Eye of the Needle (1981)

Faber (Donal Sutherland) is a Nazi spy in England. He's been there for years, eluding British intelligence, even after he shanked his landlady when she walked into his room at an inopportune moment. Nearing the time of the Allied invasion of Europe, Germany wants to be sure the invasion will be at Pas de Calais, spearheaded by Patton's army at East Anglia. Faber manages to slip in and get proof all the planes are fakes. Now all he's got to do is get to a tiny island off the Scottish coast, and arrange for pickup with a U-boat.

That's the first half of the movie, establishing Faber is a spy, establishing what he's ordered to investigate, then watching him elude capture as he crosses the country, killing several people along the way. Oddly, he always stabs them in the lower left abdomen, which is not a place I'd think was terribly effective for killing someone quickly.

The second half of the movie comes after the boat he tries to sail to the island where he'll be picked up is capsized in a storm. What, there were storms around Storm Island? Unheard of! He ends up staying with a small family: Lucy (Kate Nelligan) and her husband David (Christopher Cazenove), plus their young son. David and Lucy were getting married at the same time Faber was killing his landlady, but they crashed their car driving at an excessive speed while drinking champagne. Now David's legs don't work, so no more flying Spitfires. Now he mostly drinks and scowls and wallows in self-pity. Ignores his son, ignores his wife. When Lucy tries to help, he says he doesn't need any help. She replies, 'I do,' to which he does not reply.

So it takes seemingly 1 day for Faber to fall into bed with Lucy. Sutherland's not playing an oddball here; Faber is quiet, polite, and at least charming enough to look good compared to her brooding jerk o husband. David has his own suspicions of Faber, but his attempt to stop him ends in failure. Though he doesn't die via shanking! That's one point in his favor. So it's ultimately Lucy who, once she recognizes Faber's lied to her, has to try and stop him.

I'm not clear on Faber's motivation for the seduction. He tells Lucy at one point that he writes about the war. How lonely it is, at least for him. That his protagonist meets a woman, but ultimately kills her because she breaks his heart. Faber's spent years living under a false identity in a country that will execute him if it catches on. Doesn't allow for letting anyone too close. So maybe he's just tired, and seeing the finish line just ahead, lets his guard down a little.

Nelligan gets to focus on her terror once she realizes what Faber's done to David, and on her desire to protect her son. Less focus on her feelings about having an affair. Seeing how things are between her and David explains the physical response to Faber, but I can't tell if she's guilty about her actions, or truly happy to find someone who at least appears to really see her and her needs. Once things go wrong, she's just trying to escape and failing that, defend herself and her son from Faber.

I guess it's meant to be read that she, in some ways, kills Faber because he broke her heart. She injures her hand jamming a key into a light socket to short out the radio and Faber doesn't kill her, or even really get angry. And she doesn't take the opportunity to try and attack him. Because he's still there. It's only when he runs for the shore and won't stop that she opens fire. She's actually the protagonist of the story he described, but neither of them knew it at the time.

What I Bought 11/6/2026

Went into the field last week. One guy didn't show up, and doesn't maintain his roads very well, so I got the truck stuck. Got it unstuck, but smashed two of my fingers, bent the jack, and severed the rope connecting the wheel chocks in the process. Also broke my ID badge during all the crawling around, so I can't get in the office without someone's help until the replacement shows up. 

Batgirl #25, by Tate Brombal (writer), Takeshi Miyazawa and Daimon Scott (artists), Mike Spicer and Alex Guimaraes (colorists), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - Did Cass bring a sword to a gunfight, or did Cain bring a gun to a swordfight? Dang it people, we were supposed to have this straight before we started.

David Cain is in Gotham, allegedly with a contract to kill Cass. To force the issue, he booby-trapped the diner she visits for a morning doughnut run. If anyone tries to leave, they get chopped up by laser traps or something. Cain keeps shooting at Cass in such a way that if she dodges, someone else gets hit. Which works great until everyone else is dead. At which point she blows up the diner with a Batarang. Which doesn't kill either of them.

The issue started with Tenji debating case on why Batman doesn't just kill these villains, and that maybe Killer Croc had the right idea, biting Vandal Savage's head off. Cass disagrees, because she believes in giving people chances to make the right choice. So now Brombal throws in her asshole of a dad, who I suspect is not really there to fulfill a contract on her life, to try and put Cass in a spot where she'll maybe kill him to stop him from killing. I hope there's more to it than that, because she ought to be able to stop him without resorting to killing, but who knows.

Miyazawa uses a lot of panels for the diner fight. Action, reaction. Cass charges and throws a Batarang, Cain dodges and aims. Read the target, throw a Batarang to intercept, bullet fired, bullet blocked, punch to the face. Each move or moment leads to the next. Like squares on a game board, leading inevitably to the finish. Which does make it feel like everything is going according to Cain's plan. We'll see if things shift if Cass manages to turn things around. If she turns it around. 

There's also a back-up story, with the Scott/Guimaraes art team, about how Shiva used to visit Tenji on his birthday, to test his skill. Shiva wasn't shy about telling him how wanting he was compared to Cass, so on this birthday, he's trying to beat Cass. He doesn't. Is that going to factor into this story, Tenji trying to prove he's better than Cass by stopping David Cain, permanently?

Scott's style is still looser and more exaggerated than it was when he was drawing Kelly Puckett's run on Batgirl, but more solid than it was the last time I saw it, which was some Deadpool book 15 years ago. The characters don't look quite so much like they've been roughly formed out of putty, which is to my preference, at least. He doesn't use the approach he often did on that original Batgirl run, or showing Cass' speed via several after-images in a single panel. It's more like Miyazawa, each strike or counter gets its own panel, it's own distinct moment in the dance.

Friendly Neighborhood Mary Jane #1, by Ashley Allen (writer), Phil Noto (artist/colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - Someone tell Mr. Stank to stop staring at Ms. Watson's butt.

Mary Jane wants to start a production company, for the kinds of stories that can't get funding from the major players.  She explains this to Flash Thompson during a walk, which is interrupted by Stilt-Man doing a robbery. Which MJ stops with a bit of symbiote Venom left behind as basically a utility belt. She describes it as a Swiss Army knife, but it's unclear if the symbiote has sentience.

Also, she stops Stilt-Man in broad daylight, without a mask or anything. Is that advisable? I was under the impression there was a version of Damage Control in the Marvel universe now that was the typical, authoritarian control agency with regards to super-types. Yes, I think that sounds dumb, too, but I'm not the one who came up with it.

She has a writer with a script she wants to start with as an off-Broadway play, but her investor has vanished. because the Chameleon has decided he's not spending his money properly. So he kidnapped the guy, dumped him in a tube of green goo that gives the Chameleon access to his memories(?), and now Chamy's going to impersonate the guy. In the meantime, MJ took advantage of Stark's ego to get funding from him instead. Although Stark really balked at 300K? He probably spends more than that on shoes in a month. Definitely more on watches.

Did this earn the book a second issue from me? I'm not sure. The production company thing isn't a bad angle. The Chameleon deciding he can live other people's lives better than they would isn't too bad. Stark's presence I can take or leave, but if she needs money for this project, he's a character she has existing backstory with - thanks, Bendis - that would solve that issue. Still don't love the symbiote's presence, but I'm sure the book had to have some sort of option for costumed heroics to have any shot of lasting even 5 issues.

Noto's art is how I remember it. Too bad his art has never done anything for me. Maybe it's alright for an issue mostly either MJ talking with Flash, or MJ talking with the script writer. Calm conversations. Talking heads. There are other artists who could make that more visually interesting, but Noto's capable of doing the job. But I've never loved his stuff when it came to action sequences. Too stiff, too lacking in energy.

Sunday Splash Page #452

"Funeral Shroud," in The Black Hood #2, by Mark Wheatley (writer), Rich Burchett (artist), Tom Ziuko (colorist), Steve Hayne (letterer)

The Black Hood was the last of the solo titles from the Impact line, the first issue not shipping until the other 5 books were already on at least issue 4. The character had already popped up in other books (The Fly, The Web.) Very excited at the prospect of other costumed heroes emerging, always talking up the idea of them all forming a super-team.

They eventually would, and we'll get to The Crusaders next year, but Black Hood wouldn't be part of that. At least, not the same Black Hood.

The Black Hood wasn't unique in switching protagonists. Legend of the Shield had a different guy (briefly) take the uniform once Higgins' name was cleared. The Web was an ensemble cast who were all, at one time or another, "The Web." However, this was at least a little unique in how it made those switches, the reasons why, and in one case, how quickly.

It starts with Wayne Sidmonson. Sidmonson is the Black Hood who met other heroes. By the time the series begins, he's all the way round the bend. The first issue is overlaid with a letter to his wife, who he abandoned to pursue the cause of his truest love, Justice. No, seriously, that's what he says. He still loves her, and wishes he could be home for Christmas, but his war is just too important. He also admits he drained their kids' college funds to buy weapons. What, you couldn't just keep drug dealers' cash, like the Punisher?

His moral compass is out of whack. A teenager taunts Wayne about being lost, he twists the kid's arm to near breaking, then locks him and his friend in a filthy mall bathroom stall, just to be cruel. He gleefully terrorizing them, because one kid was rude. He's in Seaside City looking for a subterranean pier. But it's not to break up a deal between local crimelord "The Patriarch," and Pirate Blue. No, Wayne wants to make a deal with Blue - a pirate, a smuggler, an arms dealer - to buy weapons.

All this seems to stem from him owning a "McBonnie Burger" franchise, which got robbed at some point. He's Michael Douglas' character in Falling Down, mediocre middle-class dude who decides guns are the answer to his insecurity. He wears spiked gauntlets, huge shoulders pads, and armor. The armor is bulletproof. The hood is not, and Wayne bites the dust in issue 1, at the hands of Hit Coffee, #2 man to the Patriarch.

(The main story of The Black Hood Annual is Wayne's wife dealing with his funeral and just how badly he fucked their finances, while two government agents that had been tracking him conclude she's a frigid bitch for being mad Wayne wasted all their savings on a "Hood-mobile." I just end up feeling bad for Darcy, stuck dealing with the lousy hand her nutso dead husband left her.

I would have done an entry on the Annual if there'd been a splash page from the back-up story about the past wearers of the Hood, but no dice.) 

Wayne wasn't the first Black Hood, as he learns in the afterlife and we see in the final issue and the back-up stories in the Annuals. He's not the last. The two teenagers got out of that stall and followed him. The rude one, Jeff, can't keep his mouth shut and gets in trouble. His friend, Nate Cray, won't abandon him, but doesn't want to risk being recognized. So he puts on the Hood. And grabs some guns. And starts dodging bullets with surprising ease. Somehow, the hood being cursed, in addition to giving it sentience, enables it to give the wearer enhanced physical abilities.

Nate rescues Jeff, they escape. Nate doesn't want anything to do with the hood. He's a big farm boy whose family just moved here after the farm went belly-up. Quiet and kind, but awkward. A boy who would protect a snapping turtle biting his hand from his father's attempts to make it let go, but also named his dog, Dufus. What the hell, man?

But when he holds the hood, at least at first, he feels more confident, and he keeps running into situations where he needs it. A stage magician sent to prison for 17 years because someone tampered with his saw-in-half box, gets paroled and sets out for revenge. A doctor who went from working on "safe acid", to some video game, to drugs to alter your DNA, took the drug and now he's ozone.

Which somehow gave him the ability to rain lasers from the sky. Is he manipulating the ozone layer to let tiny pinpricks of cosmic rays rain down? I have no idea; this is not the last time Wheatley does something regarding a character's backstory and powers that makes no sense to me. Nate - whose outfit is a simple red coat and some heavy pants and boots, much more stripped down than Wayne's look - kills the doctor with the power of CFCs, but feels no validation at stopping the man who hurt his mother. He hates what the hood's doing to him, the changes he feels in himself. He throws it away.

Hit Coffee finds it. Hit touts himself as the Patriarch's #2 man. What that means is, he gets the shit jobs. Run to Baltimore to fetch sandwiches for the Patriarch. Go pick up a sports car the Patriarch is giving to one of his other guys. Wayne became the Black Hood because he was afraid, and wanted things to make sense as he understood the concept. Meaning terrorize the people he thought ought to be terrorized. Nate wore it to protect people he cared about, then threw it away to protect himself. (He'll ultimately take it up again to protect those same people.)

Hit wears it - along with a snazzy vest with big buttons and a collar and shoulder pads - to get what he thinks he's owed from an ungrateful boss. He finds getting to be the boss isn't so great. It's constant fires to put out, and demands from underlings to deal with. Made harder because the hood's influence means he can't handle things how he wants. The curse condemns its wearer not to harm a good man (so what's it say about Jeff, that Wayne could do what he did?) This apparently continues even after you give the hood away.

Hit gives it back to Nate, while Nate's wearing a different hood. Hit somehow knows who Nate is, and intends to use him to help keep the Patriarch's mob in line. How he figured it out is never explained. They stop a guy who, as a child, was exposed to several defoliants in Vietnam and now absorbs the memories of people he touches as a result. Which he uses to rob mob casinos. The guys running the casinos do not seem to connected to the GIs that attacked his village, he just figures it's a good place to get a lot of cash. Refer to my earlier comment about backstories and powers.

The DNA drug the doctor made gets into the hands of a girl Jeff really wants to impress, but her low self-esteem turns her into living slime. Jeff seeing her as a wonderful girl helps pull her together, but Nate's harsh words wreck all that. It's a weird pair of issues, with everyone assuming someone is being dragged down by someone else. The principal assumes Jeff will ruin Nate. Jeff's dad - a sadsack idiot of a counterfeiter whose printing shop is now owned by Nate's dad - assumes Nate is the one getting Jeff in trouble. Nate assumes Carmen is going to ruin Jeff. Everyone is pointing fingers, no one is trying to help.

One thing we learn in issue 12, where a heretofore unseen WEB agent with some sort of telepathic abilities tries to assess Nate and ends up connecting with the hood, is the hood tries to seek out someone who will use it well. But over time, it corrupts the wearer. We're shown Wayne early on wanting to protect and serve justice in a way he feels the cops don't. Given he's in a panel colored entirely red, with guns everywhere, it's hard for me to think the cheese hadn't already slipped off his cracker. Did this mean Nate's harsh words to Carmen were the start of his corruption? Or just him being a dumb teenager, frustrated with what passes for his best friend and lashing out at a safer target? It's also the story where Nate turns to shooting sooner and more frequently than normal, which is a troubling development.

The recurring theme is, Nate puts on the hood to help people. Everyone else uses their powers or skills to get something. The magician, the doctor, the casino thief, Hit Coffee: All resent how things went for them, and decide to take what they feel they're owed. Revenge, money, whatever. Even Wayne decided at some point any means were justified for his ends, even dealing with Pirate Blue. His war is too important to worry about details like who gets hurt. You could add Jeff, who initially thinks the hood is really cool and wants Nate to go on patrols and beat people up. 

(Nate questions how he's supposed to traverse rooftops, or get down to street level in time if he does see a crime in progress.)

The book's tone goes strange places at times. Issue 7 alternates between Hit taking apart the Patriarch's operations, and a history of "The Patriarch," a title not so much handed down as wrested away since colonial times. Wheatley and main series artist Rich Burchett present it like a Seuss story, complete with the issue title, "Horton Wears the Hood!" (because Hit's real first name is Horton.) The backstory works as another example of people seeing power only as a means to get what they want, but the choice of presentation is curious.

There's a whole bit where Jeff's dad is a hostage Hit doesn't want, because the hood wouldn't let him kill the man. Hit keeps leaving Mr. Sealey ways to "escape" - a crowbar, the keys to the handcuffs - and the man keeps refusing to take the hint. In issue 3, there's an entire sequence where Jeff repeatedly fails to hide one of the huge guns Nate brought back from the confrontation underground as Nate's mother cleans up some broken glass on the floor right in front of them, and she simply doesn't react. During the DNA drug doctor's trial, his attorney's opening statement is hampered by him fumbling papers, or his glass of water, or his glasses. I think it's meant to be he's gradually turning to ozone and is increasingly incorporeal, but it comes off like he's a klutz, and this is somehow hurting his defense.

Burchett is the artist for the first half of the series, albeit with a host of different inkers. Mike Chen in issue 4, Chen and Jose Marzan Jr. in issue 5. Damon Willis on issue 6. Willis also pencils issue 9. Burchett draws issue 7 himself, then does breakdowns on issue 8, with Neil Vokes as penciler. Tim Sale draws issues 10 and 11, and Peter Snejbjerg (with Chen on inks) draws issue 12. Burchett emphasizes a different style and approach for each wearer of the hood. Wayne is built like a fire hydrant and tends to charge straight in, letting bullets bounce off the armor and tackling his enemies. It's full speed ahead, deal out punishment.

With Hit, he's mostly using two Uzis, so it's a lot of shooting. We occasionally see him show off the strength, lifting a metal plate that covers the entrance to the place he hid Sealey, or hefting machines off Jeff so Nate can pull him clear. But Hit's also the slimmest of the 3, even shorter than Nate despite being a grown man, so that showcases the power the hood provides. Or shows the difference in Hit when he's wearing the hood. The guy who relied on hustle, charm and perseverance is brute forcing his way through things now.

With Nate, Burchett and the other artists focus on agility, the strength apparent through the leaps and flips. When the magician (who apparently studied how to combine different animals into chimeras in prison, which I guess could at least be loosely connected to unfortunately cutting his dog in half) sets a flying tiger on Nate, Nate leaps forward with his arms wide, then tucks into a forward roll to avoid the claws. Or he's leaping over tables and halfway up escalators while carrying a tactical shotgun, vaulting police cars and dumpsters with one hand like Daredevil would. Nate shoots, but it's a last resort.

Saturday Splash Page #254

"Doomed Struggle," in Runaways (2025) #1, by Rainbow Rowell (writer), Elena Casagrande (artist), Dee Cunniffe (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

Tying into the (momentary) Big Event, One World Under Doom, this 5-issue mini-series let Rainbow Rowell return to some of subplots left dangling at the conclusion of her stint as writer of Runaways.

As far as the tie-in angle, Doom, now ruling the world, decides he can't have a bunch of robots wearing his face running around, doing whatever. So he sends more Doombots out to bring in all the rogue Doombots. Including the one looking after the cast, as Chase was hauled off into the timestream by a future version of Gert, while Nico is in a complete funk minus the Staff of One, which Karolina took with her when she went (back) into space.

Doom's bots show up to collect Doombot and a typically disorganized Runaways fight occurs. It's kind of silly. Gert at one point breaks a Doombot by hitting it with a car. Not even hard enough to trigger the airbags! What kind of shoddy labor is Doom using for these things?

Chase returns suddenly, grouchy and scarred and a bigger dick than usual. Nico finds out she has magic besides the Staff. Or Gert has magic Nico can use, if she's holding Gert's hand and says what she wants to have happen with sufficient desperation? They don't figure it out by the end of the mini-series. Karolina returns, minus the Staff. Alex shows up in the Doc Justice outfit he stole, revealing he's been spying on them for some time.

As always, no one kicks Alex's ass.

Doombot is the core of everything, debating what to do. It is meant to be an extension of Doom's will. Doom's will is it turn itself in. It's programmed to believe children are important. Here is a group of children, disorganized and barely capable of sustaining themselves. Doombot would never go so far as to describe them as friends, but feels a responsibility it can't decide how best to honor. Stay and look after them, or turn itself in so Doom doesn't attack them?

The decision is made easy by some big reveal on the news that Doom was powering his magic with the suffering of children's souls. Prompting Doombot to conclude Doom's forgone his own principles, so it rejects Doom. Kind of feels like an easy out, but if Ryan North actually used that as a plot point in One World Under Doom then it was fair game. Although I think it makes North hopelessly naive if he figures that would get any outcry from politicians. Look at the dipshits in my craphole of a country. Kids get shot at schools and it's all, "thoughts and prayers!"

Oh man, are the citizens of the Marvel Universe now actually better people than those of us here in the real world? Terrifying to contemplate.

Artwise, Cunniffe does their level best to maintain a consistent feel. There's a heavy use of purple and orange, as much of the story seems to take place in the evening or at night. Like the sun is about to set on this whole little thing the cast has going. Either their group is going to be blown apart figuratively by Doombot's abduction, Chase's attitude, or Nico's feeling of worthlessness, or their group is going to be blown apart literally, by armies of Doombots.

That said, the book has 3 different pencilers for 5 issues. Casagrande is already giving way to Roberta Ingranata partway through issue 2, then Lee Ferguson shows up in issue 4. Ingranata's work is more angular than Casagrande's. Everyone looks sharper-edged and the designs are simplified, there's less shading. It seems rushed, which makes sense if they were asked to fill-in part of a mini-series. Ferguson's characters look closer to Casagrande's, though there's more exaggeration in expressions. Also, he likes using circular panels. Maybe just to break up the layouts, I couldn't tell any significance to when he used them. 

Not much gets resolved. Chase unilaterally blew up Gert's time machine, so I guess whatever magic thing she's got going with Nico is her new gimmick. There's no reckoning for that, or any discussion of what Chase got up to in the future that's left him acting like a bigger dick than usual. He still treats Victor like an outsider any time things get tense, even though Victor's been part of the group for much longer than he wasn't by this point. At least the rest of the cast push back against the attitude for once. 

It's honestly surprising I like Runaways as much as I do, given how much I despise Chase, and find both Nico and Gert periodically exhausting.

Karolina is back, from outer space. As usual, there's no discussion of what went on out there. It's like when they need to write an actress out of a TV show for a while because she had a baby. "Oh, she went to space. She'll be back."

Alex is also just, back, again. Spying on his alleged friends, condescending to them and providing no reason to trust he's any less the dumbest person who thinks he's smart I've ever seen. He keeps criticizing them for not having plans or contingencies. Which, true, but he never offered one himself. I'm sure whatever he did have involved deeming someone (other than himself, of course) expendable.

Random Back Issues #178 - Spider-Girl #51

This is the only issue of Spider-Girl not written by Tom DeFalco, and it takes the form of a letter. A letter a nameless blonde freshman is trying to write to tell Mayday he's in love with her. He works on it on the bus, mentioning he went through six drafts debating whether to mention how many drafts he went through.

Mind you, Mayday is not on the bus with him. As the letter talks about how beautiful and smart she is, how kind and selfless, we see her struggling to wake up and seemingly lost in thought about something in the shower.

Back at school, he gets encouragement from a friend - quite possibly his only friend - to just tell May he's in love with her. He doesn't, of course, so the letter continues with him assuring her even though they've never spoken, he's not a creepy stalker. This as he sits behind her in study hall. But by the time she reads the letter, he'll be gone.

His friend gets him out class early, so he can slip his (unsigned) letter into May's locker. He and his friend exchange good-byes, then he watches around the corner - what was that about not being a stalker? - as May approaches her locker, only to get pulled away by her friend, to buy a birthday present for their coach. At this point, the letter is talking about whether people have control of their lives, or if everything is destined. He feels his life is out of his control, and wonders if she ever feels like that.

He watches her play in a basketball game that night, as the letter discusses how he wishes he asked her out, or even just let her know he existed. I don't even remember who she was dating at this point in the series. It wasn't Jameson's grandson, or the comic book artist, or Flash Thompson's jock kid. It was either that preppy Brad guy that turned out to be a mutant-hater, or maybe she still had a crush on Normie Osborn. Regardless, the kid leaves the game early, at which point the scene shifts to the mall. Now the letter is about how terrifying the future can be, but he sees May with two of her friends and decides to go for it.

Before he can catch up, a jewelry store explodes. It's funny he seems worried about May, considering she and her friends had already walked past the store, while he was directly in front of it at the time. Writer/artist miscommunication? Anyway, it's a teenage girl Electro. She's eventually going to call herself Aftershock - we saw the rematch previously - but doesn't offer any name during her brief (3 pages) fight with Spider-Girl.

One of her attacks sends the boy over a railing, but Spider-Girl saves him, complete with a joke about not falling for her. She takes out her opponent in one punch, but by the time Spider-Girl turns around, the boy's gone.

Next morning, with the letter still going - cripes, how long is this love confession? - he rides past the school with his parents as they leave town and waves to May. May waves back, but admits she has no idea who he is. As he leaves town, the letter turns to the boy insisting this isn't puppy love, and he will still get choked up looking at his high school yearbook in 20 years, but he's glad for that. I do not remember being that stupid about love at that age.

Then May finally gets the letter when she opens her locker at the end of the issue. Sadly for the kid, despite spending her evenings and afternoons punching people, Mayday doesn't actually enjoy hurting others, so his masochist fantasies will remain just that.

{10th longbox, 85th comic. Spider-Girl #51, by Sean McKeever (writer), Casey Jones (artist), Udon Studios (colorist), Randy Gentile (letterer)}

War to the Death - Raymond Rudorff

War to the Death is concerned primarily with the sieges of the Spanish city of Saragossa during the Napoleonic Wars. Rudorff starts with the state of Spain in the early 1800s, which is to say, a former world power that was now not even second-rate. Declining populations in the cities, along with dozens of villages simply abandoned or deserted (though he doesn't get into the why of decline. Immigration? Disease?) Largely culturally stagnant, with a strong religious presence that, at the higher levels of power, pushed back against science and the ideas of the Enlightenment as dangerous. Ruled by an ineffectual dullard of a king, whose wife was sleeping with his chief advisor.

Actually, in addition to repeatedly commenting how physically ugly Charles IV and his wife, Queen Maria Luisa, were, Rudorff keeps coming back to how Charles has no clue the guy he trusts so implicitly, Manuel Godoy, is schtupping his wife. Rudorff almost seems to take it personally, like it's an insult to the grand tradition of European royalty that these people rule a country. The book was published in 1974, and there's a petty part of me hoping subsequent scholarship revealed Charles knew all about the affair and was completely fine with it. Maybe that was even his thing.

Anyway, once Napoleon, who seemed to regard Spain largely as some place that needed securing so he could to get to Portugal, had the royal family ousted to put his brother in charge (over Joseph's objections, since he wanted to stay in Naples), the people of Spain, the working classes, got a little fired up. They didn't love their king by any stretch, and maybe they didn't understand how largely useless his son, Ferdinand VII, was, but he was at least Spanish. "They're idiots, but they're our idiots," that kind of thing. The French are invaders, usurpers, trampling upon the sovereignty of their land.

Saragossa is not the only city that supported Ferdinand as true ruler of Spain and refused to acknowledge Joseph Bonaparte. They might have been the most successful at resisting Napoleon's armies, even if they ultimately were forced to capitulate. They didn't lose easily. Rudorff discusses the civilian and military authorities that form, not just in Saragossa but elsewhere. How they try to decide on a course of action, or who gets to make which decisions. He gets into the rise of Jose Palafox, the closest thing to a supreme commander Saragossa had, even if he did flee the city early in the first siege. Which was kind of funny, Rudorff spent all these pages building Palafox up as an inspirational figure, and then he bails, only to return when the city proves more resistant than expected.

The thing about Saragossa, and to an extent the Spanish campaign in general, is how much it presages a type of warfare that would become more common in the next century. The siege is not a battle on open ground between two armies; it's a force of organized, highly trained soldiers against an entire city. Everyone in Saragossa is resisting. Children are delivering food and ammunition to gunnery crews. Women and monks make wadding for muskets and help erect barricades, when they aren't fighting the French army themselves.

When the French can actually get inside the city walls, they suffer, for the era, serious losses just trying to take one street. The Spanish turn every single house into a fortress the French either have to take or destroy if they want to advance. To take it, they have to clear every floor, because the defenders will retreat to an upper level and fire through holes they made in the floor. Or they'll cross the rooftops to get behind French lines and launch surprise attacks. If the French destroy the building, they still have to take the next one, with no cover from the attacks coming from every window on the street.

All those stories you read or hear about Stalingrad, the fighting from street to street, building to building? Dead stacked up everywhere because there's no time to dispose of bodies? Saragossa might just be the OG when it comes to that warfare. Based on the excerpts from memoirs and diaries of French soldiers Rudorff quotes - he notes that, at least when this was written, there didn't seem to be much scholarship or excerpts on the siege from Spain's perspective, even in the city itself - this kind of fighting wasn't something any of them were accustomed to.

This is something new, and no one is entirely ready for it or the toll it takes. The French aren't fighting a distinct army, but an entire country. No one will help them, their attempts to requisition or demand food or water are ignored. Their messengers are captured once they're out of sight of the main force. Rudorff mentions at one point soldiers couldn't risk getting 100 yards from their unit, or they'd likely be ambushed and killed. And it would likely be a brutal ugly death. Which in turn, made the French vengeful whenever they got the chance.

That said, I think Rudorff overplays the novelty of the fury French soldiers exert on Spanish towns when they take them. The pillaging, burning and raping. I don't think that was as unique an experience, historically, as he makes it seem. Also, it's odd to see him describe the as French officers horrified at the soldiers' actions, then three paragraphs later discuss the officers extorting churches or families for gold and jewels. Yeah, they were horrified. . .horrified they didn't get first dibs on some of that booty!

Rudorff covers each siege, one in the summer of 1808, the other the winter of 1808-1809, separately. He does his best to describe Saragossa's layout. Different bridges, gates, monasteries - there are a lot of monasteries - the relative position of the Ebro and Huerva Rivers and their importance for transport or restricting movement. As far as the siege, he tends to discuss in chronological order, focusing on a few days' of fighting in one area, typically until progress in either direction stalls, then switch to a different area. I didn't feel like flipping back to look at the handful of maps of the city he provided, so I couldn't necessarily tell you where the Trinitarian monastery was, relative to Calle Pabostre. That said, the writing makes clear which direction things are trending, as well as how rough the fighting is, which are the more important parts.

Rudorff also describes the quantities of men and material on both sides, the efforts the Spanish went to maintaining gunpowder supplies. Some of the notable figures on both sides, local commanders or civilians who showed great bravery at some critical moment. One thing that becomes crucial in the fighting I hadn't considered was tunneling. Trenches I expected, but especially as the French start simply destroying buildings, or even entire rows of buildings, tunneling underneath them to set mines or gunpowder is a major factor.

He doesn't necessarily go into detail about the experience, maybe because many of the people who took part didn't survive, but there's enough to grasp the dangers of digging and not knowing if you'll burst into someone else's tunnel and have to fight, pickax to shovel. Or finding an opposing tunnel group heard you coming and rigged an explosive in your path.

Early in the second siege, as the French are still getting things in place, Rudorff criticizes Palafox for not staging a massive attack of the city's forces against the French lines. Palafox did try a few attacks, but never more than 300 men in any particular group. Rudorff is sure, if Palafox had sent out thousands, be they soldiers or civilians, the Spanish could have overrun the French.

I don't know that I agree. For one, he mentions a page or two earlier how, with all the people who flooded into the city to help with its defense, soldiers were sleeping on the streets, in the winter, for lack of available space indoors. As a result, combined with the crowding, disease was running rampant. Maybe that's all the more reason to see if they can break the French forces. Set them running, get some breathing space. But a frontal assault seems like the sort of thing you want healthy people for.

More critically, Rudorff spends a fair amount of pages detailing how almost every time Spanish forces met French on open ground, the Spanish got their asses routed. Including a few times with Palafox or his brother in command. While I don't doubt Rudorff is right there would have been no shortage of civilian volunteers, I'm pretty sure it's a different thing to charge across open ground, with little likelihood you can withdraw to safety if things go bad, versus fighting when some invader busts his way through your living room wall. Again, militias of peasants had tried to defend villages against the French on open ground. A lot of those peasants ended up on the tip of a lancer's spear.

The city does fall, eventually, though I have to question if Napoleon wouldn't have been better off just leaving it be. Strategically, I'm not sure it netted him anything close to what it cost. I don't know how War to the Death is regarded among people more knowledgeable about Saragossa, but I found it very informative, and not too technical or difficult to follow. 

'In the Plaza, the squadron lost direction. Horsemen galloped wildly around the great square while the inhabitants poured out of their houses and rushed at them with knives, sticks and hatchets. Rider after rider was pulled down by screaming women and youths, hacked, stabbed and bludgeoned to death as their fellow-soldiers had been in Madrid's Puerto del Sol six weeks previously.' 

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)

Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) is the new correspondent in Djakarta for an Australian news service. He knows no one and nothing, but that's not going to stop him. He's got ambition.

Which wouldn't count for much, but he's also got the aid of Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt), a Chinese-Australian cameraman who does know the area. Knows who to talk to, knows how to get Guy in the door, get him the scoops that earn headlines.

Billy has his own motives, of course. He's growing increasingly dissatisfied with the Indonesian president, with the poverty and starvation that the majority of the population are left to suffer through while the Westerners hang out in air-conditioned bars and hotels, having fancy parties. So in that regard, Guy is potentially useful to him. Someone eager and ambitious enough to pounce on any story or lead or interview Billy can dangle in front of him, with only vague concern for any ripple effects. Billy also seems to have plans for Guy's personal life, and they concern Jill (Sigourney Weaver), part of the British attache office. Billy proposed to her, and was turned down, but still loves her, in a certain way.

Billy tells Guy at one point that to understand the country, he needs to understand the significance of the puppet master in the society. That the stories and culture are not a binary of good/evil, black/white, but a shifting mixture, creating a balance between two sides. Billy also says the puppet master is a priest, but I wasn't clear if that was meant literally or figuratively, though I assume the latter. Especially as Billy clearly sees himself as a puppeteer, trying to move Guy and Jill around towards a happy ending he thinks they both need, watching unseen (or unnoticed) from somewhere nearby.

So Hunt spends most of the film playing Billy as jovial. Everyone's pal. Clever, but not cruel. Always helpful, but also keeping files on anyone he thinks could be useful or significant. It's only every so often he gets tired of the facade and snaps back at people. Asshole American journalist Curtis, mostly. Guy sometimes, for not living up to the version of himself Billy thinks he can be. Hunt has a very good gravely tone for expressing disappointment.

I haven't read the book, but I assume it doesn't end as happily as the film, if only because the arc of the movie doesn't feel like it's moving that way. For one, the attempted Communist uprising, which most of the people Guy knows are in favor of (if not actively assisting), is ultimately crushed. His coworkers, Kumar and Tiger Lily, which have to run for their lives to have any chance of survival.

Beyond that, Billy tried, the first night, to get Guy to give the people in the local market the money in his pockets. Guy declined, arguing it would be not even a drop in the ocean. He wouldn't make the small gesture. Billy can't save the child of the young woman he knows. Either she didn't actually go to a doctor with the money he provided, or it was too late. His big plan to hang a sign from a hotel window calling out the president for letting his people starve is never seen by said president, and Billy is killed by what I think were American security guys there to keep everything nice and friendly for Capitalism, sorry, I mean, Democracy's, allies. Billy tried the small gesture, and the grand gesture, and neither worked out.

Likewise, his efforts to push Jill and Guy together appear doomed because he's misjudged Guy. Guy put the scoop of a shipment of weapons being smuggled to the Communists above Jilly's career and trust. And then, when she somehow still gives him the time of day later, he promises to be on the flight out of the country with her. Until he hears the presidential palace has been seized. Then he had to get the scoop. It really feels like that was supposed to end with the soldier shooting him in the back as he boldly marched past, waving his press credentials. Instead, he gets a rifle butt to the eye and a detached retina, but ultimately escapes the country.

I think the significant scene is the one fairly early where Billy makes a comment about being a dwarf and Guy says he isn't. Billy says, "You really don't care, do you? Or maybe you just don't see." I think Billy hoped it was the former, but it was really the latter. It isn't about idealism, it's about self-interest. If Billy can help Guy, then nothing else matters. He has to find a source, has to get something newsworthy, or he'll be sent back to Sydney, which he describes as a graveyard for his career. Ignoring that staying Djakarta, growing increasingly hostile to Westerners, could easily become his literal graveyard.

Guy just doesn't strike me as a character who learns a lesson until it's too late. He insisted on them driving along with the protest march that ended with people throwing rocks at the U.S. embassy, and nearly got everyone inside the car killed, plus a machete cut to his leg for his trouble. He has a clumsy charm and quick temper that feels like it stems from some inferiority complex, both of which can get him into trouble. Gibson portrays those well, but those are things he usually played well. The young boy trying to be a rogue and not quite pulling it off, but still amusing for the attempt. Or the overly intense teenager that's always on the brink of an explosion. Young, headstrong, easily insulted, easily manipulated.

He always looks sweaty and unkempt, which only makes Weaver look even more out of his league than you'd expect. Weaver plays Jill as cool and composed. I assume Jill's supposed to be several years Guy's senior. Certainly in emotional age. Though in the end, they both try to keep their distance from what's happening in the country. Jill describes Guy's report on the famine on Lombok Island as being overly melodramatic. She doesn't dispute the facts, she just thinks he's overdoing it. Guy's only retort is to ask what it takes to make her cry. The facts don't really matter, not in the sense of the suffering. They're just something to hype, to get people talking about him.

In that sense, I can't decide if the reason Guy pulls back from the worst excesses of his fellow journalist Curtis is because he sees too much of himself in the man, or because Curtis' exploitation of the locals and the power he thinks he has makes Guy conscious of things he'd rather not inspect too closely.