Digging for Answers

Huh, explaining the joke does make it funnier. The future is a marvelous place. 

Star Power and the Mystery of the Zel Gux Dynasty is the 3rd story arc in Michael Terracciano and Garth Graham's Star Power series. The second arc ended with Dancia's powers back in working order and mercenary scumbag Black Hole Bill being sent off to what will apparently be a very unpleasant imprisonment. In the process of rebooting their powers (flying through a solar flare) the artificial intelligence that comes with the Star Power - which Danica named "Mitch" - sensed a signal from another Star-Powered Sentinel in the vast network meant to connect all of them, the first and only one he'd detected so far.

This story starts with the signal going silent, but Mitch tracing it to a star system where a mysterious group known as the "Zel Gux Dynasty" traveled from world to world, sharing knowledge with the inhabitants. The Zel Gux themselves are long gone, but their ruins are considered significant, so it has to be treated as an archaeological expedition (which Graham highlights with the cover to the first chapter, where Danica is rocking an Indiana Jones look.)

Each world turns out to have a different puzzle or challenge, each requiring certain things from Danica, though not her love of puns. That's a bonus reserved for her friends and coworkers. In addition, the variety of worlds give Graham opportunities to draw different aliens and civilizations. One group may be rock-people (who have commercialized their ruins to their maximum extent), another look like red pandas and live in homes built in the trees.

Danica brings along the same 3 members of the security team that became her friends in earlier volumes, plus her supervisor, Dr. Brightman. They take a backseat here, acting mainly as sources of levity in between the adventure sequences. Instead, Terracciano focuses on Beena, thus far an ancillary character, albeit one very excited to interact with Danica at any opportunity. Beena's an archaeologist, and an expert on the worlds in the Zel Gux Dynasty, so she's assigned to assist. Except as Danica solves the challenges without her, Beena starts working even harder to figure things out first. She means to show she's useful, but comes off as egocentric, especially to Danica. So that has to be addressed.

Terracciano also brings back the 3 Void Angel pilots that tried and failed to kill Danica as soon as she got the Star Power. Despite the Void Angels being gone, the Countess who hired them locked up, and the three of them being on their own, one is still hellbent on finishing the job. One seems willing to go with it, just follow whoever makes the most forceful argument, and the other Burke, seems increasingly hesitant to pursue this.

The story also jumps periodically to an extended conversation between the Countess and a member of Psychological Ops (a "psi-cop" in popular parlance.) It highlights circumstances outside the Millennium Federation (which the book delves into further in volume 4), as well as the Countess' mindset, but also teases out the history of the Star-Powered Sentinels while Danica and her friends track down these clues. I think the Psi-Cop is a little too confident about the Federation's stability, given the universe's trends towards entropy, but the series in general emphasizes hope and the value and strength of cooperation, so it's understandable.

I think this might be my favorite Star Power storyline. Maybe because it's more of a straightforward adventure. While it reveals some backstory, we're past the origin story. It's not as much a body horror deal as volume 5. The Void Angel Trio are a threat, but don't dominate the story, and neither does the subplot about Beena's need to impress people with how smart and useful she is. It feels like lower stakes, but that makes a change of pace from most of the other volumes, that have long stretches of life-or-death situations. It takes advantage of its setting in a futuristic interplanetary to offer differing settings, architecture, aliens and cultures. Casual worldbuilding, which lets the story focus on the puzzles, which are their own kind of clue to the backstory of the Sentinels.

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"Ride the Jade Tiger," in Power Man and Iron Fist #75, by Mary Jo Duffy (writer), Kerry Gammill (penciler), Ricardo Villamonte (inker), Christie Scheele (colorist), Jim Novak (letterer)

Danny Rand's run as a solo hero lasted 15 issues. 26 if you count the stint headlining Marvel Premiere. Luke Cage did better. His solo run went 49 issues, first as Luke Cage Hero-for-Hire, then as Luke Cage: Power Man. At the end of the day, neither was apparently doing well enough on their own. So somebody got the idea to do a team-up book between the naive kung fu white boy and the street savvy black guy with bulletproof skin.

Power Man and Iron Fist took over Luke's book's numbering at issue 50, and ran to issue 125, at which point, Danny got killed. (John Byrne later reversed this in his Namor run, of all things.) I bought 21 issues a few years back, whichever sounded interesting to me. Most are written by either Mary Jo Duffy (from around issue 58 to 80), or Jim Owsley (from the last year of the book). Mark Bright drew all the Owsley issues I've got, while Duffy's are drawn by, variously, Trevor von Eeden, Marie Severin (with Steve Leialoha), Kerry Gammill, or Denys Cowan. There's also a 4 issue story by Kurt Busiek and Ernie Chan in the mix that concludes at #100.

Maybe it's just the issues I picked, but it feels like the book makes more use of Danny's supporting cast than Luke's. Colleen Wing and Misty Knight are around a lot, either hanging out with Danny or on jobs of their own (which inevitably dovetail with whatever Luke and Danny are doing.) Danny's corporate associate Jeryn Hogarth sometimes gets the boys jobs.

They do operate out of Luke's set-up in an old theater, so his pal D.W. is around a lot, and there's some time spent on Luke's various romantic entanglements. Plus, the book is using Luke's "hero for hire" storytelling engine. Maybe incorporating more of Danny's cast and villains was a way of balancing things. Plus, you can get some mileage out of throwing Luke Cage into mystic cities, fighting spectral ninja assassins and sentient, angry plant-people.

And it's in a different way from putting Danny in a world Luke is accustomed to. Danny's utility in those stories is his naivete (and probably the fact he doesn't look intimidating at first glance.) Like when Danny is hired by a woman to protect her from a stalker that turns out to be Whirlwind. Even though the man is a costumed criminal, no one in the neighborhood will help Danny actually find him. Because Whirlwind is from there, and Danny's not, and he can't navigate the idea that matters more than the man being a crook.

With Luke in K'un-Lun, it's not him being naive, but him seeing things with fresh eyes. Danny, even if he doesn't agree with all of it, is used to how things work. He doesn't object when women are treated as irrelevant, and leads the charge to try and exterminate the Hylthri. When Luke questions him about it, Danny says that's just the way things are here. Luke gets to act as the one who cuts through the pomp and the bullshit and get things moving. Plus, Luke and Lei Kung the Thunderer make an interesting duo, mutual (grudging) respect masked by irritation on Luke's end and condescension on Lei Kung's.

In between stories about power struggles over an other-dimensional city, or assassins trying and start a nuclear war, there are more lighthearted stories. All the writers get mileage from Luke and Danny taking jobs they find distasteful and demeaning, or simply being caught up in bizarre circumstances. One time, Luke may come into possession of a quarter that's actually a device that disrupts electronic circuitry, and gets hounded by some crazy mountain climber whose associates look like Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart. Or they take a job to check on some vault in the Alaskan tundra, which turns out to be empty for some reason, and the security guard, already loopy from the isolation, goes completely round the bend.

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"What, This Again?" in Red Robin #10, by Christopher Yost (writer), Marcus To (penciler), Ray McCarthy (inker), Guy Major (colorist), Sal Cipriano (letterer)

In addition to the misery-fest DC made Tim Drake's life in the mid-2000s, wiping out basically any supporting cast he had, the character also had to deal with being squeezed out of any real niche. On the one hand, there's always a writer eager to introduce a new character to a hero's supporting cast of sidekicks. At the same time, the ones who came before never go away, so the roles they filled in the fictional universe never become vacant.

Grant Morrison brought in Damian Wayne, and the kid got to be Robin, despite pulling all manner of shit - decapitating a criminal, illegally imprisoning other criminals beneath Titans Tower - that would have gotten most of the previous sidekicks shitcanned. Let's hear it for nepotism!

But even when Bruce Wayne goes away, there's still Dick Grayson already standing in line to be Batman. Damian's Robin, Jason Todd's the designated black sheep. What's left for Tim Drake that differentiates him from all the rest? They gave him the codename Red Robin, which Jason actually brought back from his multiverse jaunt in the much-derided Countdown to Final Crisis.

This is the only issue of this series I bought, as it crossed over with Bryan Q. Miller's Batgirl, but there are so many threads I'm not really sure what the deal was. Tim seems to be opposing Ra's al Ghul, but maybe also dealing with the fact Hush is impersonating Bruce Wayne (currently lost in time thanks to Darkseid.) Vicki Vale is looking for Tim, for reasons I'm entirely unclear on. Tim is maybe involved with Lucius Fox's daughter? It seems like Yost was teasing Tim drifting into Paranoid Loner Asshole Batman territory - since Grayson is being Cheerful, Approachable Batman - but recognize this and pull back before it was too late.

This problem of what to do with Tim hasn't gotten any less pronounced in the 15 years since this series concluded. There's more Bat-adjacent characters than ever. They tried giving him an ongoing, that seemed to die fast. They gave him a boyfriend, albeit one with the name of one of his old private school roommates (but looking nothing like the character did when Pete Woods drew him.) No idea if that's still the case. I think the problem is, Tim's situated as the Detective Robin, but he works for Batman. Batman's already the detective (in theory, depending on the writer) in the Bat-family.

What I Bought 2/11/2026

Not satisfied with simply restricting access to certain channels, Pluto TV now requires me to register an account if I want to use it at all. Which, if it would spare me the commercials, I might consider a fair trade. But since I know that ain't happening, the prospect of giving them another avenue to annoy me is not worth it.

Plus, I'm the contrary sort who resents their trying to force me to play their game.

Marc Spector: Moon Knight #1, by Jed MacKay (writer), Devmalya Pramanik (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Dr. Sterman should probably talk to Marc about sleeping with weapons.

Marc's kidnappers have him in a giant sound stage, Mr. Fear (looking like he stole Taskmaster's Udon Studios design mask, and one of Dr. Doom's cloaks) pumping him full of fear toxins while some large black man I don't recognize tries to break him down for Agence Byzantine. The big guy is going by "Mr. Smith," pretending to be Marc's boss at the company where Marc is mailroom guy, but that doesn't really help me i.d. him. He also seems like he's really enjoying humiliating Marc whether he's playing the scowling boss, or sitting in his control room full of monitors that wash everything in blue-white.

Marc delivers meaningless letters to members of the Agence, still wearing their read outfits, but with business suits over them, which Pramanik details in repetitive 9-panel grids. Rosenberg colors these pages a sort of dull, washed out yellow. has a room, where he eats dog food like cereal and stares at a non-functioning TV. But Marc sees a Moon Knight cartoon, with a broad-chested, smiling Moon Knight. He even sings a theme song as he goes about his day.

This isn't getting anyone anywhere, even as Mr. Fear ups the doses to dangerous levels, but then Zodiac breaks in to push Marc to find himself. Even brings him his mask and cloak (which Rosenberg colors as glowing) in a gift box. There's a nice page of interlocked crescents - claws? - of "Moon Knight" telling Marc what he needs to do, growing more terrifying in each panel, while the other side shows the Agence Byzantine guys rushing towards the room they're in. So it's Moon Knight (sorta) and Zodiac, teaming up to bust Marc out. Or just kill a bunch of guys.

At times like this, I wonder about Steven and Jake. Is the fear toxin keeping them incapacitated, too, or creating some kind of barrier where they can't supplant Marc as the part of the system in control? I would figure they'd be what's helping Marc resist, but I don't think that's what MacKay's going for, since he so rarely uses either of them. 

The Saturday Night Ghost Club - Craig Davidson

Jake doesn't have a lot of friends. If he hangs out with anyone, it's his uncle, who runs a shop dedicated to the occult on what passes for the main drag of 1980s Niagara Falls. When Billy enters the shop, looking for a way to communicate with his recently deceased grandmother and make sure she's alright, dying so far from where she lived most of her life, Calvin offers to help. By sneaking Billy into the local mortuary. And Jake comes along.

For the remainder of the summer the tale spans, the three of them gather at places Calvin says have reports of ghosts. Sometimes Calvin's friend Les comes along, and sometimes Billy's sister, Dove, is around. But there's more going on with these locations and stories than Jake is aware of.

Davidson writes the book from Jake's perspective, looking back on that summer many years after the fact. Jake goes on to study medicine, and becomes a doctor who operates on the brain. So there are chapters that detail things he's seen or experienced in his work, mostly focused on what we don't understand about the connection between the brain as a physical object, and all the information contained inside it. A girl with an inoperable tumor that makes her sleep most of the time, lost in a fantasy world with a robot and druid as protectors. She can no longer recognize anyone in the real world, but when she draws how the robot and druid appear, they're her parents.

So in looking back, Jake views the summer of the ghost club is written as a transformational experience. In one sense, he starts to move past the point where he can believe in stories of haunted rail tunnels or stone angels that crush anyone who spends a night beside the grave. He starts to draw a line under what he believes is possible. But he also makes a couple of friends and, in being willing to stand with them, learns to stand up for himself, begins to become the person he'll grow up to be.

At the same time, Jake sees all the things he didn't understand about people back then - about Dove's shifts in moods, the struggle in his father between a respectable provider and the hellraiser he was, Uncle Calvin's fixations - with more awareness. As a kid, if your mother is cautious with money, or your dad can stand and talk on the doorstep with strangers for hours, you don't really think about why they might be like that. Whether it's childhood experience, or brain chemistry, or some cocktail/battle of the two. You have no frame of reference. That's just, how they are.

If Jake still doesn't, as an adult, understand exactly what's driving the people he cares about, he at least looks back with the knowledge those things were always there.

'Looking back, I wish I'd relished those final instants of childish fear: that saccharine-sweet taste of terror curdling like sour milk in my mouth.' 

The Wrecking Crew (2026)

James (Dave Bautista) is a Navy SEAL in Hawaii with a wife and two kids. His half-brother Jonny (Jason Momoa) is a reservation cop in Oklahoma, whose girlfriend (Morena Baccarin) just broke up with him because of things like lack of communication and forgetting her birthday.

Neither is all that concerned when their private investigator dad is killed in what we see as a pretty obvious intentional hit-and-run, but is being treated as just an accident by the investigating officer (Stephen Root.) But a bunch of Yakuza attack Jonny while he was in the bathroom, looking for some package they think his dad sent? Now Jonny is interested in returning to Hawaii for the first time in 20 years. Mostly so he can beat the shit out of people, and maybe also irritate his big brother.

Momoa plays Jonny as sort of an arrested development, perpetual asshole. He's always looking for a beer, never lets any petty argument drop. When Valentina shows up, Jonny can't help constantly trying to impress her, or get his brother to agree she's hot. (This is not difficult, James is perfectly impressed with her, especially her driving.) Spends a lot of time insulting people by calling them names. One of the Yakuza guys gets called "Naruto" and "Zuko" (because part of his face looks burnt) within a minute, and one the main bad guy's chief goons gets tagged as "Fat John Cena."

Bautista gets the slightly deeper role as the older sibling who can't admit he worries about his younger sibling, so he expresses it through disappointment. Until all the insults Jonny hurls back punctures the "responsible" air and James starts going for the throat. You can even see it in their actual fight. Jonny's swinging and trying to do damage, while James keeps going for holds and grapples. It's either at the point Jonny bites him, or the kick to the nuts, that James starts fighting back for real.

(They fight in the police station parking lot immediately after Jonny gets bailed out for barging into the main bad guy's house and getting tased three times. I envision the cops standing at the windows, just watching and shaking their heads like, "Do we arrest them?")

The fistfight leads to obligatory sharing of feelings, and then to Jonny getting the chance to make things right with Valentina, then an action sequence that makes me think somebody really liked the initial attack on Ajax's convoy from Deadpool. Then big final battle. It's a little odd, because they switch between James' fight with the main Yakuza guy, where James is doing pretty well throughout, and Jonny's fight with the main bad guy, Man Bun McGee (not his true name), where Jonny is mostly getting his ass kicked.

Which is not so weird by itself, except the moments at which they switch feel like there's a thematic significance to it. Like, there's a similarity between the moment where Jonny gets a gaff hook jammed in his shoulder and James has the Yakuza's sword arm in a lock where he could clearly do a lot of damage, but he hasn't yet? I don't know, maybe that James has been denying any emotional fallout from his father's death (and various poor life choices prior to that), and trying to stay under control, disciplined, all that. But really, he's angry too, angry enough to make that arm bend a direction it shouldn't and bury the sword in the guy's face.

Not sure exactly how that maps to Jonny's situation, where his anger doesn't seem to be doing him much good. So maybe it's that James cares about his brother and senses he's in trouble, so there's no more time for restraint.

Grappling with a Host of Issues

Probably not what anyone wants to hear. 

Total Suplex of the Heart is focused on Georgie, a young woman writing for a web site that gets an idea to do an article on a local hardcore wrestling promotion. But once hired, to act as a valet, or less charitably, eye candy, Georgie finds she really loves wrestling. The storytelling and the characters as much or more than the physicality.

For the remainder of the story, Georgie is around or involved in wrestling to some extent, but writer Joanne Starer tends to focus on how those things intersect with various issues Georgie has (which are drawn from Starer's own life, including starting her own women's wrestling promotion in the early-2000s.) Georgie has body image issues and anorexia, neither of which is helped by her valet character often being dressed up in skimpy outfits designed to titillate the male audience.

So there's a scene where a friend she's made through wrestling is trying to help her find new clothes for her costume, and artist Ornella Greco draws two panels side-by-side: one is how Georgie actually looks in the outfit, and the other is what Georgie sees in the mirror, with a more noticeable belly, and some hair on her legs, bags under her eyes. Basically that she's fixating, or imagining, on perceived imperfections. Or Georgie narrates her cycle of binging, and justifies it by assuring that she tries to eat healthy foods. Except binging on raisin bran has negative consequences.

There's also her tendency to gravitate towards guys for affirmation, and those guys are often completely self-absorbed. Even the guy who seems "nice", is really trying to have the relationship entirely on his terms. They're working together on a show for the wrestling school Georgie helped him start and run, but it's all for him. Everything is on his schedule, according to his needs. The guy who points this out, seems to be doing so more to convince Georgie to sleep with him, than out of any real concern for her.

Greco draws most of those guys as physical specimens, though I'm not sure if that's meant to be how they really look, or how Georgie perceives them. Meaning as an the inverse of her self-image. That she sees them as these perfect guys, and she's lucky they like her (because she sees herself as such a mess), so she needs to make sure they keep liking her. By being the fun one, or the supportive one, or the flirty one.

 

But amid all that, Starer does emphasize that Georgie makes a lot of friends through wrestling. Actual friends, who not only support her or encourage her to figure out what she wants, but also will call her on her self-destructive behavior. Starer ends the story on an up note, one she admits in the afterword doesn't mirror the reality of her situation at that time in her life. She's likely right that it's important to note toxic relationships or body issues don't just magically fix themselves, but I appreciate she let the comic end on a more positive trend. I often found myself occasionally groaning at Georgie's latest bad decision, so having her step away from that was fairly carthartic. Though Starer usually has Georgie groaning at herself along with us, per her narration boxes. But it's an illustration of the cycles people get caught in, making the same mistakes over and over, even knowing they're doing it.