Redshift - Al Sarrantonio (ed.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Possible Autumn of Abundance

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

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

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

I do not share such nostalgia. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action in the North Atlantic (1943)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plague-Bringing Angels

No one knows you like your best friend?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday Splash Page #432

"Beauty and the Bowl Cut," in Amazing Mary Jane #1, by Leah Williams (writer), Carlos Gomez (artist), Carlos Lopez (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)

In late 2019, Marvel tried giving Mary Jane Watson her own ongoing series. I'm not clear on the thinking, maybe her fans were getting annoyed by all the focus on Gwen Stacy (albeit an alt-universe version with super-powers), or Marvel just figured there'd be enough carry over from people who bought Amazing Spider-Man to make it work?

Whatever the reason, they tried it. Whether due to sales or shipping disruptions with COVID, the book solicited 9 issues, but only shipped 6. The first 5 were collected into a tpb that I reviewed in November of 2024. Those issues involved MJ being cast as the love interest in a Mysterio biopic that turned out to be directed by the actual Mysterio, posing as auteur director Cage McKnight, who Mysterio suckered into visiting the Falklands to find the perfect penguin to use for the "Jaws of penguins."

MJ decides to go along with this insane idea, and ends up basically saving the film by managing Mysterio's over-the-top temperament, finding them a new backer when their funding gets pulled, covering for the actor playing Spider-Man when he chickens out over a little thing like irate super-villains attacking the set because they don't like their likenesses being used in the film.

(Although Cobra? Stegron? Tarantula? Really digging the bottom of the barrel there, Mysterio. Was Hypno-Hustler considered too cliche?)

Williams leans into Mary Jane's charisma and knowledge of the world of movies as things that keep filming rolling, along with the idea that hanging around Peter Parker has given her a commitment to helping people try to make the best of second chances. I'm not clear on what MJ and Peter's relationship status was, other than they're on good enough terms to talk regularly over the phone, but there's also an element of guilt for MJ that, while Peter knows she's working on a movie about Mysterio, he doesn't know Mysterio is actually the director. She's doing something she believes in, but recognizes there's a risk that it could damage her connection with someone really important to her if it backfires.

While it stretches my suspension of disbelief MJ can hold off the entire "Savage Six" by herself (with some help from robots of the Original 5 X-Men Mysterio built previously for some reason) long enough for the movie to finish shooting, I definitely prefer Williams' writing here to the work she did on Gwenpool Strikes Back, which may be the only other thing she's written that I've read. Meta-commentary humor is a tricky needle to thread, so maybe that's to be expected.

Carlos Gomez's art is very clean and expressive, really capturing the dramatic personality Mysterio has, as well as Mary Jane's range of emotions. When she decides they need to leverage Mysterio being much angrier than the actual Cage McKnight, she hams it up a little to appeal to Mysterio's ego. When their equipment is being repossessed, she plunks herself in the director's chair with a megawatt smile and chats with the repo guys like old friends. When she discusses the risk she's taking trusting Mysterio is genuine about this with a member of the crew, she draws in on herself and stops making eye contact.

I'm not sure what Williams had planned beyond this - I think issue 6 is a premiere for the film back in NYC, so presumably Peter was going to learn the truth at some point - but I wouldn't have minded seeing more.

Saturday Splash Page #234

"Action Figure," in Wild Dog #2, by Max Collins (writer), Terry Beatty (penciler), Dick Giordano (inker), Michele Wolfman (colorist), John Workman (letterer)

Created by Max Collins and Terry Beatty in the late 1980s, when, as mentioned when we discussed The Punisher, the United States loved itself a guy who ran around shooting people who "deserved" it. OK, fine, the U.S. always loves a guy who runs around shooting people who "deserved" it. We're a fucked-in-the-head country.

Wild Dog was sort of a homemade, street-level vigilante. A guy who pulls together a costume from stuff you could buy in stores. Camo pants. A jersey with a local school mascot on it. A hockey mask. He drives around in a pickup truck. No specially modified battle van for Wild Dog! He does however, have a fair amount of guns, a bulletproof vest under the jersey, and a taser built into his glove.

(At one point, a character states Wild Dog's used existing tech to give himself capabilities rivaling Superman. I know they powered Supes down a bit post-Crisis on the Infinite Earths, but let's be real here. Wild Dog hasn't even given himself capabilities rivaling Booster Gold.)

Wild Dog started with a 4-issue mini-series in 1987, revolving around him fighting a, you could call them a terrorist, paramilitary, or revolutionary group depending on your perspective. The "Committee for Social Change" were operating in the Quad Cities area (which is in eastern Iowa/western Illinois, on the banks of the Mississippi River.) They decide to punctuate their statement about tearing down existing political and social systems via killing a bunch of honor roll students, or attacking a military arsenal to steal a bazooka that launches some powerful "fuel air bomb." In both cases, Wild Dog shows up and tears down their existing circulatory systems via some hot lead.

Running through the mini-series is the question of who is under the hockey mask. A local reporter who was rescued in the first issue pursues the mystery as a way to bolster her career, and a government agent suspects one of his three high school football pals - now a police lieutenant, a Pulitzer-winning journalist and an car repair shop owner, respectively - is the vigilante and wants him to work for the government. We get a little bit of their backstories and philosophies to see why he thinks this, and so we can make our own guess. But Collins plays it such that we're left wondering if maybe Mr. Agent Man, Graham Gault, is just trying to throw people off his trail.

The final issue settles the question, as we learn why Jack Wheeler turned to vigilantism and where he got the money to open his shop (and presumably, buy all these guns.) But we're left with the question of what his cop friend is going to do with the knowledge. Turn Jack in, or help him by feeding him info? It's a different approach, keeping the protagonist almost silent and anonymous through most of the story. His motivations only hinted or guessed at based on which suspect you think he is.

The approach does mean the final issue is almost entirely flashbacks that give us more details about Jack. If you figure the mystery of Wild Dog's identity was the most important part, then it's a suitable climax to go back to the very beginning, the detective laying out the sequence of events. If you were expecting a climactic confrontation with the remnants of the Committee, either as they make some final push towards a goal, or just try to eradicate Wild Dog before he does the same to him, it falls flat. I must fall into the second category, because I was underwhelmed by the final issue.

Wild Dog would go on to get a spot in Action Comics during the stretch where it was a weekly anthology title. With the identity mystery resolved, I assume his war on crime took prominence there. I haven't read those, but when Action Comics went back to being a monthly Superman book, Wild Dog got a final one-shot where he was targeted by a guy hired specifically to capture him on behalf of a crime family. Which he did, but the fine print ended up getting the crooks in the end.

I learned about Wild Dog because he got some play in the mid-2000s comics blogosphere. The makeshift costume and taciturn personality seemed to make him someone bloggers liked to point and gawk at. Geoff Johns used him briefly in Booster Gold, as part of the last bit of resistance - with Hawkman, Green Arrow, Pantha and Anthro - in the "bad" timeline where Booster keeps Ted Kord from getting his skull perforated by Max Lord. Spoiler alert: A guy with some Uzis doesn't last long against OMACs and a mind-controlled Superman. There was a version in the Arrow TV show, and I think another version in one of the lousy New 52 Suicide Squad books (I'm not going to look at any of those comics, or even my old reviews, to confirm that.)

Then Gerard Way used the Jack Wheeler, auto mechanic version, in Cave Carson has a Cybernetic Eye, as basically the one friend Cave had. Which was a curious choice, but I guess Way wanted someone who was both out of his depth in subterranean empires, yet largely unconcerned about it as long as he had something to shoot and something to shoot at.

Random Back Issues #171 - R.E.B.E.L.S. #21

I didn't even remember I had a "rebels" tag.

This is a transition issue, as Bedard wraps up loose ends from his "War of the Brainiacs" story and segues into the Green Lantern Corps becoming more hostile towards Vril Dox's L.E.G.I.O.N. The events are related via flashback, as two rookie Lanterns, Altin Admos (the blue guy) and Gorius Karkum (the lady with the tail), relate how their attempt to arrest Dox for not keeping Brainiac in custody backfired horribly.

They told Dox he was under arrest, he told them they had no authority, then Lobo attacked Gorius. Altin admits that because Okaarans love fighting, Lobo's a legendary figure. Gorius tries a containment bubble and Lobo just pushes through, but Altin clocks him in the face and then impales him with a, it can't be a trident, it has 4 points.

Whatever, he impales him, which is just gonna annoy Lobo, but impresses Dox enough he has his son Lyrl give us Altin's backstory. He's a fighting prodigy, who the Okaarans thought would lead them to new glory. Except he joined the GLC, and Dox thinks it's because the guy wanted a challenge. (How we're getting that narration when the Lanterns are the ones telling this story, I have no idea.)

Back to Altin, who's ducking and weaving, but Lobo eventually hits him. Then hits him a bunch more times. Gorius creates a bunch of chains, with apparently enough will behind them Lobo can't break free. So he grabs the chains and swing her into a wall. Altin wants to keep going, but Dox intercedes. From the safety of his force field bubble, because the man's not stupid enough to interrupt one of Lobo's fights otherwise. Dox explains Lobo's working for him to earn money to pay off debts incurred as an Archbishop in the church of the Triple-Fish God. Which I think was part of that storyline with Adam Strange, Starfire and Animal Man in 52? 

The Lanterns are unimpressed with Lobo's commitment to maintaining his credit rating, but now an entire L.E.G.I.O.N. task force showed up, along with news crews. At which point Dox makes the pitch how much better his company is than the Corps. L.E.G.I.O.N. will help rebuild a government, and they work for people who hire them, while respecting those planets' laws, unlike a certain group of blue assholes we all know, who hand out rings to brain-damaged fighter jocks and say "Go nuts!" Oooh, maybe that's a bad turn of phrase, given Hal Jordan's whole, ya know.

Eh, screw him. If he who is without the sin of trying to erase the entire timeline because he's too sad his city got blown may cast the first stone, then I'm set to start pitching.

Vril also takes some creative license by stating Lyrl helped him defeat Brainiac and Brainiac's weapon, Pulsar Stargrave. When really, Stargrave was an actual star Lyrl turned into some kind of super-computer weapon intending to steal all of Colu's super-computer information, only for Lyrl to get outflanked by Brainiac. But who's alive to say different? Not much of anyone that cares to, certainly, and the sales pitch worked, as Altin admits Vril got a dozen more client worlds in the week since the broadcast.

The Guardians state they would have handled Dox in their own way - frown disapprovingly? create a mechanized corps of robo-enforcers? oh wait, they already did that - but now they have a P.R. problem. Honestly hard for me to believe the Guardians even know what P.R. is, let alone care about it. But they're even angrier about what Gorius did to her own people, the Psions! Which was detailed the next issue, and involved Starfire, who had her own bad history with the Psions. 

{8th longbox, 234th comic. R.E.B.E.L.S. #21, by Tony Bedard (writer), Claude St. Aubin (penciler), Scott Hanna (inker), Rich and Tanya Horie (colorists), Travis Lanham (letterer)}