I didn't really plan to save the horror book for Halloween, it worked out that way because Friday's books were loosely, "concluding stories", and these two books are still in their first half.
Good news, everyone! Campbell and Risso did mostly get exposition out of the way in the first issue! By the time we see Easy Co. in this issue, they're already sneaking around the "industrial district" of Berlin, looking for the zombie-generating lab. They find a heavily-guarded place where bodies are being delivered, but their attempts to commandeer a truck fall prey to the rear of the truck being full of undead Nazis.
Dealing with that requires a lot of shooting and some grenades, which somehow doesn't attract immediate attention. So they're able to spy on the factory long enough to see Hitler's personal physician leaving (after receiving some drugs, which I'm sure implies something unpleasant with regards to the genocidal failed painter). But more undead soldiers show up, and fire doesn't kill them, or at least not quickly, so it's out the window, into a truck and chase that doctor.
The opening scene is definitely the creepiest part of the issue (not that the book is terribly creepy or scary). A bunch of the undead soldiers in a tavern, drinking. Then they start shooting each other, but it's all in fun as they laugh at how it doesn't kill or even really harm them. One of them gets shot through the back, laughs, drinks, and watches the beer pour out the bullet holes like he's Daffy Duck. Then they all laugh with these wrinkled, decayed faces, and Rossi colors the whole thing in a sickly grey-green that almost matches the undead's skin.
I don't know if it's more unsettling or less to think these guys still have some capacity for thought and understanding of their situation. The fact they understand and seem to revel in it is disturbing. When Bulldozer's stuck fighting one in close quarters later, he empties a revolver in the guy's gut, and said guy just keeps grinning (and drooling, these undead guys have all got permanent drool coating their chins) and saying he'll live forever. Reminds me a bit of the Letzses Battalion from Hellsing, although these guys are a bit goofier than that lot, who gleefully mangled and shredded human bodies at will.
This is set immediately after the original Nocenti/Art Adams Longshot mini-series from the '80s. Longshot's captured by Mojo and dragged back to the Mojoverse, where Mojo plans - I use the term loosely - his next big cinematic piece with his incredibly lucky star. Dr. Strange may have stitched the portal shut, but Spiral reopens it and grabs Wolverine, Shadowcat and Lockheed, who came to investigate. Little reprogramming and recostuming later, and they're ready for starring roles in a big war picture. On opposing sides, naturally.
The heroes are almost props in this issue, as Nocenti seems most focused on Mojo, Spiral, and Major Domo. The resent the latter two hold for their boss, only thinly veiled (if that.) The contempt he holds for them, if even that. Mojo typically gets written as a comedy villain, maybe ever since the X-Babies thing. Just a big yellow blob that sees everything in terms of the entertainment value he can squeeze from it. Nocenti's the only one who seems to actually show that he's dangerous. Not just whatever it is about him that kills natural things by his mere presence. More the complete disregard for anyone or anything else.
He's a bit like a child, but an especially cruel one. Pain that happens to others, doesn't exist. Everyone is to be used by him, and you're only hope in getting him to listen is by appealing to his ego. He has no grasp of depth. As he puts it, characters change by being alive at the beginning of the story, and dead by the end. Major Domo argues in favor of creating real characters and giving them conflicts, but it only works because he points out that Mojo's ratings will plummet if they're bored for even a second. In panels where Mojo's the only character, he fills them, or close to it. A lot of those panels are close-up on his face. If he shares the panels with someone else, he still dominates it.
Even in a full-page splash where Longshot briefly escapes and makes a speech while attacking Mojo, Mojo is in the foreground, taking up more of the panel than Longshot and Spiral (relegated to a small corner) combined. Even when Spiral and Domo plot betrayal, they're presented as greyed outlines, while Mojo's is this yellow shadow that looms in the background. He's got to be the star, the genius, the one everybody loves. Or else.
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