Can't go a day without somebody wanting me to drive halfway across the state to help them with something. People have apparently decided I'm someone at my job who can be counted on to help solve their problems. It wasn't intentional, I swear.
Moon Knight (or Mr. Knight) is on the streets, trying to shut off the flow of a new drug, which may in fact be fairy dust. The path leads to some former boxer turned Mista Big named Achilles Fairchild, who also has a chief enforcer named Carver. Carver doesn't talk, just carries a big magic sword, but Achilles talks enough for both of them. The conversation doesn't produce results, but it's probably more of a pissing contest, I mean, marking territory, I mean, a friendly warning.
Cappuccio keeps Fairchild sitting for the first half of the conversation, which means it was a surprise when he stands up and he's got several inches on Moon Knight. He didn't look that big, but it plays well as the moment when shifts from cordial businessman to hard-nosed drug pusher.
MacKay intersperses bits of a conversation between old Moon Knight supporting cast member (former) Lt. Flint, and a new cop, a Detective Frazier. Frazier is the cop who Doesn't Want to Play Nice with Vigilantes, and is openly scornful of Moon Knight's crew, who will therefore have to learn the error of their ways. Or die, I'm good with dying. Especially since Frazier is, gasp, working for Fairchild! Because she's hooked on the drug. I don't know, a bent cop is a pretty farfetched notion to expect me to swallow in this comic about a guy who dresses all in white and beats to shit out of people for his Skeleton Bird God.
I'm not sure if it's Rosenberg or Cappuccio, but the characters are less sharply defined than they were in the previous book. The colors tend to smudge and blur a bit, softens them a little. Or makes them dirtier, I suppose. Although maybe MacKay's going to have Moon Knight ease up a bit after his most recent death. Try a little compassion. You know, not hit people where it causes permanent disfiguring. Only temporary disfiguring.
A Massachusetts town is being haunted by ape ghosts. Lots of ape ghosts. Is it Silver Age DC month at Marvel and no one told me? So it's Captain America, Hercules, Hawkeye and Night Thrasher to investigate. Herc's the only one able to actually hit ghosts, so it's just as well the apes don't seem to be trying to hurt people. The heroes eventually figure out the apes are smart enough to speak, and that they were the Red Ghost's early test subjects. No powers, save enough intelligence to speak and plead for their lives. Pleas that were ignored.
The Avengers locate Red Ghost's house, let the apes torment him until they're satisfied and then Herc uses his mace's ability to absorb energy(?) to draw in the radiation holding the ghosts in the realm of the living. Another crisis averted, although the Serpent Society stole some bone fragments soaked in magic moonshine, so that's. . .concerning. I guess? I'd say the vocal dissent of members of the Society is going to short-circuit that plot before too long.
Anyway, credit to Orlando for an interesting problem for the team to confront. The ghosts of unethical animal experimentation. I didn't quite understand why, if Hercules can apparently understand the ghosts courtesy of the "All-Speak", why he let Hawkeye keep trying to read their lips. Did Hercules just not think of trying to understand their spectral cries? But that wouldn't explain why he's still letting Hawkeye have first crack even after that. I guess he just thinks it's a good challenge for Clint.
Oback keeps the colors murky while the team is dealing with the apes, then brightens things up considerably once they find the Red Ghost. Maybe because, once the team has a sense of the cause, things aren't so dire. Eaton's ghost apes are suitably anguished and angry looking.
No comments:
Post a Comment