What I Bought 2/28/2026 - Part 2

I spent most of last Friday on the road. Driving to Alex's, driving to his gig 300 miles away, driving back, then driving home, on about 1 hour of sleep. To be fair, that's more than I usually manage when he drives, but I still basically flopped on my couch as soon as I got home 8 a.m. Saturday morning. Next I knew, it was noon, and I was basically useless the rest of the weekend.

I don't intend to do anything like that this weekend. In fact, maybe I'll just sleep the entire weekend. That sounds fantastic.

Babs: The Black Road South #2, by Garth Ennis (writer), Jacen Burrows (artist), Andy Troy and Lee Loughridge (colorists), Rob Steen (letterer) - I don't know what Babs and Barry are looking at, but the horse is appalled.

Babs and Izzy pursue the questing party that's got all their money with the aid of a punch-drunk dragon. Who passes the time telling about how he used to be quite the fighter, with all the riches and women that came with it, until all the blunt force trauma put his career on the downslope. Then he confused one of his ladies for a sheep, and well, look, it's awful he ate her, but I don't think it's accurately described as toxic masculinity, as the other ladies accused, and which Babs and Izzy agree. He's got CTE and no depth perception, for fuck's sake!

Also, I imagine a dragon's metabolism is a real bear to keep fed. As in, a whole bear is something they'd probably like to eat, given the chance. 

Whatever. They catch up to the questing party in the town everyone stops at before continuing on to die in Mordynn. Babs is very concerned about being recognized, and reluctant to talk about her past experience. But she offers enough, combined with a flashback at the beginning of the issue, to know Ennis is parodying Lord of the Rings. With Babs in Sean Bean's spot, I believe, since everyone else is accounted for. Babs leaves Izzy to talk the body count, I mean, party into letting the two of them join, as their only hope to get back their money is make sure these goobers actually complete the quest and return with significant loot.

Yeah, I wouldn't bet on it, either. Especially since what appears to be the only other survivor of the faux-fellowship is lurking in the shadows, and the years don't appear to have been kind to him. 

Dust to Dust #7, by JG Jones (writer/artist), Phil Bram (writer), Jackie Marzan (letterer) - Back in the mid-2000s, there were these awful TV commercials for this local church. They always ended with, "Family Worship Center, it's a church on fire!" From a marketing sense, just terrible. However, it was great for my mood, Alex and I laughed our asses off. Still do. The only good thing organized religion in the United States, quite possibly the world, has ever produced.

The masked killer is getting down to business now. The baseball player fooling around with the preacher's daughter, in the church? Dead. The preacher's daughter, too. Then it's immediately to the farmhouse where the photographer's staying. It turns into an awkward fight of her, an old man in a wheelchair, and his wife with her frying pan, all against a guy in a gas mask.

Jones uses tall, narrow panels during the struggle, usually breaking up a single setting into discrete pieces that each center on one character. A panel of the old man trying to use his cane to stand, another of the killer with his machete, holding the photographer by the hair. A third of the missus coming in hot with the skillet, concluded by the start of her swing.

A chaotic, uncoordinated and ultimately, somewhat successful, fight for both sides. The killer doesn't manage to get the photographer, but does manage to escape with some of her photos. All because the sheriff couldn't haul himself out of the bath fast enough to do anything. Jeez, this guy ain't exactly impressing me, especially as he still thinks it's the moonshiners who've been dead for a couple of issues now.

The rest of the issue is spent on the rainmaker setting up his equipment while the Mayor looks on. The Mayor's brother is helping, which puts the two prime suspects for the killer in the same place, so I thought Jones and Bram might do something to hint at a head injury for one of them, after the frying pan, but no. It's getting difficult for me to figure this story is actually going to resolve next issue. Especially after the preacher chucks a rattlesnake at the rainmaker, causing a flinch and misfire of the device, which lights the church on fire.

I at least appreciate the preacher's own self-righteousness getting his place burned down.

Feeling Shifty

Mr. Shifty involves a silent, teleporting guy who infiltrates a hi-rise tower. As you find out from his tech support, Nyx, the tower is owned by Chairman Stone, who stole MEGA Plutonium. You've got to steal it back via teleporting and punching.

Every level is a different floor in the tower (or under it.) The view is topdown, enabling you to see the layout of the halls and rooms in your vicinity. You can also move the camera a limited distance with the right thumbstick, to peek ahead. There's usually some objective you're trying to complete on each floor. Reach a security terminal to get more accurate blueprints, destroy a certain machine. Sometimes you're just trying to make it to a different elevator to take you to the next floor.

There are lots of hazards in your path. The goons ramp up from guys with handguns, to shotguns, to machine guns, to flamethrowers and grenade launchers. There are big dudes who just punch, but take an extra hit (3 instead of 2) to knock down, women with dual pistols who seem to have limited super-speed (after the first time you hit them, they do a very fast backwards dash to escape your punching range), and vaguely ninja-ish women who can zip into your face faster than you expect. There are also exploding barrels, automated machine guns and missile launchers, and laser traps. So many laser traps. Chairman Stone must have loved the first Resident Evil movie. 

All of that in a variety of configurations. However, friendly fire is a thing, so you can often get the opposition to eliminate itself. There was one particular room, in the last level, where I had my most success when I stuck to safe spots as much as possible, and the moving lasers mowed down most of the enemies. Just don't get caught in the blast radius, because Mr. Shifty is a real glass cannon. One hit and you're down. Most enemies' weapons have laser sights, so you can tell where they're aiming and, you know, not be there. But with how much ordinance is flying around sometimes, that can be difficult to track. Fortunately, the game restarts from the room you died in, rather than the start of the level, but at the same time, when you finish a level, it tells you how long it took, and how many times you died.

Seeing I died 59 times on level 16 was disheartening.

You also have a limited number of teleports you can use at one time, highlighted at the bottom of the screen as five boxes. You recharge, but it sure feels like, when you've exhausted your jumps, it takes forever for even one to recharge versus how quickly it happens if you're just recharging from 4 to 5 available teleports. The teleports are aimed with a little cursor that swivels and moves as you do. Range is limited, so some levels involve puzzles where you have to figure out how to get from A to B when the most direct hallway is separated from you by a thicker than usual wall.

Fighting fills a meter just above the teleport capacity display. When it's full, and you're about to get shot, you enter a sort of bullet time where everyone else slows down. So you can get clear and hopefully knock out several enemies in the few seconds before it drains.

Almost everything in the environment is destructible. On the one hand, this is dangerous. If you aren't careful, an enemy might have a strong enough weapon to just destroy the wall between you and keep firing. Though again, helpful in terms of friendly fire. However, this means there are all sorts of things you can use as weapons. Not guns - Mr. Shifty considers guns to be a coward's weapon, not like teleporting behind someone and punching them in the skull - but broken pipes, staffs, keyboards, the heads off marble busts, sodas from the drink machine. Chairman Stone has a lot of Greek or Roman statues with tridents or shields that you can pick up and hurl. Then pick up and hurl again. (You can't Captain America the shield, or maybe I just wasn't doing it right.)

I at least understand those as a design choice; Stone's a wealthy guy who thinks he's hot shit. I'm less sure why he has boat oars displayed on the walls everywhere, but hell, they make for good cannon fodder smacking.

Mr. Shifty is a game that, when it's going you well, you feel super-slick and accomplished. The one-hit-kill nature of the gameplay means that can vanish in an instant and, at least for me, once it was gone, it was hard to get back. One death seemed to wreck my timing. I'd start dying repeatedly in the same room. So it can be anger inducing sometimes.

What I Bought 2/28/2026 - Part 1

Had a dream early Monday morning where I was locked in an airtight room with a window in the door. I could feel myself running out of air as I managed to break the glass, at which point water started to pour in. Managed to tear the opening wider, which let in more water, but seemed to drain the hallway of the Gothic mansion I was in fast enough I didn't drown or asphyxiate. Nice when dream logic works in your favor.

I didn't find everything from January and February I missed, but I found most of it, so let's get started.

Spirit of the Shadows #1 and 2, by Daniel Ziegler (writer), Nick Cagnetti (writer/artist/colorist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - Play something lively, my man, it'll be funny. 'Cause you're in a graveyard.

Erik Leroux is dead, and finally reunited with his love, Katrina, in the Sacred Realm. Or not, because he has to pass through the Spirit Realm first and be judged. To be judged, he needs a book that documents his entire life. It'll also help him remember, since his memories are a little fuzzy. Too bad a creature grabs his book and shreds it, but Erik manages to find some pages that show him and us his life.

At first, it feels like Ziegler and Cagnetti are going for the approach of starting at the end, then flashing back to how we got there. Except Erik's time in the Spirit Realm is interrupted with activity back in the living world, where a doctor buries Erik, only to be captured by a traveler that turns out to be a witch named Helena Hextress. She's after Erik because he's responsible for her sister's death. No, her sister isn't Katrina, but Katrina's fate is tied to what happened.

Erik being dead is only a minor inconvenience to Helena, who turns the doctor into a wooden figure, then resurrects Erik with a spell she originally learned to revive her sister. But you've got to use it quick, and it took her too long to learn it. Cagnetti depicts the resurrection as a giant, ghoul-mouthed, alternate color version of Spirit of the Shadows bursting from the Spirit Realm's ground and swallowing Erik. Gotta be up there with resurrection via enormous, wish-granting dragon in terms of unique ways to do it. That's where issue 2 ends, Erik alive again (and not for the first time), but not aware what danger he's in, with the book of his life (what he collected of it) still in the Spirit Realm, with Elizabeth.

I'm curious whether Erik will remember his life now that he's alive, or if Ziegler and Cagnetti intend to flesh out the rest of his life via Elizabeth continuing the search for Erik's pages. In which case, Erik's time in the living world would be focused on him trying not to be killed by Helena. The being that explained the rules to Erik within the first few pages of issue 1 asked him a question he said was the basis of the judgement: Did you lead a moral life? Based on what we've seen in the first 2 issues, the answer is no, so Erik probably needs to stay alive long enough to reverse that trend (if he can), while Elizabeth learns things that would probably turn her against him.

Cagnetti's art feels very Kirby-influenced at times, though maybe that's just Helena's hair. But the squared off buildings and blocky protagonist has a similar vibe. The shading on the faces, narrow smudges of black here and there, has is more what I associate with '50s horror comic (or Black Jack Demon.) Which makes for a contrast with the vivid, solid block colors of the Spirit Realm scenes, which feel closer to a Ditko Dr. Strange book. Like two different stories taking place in the same book. I won't say it doesn't work, if I take it that the ultimately Earthly motivations Erik had pushed him into this supernatural situation (somehow.) It's just noticeable in a way I find distracting sometimes.

The Running Man (2025)

Ben Richards (Glen Powell) needs money for his sick kid, so he applies to appear on a Network show, and Network show, to make said money. Just as long as it's not The Running Man. He's very angry, so the producer (Josh Brolin), thinks he'd be great for The Running Man. Richards is desperate enough to accept and quickly learns TV is, gasp, fake!

Not in the sense that people are trying to kill him, or that he can make big bucks if he can stay alive. Those are both real. But in the sense the show lies about how he got to this point, and when he sends in the required daily videos, they fake them to be more incendiary. And at a certain point, the show starts working to keep him alive, at least so long as the ratings are good.

I can't decide if Powell, or maybe it's the movie in general, overplays the "angry" thing. It feels like too much, but the commercials and the other touches Edgar Wright puts in the movie - the clips of the obnoxious "Americanos" show, the videos by "The Apostle" - make the film feel like it's meant to be a satire, Robocop-style. If so, maybe having Ben Richards be a comically angry man, who responds to everything with either acerbic comments or violence, is a good choice. He tried to be a good man, it got him nowhere, now he's pissed off all the time.

Still, the performance puts me in the mind of what Robert Downey Jr. said in Tropic Thunder when watching the play version of Simple Jack. When Powell dials back on the anger throttle, it allows the audience to connect. The moments where Powell is allowed to show Richards' humanity through trying to help people, whether it's offering money to get a sick kid some medicine, or trying to talk a dementia-addled old woman out doing something that will get her killed, those make me root for the guy more than when he's screaming into the floating cameras. Even the bits where he's being funny in the daily videos he's supposed to send in convey his anger in a more relatable way. 

Brolin's excellent as this complete scumbag, who is always selling. The conversation near the end, where Powell asks if "they", meaning his wife and daughter, are OK, and Brolin legitimately can't figure out who Powell means until he spells it out. Even though Richards got into this to make money for them, even though that's what Brolin used to convince him. Because it was never anything other than a lever to get what he wanted, a promising contestant. If it didn't work, he'd have tried something else until Richards agreed.

There are some nice scenes or pieces of the film. I think the one I found most disquieting was the part with the two kids who got Laughlin. Them standing on either side of Buddy T (who I kept thinking was a CGI de-aged Ernie Hudson, sorry Colman Domingo!), stone-faced while holding the flamethrowers they used, was unsettling. They're not even happy to be on TV getting cheered for, might as well be telling them it's oatmeal for dinner tonight.

The part where Richards is in the trunk of a car, only aware of how badly things are going via the discussion he can hear and the way he's being bounced around, that was a nice bit. Michael Cera walking Richards through his secret room - 'this is where I make handmade soap, as far as you know' -  that was good. I enjoyed a lot of the cat-and-mouse between Richards and the Hunters in general, Richards mostly running for his life, taking out pursuers by sheer dumb luck as much as anything else.

The people he meets along the way were crucial for me to be pulled into the film. They living in the same world as Richards, but they've chosen different approaches to survive than "angrier than Vegeta with a permanent case of hemorrhoids." Whether it's Molie with his business selling TVs that, 'don't watch you back,' or The Apostle sharing the truth about the Network shows through underground tape distribution, or Amelia sneering at the "welfs" who watch The Running Man while insisting she's an open-minded person. Some of them try to address the problem, some put their head down and focus on the ground in front of them, some don't see a problem at all until they see a faked video of themselves leaning out a car window screaming for help.

Making Preparations to Set Sail

Wanted! is a collection of Eiichiro Oda's work prior to One Piece. Which, if this volume is comprehensive, consists of 5 stories. That's including Romance Dawn, the last entry in the book, which is kind of a dry run/first draft for One Piece, as it consists of a kid in a straw hat named Luffy with rubber powers, who wants to be a pirate. It doesn't get as far as Luffy actually recruiting a crew; he saves a young girl who was trying to protect her friend (who is a magic bird) from some creepy-looking guy with weird powers.

Yeah, that guy.

All the stories have comedic elements to varying degrees, and fall into different genres or styles. WANTED! is a Western, with a legendary gunman being haunted/annoyed by one of the bounty hunters who failed to kill him. The lead, Gill, spends most of the episode trying to run away or outsmart his pursuers, or yelling at the ghost to shut up as it plots his demise. Future Present from God is set in the modern day, about a pickpocket that God intended to kill for being a negative to society, but God fucked up and now said pickpocket has to keep a department store full of people from dying in a meteorite impact. Ikki Yako follows a cowardly monk (named Guko, and there's a monk named Ginko from a series called Mushi-shi. I don't know if Oda was spoofing that, or it's just a coincidence. He says he just thought a monk manga might be fun to do) who gets roped into trying to vanquish an evil spirit terrorizing a village.

Monsters is the closest to an entirely serious story, as it involves a swordsman who poses as a courageous hero, but actually uses a town's terror at an impending dragon attack as a cover to rob everyone's homes after they flee. There's another swordsman, Ryuma, overly serious and quick to anger, looking for the greatest swordsman in the world so he can challenge them. But he seems like an idiot, and managed to piss off the entire town because it seems like his fault the dragon's coming.

One thing the first 4 stories have in common is late surprise twists. That Gill was never actually in any real danger from the dangerous bounty hunter after him, because his skills are far greater. The thief pulling a fast one on God, Guko seeming like a talentless coward for 90% of his story, then becoming a badass at the very end. Monsters has a last page reveal about the true identity of the mysterious swordsman "King," that Ryuma's looking for. Romance Dawn's the exception, as Luffy shows off his powers about halfway through, and had already told us in a flashback he ate a mysterious fruit, albeit without telling us what it granted him.

The other thing I notice is the newer works tend to have fewer panels. WANTED! runs 6-8 panels a page, in a variety of layouts, for basically its entire length. Meanwhile Romance Dawn is almost entirely 4-6 panels, minus a handful of pages near the end with only 2 panels. Those are usually pages that involve someone getting hit, so the reduction in panels might reflect a shift towards more action-oriented stories. The 2-panel pages start to appear in Monsters, where Oda understandably seems to want more space to draw a guy leaping at the jaws of a dragon.

Sunday Splash Page #416

"Storytime," in Power Pack (vol. 3) #1, by Marc Sumerak (writer), Gurihiru (artist/color artists), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

The Power kids' ongoing ended in '91, and then, not much of anything until a 4-issue mini-series in 2000 that I haven't read. But the Nineties probably weren't the decade for a kid team at Marvel. Not x-treme or kewl enough.

In 2005, Marvel got in one of their periodic moods to make some stuff aimed towards younger readers, complete with manga-influenced art from the Gurihiru team, that really emphasizes these characters are kids, as opposed to "kids" that are built more like young adults. So, a bunch of 4-issue mini-series revolving around Power Pack, starting with this one. Katie's hand-drawn retelling of the origin over the first 4 pages aside, it's not an origin series, as the kids have already had their powers long enough to make some sort of name for themselves as crime-fighters.

(There'd be a Power Pack: Day One mini-series covering the origin later, but I don't own it.)

Each issue, Sumerak focuses on one kid, usually them dealing with the strain of being a hero. Katie wants to stop hiding, and tell the story of them getting powers from an alien horse for an assignment about what she did over the summer. Alex tries to juggle responsibility as the oldest with wanting to spend time with a girl he likes. Julie wants to focus on being a regular kid instead of a superhero. Jack, however, wants to spend as much time being a superhero as possible, whether his siblings are around or not. Whether he's able to handle the trouble he encounters or not.

The issues aren't entirely standalone, certain elements pop up more than once. Katie's frustration with her feelings being dismissed by her siblings leads to an outburst of power that leads a Snark to their home. He returns in the final issue, having recruited and empowered a masked robber that escaped earlier in the issue when Julie was being pulled in too many directions at once. Both antagonists are dealt with by letting them get pulled into another dimension by a squid-thing, via a doorway the kids' dad built in their basement.

Which is kind of a harsh resolution now that I think of it. That squid probably wasn't looking to make friends, no matter how silly Gurihiru make it look. Certainly when the portal got opened in issue 2, disrupting Alex's date, the squid was played as a serious threat, but Sumerak doesn't dwell on what happened to the bad guys. Guess we know where Stark and Richards got the idea for their Negative Zone prison.

Saturday Splash Page #218

"Conqueror," in R.E.B.E.L.S. (vol. 2) #5, by Tony Bedard (writer), Claude St. Aubin (penciler), Scott Hanna (inker), Jose Villarrubia (colorist), Swanos (letterer)

There was another DC series by this name that ran for a year-and-a-half in the '90s. For the record, and before I forget, the acronym stands for "Revolutionary Elite Brigade to Eliminate L.E.G.I.O.N.  Supremacy." Yes, Vril Dox II put an acronym inside an acronym. 11th-level intellect can't substitute for style. In this case, L.E.G.I.O.N. was a for-hire peacekeeping force Dox created, that was subsequently usurped by his kid, who was smarter than Vril from birth, but also insane.

I don't know if Dox was the offspring of the original Brainiac back then, DC continuity being what it was, but in the late-2000s, he is. He'd been a sort of lab assistant Brainiac created, and was ostracized by the Coluans for it. Dox seemed to take the approach, if he can't make people love him, make himself indispensable, then charge out the nose for his services. Except someone takes control of his robot peacekeeping force. Someone using mind-control starfish. Someone who wants to attach one of those echinoderms to Dox.

The first 14 issues are Dox avoiding capture, while trying to assemble a force to take said enemy down. He gets an assist from Brainiac 5, out to ensure his own existence by sending info back inside Supergirl's mind (from that stretch post-Infinite Crisis where she was in the Waid/Kitson Legion of Superheroes title), about how to build a team like the Legion. Dox, being a controlling dickhead with a superiority complex and little use for social niceties, takes his own spin on things. Rather than recruit Supergirl, he seizes control of a powerful, but near mindless, creature that was part of the force hunting him, because he wants power that won't buck his commands.

The big deal of this title was Bedard presenting a Starro the Conqueror who is actually an alien that managed, through force of will, to assert control over the Starros when they tried to control him. He's conquered entire galaxies, and can draw on the strength of every being controlled by the starfish. I recall the reception to this not being positive, but I look at it as a temporary thing. There were Starros as generally presented before this, and once this guy was dealt with, the Starros went back to that. A big starfish that controls people with little starfish, for some reason or another.

I started buying this after the Starro storyline was already over. I'd dropped Power Girl due to not liking the direction Winick was going, and the ongoings I was buying from Marvel were canceled or would be soon, so my pull list wasn't exactly stuffed. And Bedard was adding Starfire to the cast, and I was curious to see her away from the Teen Titans. Plus, Bedard had earned some credit with me for his Exiles' run.

By that point, the book shifted to Vril Dox playing a public relations game. He got credit for defeating "Starro," was getting all sorts of new client worlds, and was trying to get people to regard him more favorably. And stop referring to him as "Brainiac-2." His methods left something to be desired, as he's morally flexible to an extent at least parts of the cast questioned whether they could really trust his judgment or continue to follow him. 

The book was one of a handful canceled before the New 52 was even announced, I believe to make space for various Flashpoint tie-in mini-series. Probably not a surprise, since Starfire and Lobo were likely the two most popular characters, and they both showed up in the last 10 issues. Green Lanterns are involved, but mostly rookies rather than the established characters, and they're antagonists, because Dox questions the validity of a police force that appointed itself. He has a point. At least the worlds he protects hired him. Nobody asked the Guardians to create so many fuck-ups.

Still, Dox is a tough protagonist to root for, so willing to sacrifice others for what he deems the greater good, which typically involves ensuring his survival. But aside from himself, he doesn't play favorites. He'll sacrifice anyone, including his son, if he thinks it's the best option statistically. And even if things ultimately work out for Dox, Bedard has enough things go wrong, and lets the rest of the cast push back against Dox enough, that it maybe keeps him from being too insufferable. It's at least fun when he cancels a contract with the Psions because it's better than dealing with a pissed-off Starfire, or Lobo makes him drink some hideous concoction because he knows Dox is desperate enough for his help to do it.