Monday, September 16, 2024

What I Bought 9/11/2024 - Part 2

I happened to catch an episode of Columbo over the weekend, and he was making a peanut butter and raisin sandwich. I started eating those periodically back in elementary school, and I can't recall ever seeing anyone else do it. Now I'm wondering if Columbo gave me the notion.

Fantastic Four #25, by Ryan North (writer), Carlos Gomez (artist), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Uh-oh, a planet of floating islands. Those platforming levels are always tricky.

Dr. Doom's erected a magical dome over Latveria. Naturally, the FF try to poke it and end up on an unfamiliar world full of intelligent, friendly aliens. Gomez draws the aliens as having a bit of the "big head and eyes" grey aliens, but on a long stalk neck, with multiple little noodle limbs and red spines sticking out of their backs (the purpose of which I was not clear on.)

The locals agree to let Reed use some resources to build a rocketship to get home (which looks very old-timey, even moreso than the original rocket Kirby drew them taking into space to get bombarded by cosmic rays.) Meanwhile, Johnny's hit it off with the liason, named (or translated to) Angelica of the Shore.

Everything's proceeding well until the clouds clear enough Reed can calculate their position by the stars. Turns out, they're still on Earth, but an Earth that was never hit by another planetary body, causing the formation of the Moon. Turns out the FF aren't the only ones who poked the dome. Reed can make his rocketship into a time machine and stop Doom's magic trick from doing this, but that means Angelica and her people won't exist, which is not OK with Johnny.

North continues to come up with clever bits of science to use as a basis for stories, but this is undercut by how easily Reed seems to solve these problems. Sure, he can make his rocketship into a time machine, too. Confronted with the problem, Reed builds a thing to solve the problem in about two panels. He's continuing one spiel throughout, so it's not like there's a timejump.

I guess there wasn't supposed to be any doubt they'd figure something out, so the real conflict was Johnny fighting with the others about how they can't get rid of Angelica's world to save their own. Then hie and Angelica having to sacrifice their happiness to make the solution stick. The internal narration boxes for this issue are Angelica's, which probably helps to plant their connection in the foreground and make this more than just another doomed relationship for Johnny Storm.

Vengeance of the Moon Knight #9, by Jed MacKay (writer), Devmalya Premanik (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - I bet moon-fire is cold.

Marc owes Khonshu a favor. Not for bringing him back to life, but for that time he got Marc and Tigra a shortcut so they could save Reese and Soldier from Zodiac. And the favor is to kill the false Moon Knight, the Shroud.

So he does, after a brief fight, albeit with a lot of panels as Premanik and Rosenberg have one page of 16 panels, slanted and staggered, showing the main stretch of the fight, against the backdrop of a, I thought it was a crescent moon, but it's actually two crescent moons, one matching the symbol Shroud Knight wore, the other matching Marc Knight's. One shatters, the other remaining whole. Premanik's Moon Knight feels like more of a physical presence than Cappuccio's. Bigger, body less obscured by the cape, a lot of focus on his fists or legs, his instruments of pain.

Marc's talking in a very stilted manner, calling Shroud "Moon Knight", reminding him he disrespected a god, impressing on him that this is a fight for his life. Didn't impress it on him enough, as Marc brings Shroud Knight's costume to the villain bar and pins it on the wall as a message. Or two messages: a) he's back, b) the other guy is dead. That said, I don't believe for a second the Rhino is scared of Moon Knight. Come on, tell me McKay didn't actually tell Premanik to put him in those pages. The Jester, the Shocker? Sure. The Spot? Guy probably wees himself around Moon Knight. The Rhino takes punches from the Hulk. Same with Piledriver, except replace "Hulk" with "Thor."

Anyway, Shroud's not dead. He was, but you know, Hunter's Moon is a doctor. Hearts stops, hearts restart. Easy-peasy, right? Khonshu's pissed, but Marc makes an argument it's a fitting symbolic sacrifice, and points out Khonshu can't strike at Reese or the others in retaliation, because he owes them for getting him out of Asgard Jail. And that's were the book ends. Khonshu's back, Marc's back, with an uneasy detente at best.

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