Saturday Splash Page #249

"Here's Juggy," in The Thing (2025) #3, by Tony Fleecs (writer), Justin Mason (artist), Alex Sinclair (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)

A 5-issue mini-series where Ben Grimm is approached by an old acquaintance - read: childhood bully - needing help locating his niece, whose mother was a girl Ben was friends with back then. Following the leads they've got takes Ben first to Daredevil's old foe the Gladiator, who seems out of sorts about something. More concerning, he has super-strength.

He finds Sara in Hammerhead's clutches, but recovering her is only half the problem. Hammerhead's working for Kingpin, and Fisk puts a $10 million bounty on The Thing's head, bringing a lot of villains who really ought to know better out of the woodwork. I mean, the Wrecking Crew? Sure, they're strong, and amoral enough to abduct a kid. But the Sinister Six show up and, I'm sorry, what did the Vulture or Kraven think they were gonna be able to do the Thing? To say nothing of Jigsaw, a guy whose superpower is, "only maimed, rather than murdered, by Frank Castle."

The smartest people in the entire mini-series are the Serpent Society, who hear about the bounty, realize it would be real dumb for them to try messing with The Thing, and sit the whole thing out. Which did not stop Nick Bradshaw from drawing Diamondback among the people attack the Idol of Millions on 3 covers. Not sure what that was about.

The point of the story is when to use power. Sara is a mutant, caught up in a scheme where powers get "scraped" so you can temporarily give those powers to someone else. Sara's been hurt and wants to hurt the person she holds responsible. Ben has to explain the difference between fighting to protect and fighting to hurt. That he does hit people, like those trying to abduct her, and he might be angry when he does it, or enjoy hitting them, but that's not why he's hitting them.

Fleecs has the Thing hold back a lot, taking hits from guys who, amped or not, aren't on his level, until he has to stop them. He lets Gladiator hit him several times while trying to talk him down, but when it comes down to it, he knocks the guy out in one punch. As he puts it to a too-confident Hammerhead in the last issue, 'You think I punch a guy in a pinstripe suit the same as how I punch the Hulk?!'

I don't know if we need him to explain that he uses "It's Clobberin' Time!" as his way of telling himself it's time to fight for real, but what the hell, he's trying to explain things to a traumatized kid. 

Fleecs also has the Thing keep trying to avoid fighting entirely once he's got Sara. Moonstone attacks, he hits her once and tries to bail, only to run into Rhino and Jigsaw. OK, run the other way, except Grizzly and Hate Monger are waiting. Try another direction, nope, Red Ghost and his Super-Apes. Try a fourth direction, here's the Sinister Six.  He's tries sticking to rooftops, or traveling at night. He doesn't actually fight the Juggernaut so much as distract him by throwing Black Tom down the street. Which was disappointing - I was really excited for that fight - but makes sense in context. He's not out to prove something, he's trying to get a kid to her mom. 

Ben's usually fighting with one hand, the other cradling Sara against his chest, shielding her. He's still a big guy covered in rocky plates, but Mason rounds his edges, the shoulders, the shape of Ben's head, which at least gives an impression of being softer than you'd expect. Mason also doesn't draw Ben as huge. He's bigger than Sara's uncle, or Bullseye, but stands eye-to-eye with the Wrecking Crew, is a full head shorter than the Kingpin, and Juggernaut's twice his size.

The end lands with a bit of a thud. Ben marches into the Kingpin's office, dumps Sara's uncle at his feet, yells a bit, then walks off in the pouring rain while Kingpin makes threats about owning the city. Ben's final line, 'Yeah? Well, you don't own Yancy Street,' is said to no one. He's far enough down the sidewalk Fisk isn't even visible in the background, so it's not really a comeback.

Yes, beating up the Kingpin, someone much weaker than the Thing, would go against everything he's said and done up to then. But he doesn't do anything to Fisk, like point out that trying to pick a fight with the FF, beloved by the public, is much different than messing with Spider-Man or Daredevil, who are viewed less favorably. There's no implication anyone but Hammerhead and his goons will be going to jail. Even if Sara's uncle has testimony that could link Fisk to the operation, and that seems unlikely since he was such a small fry Hammerhead felt confident he could rip him off, Ben just dumped him at Fisk's feet and walked away. Guess Marty's gonna sleep with the fishes next to that cabbie Fisk had killed to try and frame Matt Murdock!

Random Back Issues #176 - Deathlok #2

37-year-old SHIELD agent Jack Truman's mind is in the body of a 6-year-old named Billy. Truman had been pursuing Cable - I assume during Joe Casey's stint writing that book - and their final showdown on the Helicarrier didn't go great for Jack. His body was trashed, but some group, I'm unclear if Extechop is a division of SHIELD or some independent company, decided to experiment on him.

But Jack learned how to project his mind into someone's body from a stint in Tibet. Wow, Doom had to swipe that trick from some aliens. The Ovoids? Maybe if he'd visited the same monks as Jack, they could have advised him not to put burning metal on his face, too. Jack jumped first into Billy's dad, then accidentally into Billy. As for his body?

It's now a cybernetic war machine, running amok in Las Vegas. A SHIELD Air Cavalry unit is there, commanded by some guy Truman doesn't think much of named Larry Young. Vegas appears to be on fire, no great loss. Casey constantly throws in caption boxes that are just definitions of some word relevant to whatever is going on in the panel. I guess to represent only a basic computer intelligence is operating Truman's body.

Young asks Fury if he'll lift the weapons restrictions so they can hit the 'bot with some 'cold lasers.' Fury declines, stating he's sending in Zero Company to handle things. Young gets pissed and crashes into the aircraft Deathlok's controlling - or is it the other way around? - sending it to earth.

Back in Suburbia, Jack's doing a shit job pretending to be a kid, but manages to hitch a ride in the back of Billy's dad's car without being noticed. Pop works at a SHIELD front company, but Jack sneaks in and takes out two guards in armor, with hand-to-hand combat. Makes a guy's knee bend the wrong direction. With a first grader's kicks. That is the least believable thing is this comic about a cyborg destroying Las Vegas. Truman finds a hanger, and while Billy's voice can't pass authentication, Truman knows a secret code word Fury had hard-wired into everything as an override, though the significance of "Wah-hoo" escapes him. 

On the other side of the country, Mr. Young decided to visit a liquor store before returning to battle. It may be too late, because Zero Company is here! When you need to kill that hero, get yourself a Zero! Hot damn! They appear only as a full-page splash on the last page, and I'm not wasting the time to scan that. Rest assured, Manco makes them look like Fury called them away from a cameo appearance in Borderlands. I can't believe Fury lets them run around looking like that, but whatever, they'll probably be dead in an issue or two.

{3rd longbox, 266th comic. Deathlok (vol. 3) #2, by Joe Casey (writer), Leonardo Manco (artist), Mariana Manco (colorist), Jon Babcock (letterer)}

Could Be A Quiet Christmas

Not a lot of new books in the December solicits, at least not that I'm likely to buy. Lilith: Blood and Burlesque is skipping that month. The Deadman wasn't in DC solicits, so either it was a mini-series, or it's also on a skip month. Vampyrates! #4 is pushed back from October to mid-November, so I'm guessing issue 5 will be out in December now.

Suppose I ought to be spending the money on presents for other people, anyway.

What's new? I was not expecting a comic by Shaq about a West African king turned slave turned pirate, but now we've got Black Caesar, from Archie Comics, no less. Am I going to buy it? No, but it was strange enough to merit mention.

Ablaze has Soldier X creative team Darko Macan and Igor Kordey releasing the first of a 3-volume story about Marshal Bass Reeves, titled Marshal Bass. Am I going to buy it? Maybe down the line, if I hear good things and it looks like they'll actually finish the project.

Abrams Comicarts is, I think, re-releasing volumes of Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda's OGN, The Night Eaters, but re-titled as She Eats the Night? I think that's what's going on. The solicit said the book had been previously released, albeit by a different publisher, but I couldn't find anything matching the title.

In terms of things I would actually buy, it's Garth Ennis and John McCrea's Hitman: It Was the Nineties from DC, which appears to be a couple of new stories set somewhere during the original run.

What's ending? Chachu wraps up, and that's it.

And the rest: Batgirl is still dealing with David Cain's dropping by. Fantastic Four has the team's only chance to save the Earth from impossibly powerful aliens relying on Johnny's ability to bridge the language gap.

Marc Spector and D'Orc are on issue 11. Marc's West Coast reunion tour continues, while Brett Bean's spending an issue focusing on Chicken. Not exactly traditional for Christmas, but whatever meets your dietary requirements.

Which leaves the two books on issue 2. The Agony of Stars has a cop trying to investigate what these cop murders are about. Don't rush, make sure to thoroughly examine all the evidence. Take it home, sleep on it over a long weekend. In Friendly Neighborhood Mary Jane, is having trouble with her investor, Tony Stank. I really ought to spell his last name that way more often.

That said, I'm having second thoughts about that book. I got a closer look at the cover to issue 1, and I think MJ still has a symbiote, which is a strike, added to my doubts about Noto as an interior artist, added to Stank's presence as part of the cast. I guess there's still issue 3's solicit to win me over before the first issue actually comes out.

Evil Dead (2013)

Mia's (Jane Levy) brother and three of their friends have brought her to the old family cabin out in the woods to help her kick her drug addiction by going cold turkey. Of course, what David (Shiloh Fernandez) doesn't know, because he hasn't been around for years, is Mia's tried this before. It never lasts. As in, less than half a day. So their friends are prepared to keep Mia there by force.

A short time into the stay, while Mia's already complaining about an awful stench permeating the cabin, they find a locked room in the basement, full of dead cats and a book bound in human skin. One friend, like a dumbass, decides he should while away the hours reading from this book, going so far as to use pencil rubbings to find the words that were on pages that are missing from the book, and then read them aloud. People get possessed, people get maimed, people die, but David is determined to save his sister.

Couple of things working against this movie with me. One, the channel it was on just finished showing the original Evil Dead and Evil Dead II back to back, so I was hoping for Army of Darkness. I got this instead. Booo. Second, gore is the least interesting thing about horror movies to me. I can roll with it if you use it for comedy, which is probably why Army of Darkness is my favorite of the original trilogy. But gore and brutality for shock value? Doesn't do much for me. It's gross, sure. Turns my stomach? Probably. But scary? No. Hence Saw being the movie I deemed the worst I've ever seen in theaters, since gore was the edifice that entire sorry sack of ape shit hung on.

Maybe if you can make it relevant to the plot, but when Natalie takes off her arm with an electric turkey trimmer, and it doesn't actually keep her from getting possessed, then it's gratuitous. Great, you got to spray corn syrup all over the place. I'm sure that was a lifelong dream.

I don't know, I thought the movie would do more with the idea Mia was the one most aware there was something wrong, but the others dismissed it as withdrawal talking. But she's the first one possessed, and things go to the extreme too quickly to waste time on that sort of uncertainty. Once she's scalded herself so badly her flesh is peeling off, they can't worry whether she's possessed or just jonesing.

Also, it seems weird this is apparently their family's cabin, and they spent enough time there for Mia to have photos all over a wall, but neither she or David comment on the rusted remains of Ash's car, and David seems completely stunned there's a door to a basement under the rug in the living room. Yet they both knew about the little hollow under the three that could let them climb into the tool shed.

That said, the complicated relationship between Mia and David is the strongest part of the movie. The others are really just there for plot reasons and/or to up the body count. They need Eric to be the curious idiot who unleashes forces he doesn't understand, and Olivia has the medical training and access to various drugs, but beyond that, it isn't as though the film lingers over their deaths.

But Mia and David have this whole thing where David is guilty about the fact he ran in the past, leaving Mia to deal with her grief alone, in self-destructive ways. Mia can't really bring herself to trust him because of that. The words are nice, the birchwood necklace is sweet, but will he actually be there when she needs him? And what would that mean? Certainly Eric sees David's unwillingness to give up on saving Mia when she's vomiting black bile and looking like she just popped over from The Exorcist as another example of him running away from things he doesn't want to face. Same as how he balked when Eric and Olivia said they were prepared to keep Mia here until she got through it, no matter what.

Also, yelling at David probably helps distract Eric from how this is his fault. Remember kids, curiosity is bad! Pursue knowledge and all you'll catch are suffering and death!

I could see David taking the most dangerous approach to getting rid of the spirit as another symptom. A live burial means he's got to go into the basement and fight his possessed little sister, and hope sedatives still work on her when something he doesn't understand is animating her body. The repeated shots of him getting thrown around the basement into stone walls somehow felt the most like the original films to me. They aren't meant to be funny, but there was something vaguely comic about it. I suppose because it sure looks like his big plan to save his sister has crashed on the reef of him getting his ass kicked. The over-confidence of Ashley Williams in quite possibly an even dumber vessel.

But he was willing to risk his own life to try that plan. Lighting the house on fire and bailing, as he originally planned, from his perspective, would have been him abandoning her again. Of course, if he'd failed, then the demon kills him, that's five souls, the skies turn red, DC runs another Big Event with the word "Crisis" in it. The usual apocalyptic shit.

The burning tree suddenly being snuffed out was a nice touch. One of thosethings that could be read glass half-full or half-empty. That lightning strike sure was ominous, the fire being gone is probably good! Or the fire was hope because it gave David the idea, and now it's gone, oh no! Or, the demon's playing a little joke, faking David out. That was my guess. He'd dig Mia up and surprise, still possessed!

As random note to close on, Evil Dead offered a very different perspective on the efficacy of nail guns as weapons compared to The Equalizer, which I caught most of the night before. Denzel pretty much removed the main bad guy, a hardened ex-Spetsnaz sociopath, as a threat with a couple of nails to his arms. In Evil Dead, Eric, who is definitely a nerd and a total loser, gets five nails in the chest and a bunch more in the arms, and he's still able to move around and use guns and whatnot. Maybe David's family cheaped out and bought a low-grade model that lacked oomph. Needed to get the exclusive S-Mart model!

Some of the emotional beats worked, some of the visuals were good - the blood rain was cool - it was just wrapped up in a level of mutilation I didn't enjoy.

A New (Lunatic) Challenger has Entered the Fray

That's standard for arranged marriages, isn't it? Lots of contracts? 

Volume 7 of Yakuza Fiance is split between two stories. In the first, Kirishima asks Yoshino to accompany him to a visit to his family. Specifically his great-aunt Sumire. Sumire has a pretty sharp tongue, especially towards Kirishima, and is stunned he has a girlfriend, let alone the granddaughter of her no-good Yakuza brother's old buddy, who Sumire clearly sees as a bad influence.

More interesting is her conversation with Yoshino about Kirishima. He apparently showed up at the family home one day, and burned every photo of himself. Why is unclear at this point. Sumire also offers more about the incident from Kirishima's childhood where he beat the crap out of a bunch of other kids. Sumire knows it was more than them bullying Kirishima and demanding money, because he kept a record of it, and not in the sense of wanting evidence for a later court case.

Kirishima ends up in Gaku's orbit not long after, when Sumire pushes him at Gaku during his grandfather's (Gaku and Sumire's brother) funeral. Kirishima's parents just, gave up on him, and later divorced. Well, OK. Kind of odd. Seems like a shortcut to explain why they aren't around, without going the "they're dead" approach Konishi used with Yoshino's father. Sumire doesn't seem to have a high opinion of Kirishima, and even advises Yoshino to leave if she really doesn't want to stick with him, but also hopes he'll have someone like Yoshino in his life.

I'm a little surprised that, when pressed on why she likes him, Yoshino can only say he's a hard worker. I figured she'd say something about how, even if he drives her nuts, he's always authentically himself. Anyway, somehow she impressed Sumire, so Kirishima's attempt to follow Tsubaki's advice (show Yoshino more of himself) worked! Yoshino even gives him a birthday gift!

Naturally everything goes to hell in the second half. While Kirishima is attending a funeral for some person, Yoshino is at a cram school prepping for exams. Kirishima gets distracted by what turns out to be Squirrel's Nest Hair stealing one of their guys' phone, so who appears to pick Yoshino up but Azami, the creepy guy with a scar that fought Kirishima a couple volumes ago.

There's a bunch of odd detours, which feel a lot like Konishi padding things out. Maybe it's supposed to humanize Azami, but given what comes next, that ain't happening. Long story short, he drugs Yoshino and she wakes up in a bathtub. Where Azami reveals his inner Silver Age villain. He was able to ditch her phone earlier, but assumes there's a tracking device on her. He has a jammer, but he's been turning it off periodically so someone, meaning Kirishima, could trail him here, at a pace of Azami's choosing.

And if she wasn't wearing a tracking device?! Well, that's the second part. Azami wants Yoshino to ditch Kirishima and return to Osaka, with Azami as her new beau. That way he can kill her grandfather, part of that power struggle Yoshino is largely unaware of (though there's a subplot through the entire volume of Shouma doing some investigating and gradually figuring it out.) Azami will kill Kirishima as a bonus. After all, her grandfather hired Kirishima to protect Yoshino, and Kirishima knew Azami was looking for her, but never warned her. What does she owe him? Suffice to say, Yoshino ain't going for that.

The fight doesn't exactly go well, though she certainly intends to go down swinging. Manages to break one of his fingers and short out the jammer. Would have appreciated if she actually did bite his tongue off entirely, though. Azami, knowing Kirishima's now coming right for him, gives her a chance to survive. If she can escape the building, he'll leave her be, for now.

Kirishima shows up during the escape attempt and runs right past Azami - who he has seen without a mask, so he must recognize him - to get to Yoshino. Which means, when he tries to get her out of there, Azami is able to put a knife in his shoulder, before they drop 3 stories. What the hell happened to beating the shit out of anyone that even looks funny at Yoshino, man?! The one time the damned lunatic actually needs to go berserk on somebody, and he doesn't. 

Sunday Splash Page #446

"Two Sides of the Coin," in Batman '89 #6, by Sam Hamm (writer), Joe Quinones (artist), Leonardo Ito (colorist), Clayton Cowles (letterer)

Reviewed a year ago, but briefly, the first mini-series continuing the universe of the Tim Burton Batman movies. A Batman that looks like Michael Keaton is still roaming the night, beating up muggers, to limited effect. He's not considered a friend by the Gotham City government, including its social climbing D.A., Harvey Dent. Dent is engaged to Barbara Gordon, the two of them working to stop Batman, even as they expect it to bring Barbara's father down in the process.

The story is about choices, those you make and those you don't. Bruce is still doing the Batman thing, but little else. This isn't even a Bruce Wayne that's a frequent subject of the tabloids, as evidenced by how blindsided he is by the media attention when he rushes into a burning auto repair shop to save Dent and becomes a major figure of public interest. As Batman, he stops an armored car heist, completely oblivious the real target was documents implicating several city and state politicians for siphoning federal aid funds into their own pockets, keeping Gotham in its miserable state. It's Catwoman who brings that to his attention.

Selina spent the year since the near-exhaustion of her nine lives in Batman Returns laying low, playing it smart. She still has the costume, but it's unclear how active she's been. Instead, she established a computer security firm, really just her, that gives her a way to bug those same systems and track everything in them. She's also going to therapy, though one questions how much good TV shrink Dr. Quinzel is doing her. Point is, Selina's evolved, at least somewhat. She still hates the Max Schrecks of the world, but she's not trying to attack them directly.

Selina makes a point Bruce's development basically arrested at age 8, but only because he was rich enough to get away with it. If he had to work for a living, support a family, maybe he'd have gotten his shit together. Stop thinking everyone could be saved, or that everyone needs to be saved according to his specific (and selective, often hypocritical) morality. At the very least, there'd be no Batman. I'm not sure about that last one. Selina's still running around as Catwoman, even with a job. But I suppose outside the cats, she's not supporting anyone. 

There's Winston Drake, a teenager living in the same Burnside District Dent hails from. (I read somewhere Quinones based him on Marlon Wayans, but can't confirm that.) Winston isn't above putting on a cloak and mask to beat up people causing trouble in his neighborhood (including Batman), but sees it's a dead end street. It's not inspiring people to do anything, except go out and beat up anyone they think doesn't belong.

Which doesn't mean he won't help people actively trying to accomplish something. When Burnside residents stage a peaceful march after Harvey's injuries, and Bullock (who I think Quinones bases on John Goodman) ignores Gordon's orders and brings out the riot cops, it's Drake who lends a hand, lobbing a big paint bomb at the cops from a rooftop, then providing spray paint cans to the protestors to help blind the cops. Meanwhile, Batman is chasing Catwoman, aka, sorting out his relationship issues.

And there's Harvey Dent. Dent is a man who, when rubber meets road, throws away principles for what he wants. Which is more power. He's going to do good things, really! He just needs more power than he has. He'll return to Burnside to show off his car, show the kids a successful black man that's not an athlete or a drug dealer, as he puts it, but he's there rarely enough the locals feel he's left them behind to move in white society. He won't let Barbara come with him to a rally in Burnside, because it wouldn't look good for the people of the neighborhood to see him with a white lady, even his fiance. But it's other peoples' expectations that make him do those things! It's what he has to do to get ahead!

The mini-series dips briefly into the difficulty for a black person to operate in a society where most (all?) levers of power are held by white people. Most of whom, consciously or unconsciously, think that's how it should be. Harvey probably wouldn't have gotten to District Attorney without "playing the game," so to speak. But he decided it was worth it, then tries to pretend he didn't, protesting when accused of not being around much for the people he grew up with.

Ultimately, the coin is, as Commissioner Gordon notes, just anothher convenient excuse Dent uses to abdicate responsibility for his choices. Dent used it even before his face was marked. Catching a purse snatcher and getting the guy's gun from him, Dent pretends to use the coin to decide whether he'll just murder the guy. To terrorize him, or maybe just make Dent feel big. Next morning, he's up at Wayne Manor, trying to sell Bruce on the idea they can't have Gordon's personal hit squad - he thinks Batman is multiple people, all taking orders from the Commish - roaming the streets. Vigilantism was fine for him the night before, as a momentary thrill, but today is for politicking.

Issue 3 starts with a hallucination of Harvey's about him saving Drake from the burning auto shop, while in reality his attempt went poorly and Wayne and Drake saved him. In the hallucination, everyone tells Harvey how swell he is. Drake admits he was wrong about Dent. Bruce Wayne says there's no way he'd have the guts to do that. Dent rides the wave of acclaim straight to Governor, loved by all demographics. Bruce admits he's funding Gordon's Bat-squad, Bruce and Gordon both go down, and Barbara loves Harvey for it.

Basically, in this dream world Harvey gets everything he wants, without any conflict or difficulty. He doesn't have to deal with anyone not liking him or calling him a sellout. He doesn't have to choose between a friend and his political career, or the woman he loves and putting a man he considers a criminal behind bars. There's no moral conflict or doubt, no one who can challenge him. He wants it all handed to him.

Even once he embraces being Two-Face persona, he bends the rules around the coin flips, when not outright ignoring them. He flips the coin to decide what to do about Boss Maroni and it comes up good head. So he does something nice - for himself, and shoots Maroni. The coin comes up good head when he flips it for Gordon, and Harvey kills him anyway.

(It's a major flaw in Bruce's big plan in the final issue to turn Harvey around. He's going to switch the coins and make the outcome what he wants. Great, except we've seen Harvey just decide to rationalize doing what he wants anyway.)

Once Two-Face is in the picture, Quinones starts using a lot of split panels. Not just to show the difference between the two halves of Harvey, but also Harvey seeing the way things are and the way they could have been. Like each eye is peering into a different universe. The climax in the Batcave is split down the middle of the page, the coin falling between the two columns. One where Harvey lands on a rock outcropping, another where he only barely grabs hold of it with one hand. The two threads continue on their separate courses across the top half of the next two pages, before coalescing into a single outcome on the bottom half. It's in the universe of Burton's Batman films, so take a wild guess how things work out for the bad guy.

Saturday Splash Page #248

"Talking Turkey," in The Tick: Heroes of the City #3, by Clay and Susan Griffith, Marc Silva (writers), Gabe Crate (penciler), Tak Toyoshima (inker), Dave Garcia, Nathan MacDicken (artists)

A late-90s series running concurrently with The Tick and Arthur (which I'll get to if I can ever find the final issue), Heroes of the City was an anthology, with several shorter stories in each of its 6 issues. Some focused on the main characters, but also stories exploring the other heroes of The City.

The book actually starts with Arthur blowing up at the Tick for taking him for granted and treating him like a servant. In the tradition of Boxing Day, this leads to Tick trying his hand at sidekicking, though not for Arthur. Instead, he works for several other heroes, such as Super Pilgrim, who makes the Tick rent dirty videos, which Super Pilgrim is confiscating for morality reasons. Yep, just to protect the citizenry from such filth. No other reason!

A couple of those issues show Arthur attempting the life of a solo hero while the Tick explores sidekicking. Rescuing a kitten from a tree doesn't go well, but he saved a man from choking and stopped a convenience store robbery with a gallon of milk. Successes to build on! To be fair, Tick's attempt at cat rescuing in issue 5 doesn't go much better.

Most stories are silly as you'd expect from the Tick's universe. Issue 6 is devoted to Tick and Arthur getting jobs, because Tick thinks civilian identities will protect them if the UPS man turns evil. Paul the Samurai and his assistant Ashley (formerly ninja lady Oedipus) tangle with a heartbroken Paul Bunyan. There's a 3-parter where Arthur's girlfriend(?!) imagines herself as a cheerleader-themed superhero, whose pom-pons have more tricks than Batman's utility belt. That one got at least one complaint letter about how Myndi was depicted with basically beach balls for boobs. Not sure if that person was assuaged when it turned out to be a power fantasy by Myndi herself.

Then there's issue 4, where, besides Part 1 of the Paul the Samurai story, you have one story about "Red Eye", a Tales from the Crypt-style thing about a mysterious hitchhiker who leads you to doom. Especially if you won't let him order off the dinner menu after 10. And then a story about the Crazy Blue Rocket that reveals he used to be a James Bond figure in a nice suit, with a teen ward. Now he's a deranged man eating flavored paste, replaying memories of his past life as he crash lands throughout the City.

Those are the only two stories in the six issues that take a scary or sad approach, so it makes for an abrupt tonal shift.