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.
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.
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.
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