Monday, May 24, 2021

What I Bought 5/19/2021 - Part 2

Another day, another pair of comic reviews.

Way of X #2, by Si Spurrier (writer), Bob Quinn (artist), Java Tartaglia (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer), Tom Muller (designer) - This comic does not live up to the cover's promise of fun multiple swashbuckling Nightcrawlers.

Legion goes inside Kurt's head and finds something that's been messing with him. In return, Kurt now owes him a favor. So he grabs Dr. Nemesis (in the middle of chatting up Fabian Cortez) and Pixie and they find Legion's disembodied brain in the grasp of these anti-mutant Orchis guys. Legion's brain, with all its many personalities, is being used to model ways to destroy Krakoa from within. Kurt and Pixie deal with the thing causing the problem, but Legion's about to blow, so Kurt shoots his brain.

Legion gets a nice new body in Krakoa and hops inside, then rebuffs Magneto's offer to join in some bullshit project, and Xavier's attempt to, I don't know, half-ass reconcile, and decides to hang out with Kurt. Which is sort of promising.

Oh, and the last page bombshell as to the identity of the "Patchwork Man", who is the thing Kurt suspects Orchis introduced into Krakoa to tear it apart is. . . Onslaught.

Sigh. I should have expected this, right? First Donny Cates with all the symbiote bullshit. Miles Morales is having his own Clone Saga. Heroes Reborn. Onslaught is the next logical step, like Dewey Cox going from cocaine to uppers and downers. You know, setting aside that Onslaught originally caused Heroes Reborn. Once again, as someone who lived through this stuff, I'm befuddled these folks want to revisit the nightmare. 

I'm actually curious to see where this goes, even if Dr. Nemesis' sneering contempt for almost everything is going to get old in a hurry (incidentally, Spurrier's using Elsa Bloodstone the same way in Black Knight.) But if the road goes through Onslaught. . . sounds like the point where you jump out of the car and hope you don't land in a pile of broken beer bottles.

I like Tartaglia's coloring in the more unusual moments. Like the sickly greenish-yellow he gives the panels in Kurt's mind. It gives that sense of strange lighting you see in storms, which makes sense given the state Legion finds Kurt's mind, but also hints at the infection inside, throwing Kurt off his game. And the panel when Kurt shoots Legion's brain. Tartaglia sets it as a red outline against a black backdrop. It's a stark change from every other panel up to that point, and helps draw attention to Kurt actively (mercy) killing someone, which is apparently a big deal for him.

 
I was gonna post that panel, but Spurrier and Quinn did another mass vomiting panel and I have decided I will post those for every issue I buy that has one. Ta-da!

You Promised Me Darkness #2, by Damian Connelly (writer/artist), Anabella Mazzaferri (letterer) - Seems excessive, but can't say that crazy Satanist isn't trying to keep from spreading COVID.

Sebastian and Yuko are brought to where Sage and their people stay by a talking cat named Nuria who coughs up hairballs that transport you places. Meanwhile, the Anti-Everything's right-hand lady is rounding up some helpful lunatics of her own to track down Sebastian and Yuko. One thing I'm unclear on is whether he knows he needs them specifically, or if he's just hunting them because he knows they have powers and he wants them.

Sebastian doesn't want to stay, but maybe Sage mentioning that while Sebastian did start the fire that burned down his house, he did not kill his father will get him to stay. And in Korea, someone found PSY as he's just starting to figure out his super-awesome hit song that will turn everyone into mindless zombies. While aware of it, I'd never actually listened to "Gangam Style" before, so I looked it up on Youtube last week and. . . 

Look, every friend has given me shit about at least one band or artist I listen to, so maybe my taste is crap. Even so, that song is freaking terrible. I couldn't make it past the first 80 seconds before I had to stop and erase it from my viewing history, lest it contaminate the suggested videos.

That aside, Sage is still narrating. The verbal tics are less annoying here, with less backstory to relate. Gives Sage fewer opportunities to wander off-track. It still happens - Sage at one point explains they still aren't back yet because it stopped raining and they decided to go buy groceries - but even just cutting back on it helps.

 
Connelly also evens out the amount of white versus black in the artwork, so there's fewer panels where I'm struggling to figure out what I'm seeing based on a couple of little bits of white among huge amounts of shadows. There's actually enough there to have contrast to play with negative space. Now I'm pretty sure Sebastian just has light streaks in his oddly long hair. And when he actually wants to go with a panel that's overwhelmingly dark, it has a little more oomph. There's one where the Anti-Everything steals this other person's mind reading power and it's this dark thing of a guy's barely outlined face screaming and there's odd-shaped white blobs and circles everywhere, like he's being torn apart.

2 comments:

thekelvingreen said...

Wow, I know it's only a cover and a couple of panels, but You Promised Me Darkness is very Oni Press, circa 2004.

CalvinPitt said...

Well, it would be typical of me to get into a series that's 15 years behind the times in its look.