What I Bought 12/18/2020 - Part 1

Pretty good haul this go-round. Out of the 8 books from the first three weeks of December, I found 7 (the last issue of Atlantis Wasn't Built for Tourists is the lone outlier), and just managing that many comics at all is a minor miracle considering how this year's gone. Figured today we'd look at the last issues of a couple of mini-series.

Spy Island #4, by Chelsea Cain (writer), Lia Miternique (cover/designer/supplemental art), Elise McCall (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - The rare skull-blood fern, which makes delicious tea. Or is it the rare blood-skull fern, which is a deadly poison?

So Louie, the Freud sisters' father, is digging up sunken artifacts off-shore using an army of sand fleas for back-up, and Nora has gathered most of the other secret agent types on the island to stage a scuba assault and bring him down. Quite why that required faking the stupid Brit guy's death, I'm unclear. Why it requires outfitting Brit guy's corgi with scuba gear, I'm also unclear. The mermaids, who are sick of Louie's excavations disturbing their sleep, join in to help, and Nora placates the Kraken (also woken up by all the noise and unhappy) with a bottle of wine, and there you go. Louie's still pretending to be a mime, but now he's running an ice cream stand. Truly a fate worse than death.

I don't know. Being a spy is really about daddy issues, for both women and men? Meetings with estranged parents are always ultimately unsatisfying, because they still have the same flaws that led to the estrangement in the first place? In other words, Louie's still a selfish, conniving asshole. Life is a series of things (or people) you find to do to keep from being bored off your ass?

 

I did grin at Nora's annoyed 'unbelievable' when Louie tells Connie she's his favorite daughter. And the panel where the mermaids and the sand fleas leave as quickly as possible as the Kraken wakes up. Actually, the panel that shows the Kraken as this enormous eye that looks like matter collapsing into a event horizon or something was pretty cool. Although how the hell did it get into that cave if its eye is as big as the entrance?

And the bits where they're using what I assume is not accurate sign language to communicate underwater. Although I gotta wonder about Connie's wetsuit having the same symbol on it as Louie's knockoff Deep-Sea Doctor Octopus (with flailing tentacles action!) diving suit. I guess it's what they had available. Brit Guy is out there in flippers, a bucket over his head, wearing his swim trunks. I would think the bottom of the ocean is pretty cold, even around Bermuda. Oh well, not like the cold would damage anything important.

Amethyst #6, by Amy Reeder (writer/artist), Marissa Louise (color artist), Gabriella Downie (letterer) - Uh-oh, she's activating Extra-Glowy Hyper Mode. Shit just got real.

Amethyst and her friends try to hold off Dark Opal and his combination throne/spider-mech. Even when Maxixe's people showing up to help, and the folks from Emerald and the Banned she offered haven to, things are going poorly. Especially because the Diamonds decided to play Switzerland (or the United States for most of World War I) and just sit back and watch. Amy is running through all this stuff in her head about the properties of different crystals, and hits on black tormaline, which banishes negative energy. If you say so

Which takes down Dark Opal, and frees all of her people, but also may have wiped out all the amethyst present. If you figure her parents' general shittiness, and the fact their entire people where imprisoned within amethyst, I guess I could see the stone being banished as a source of negative energy. 

 

Her newfound birth parents are not pleased, but the Diamonds, largely ineffectual Johnny-Come-Latelys they are, are hauling them off for questioning, so tough shit. So Amy's meeting with her parents went horribly. See my comment in the Spy Island review about there usually being reasons for parties being estranged. Lord and Lady Amethyst were conceited, arrogant snobs, only concerned with their status and that hasn't changed. With no amethyst, I guess that makes them kind of a joke, and that's not OK.

But there still seem to be plenty of people who want Amy to be their leader, so that's good for her.

I'd been under the impression people in Gemworld could only do magic through their own types of gems, each with their own specialties and whatnot. If Amy can channel her power through something that's not amethyst, maybe not. Or maybe she's unique. Ugh, I hope they don't turn her into a Lord of Order again. That was such a terrible decision the first time they did it. I would think that the complete dissolution of one of the Houses of Gemworld would be an issue, but as DC has upended everything now, I'm guessing we'll never know.

Most of the time in this issue, Reeder keeps the panels as square or rectangles. Flat, level, thick black borders. But when things start to get more tense, usually when Amethyst is directly confronting Opal, or Opal is gaining the upper hand, Reeder has the panels start to tilt or slant. I don't think there's a pattern to, them tilting one way when Amy gets the edge, the other when Opal does, it's just something I noticed. I did like how Amy throws the gem and there's a tiny "shiiing" sound effect, and then her magic hits and the panel itself is a massive "CHA" effect. Although I half expected the sound effect to continue on the next line down. But I think it's been well-established by my repeated gushing over Marcos Martin that I'm a sucker for those kinds of things.