What I Bought 1/4/2021 - Part 3

Speaking as a resident of Missouri, Josh Hawley's a fucking embarrassment. If he had any integrity, he'd resign his position. Obviously he doesn't, since he's acting like the First Amendment guarantees him the right to a book deal, so I'd like to see him jailed for sedition. Not gonna happen, and the fucking dumbasses in this state likely won't vote him out in four years, but I can have hopes.

Saved the one book that was wrapping up for the last post. Was that a good idea? Probably not any worse than saving any of the other comics for this spot.

Atlantis Wasn't for Tourists #4, by Eric Palicki (writer), Wendell Cavalcanti (artist), Mark Dale (colorist), Shawn Lee (letterer) - It's not actually a nighttime/daytime-related transformation, FYI.

While Lucas confronts the sheriff and keeps him talking, Lauren finds her dad, or the vampire running around in his body on the nearby roof and deals with him. Lucas uses the sheriff as a bullet shield against the lady deputy who likes to snipe people, and she decides to beat feet. The really big deputy is. . . possessed by Cthulu I think? One of Cthulu's offspring? I don't know Lovecraft, I'm not sure how it works. He gets a knife in the throat, I assume he's dead.

Which leaves one cop in town and no vampires, and Lucas says Ed can either shoot him, or arrest him, because Lucas surrenders. Ed opts for the more lawful approach, and then Lucas breaks out anyway. But I guess it was important for Ed to show he was going to uphold the laws. On his way out of town, Lucas is abducted by the lady deputy, who had some deal with the sheriff which was never completed. She says if Lucas doesn't help, she'll kill him and then everyone in town. I didn't see anything out of her that makes me think she could pull the latter off, but Lucas isn't much of a gambler I guess.

So they left it open for another story. Palicki hinted at the wider array of supernatural things that are out there. Lucas still hasn't made it to Seattle to confront his father, and we never found out who that message he gave the soda distributor was intended for. So there's some open-ended potential there, I guess. They kind of have to change the name of the book though, since it seems like they're done with Atlantis. I guess there could be more than one city with that name, like how there's a bunch of Columbias or Charlestons in the world. Next time Lucas travels to Atlantis, Arizona and fights scorpion people!

 

I'm trying to figure out the strategy behind the coloring choices. Mostly the backgrounds are muted greys and browns for a boring downtown area at night. But there are certain panels where the backgrounds are just a yellow or orange backdrop. Starting with the panel where Lauren opens her dad's head up with the shovel. The last few are when Billy is beating up Lucas, although the color has shifted towards more of an orange by then. But in between, most of the panels on a page where Lucas is tricking the sheriff into revealing the sniper's location are like that. I could see using it for the panels that are her looking through the scope, but Dale also uses it for two panels in between, one that's a close-in on Lucas, the other a close-up of her finger on the trigger.

I did finally figure out that when the solicit said "Lovecraft meets Leone", it meant Leone in the sense of a lone stranger arriving in town and turning things upside-down. Which is not really a Leone thing so much as a Western or samurai flick thing, but OK.