Lord said kill monsters. Griffin just wants to dissect strange things in the hopes of unlocking the keys to something more.

In the second arc, the quartet have come to an uneasy detente, but new agents move into town at the behest of Dr. Moreau, and play to both Constance's ego (she was a renowned opera singer in New York before the flight west) and her thirst (she's trying to only feed on the evil, but the town is too small and lacking in such people.)

Seeley and Campbell pull in horror elements from a lot of sources. Unfortunately, most of them are ones I'm not familiar with, so any significance kind of whizzes right past me. I recognize Moreau selling the land he'd purchased to a brokerage in England run by a Renfield is a Dracula reference. That the "blind god" Griffin sees when he lets Moreau experiment on him is probably Lovecraftian. Maybe the grey little things roaming the wilderness that cry "ooot!" and have a paralytic tongue are (Canadian?) chupacabras. The fact Constance's father became a werewolf by eating part of the dog he killed trying to protect his wife and child (killing his wife in the process)? Don't get that. Is that a normal method of becoming a werewolf? I thought they had to bite you, not the other way around.

That's probably not an issue, other than I'm missing details. Seeley and Campbell establish that this or that constitutes a Problem, and the cast need to confront it. Terry and Farrell, who illustrate the entire series, keep the threats grounded and solid, only veering occasionally into something that hints at being beyond perception. Moreau's beast-people are basically human, just with animals parts stitched on here and there. But there's a banshee in the second arc, and her face is kept in shadow, save for her teeth, which gleam out of that darkness. In the first arc, the quartet pass through some weak point between dimensions and encounter something that's possessed a horse. Terry and Farrell channeled some strong Berni Wrightson for that creature.

The series really revolves around Constance and Dooley's relationship, and that's where I think it falls short. Not that it's a poorly set up relationship. Dooley feels grateful to Constance for helping him escape the war and educating him, but is growing increasingly uneasy at what he's part of. Constance likes Dooley, probably sees him as a bit of a wayward youth (he's an adult, but she's over 200, so it's a fair perspective) to guide and tease. She cares about him enough to mediate her hunger, but at the same time, resents him a little for his morality that constrains her.

The issue is, Seeley and Campbell leave a lot of things unresolved, or meat on the bone, if you prefer. The first arc turns on Dooley and the Monster, and to a lesser extent, Griffin, deciding to try and deal with this crazy cult leader who has his followers drinking the blood of Constance's father to try and ascend to some higher plane. Constance wants no part of it, until her father (who she claims to despise and want to see dead) points out she cares about Dooley. Then she turns around and shows up to help. Why then, due to words of someone she doesn't care about?

That isn't resolved by the second arc, when Dooley seems bent on trying to protect the citizens of Sangre de Moro from supernatural threats, but can't do much on his own. Even the Monster is limited. A lot of it falls to Constance, who still doesn't really care. Even with her native soil readily at hand, she needs blood, and desires praise from people she thinks are worth it. (Bit of a social climber.) When the eastern businessmen, Moreau's lackeys, show up, talking about bringing the railroad through town, which will mean more people, specifically more evil people, Constance is all ears. That they promise to build an opera house, praise her singing, only makes the offer sweeter.

But even if Constance acknowledges they played on her ego, and she should have listened to Dooley, the core problem is not resolved. Whether she continues to help Dooley with his defender of the night act or not, she's a vampire. She needs blood. Sangre de Moro is a pissant, backwater town in the middle of the desert. If she's going to willingly restrict her potential prey, she's going to starve. No solution is offered, not even Dooley occasionally opening a vein for her. The friction between Dooley's Christian morality, and the necessities of Rosa's existence, remain unaddressed.

(She comments once during their flight west, that if he can't find someone, she may have to feed on him. Dooley treats it as a joke. I don't think it was.)

Maybe if the book continued, they were going to address that, but it's been over 3 years, so I doubt anything is on the way. 

What I Bought 6/24/2026

Alright, this is it. Last day - hopefully - I have to play fake boss. He's supposed to be back in the office Monday. I'm so ready to be done with the added stress. It makes me dread getting up, and makes me want to go to bed earlier so I can wake up and be one day closer to being done.

Here's two X-books.

Generation X-23 #5, by Jody Houser (writer), Marco Renna (artist), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - That is definitely a picture of Laura Kinney lunging at the reader, claws extended.

X-80, the time traveler that originally clued Laura into this whole mess, shows up to rescue her. This is a younger version than the one Laura met earlier, because time travel, although that power is one that was grafted onto her later. The energy blades X-Infinite uses are her original mutation.

While Infinite drags Gabby off to use as a genetic material source, and the rest of the cast figure out he's a bad guy, 80 takes Laura on a trip through the past to see how things got to that point. Infinite (X-39, then) used to try and protect the others by getting the guards angry at him, but eventually a Dr. Chiles (and for some reason that name seems familiar) convinced him to help her with this grafting of powers. Except she was only interested in powers rich humans would pay for, which apparently doesn't include having wings and feathers? I mean, there are lots of other powers I'd rather have, but it's not a bad power.

Laura and 80 rescue the others, then free Gabby. Whose enhanced senses somehow still work, even with the mutant power neutralizing collar on. Don't quite understand that. Laura's willing to leave Infinite there and take the others to safety, but 74 decides to blow him up. Except 66 - with the bird powers - throws herself on the grenade, so he's still alive.

If the point of this arc was to give Laura and Gabby a supporting cast - and the remainder of this bunch are going to live with them, so that seems to be the case - Houser probably should have moved faster. Speed-run Infinite's reveal as the villain, weed out whoever you were going to kill, get on with having Laura be a leader/mentor/friend to the survivors. Especially given Marvel's quick-trigger on the cancellation button these days, I'm not sure you can afford to burn 5 issues just getting to the actual point of your book.

(Also kind of strange to introduce the Kimura Scorpion-bot and not have it be a bigger deal. Maybe save that for after Infinite was dealt with, or vice versa.) 

Especially since none of the new characters Laura's going to be interacting with have much in the way of personalities yet. 92 is silent and lurks in the walls, 99 is chipper and playful, which seems to be designed for her to interact with Gabby rather than Laura. 74 is the one with a quick temper. That's pretty much what I've got on them so far.

Moonstar #4, by Ashley Allen (writer), Edoardo Audino (artist), Arthur Hesli (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - We got a zombie bear, zombie elk (stag?), zombie wolf, and zombie hyena? I was thinking this was in North America, in which case the hyena's a long way from home, but they end up in Iran, so maybe all those are native fauna.

Dani thinks it through and concludes Kyrion will want to kill her parents in front of her. So they have time to get to the tablet first, and hide it, then rescue her parents. Dani has enough of the residual magic from the sword infecting her to use it as a tracking beacon, so they fly to Iran on Brightwind. Dani says she learned a spell that can provide acceleration over short distances, but Colorado to Iran wouldn't seem to qualify as short.

As it turns out, this is where Kian grew up, and where he first started messing with magic, which is why his eyes are messed up now. Something else that's messed up: the native wildlife, which is back from the dead and running rampant. Kian tries some kind of spell to dissolve the reanimated corpses, but they just combine into a monstrosity that would make John Carpenter proud. I mean, that thing is truly disgusting looking, props to Audino.

Dani's able to panic the chimera by hurting it, then playing off the instinctive reaction that pain causes, which leaves them free to continue to the tablet. Kian keeps advising her to at least consider alternative approaches, like taking out Kyrion's backup and saving her parents, but Dani won't be swayed. She's certain she can save everyone if she does things her way.

It's funny she doesn't ever point out that if they don't keep Kyrion from getting the tablet, saving her parents will be a moot point, because he'll kill everyone. As it turns out, the tablet is somehow too big to move now, and Kyrion's brought her parents along to use it as a sacrificial altar. And Dani's arrows don't seem to be doing much. That's not a great turn of events.

I'm curious to see how Allen wraps this up. Kyrion and Kian both keep commenting on Dani's optimism or hopeful attitude, which feels significant in a story about accepting death as part of life. Or refusing to accept it, in Kyrion's case. Whether Dani saves people today, she can't save them forever, but she still persists in trying, and in believing she can save everyone today. I don't know where Allen's going with that. There's also the fact Kian's caught feelings, as we get a panel where he's very close and asking if she can lend him some courage, while Hesli colors the background a very soft focus pink. Dani's either oblivious or too locked in to notice, so I guess we'll see if Kian just booked himself a room in the fridge next month.

Redshift - Al Sarrantonio (ed.)

A collection of 30 stories by various authors, placed under the heading of "speculative fiction." The lengths vary, a few only a couple of pages, others closer to 50. It seems like they're supposed to be science fiction - Sarrantonio apparently wanted something like a modern version of what Harlan Ellison pulled together in the '60s - but some don't have much sci-fi. Joe Haldermann's "Road Kill" feels like the outline of a script for a serial killer thriller, with a tiny bit of science fiction tacked on at the end.

Sarrantonio's own offering, "Billy the Fetus," is a bizarre piece about the child of Billy the Kid and the woman who apparently killed him and every other man that fucked her, and what the fetus learned about the world from the songs she sang while he was in her womb. Harry Turtledove's is set in Afghanistan during the 1980s, and involves a dragon. It's not a bad story, I'm just not sure how it's either science fiction or speculative fiction.

It was rough sledding at times, is what I'm getting at. Thomas Disch's "In Xanadu" was probably the first one I actually enjoyed, and that was over 100 pages in. Either that or James Patrick Kelly's "Unique Visitors." Both are brief and focused on unpleasant forms of immortality people tried to buy themselves. In contrast, David Morrell has an entry, "Resurrection," about people sacrificing their present and futures for a bit of the past they can't bring themselves to let go of.

The most noteworthy thing to me about Joyce Carol Oates' "Commencement," was the realization I've apparently been confusing Oates with some other writer. Which one I don't know, as I thought she was part of the Lost Generation, hanging around Paris with Gertrude Stein and Hemingway. As for the story itself, I figured out the basic arc two pages in, and the rest felt like killing time until the climax. I didn't even attend my own college graduation ceremony, why would I want to read about a fictional one?

There were some stretches where I got into the stories more. Paul Di Filippo's "Weeping Walls" was farcical in a way I enjoyed. Meaning it was cynical towards targets I don't mind seeing take the hits. I wouldn't have minded it if were a bit longer (it was ~15 pages.) That was followed by Gregory Benford's "Anomalies," which was kind of clever, with a nice twist at the end.

I think I preferred stories where the characters are human or close enough the writer doesn't spend a lot of effort describing some alien being or setting, utilizing made up terms I can't visualize from what's on the page well enough to connect with the story. Like, "Pockets" had weird bubbles people can visit other places through and time moves differently, but the people are still basically people. Recognizable in their follies and desires, even if the setting is somewhat different. Stephen Baxter's "In the Un-Black," I couldn't really wrap my head around what sort of society he was trying to describe. Not well enough to care about the characters caught in it, anyway.

'He went to the bubble and kicked it angrily. He couldn't feel anything but "stop," with his sneaker on. It wasn't like kicking an object, it was like something stopped you, turned you back towards your own time flow. Just "stopness." It was saying "no" with the stuff of forever itself. There was no way to look inside it. Once someone crawled through a pocket's navel, it sealed up all over.' - from "Pockets, by Rudy Rucker and John Shirley

A Possible Autumn of Abundance

The title's not entirely accurate. In terms of single issues, there wasn't much new I'd buy in September, though there are a few things worth mentioning. It was collected editions and OGNs that caught the eye.

What's new? DC's got a handful of new series, some of which appear to be going unusual directions with the concepts. Teen Titans is Jason Todd helping new characters look for a missing friend of theirs, while they're uneasy about his lethal approach to problem-solving. Legion of Super-Heroes mentions "Brainiac 1 of 5" trying to put together a team of rebels from across the cosmos. I guess LOSH fans are used to getting something different every time. Doom Patrol is doing a heroes-for-hire approach, although the main takeaway I had was Elasti-Girl's costume on the cover makes her look like the Madame Rouge from the Teen Titans cartoon.

Marvel, in full panic mode as their hysterical flailing fails to produce results, is running their Armaggedon thing at the same time as Queen in Black at the same time as DNX. None of which are increasing the amount of their comics I buy. They're dragging Fantastic Four into DNX, so that's one comic I'm not buying in September. They're also doing a series of one-hots for the 25th anniversary of the Marvel Mangaverse, which I don't remember being terribly popular, but what the hell. A drowning man will reach for anything thrown to him. Also, a new Avengers book whose roster feels like Chip Zdarsky is nostalgic for Bendis' New Avengers.

I do not share such nostalgia. 

That depressing nonsense aside, here are some OGNs and TPBs from publishers that aren't hapless dopes. Avery Hill Publishing has Owen Pomery's The Hard Switch. I really need to write more carefully, I originally read my notes as "The Hard Scotch." This was released through some other publisher 3 years ago, but is being re-released now. Humanity's about to run out of what it needs for faster-than-light travel, meaning everyone will basically be stuck on whatever world they're on now. Or will they? Aksel Studsgarth and Daniel Hansen's Alva in the Dark, where a thief unleashes an ancient witch and finds herself in a lot of trouble, is being released through Titan Comics.

Mad Cave has Frederic Brremaud and Vic Macioci's Havana Split, where a young woman tries to rescue the father she just found by abducting a starlet for a mafioso. That doesn't feel like a story that needs more than 1 volume, but the solicit says "volume 1", so maybe there's going to be more 1950s Cuban adventures? Mad Cave's also releasing Ian Flynn and Ryan Jampole Hokis, Focus! about a young wizard trying to fix some mistakes she made, and a collected edition of a webcomic called Tiger Girls, by Felicia Low-Jimenez and Claire Low, which sounded kind of interesting.

AWA has a mini-series, Beast Mode 510, starring former NFL running back Marshawn Lynch as a sort of badass, problem solving-type guy for the 510 area code (which I think is Oakland, Lynch is from that area and still a big presence there.) I don't think I'll be buying it, but Denys Cowan's drawing the book, and the splash image for AWA's section of the solicits was an image of a giant Beast Mode punching out Godzilla's teeth, which was much appreciated after Marvel's being letting that stupid lizard run roughshod over everyone like it's a Jim Starlin creation, and Starlin's back writing him for the first time in 8 years.

What's ending? Babs: The Black Road South, allegedly. File that under "Believed when seen."

And the rest: Marc Spector: Moon Knight is still trying to get his friends out of that damn house. Generation X-23 is still dealing with the facility, only now Logan's broke-down ass is in tow. Can nobody just solve a problem with punching in a reasonable span of time any longer?

And while Fantastic Four #17 is crossing over with X-Men, FF #16 is a standalone story, so I guess I'm still buying one issue of the series in September. Speaking of books tying into crap I don't care about, all the Bat-books appear to be dealing with some invasion of Gotham via prehistoric plants, and that includes Batgirl. The Deadman is going to Heaven in issue 4 of his book, but we're promised it's no version of Heaven we've ever seen before. You mean Heaven isn't a customizable experience? What a ripoff!

D'Orc is going to encounter a vengeful boar. Or maybe it's a just a coincidence the character's name includes "Schwein." And in Chachu, it's time for a trip to Vegas! In just the second issue? I always figured that was more of a last-ditch relationship saver move. Junk Punch #4 is going to answer the question of whether zombies are vulnerable to punches in the junk. The cover implies "yes." I remain doubtful.

The Matron is going to respond to abuse of eminent domain with a feast. Which makes more sense - for a given value of the word - when you consider she's a cannibal. Some people just do recall elections on corrupt county commissioners, but you can always eat them instead. And the Vampyrates have a mutiny on the horizon. Are we sure it's not just a desertion? People apparently get those confused all the time.

Action in the North Atlantic (1943)

A cargo ship is sunk by a U-boat in the north Atlantic. To add insult to injury, the U-boat crew takes footage of the survivors huddled in their lifeboat, but when the survivors act defiantly, the U-boat rams the lifeboat, leaving them adrift on what looks like a giant pallet, but is apparently a raft.

The crew subsequently sign on to another cargo ship, the Sea Witch, but at least this one is crossing in a big convoy. 73 ships! Military escort!! What could go wrong? Well, they could run into an entire wolf pack of U-boats. The convoy could receive orders to disperse. The Sea Witch could find itself hounded by the U-boat that sank their last ship. Just a few examples!

Raymond Massey plays the captain of the two cargo ships, with Humphrey Bogart as his first officer. I guess so the captain can be wounded in the latter stages of the film, pushing Bogart into command, where he can come up with a way to trick the U-boat and get some poetic revenge. Bogart's character also punches out a guy in a bar that's blabbing about all the ships he saw leaving the harbor, then marries the lounge singer, but that never goes much of anywhere. Massey's character clearly thinks she's a gold digger, until learning they got married. Then he's OK with it, but there's no payoff beyond that one scene.

There's a handful of the crew that get a lot of lines. A guy who complains all the time, a guy who says there are subs around when his corns hurt, an older guy (Alan Hale) that's had several wives, that sort of thing. They bicker with each other, or with the regular Navy guys who man the ship's guns, and are probably meant to be the comic relief, but they're just kind of annoying.

The cat-and-mouse between the Sea Witch and the U-boat has a lot of twists and turns of fortune, rather than sticking to the formula of the cargo ship trying to dodge torpedoes or anticipate where the next attack will come from. Even when the cargo ship manages an escape via trickery, it's only a temporary reprieve. Likewise, the battle scene when the wolf pack falls upon the convoy is appropriately chaotic. Ships are blowing up, destroyers are dropping depth charges and blowing up subs, there's no sense of where anything is happening in relation to anything else, all the cargo ships are just looking for a way out.

That said, you can feel the movie grind to a halt each time a character has to give an Important Speech. When the guy who complains a lot explains he keeps passing up jobs on convoy ships because he's got a wife, with a kid on the way, the 4th guy in their little group goes into some spiel about whether the guys in Poland or Czechoslovakia were just thinking about staying safe when their countries got invaded. Or something like that. It was so obviously thrown in to appease the War Department - there is no way I believe that character would make that speech - I tuned it out.

There's a few scenes like that in the film, or like the one where the Sea Witch arrives in Halifax to join the convoy and we see how many different countries all the ships are from. Which, yes, it's nice to acknowledge it was a multinational effort to whip the Nazis' asses, but it's not what the movie's about, in terms of the characters or the plot. In those terms, it's about these civilians surviving getting sunk and being willing to go back out there and run the gauntlet again. And in the process, earning a shot at the guys who felt like it wasn't enough to sink them, they had to humiliate and then terrify them.

Plague-Bringing Angels

No one knows you like your best friend?

A Plague of Angels is the third, and I believe final, Dirty Pair mini-series Adam Warren and Toren Smith (co-writing, with Warren handling the art duties, Tom Orzechowski as letterer) released through Eclipse. Cory Emerson is a reporter who makes the mistake of agreeing to write a puff piece about the 3WA's "Lovely Angels", at a time when Kei and Yuri are trying to track down some inventory stolen from a major company that operates on the space station where they live.

Kei and Yuri do their best to put forth a positive image, but even when Kei isn't getting into screaming matches with the local cops over how much damage they did trying to break up the purchase of the inventory - a mech with holographic disguise capabilities and a gravity bomb that could destroy the station - their attempts to show their more human side only makes things worse.

Kei can't resist bragging about kicking Yuri's ass when they got a spur-of-the-moment bit part in a kung-fu flick. They take Cory out on the town, and over many drinks confess they only got hired by the 3WA because they found some old vids about "Randi Geller", and convinced people they were clairvoyant, as a joke.

Of course, it's not all failed attempts at girls' night out and image-washing, there's lots of action, too. The ones selling the holo-bot are themselves plugged into robots the Pair fight using those flying exo-suits with the bubble canopies '90s anime seemed to like. There's a shootout in a warehouse as the lead terrorist gets uploaded into the holo-bot, and a lengthy battle that starts in a strip club and tears across the station between the holo-bot, the Dirty Pair, the security forces of the company the built the holo-bot, and sometimes Kei and Yuri themselves. With a robot that can assume other's identities, a fight between the two was more or less inevitable, especially after Kei's mentioning the kung-fu thing.

Warren's art is still in transition to the state it would reach by the time he started writing and drawing Empowered. The linework is still a lot lighter and thinner, the figures not nearly as sharply defined by heavy black lines as in his later stuff. Outside of a few occasions where characters start weeping or their heads seem to expand as they scream at someone, he doesn't exaggerate for comedic effect nearly as much. Maybe that's a consequence of working with someone else's characters, or he just wasn't at that point in his career yet. Certainly with how much they squabble and overreact, Kei and Yuri are ripe for that kind of thing.

The tpb I bought has an intro from a sci-fi novelist, Walter Jon Williams. I don't know if I agree that this is satire, let alone excellent satire. Yes, lots of characters make assumptions about Kei and Yuri based on their appearance and their work outfits. Mostly guys, but Cory makes a few unflattering comments the more she comes to see her assignment as impossible. The main terrorist is an artificial personality with the libido cranked up too high, so of course he's drooling over them and making crass comments constantly. Kei and Yuri use that, first to locate him, then to draw him into a trap later.

I guess it's satirizing the people reading the comic. We are - or I guess, I am, since I don't know if you've read the comic - all these dopes in the story who slobber over Kei and Yuri and would get beat into oatmeal if those two actually existed. Yeah, hot girls with guns who were trained to make cool quips sound like fun, until you let them borrow your aircar because you were busy staring at their cleavage and they casually drive it through a wall while remarking how relieved they are it isn't their car. Being around Kei and Yuri, and their blithe disregard for chaos and destruction would actually be terrifying, and might to a nearly nihilistic response, as it does with Cory late in the story.

If so, that's most exemplified by Carvalho, the artificial personality. He's so fixated on women or their physical attributes - when he's not trying to destroy space stations - that he's constantly watching videos or checking out the Dirty Pair universe's equivalent to dirty magazines. Seeking the next unique thrill, the next novel act or look. Desensitized to the point that, when he's hit with an EMP, that's basically all that's left of him, the urge to seek out some sexy little thing, even when they're trying to kill him.