Random Back Issues #138 - Guardians of the Galaxy #17

We've seen an issue prior to this and one showcasing some aftermath. The dice must be big War of Kings fans this year.

The decapitated Celestial head that's the home to Knowhere just woke up and warned everyone of a massive threat to the universe. That's good (the warning.) Too bad the Inhumans' big bomb already went off. That's bad. But Black Bolt and Vulcan died in the explosion. That's good! But it also tore a massive hole in the fabric of the universe. That's bad.

While Warlock, Gamora on his heels, seeks a solution, what's left of the team - Rocket, Groot, Drax, Major Victory, and Phyla-Vell - teleport aboard the Inhumans' big ship. In theory, they want to make sure there's no second bomb, but it's mostly the Guardians berating the Inhumans for being idiots. Fair.

This much deserved finger-pointing is interrupted by massive tentacles emerging from the Fault to reel in the city-ship. While the Inhumans and some of the Guardians try to fend off the invaders, Rocket, Crystal, and Groot stick with Maximus the Mad, to find some way. But really, it's just Maximus and Groot talking it out, while Crystal and Rocket watch. All we see Groot saying is, "I am Groot," but Maximus insists that's because of the hardened formation of Groot's larynx, and you need to listen to the 'breeze beneath it.' Rocket and Crystal agree Maximus is as crazy as a bag of spanners, which is not an insult that makes much sense, but hell, it's been a long day for everyone.

Maximus and Groot somehow unmake the creature by uncreating its reality and imposing their own. Whatever that means, that's good! The Fault is still growing and the ship lost enough velocity it's falling into the Fault. That's bad. A bunch of templeships of the Universal Church of Truth arrive! That's bad. Phyla investigates and finds Adam Warlock preparing a big spell to arrest the Fault's growth by grafting their timeline to an inert future. That's. . .good? The spell is powered by the faith generators of the Church of Truth, and the engines are powered by the belief of their followers, burning them out in the process. That's bad.

Warlock casts his spell, the Fault stops growing, Maximus looks very confused as Crystal hugs him, Adam takes a moment to appreciate his act, while aware of the dangers, and then Phyla stabs him through the chest with her sword. She made a deal with Oblivion to get Moondragon back, and it involved killing the Avatar of Life at the right moment. Gamora objects, they fight, Phyla gets stabbed in the chest. See how you like it.

Gamora rushes to Adam's side, but Warlock's not home. Instead it's the Magus, but the inert timeline Warlock used was the one where he turns purple. Gamora bemoans Warlock dooming himself to save the universe - ignoring that the universe ain't gonna be in great shape with this putz on the loose - and Magus snaps her neck and tosses her body into space. This outcome would subsequently appear to be averted - time travel shenanigans - but that would be a fakeout, too.

{5th longbox, 38th comic. Guardians of the Galaxy (vol. 2) #17, by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (writers), Brad Walker (penciler), Victor Olazaba and Scott Hanna (inkers), Jay David Ramos (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)}

What I Bought 9/27/2024 - Part 2

I went with Alex to one of his gigs in a town he hadn't played before. The attempt to visit the local comic shop ran aground because it was closed for a family matter, but there was an Asian restaurant next door, so I got the chance to try takoyaki.

Years of seeing anime characters eat it off skewers or toothpicks gave me the impression it would be crispier and crunchier. I guess I was expecting something like popcorn shrimp maybe, which it was not. That wasn't a bad thing, it was quite tasty. I didn't even have trouble with the sauces on top, which have typically been my arch-foe with other Asian cuisine. Just not what I was expecting, but a nice compliment to the fried rice.

The ice cream I had later that night may have been a bad idea, if my stomach's response around the time Alex's gig ended is any indication.

Babs #2, by Garth Ennis (writer), Jacen Burrows (artist), Andy Troy and Lee Loughridge (colorists), Rob Steen (letterer) - I envision Babs and Izzy tricked those guys into beating the crap out of each other to settle who would get to beat up Babs and Izzy. Hence the lack of blood spatter on the ladies. Fight smart not hard.

The Knights of Human Rights are for Humans are still prattling on about making the land safe for "normal" folk, but Mork the Orc (kind of small for an orc) and his dumbshit pals still think they can get in with this bunch, via some scroll Mork has. Leopards, faces being eaten, never thought my face, you can pretty well see the trajectory of that arc, though I can't rule out Ennis pulling a swerve.

Babs, meanwhile, spends half the issue wandering. First encountering a horde of undead warriors trying to figure out which way is the next place they're supposed to manifest. Which Ennis gets some humor from by having the horde bust each other's chops, because they've been together so long. Surprised he and Burrows didn't do more with the decomposing nature of their bodies. Later she shares a road with some poor knight trying to play at being a grand hero who won't shut up. Interacting with people locked in pitiful cycles prompts brief (one page worth) concern in Babs she'll end up like that, so she decides to steal some silver from the dwarf mines. Aim high! Except all the dwarves are missing.

Well, Tiberius Toledo - I think that name's supposed to mean something, possibly related to Roman history, but fuck if I know - did claim he already drove out the dwarves. Which I assume means he slaughtered them to the last child, but I guess I'll see next issue. It feels like Ennis is working towards Babs having to do more than simply wander and pull crimes that might grant her "middle class comfort" as the sword puts it, by dealing with Toledo and actually trying to rule like she's apparently supposed to. Except the tone feels too cynical for that, so either she turns it down and inter-species (class? race?) war erupts across the realm, or she tries and fucks it royally because she never finished princess school.

Body Trade #1, by Zac Thompson (writer), Jok (artist), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letterer) - The way he's seated in front of that grand tree, with the thick clothes and beard, makes me think a bit of, like, Odin, seated in front of the World Tree or something.

Kim's son just passed away. The obituary says of prolonged illness, but based on the shouted accusations of Kim's ex-wife, it had something do to with Kim's bad driving. So that's an uncomfortable funeral, made worse for Kim by the fact there's no body. Because the hospital bills were enormous, so they had to sell the body to Bio-Mem to cover the costs. Kim doesn't give a shit, he just wants his son's body, to the extent he threatens a company rep (who is, admittedly preying on the desperation of an aged new-widow when he finds her.)

Kim gets his ass kicked by some meathead in a tank top who looks rougher than Kim and drives the H3 on steroids they transport bodies in. Up to that point, Jok's drawn Kim as a rough edges, heavily lined face, narrowed eyes and slanted brows. In the moment this new asshole shows up, he eases off all that, raises the brows, opens the eyes. Most of the lines on the face vanish. It doesn't make Kim look nice or anything, just lost and scared.

And he's not the only one, as even the "lead broker" for Bio-Mem is getting heat from her bosses, or maybe they're stockholders. Shitheads who have unreasonable expectations about profit and public image for what is essentially them being vultures. She also scratched her arm until she tore her coat, and Kim was scratching his cast (and his beard) earlier. I don't know if it's a nervous tic, or there's some contagion going around that results from whatever Bio-Mem is doing with these bodies, which aren't being transported humanly or with much concern to hygiene. Ah, the old cutting "costs to raise profits" gambit.

Thompson's playing cagey with what Bio-Mem does with the bodies, and also what's up with Kim. He keeps calling someone named "Cal", who seems to be a therapist or anger coach of some sorts. The cast on his arm is also too recent to be involved in whatever wreck his wife brought up (and I notice no one signed it, which could mean something or nothing. Cal's the only person who has anything nice to say to Kim.) I'm not nearly as invested in these mysteries as I was the incident on the mountain in Blow Away, or whatever was going on in Nature's Labyrinth. Which isn't great, since I didn't feel all that satisfied with the resolutions in either of those. Figure this book is on thin ice.

Pokemon: Detective Pikachu (2019)

Does not feel like this movie came out five years ago. Tim (Justice Smith) works for an insurance company in some little town, living a lonely existence. He travels to Ryme City, which is supposed to be a revolutionary place where people and Pokemon just coexist without Pokemon being pitted against each other in gladiatorial combat for our amusement. Unfortunately, he's there because his cop dad died in a car accident.

Tim hasn't seen his dad in years, the specifics having something to do with Tim's mother's passing, so he'd rather just close out affairs and leave. Unfortunately, his dad's Pikachu shows up, alive but amnesiac, and able to speak so Tim, but only Tim, can understand. So they work together, with a nosy wannabe journalist, played by Kathryn Newton, and there's conspiracies, underground Pokemon fight clubs, illegal genetic experimentation.

There's at least one decent twist I didn't see coming, and one surprise I really should have. The movie set it up on a tee. It's not the identity of the mastermind behind the conspiracy; that was telegraphed with big, blinking signs, though the movie does try to point you another direction.

Smith plays Tim as a mixture of terribly awkward in the nasal-voiced Jay Baruchel kind of way, and closed off. He's shut down emotionally and so his whole life has kind of ground to a halt. He's not going anywhere or really even thinking of going anywhere. The circumstances of his father's death force him to lower his walls and start caring again. Reynolds as Pikachu's voice is mostly what you expect of Ryan Reynolds these days. The jokes and one-liners and the faux-panic. There are a few sequences where he uses genuine emotion when speaking with Tim, and those work fine. Because they're being issued from a CGI Pikachu face? Maybe!

(I do wonder why Tim's dad, if he wanted to bridge the distance, didn't just, you know, go visit his damn kid instead of putting a train ticket in a birthday card he was presumably going to mail before all this happened. Nut up and take the risk to make the first move, instead of putting all the pressure on Tim.)

The movie, while being upfront that Smith thinks Newton's reporter character is cute, avoids a romantic subplot. Newton plays Lucy as confident and opportunistic, but not nearly as sure of herself as she acts. Faking it until she makes it.

One thing that caught in my mind was, Ryme City is supposedly a city for people and Pokemon to coexist, rather than Pokemon living in the wild. This is apparently an unusual thing in this world, and it's true that nobody really reacts to groups of what appear to be un-partnered Pokemon just hanging around. But it still looks like basically any city you might see in our world. There's nothing that really suggests accommodations were made for Pokemon and their specific needs. Like, why no canals to make it easier for Water-types to get around, or catwalks for climbing Pokemon to use? Hell, Pikachu complains about how many steps it takes him to cover the same distance as Tim, why no moving walkways?

As a counter-example, the Wachowski's Speed Racer movie, for all its faults, did depict a world where that particular kind of racing is the biggest sport in the world, and is long-established to were nobody in-story bats an eye at its quirks. Everybody's cars look like race cars, a racing team dressing up as Vikings is accepted without question or comment. It's weird to us, but not to them. Pokemon in the world of Detective Pikachu are clearly well understood, so why wouldn't a city designed to let them live there have more accommodations in, I don't know, door design or something? It still just seems like a city for humans, but all of them have essentially a pet.