Digging for Answers

Huh, explaining the joke does make it funnier. The future is a marvelous place. 

Star Power and the Mystery of the Zel Gux Dynasty is the 3rd story arc in Michael Terracciano and Garth Graham's Star Power series. The second arc ended with Dancia's powers back in working order and mercenary scumbag Black Hole Bill being sent off to what will apparently be a very unpleasant imprisonment. In the process of rebooting their powers (flying through a solar flare) the artificial intelligence that comes with the Star Power - which Danica named "Mitch" - sensed a signal from another Star-Powered Sentinel in the vast network meant to connect all of them, the first and only one he'd detected so far.

This story starts with the signal going silent, but Mitch tracing it to a star system where a mysterious group known as the "Zel Gux Dynasty" traveled from world to world, sharing knowledge with the inhabitants. The Zel Gux themselves are long gone, but their ruins are considered significant, so it has to be treated as an archaeological expedition (which Graham highlights with the cover to the first chapter, where Danica is rocking an Indiana Jones look.)

Each world turns out to have a different puzzle or challenge, each requiring certain things from Danica, though not her love of puns. That's a bonus reserved for her friends and coworkers. In addition, the variety of worlds give Graham opportunities to draw different aliens and civilizations. One group may be rock-people (who have commercialized their ruins to their maximum extent), another look like red pandas and live in homes built in the trees.

Danica brings along the same 3 members of the security team that became her friends in earlier volumes, plus her supervisor, Dr. Brightman. They take a backseat here, acting mainly as sources of levity in between the adventure sequences. Instead, Terracciano focuses on Beena, thus far an ancillary character, albeit one very excited to interact with Danica at any opportunity. Beena's an archaeologist, and an expert on the worlds in the Zel Gux Dynasty, so she's assigned to assist. Except as Danica solves the challenges without her, Beena starts working even harder to figure things out first. She means to show she's useful, but comes off as egocentric, especially to Danica. So that has to be addressed.

Terracciano also brings back the 3 Void Angel pilots that tried and failed to kill Danica as soon as she got the Star Power. Despite the Void Angels being gone, the Countess who hired them locked up, and the three of them being on their own, one is still hellbent on finishing the job. One seems willing to go with it, just follow whoever makes the most forceful argument, and the other Burke, seems increasingly hesitant to pursue this.

The story also jumps periodically to an extended conversation between the Countess and a member of Psychological Ops (a "psi-cop" in popular parlance.) It highlights circumstances outside the Millennium Federation (which the book delves into further in volume 4), as well as the Countess' mindset, but also teases out the history of the Star-Powered Sentinels while Danica and her friends track down these clues. I think the Psi-Cop is a little too confident about the Federation's stability, given the universe's trends towards entropy, but the series in general emphasizes hope and the value and strength of cooperation, so it's understandable.

I think this might be my favorite Star Power storyline. Maybe because it's more of a straightforward adventure. While it reveals some backstory, we're past the origin story. It's not as much a body horror deal as volume 5. The Void Angel Trio are a threat, but don't dominate the story, and neither does the subplot about Beena's need to impress people with how smart and useful she is. It feels like lower stakes, but that makes a change of pace from most of the other volumes, that have long stretches of life-or-death situations. It takes advantage of its setting in a futuristic interplanetary to offer differing settings, architecture, aliens and cultures. Casual worldbuilding, which lets the story focus on the puzzles, which are their own kind of clue to the backstory of the Sentinels.

Sunday Splash Page #414

"Ride the Jade Tiger," in Power Man and Iron Fist #75, by Mary Jo Duffy (writer), Kerry Gammill (penciler), Ricardo Villamonte (inker), Christie Scheele (colorist), Jim Novak (letterer)

Danny Rand's run as a solo hero lasted 15 issues. 26 if you count the stint headlining Marvel Premiere. Luke Cage did better. His solo run went 49 issues, first as Luke Cage Hero-for-Hire, then as Luke Cage: Power Man. At the end of the day, neither was apparently doing well enough on their own. So somebody got the idea to do a team-up book between the naive kung fu white boy and the street savvy black guy with bulletproof skin.

Power Man and Iron Fist took over Luke's book's numbering at issue 50, and ran to issue 125, at which point, Danny got killed. (John Byrne later reversed this in his Namor run, of all things.) I bought 21 issues a few years back, whichever sounded interesting to me. Most are written by either Mary Jo Duffy (from around issue 58 to 80), or Jim Owsley (from the last year of the book). Mark Bright drew all the Owsley issues I've got, while Duffy's are drawn by, variously, Trevor von Eeden, Marie Severin (with Steve Leialoha), Kerry Gammill, or Denys Cowan. There's also a 4 issue story by Kurt Busiek and Ernie Chan in the mix that concludes at #100.

Maybe it's just the issues I picked, but it feels like the book makes more use of Danny's supporting cast than Luke's. Colleen Wing and Misty Knight are around a lot, either hanging out with Danny or on jobs of their own (which inevitably dovetail with whatever Luke and Danny are doing.) Danny's corporate associate Jeryn Hogarth sometimes gets the boys jobs.

They do operate out of Luke's set-up in an old theater, so his pal D.W. is around a lot, and there's some time spent on Luke's various romantic entanglements. Plus, the book is using Luke's "hero for hire" storytelling engine. Maybe incorporating more of Danny's cast and villains was a way of balancing things. Plus, you can get some mileage out of throwing Luke Cage into mystic cities, fighting spectral ninja assassins and sentient, angry plant-people.

And it's in a different way from putting Danny in a world Luke is accustomed to. Danny's utility in those stories is his naivete (and probably the fact he doesn't look intimidating at first glance.) Like when Danny is hired by a woman to protect her from a stalker that turns out to be Whirlwind. Even though the man is a costumed criminal, no one in the neighborhood will help Danny actually find him. Because Whirlwind is from there, and Danny's not, and he can't navigate the idea that matters more than the man being a crook.

With Luke in K'un-Lun, it's not him being naive, but him seeing things with fresh eyes. Danny, even if he doesn't agree with all of it, is used to how things work. He doesn't object when women are treated as irrelevant, and leads the charge to try and exterminate the Hylthri. When Luke questions him about it, Danny says that's just the way things are here. Luke gets to act as the one who cuts through the pomp and the bullshit and get things moving. Plus, Luke and Lei Kung the Thunderer make an interesting duo, mutual (grudging) respect masked by irritation on Luke's end and condescension on Lei Kung's.

In between stories about power struggles over an other-dimensional city, or assassins trying and start a nuclear war, there are more lighthearted stories. All the writers get mileage from Luke and Danny taking jobs they find distasteful and demeaning, or simply being caught up in bizarre circumstances. One time, Luke may come into possession of a quarter that's actually a device that disrupts electronic circuitry, and gets hounded by some crazy mountain climber whose associates look like Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart. Or they take a job to check on some vault in the Alaskan tundra, which turns out to be empty for some reason, and the security guard, already loopy from the isolation, goes completely round the bend.

Saturday Splash Page #216

"What, This Again?" in Red Robin #10, by Christopher Yost (writer), Marcus To (penciler), Ray McCarthy (inker), Guy Major (colorist), Sal Cipriano (letterer)

In addition to the misery-fest DC made Tim Drake's life in the mid-2000s, wiping out basically any supporting cast he had, the character also had to deal with being squeezed out of any real niche. On the one hand, there's always a writer eager to introduce a new character to a hero's supporting cast of sidekicks. At the same time, the ones who came before never go away, so the roles they filled in the fictional universe never become vacant.

Grant Morrison brought in Damian Wayne, and the kid got to be Robin, despite pulling all manner of shit - decapitating a criminal, illegally imprisoning other criminals beneath Titans Tower - that would have gotten most of the previous sidekicks shitcanned. Let's hear it for nepotism!

But even when Bruce Wayne goes away, there's still Dick Grayson already standing in line to be Batman. Damian's Robin, Jason Todd's the designated black sheep. What's left for Tim Drake that differentiates him from all the rest? They gave him the codename Red Robin, which Jason actually brought back from his multiverse jaunt in the much-derided Countdown to Final Crisis.

This is the only issue of this series I bought, as it crossed over with Bryan Q. Miller's Batgirl, but there are so many threads I'm not really sure what the deal was. Tim seems to be opposing Ra's al Ghul, but maybe also dealing with the fact Hush is impersonating Bruce Wayne (currently lost in time thanks to Darkseid.) Vicki Vale is looking for Tim, for reasons I'm entirely unclear on. Tim is maybe involved with Lucius Fox's daughter? It seems like Yost was teasing Tim drifting into Paranoid Loner Asshole Batman territory - since Grayson is being Cheerful, Approachable Batman - but recognize this and pull back before it was too late.

This problem of what to do with Tim hasn't gotten any less pronounced in the 15 years since this series concluded. There's more Bat-adjacent characters than ever. They tried giving him an ongoing, that seemed to die fast. They gave him a boyfriend, albeit one with the name of one of his old private school roommates (but looking nothing like the character did when Pete Woods drew him.) No idea if that's still the case. I think the problem is, Tim's situated as the Detective Robin, but he works for Batman. Batman's already the detective (in theory, depending on the writer) in the Bat-family.

What I Bought 2/11/2026

Not satisfied with simply restricting access to certain channels, Pluto TV now requires me to register an account if I want to use it at all. Which, if it would spare me the commercials, I might consider a fair trade. But since I know that ain't happening, the prospect of giving them another avenue to annoy me is not worth it.

Plus, I'm the contrary sort who resents their trying to force me to play their game.

Marc Spector: Moon Knight #1, by Jed MacKay (writer), Devmalya Pramanik (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Dr. Sterman should probably talk to Marc about sleeping with weapons.

Marc's kidnappers have him in a giant sound stage, Mr. Fear (looking like he stole Taskmaster's Udon Studios design mask, and one of Dr. Doom's cloaks) pumping him full of fear toxins while some large black man I don't recognize tries to break him down for Agence Byzantine. The big guy is going by "Mr. Smith," pretending to be Marc's boss at the company where Marc is mailroom guy, but that doesn't really help me i.d. him. He also seems like he's really enjoying humiliating Marc whether he's playing the scowling boss, or sitting in his control room full of monitors that wash everything in blue-white.

Marc delivers meaningless letters to members of the Agence, still wearing their read outfits, but with business suits over them, which Pramanik details in repetitive 9-panel grids. Rosenberg colors these pages a sort of dull, washed out yellow. has a room, where he eats dog food like cereal and stares at a non-functioning TV. But Marc sees a Moon Knight cartoon, with a broad-chested, smiling Moon Knight. He even sings a theme song as he goes about his day.

This isn't getting anyone anywhere, even as Mr. Fear ups the doses to dangerous levels, but then Zodiac breaks in to push Marc to find himself. Even brings him his mask and cloak (which Rosenberg colors as glowing) in a gift box. There's a nice page of interlocked crescents - claws? - of "Moon Knight" telling Marc what he needs to do, growing more terrifying in each panel, while the other side shows the Agence Byzantine guys rushing towards the room they're in. So it's Moon Knight (sorta) and Zodiac, teaming up to bust Marc out. Or just kill a bunch of guys.

At times like this, I wonder about Steven and Jake. Is the fear toxin keeping them incapacitated, too, or creating some kind of barrier where they can't supplant Marc as the part of the system in control? I would figure they'd be what's helping Marc resist, but I don't think that's what MacKay's going for, since he so rarely uses either of them. 

The Saturday Night Ghost Club - Craig Davidson

Jake doesn't have a lot of friends. If he hangs out with anyone, it's his uncle, who runs a shop dedicated to the occult on what passes for the main drag of 1980s Niagara Falls. When Billy enters the shop, looking for a way to communicate with his recently deceased grandmother and make sure she's alright, dying so far from where she lived most of her life, Calvin offers to help. By sneaking Billy into the local mortuary. And Jake comes along.

For the remainder of the summer the tale spans, the three of them gather at places Calvin says have reports of ghosts. Sometimes Calvin's friend Les comes along, and sometimes Billy's sister, Dove, is around. But there's more going on with these locations and stories than Jake is aware of.

Davidson writes the book from Jake's perspective, looking back on that summer many years after the fact. Jake goes on to study medicine, and becomes a doctor who operates on the brain. So there are chapters that detail things he's seen or experienced in his work, mostly focused on what we don't understand about the connection between the brain as a physical object, and all the information contained inside it. A girl with an inoperable tumor that makes her sleep most of the time, lost in a fantasy world with a robot and druid as protectors. She can no longer recognize anyone in the real world, but when she draws how the robot and druid appear, they're her parents.

So in looking back, Jake views the summer of the ghost club is written as a transformational experience. In one sense, he starts to move past the point where he can believe in stories of haunted rail tunnels or stone angels that crush anyone who spends a night beside the grave. He starts to draw a line under what he believes is possible. But he also makes a couple of friends and, in being willing to stand with them, learns to stand up for himself, begins to become the person he'll grow up to be.

At the same time, Jake sees all the things he didn't understand about people back then - about Dove's shifts in moods, the struggle in his father between a respectable provider and the hellraiser he was, Uncle Calvin's fixations - with more awareness. As a kid, if your mother is cautious with money, or your dad can stand and talk on the doorstep with strangers for hours, you don't really think about why they might be like that. Whether it's childhood experience, or brain chemistry, or some cocktail/battle of the two. You have no frame of reference. That's just, how they are.

If Jake still doesn't, as an adult, understand exactly what's driving the people he cares about, he at least looks back with the knowledge those things were always there.

'Looking back, I wish I'd relished those final instants of childish fear: that saccharine-sweet taste of terror curdling like sour milk in my mouth.' 

The Wrecking Crew (2026)

James (Dave Bautista) is a Navy SEAL in Hawaii with a wife and two kids. His half-brother Jonny (Jason Momoa) is a reservation cop in Oklahoma, whose girlfriend (Morena Baccarin) just broke up with him because of things like lack of communication and forgetting her birthday.

Neither is all that concerned when their private investigator dad is killed in what we see as a pretty obvious intentional hit-and-run, but is being treated as just an accident by the investigating officer (Stephen Root.) But a bunch of Yakuza attack Jonny while he was in the bathroom, looking for some package they think his dad sent? Now Jonny is interested in returning to Hawaii for the first time in 20 years. Mostly so he can beat the shit out of people, and maybe also irritate his big brother.

Momoa plays Jonny as sort of an arrested development, perpetual asshole. He's always looking for a beer, never lets any petty argument drop. When Valentina shows up, Jonny can't help constantly trying to impress her, or get his brother to agree she's hot. (This is not difficult, James is perfectly impressed with her, especially her driving.) Spends a lot of time insulting people by calling them names. One of the Yakuza guys gets called "Naruto" and "Zuko" (because part of his face looks burnt) within a minute, and one the main bad guy's chief goons gets tagged as "Fat John Cena."

Bautista gets the slightly deeper role as the older sibling who can't admit he worries about his younger sibling, so he expresses it through disappointment. Until all the insults Jonny hurls back punctures the "responsible" air and James starts going for the throat. You can even see it in their actual fight. Jonny's swinging and trying to do damage, while James keeps going for holds and grapples. It's either at the point Jonny bites him, or the kick to the nuts, that James starts fighting back for real.

(They fight in the police station parking lot immediately after Jonny gets bailed out for barging into the main bad guy's house and getting tased three times. I envision the cops standing at the windows, just watching and shaking their heads like, "Do we arrest them?")

The fistfight leads to obligatory sharing of feelings, and then to Jonny getting the chance to make things right with Valentina, then an action sequence that makes me think somebody really liked the initial attack on Ajax's convoy from Deadpool. Then big final battle. It's a little odd, because they switch between James' fight with the main Yakuza guy, where James is doing pretty well throughout, and Jonny's fight with the main bad guy, Man Bun McGee (not his true name), where Jonny is mostly getting his ass kicked.

Which is not so weird by itself, except the moments at which they switch feel like there's a thematic significance to it. Like, there's a similarity between the moment where Jonny gets a gaff hook jammed in his shoulder and James has the Yakuza's sword arm in a lock where he could clearly do a lot of damage, but he hasn't yet? I don't know, maybe that James has been denying any emotional fallout from his father's death (and various poor life choices prior to that), and trying to stay under control, disciplined, all that. But really, he's angry too, angry enough to make that arm bend a direction it shouldn't and bury the sword in the guy's face.

Not sure exactly how that maps to Jonny's situation, where his anger doesn't seem to be doing him much good. So maybe it's that James cares about his brother and senses he's in trouble, so there's no more time for restraint.

Grappling with a Host of Issues

Probably not what anyone wants to hear. 

Total Suplex of the Heart is focused on Georgie, a young woman writing for a web site that gets an idea to do an article on a local hardcore wrestling promotion. But once hired, to act as a valet, or less charitably, eye candy, Georgie finds she really loves wrestling. The storytelling and the characters as much or more than the physicality.

For the remainder of the story, Georgie is around or involved in wrestling to some extent, but writer Joanne Starer tends to focus on how those things intersect with various issues Georgie has (which are drawn from Starer's own life, including starting her own women's wrestling promotion in the early-2000s.) Georgie has body image issues and anorexia, neither of which is helped by her valet character often being dressed up in skimpy outfits designed to titillate the male audience.

So there's a scene where a friend she's made through wrestling is trying to help her find new clothes for her costume, and artist Ornella Greco draws two panels side-by-side: one is how Georgie actually looks in the outfit, and the other is what Georgie sees in the mirror, with a more noticeable belly, and some hair on her legs, bags under her eyes. Basically that she's fixating, or imagining, on perceived imperfections. Or Georgie narrates her cycle of binging, and justifies it by assuring that she tries to eat healthy foods. Except binging on raisin bran has negative consequences.

There's also her tendency to gravitate towards guys for affirmation, and those guys are often completely self-absorbed. Even the guy who seems "nice", is really trying to have the relationship entirely on his terms. They're working together on a show for the wrestling school Georgie helped him start and run, but it's all for him. Everything is on his schedule, according to his needs. The guy who points this out, seems to be doing so more to convince Georgie to sleep with him, than out of any real concern for her.

Greco draws most of those guys as physical specimens, though I'm not sure if that's meant to be how they really look, or how Georgie perceives them. Meaning as an the inverse of her self-image. That she sees them as these perfect guys, and she's lucky they like her (because she sees herself as such a mess), so she needs to make sure they keep liking her. By being the fun one, or the supportive one, or the flirty one.

 

But amid all that, Starer does emphasize that Georgie makes a lot of friends through wrestling. Actual friends, who not only support her or encourage her to figure out what she wants, but also will call her on her self-destructive behavior. Starer ends the story on an up note, one she admits in the afterword doesn't mirror the reality of her situation at that time in her life. She's likely right that it's important to note toxic relationships or body issues don't just magically fix themselves, but I appreciate she let the comic end on a more positive trend. I often found myself occasionally groaning at Georgie's latest bad decision, so having her step away from that was fairly carthartic. Though Starer usually has Georgie groaning at herself along with us, per her narration boxes. But it's an illustration of the cycles people get caught in, making the same mistakes over and over, even knowing they're doing it.

Sunday Splash Page #413

"Pipe Organ from Hell," in Power Girl (vol. 2) #3, by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Amanda Conner (artist), Paul Mounts (colorist), John J. Hill (letterer)

Power Girl had a 4-issue mini-series in the late-80s, then bounced between team books - not to mention origins and powersets - for almost 20 years. Infinite Crisis bringing back the multiverse meant it was OK for her to be a Kryptonian from a different, now-deceased, universe, which at least settled the origin and powerset. Still, now that her past was concrete - as concrete as anything gets in a Big 2 superhero universe - what to do with her present?

Amanda Conner, Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti started with trying to get her a civilian life again. In the arc in JSA Classified that led into Infinite Crisis, Geoff Johns established that while Power Girl had an apartment, she was hardly ever there. Dust on everything, she couldn't keep track of where her key was (Conner drew a pile of doorknobs just inside the apartment from Peej breaking them to get in each time she actually came by.) Not even bothering with a disguise or secret identity, just walking to the door in her costume.

So, get her an apartment. Have her try to maintain, with limited success, a secret identity as Karen Starr. Get her a cat, which allows Conner to draw all sorts of interesting or funny stuff in the background when Power Girl's at home. Continue building the friendship with the current Terra (as started in the Terra mini-series from this creative team the year before), but make sure they interact outside superheroics. Doing stuff like going to the movies together. Get Peej back in charge of her old company, Starrware (I don't know how many reboots of the character ago that was), with a focus on technological solutions for environmental and ecological problems. That provides the opportunity for supporting cast members who aren't costumed adventurers, while also offering a setting which can provide both conflicts and solutions to conflicts that don't strictly involve a Kryptonian punching stuff (fun as that can be to read.)

Then throw her up against a wide variety of foes. The arch-villain of this creative team's run was the Ultra-Humanite, himself a refuge from Earth-2 like Power Girl, though I'm unclear how he's still around. U-H has a superiority complex related to his intellect, and a chip on his shoulder because his body let him down, resulting in his brain being implanted in an albino gorilla. He initially plans to move his brain into her body, which is an inversion of the typical focus on Power Girl's appearance. Where often it's the male gaze about her physical appearance, for U-H, it's about the power inside that body, and what he thinks he could do with it, rather than the usual lust motivation. He's still reducing her to a body for him to use, but in a different way. Not that it ends any better for him.

And there's plenty of the other kind of reduction dealt with in the book. Lots of brief scenes of people talking down to Power Girl or otherwise behaving inappropriately, which she then shuts down in some way. An egotistical scientist interviews for a position at her company and dismisses her concerns about his plans to bio-engineer psychological change into people to match what he thinks is "healthy"? That dude is shown the door. Some bum tries to flash Power Girl? Freeze breath on his junk. The 2-part story where Vartox shows up, having decided Power Girl is the ideal woman to help kickstart a population boom on his planet, is one long exercise in her dealing with an annoying dickhead with no respect for her (or boundaries.) There's a lot of yelling, followed by punching.

I'd like to solve more of my problems with yelling followed by punching. Maybe skip straight to the punching.

Beyond that, there's a teenage girl who tries to use a magic book to destroy aspects of industrialization in an effort to protect the planet, and a trio of wild alien ladies looking for a planet to have a party. And there's Satanna, looking for revenge after Power Girl's initial defeat of the Ultra-Humanite. Except this was at the same time the Humanite had gotten his brain transferred into Terra, so that played out strangely. Satanna went to the trouble of getting weapons from Dr. Sivana to kill Power Girl, only for the Humanite, in Terra's body, to destroy the weapons. Satanna helped with the brain transfer, so why are they working at cross-purposes?

Conner fills the pages with all sorts of background details and foreground action. Wherever Power Girl goes, in costume or civilian clothes, we see people passing by take notice. (Sometimes she comments, sometimes she doesn't.) Two people may be talking while one of Karen's employees is chasing her cat in the background. Colorist Phil Mounts uses vivid colors, nothing muddy or restrained. The Ultra-Humanite's weapons fire bright-green beams, Satanna's armor she got from Sivana has a gaudy leopard-print design. The subterranean land Terra comes from has clothing that changes into dayglo colors in response to the wearer's emotions. Even if things get ugly at times, these are still bright, exciting adventures for the most part. Weird science stuff, magic, aliens! Satanna's chief henchman is an angry badger scientist, a detail I really loved.

Conner makes Power Girl a big presence. Taller than most of the guys at her company, so she often has a noticeable height advantage in the profile shots of two characters conversing. She shifts easily from amusement to exasperation to anger as the situation changes. Not that she can't play diplomatic, but this is not a character who is going to bite their tongue and play nice to avoid stepping on some jerk's feelings, or worry about being called a bitch for it. They play up the "power" in her name, too. She swings cars like she's waving a paper fan. A panel full of Bioshock-looking machines is followed by a panel full of shattered junk. Or she survives an explosion that vaporizes an alien spaceship with nothing more than some scorch marks on her skin and mild disorientation.

Unfortunately, the creative team left after 12 issues, replaced by Judd Winick and Sami Basri. Winick proceeded to tear down Starrware and embroil Power Girl in Justice League: Generation Lost-related plots, and Basri's Power Girl seemed like a much more reserved and remote character than Conner's. A lot of narrowed eyes and harsh glares. I gave that 5 issues and then bailed out hard.

Saturday Splash Page #215

"Roadkilled," in Resurrection Man #8, by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (writers), Butch Guice (artist), Carla Feeny (colorist), Ken Lopez (letterer)

Mitch Shelly has been homeless and wandering for a while. He doesn't know much about himself, not even that his last name is "Shelly." One day, during a drive-by, he learns he can fly. And gets shot. Sees flashes of a life that might have been his, then dies.

And then he's alive again, with a different superpower. He doesn't know the "why," isn't even entirely sure about the "who." But he's got a few leads to start chasing.

Except there are also lots of people chasing him. People who intended for Mitch to stay dead. People certain he was never dead to begin with. People interested in why he doesn't stay dead. People who think they know why, because they think they know who he really is.

In that sense, Resurrection Man's 27-issue run (plus a DC One Million tie-in issue) is one big continuum of chases and pursuits. Mitch pursuing answers about himself. Insurance investigator Kim Rebecki pursuing Mitch, who she suspects of faking his death. The bounty hunting pin-up model duo Body Doubles pursuing Mitch for their employer. A walking corpse that consumes parts of people to keep going and will not shut up, that wants what Mitch's got. The Forgotten Heroes - a version of them, anyway - show up late in the series wanting Mitch's help dealing with Vandal Savage.

Some of it works better than others. While it makes perfect sense Mitch would want to learn who he was and try to regain what he'd lost, it never interested me much. Abnett and Lanning have Mitch's past involve being a scummy lawyer, but by the time we figure that out, we've seen him die multiple times protecting innocent people. Unless you're going to really delve into what makes a person who they are in terms of why Mitch changed before and after his first death (or you're going to tease him reverting over time), the guy he was before doesn't make much difference.

I was more interested in the deal with his powers, even if I had no idea who this "Immortal Man" was the Forgotten Heroes and Phantom Stranger each assumed him to be. Especially the cat-and-mouse game with the Body Doubles, where Mitch sometimes had the upper hand, but sometimes got caught flat-footed or unprepared. He's running a lot early, but as he gets a better handle on his powers (and lands a potent power thanks to some help from a two-issue guest appearance by Hitman, who Abnett and Lanning do an excellent job using in a tone that matches Ennis'), he can turn the tables.

Guice drew the entire series (minus a couple of fill-ins.) There's a strong Joe Kubert influence to his work in the scratchy lines and Mitch's wiry frame and ragged look. Even when Mitch tries shaving and trimming his hair, he still looks like a guy who's been living rough for a while and shows it. It gives Mitch an everyday appearance, rather than that of some costumed hero. Mitch will act to saves lives he sees in danger, but most of the time he's focused on own problems. He eventually recognizes there's a greater threat to be confronted, but initially agrees to work with the Forgotten Heroes because Vandal Savage was involved in the experiments Mitch was subjected to.

(In DC One Million, Mitch has embraced being a hero, as something like the senior tactician of that time's Justice League, what with all the experience he's got. Guice draws him in a more superheroic outfit, and gives him a more bulked-up physique, reflecting the change in perspective.)

Mitch survives the big conflict at the end of his series, but doesn't seem inclined to embrace being a hero. Instead he returns to his home town and Kim Rebecki, since the two had started something of a relationship amid all the different people killing Mitch. Which might be why nobody much used him after the series ended, although he seems like the Hero Dial in that he would be an opportunity to play around with weird powers.

Abnett and Lanning took another crack at the character in the initial New 52. Of the 3 books I tried at the start, it was the one that held out the longest, until it was canceled around 10 months in. But I was probably buying it from inertia as much as anything. They again spent more time digging into Mitch's past than I would have liked. I wasn't exactly disappointed when the book ended.

What I Bought 2/5/2026

I spent 4 days last week looking after Alex's cat. I took his advice and set his TV to some Youtube "cat tv" station full of birds and squirrels when I had to leave for a while, but the cat seemed equally interested in the NBA player podcasts I'd watch sometimes.

Batgirl #16, by Tate Brombal (writer), Takeshi Miyazawa (artist), Juan Castro (inker), Mike Spicer (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - Does Batgirl think she's learned to cut fire? Maybe.

Let's wrap this war up. Nyssa was unconcerned that the Unburied were infiltrating Samsara, because she wants them there to kill via machine gun towers, under the logic that the blue poppies grew from the corpses of the Unburied's ancestors, so that will definitely happen a second time if she can produce the corpses. And the Unburied wrecked her Lazarus Pit, so she's trying to avoid death.

Jaya takes out the towers, and apparently is not on Nyssa or the Unburied's side, but some third motive. Oy. Batgirl seems busier fighting her ghosts than anything else, but pulls it together enough to choose against vengeance. Rather than fight Kalden to the death for killing Shiva, she figures out the pressure point thing Jaya uses to make Nyssa able to feel stuff again. Which leaves Nyssa unable to continue fighting. And Batgirl freed Tenji, who was chained up for. . . reasons.

Was Nyssa thinking he'd work as bait for the Unburied? Was it supposed to distract Batgirl, or make her fight harder against the Unburied? I have absolutely no idea what Nyssa's end goal was there.

But Batgirl chose against vengeance, the Unburied get their home back, so I'm sure they'll just be all peace and love now, and definitely won't opt to hunt down Nyssa and anyone they think might strike against them. And Batgirl is maybe returning to Gotham with her half-brother and Jaya.

I assume Batgirl's able to use Jaya's pressure point stuff to heal Nyssa - though it's not like it does anything for her aging and dying problem - because she chose freeing Tenji over attacking Kalden, and this represents healing her past emotional wounds. It doesn't really feel like that significant of a choice - Cassandra Cain has chosen saving someone over beating someone else up plenty of times - and it also doesn't feel like it would resolve any of her issues with her mother, but here we are. 

Nova: Centurion #4, by Jed MacKay (writer), Matteo Della Fonte (artist), Mattia Iacono (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - OK, I understand Nova's presence, and the former Nova turned wannabe Han Solo behind him. What's with the two red circles? Are they suns?

Nova's trying to get a recharge, but the technician is giving him a lot of static about how disrespectful it is for an Earther to be wearing a Nova Corps uniform, now that the Corps is gone. So, did the Corps get rebuilt and then destroyed again some time between the end of Thanos Imperative and now? I generally understood Rich was still the only Nova all throughout the Krakoa era, so how has word of that still not gotten around?

But he gets his recharge, and his being able to handle that much juice convinces the guy he really is a Nova. Meanwhile, some doofus named Eden Rixlo steals Nova's ship while Rich is buying groceries. What a fucking terrible name, what idiot came up with "Eden Rixlo"? Really? Gerry Duggan? I would have put money this guy was created by Jeph Loeb in his Sam Alexander Nova book. Good thing I don't gamble.

Cammi and Aalbort are on-board at the time of the theft, which is weird since Eden was apparently eyeing the ship the same time Nova was trying to get his recharge, which Cammi and the combat accountant were present for. Why wait? He could steal the ship, but not break in? Either way, there presence means this is a bad idea even if Nova didn't manage to get right on Rixlo's tail, including using the mines Rixlo drops as speed boosts (which was very cool) all the way to his destination.

But Nova did stay on his tail, and Cammi and Aalbort are in position to slit Eden's throat, as they arrive at some space station where Star-Lord is waiting. At least, the guy introduces himself as Star-Lord. 

Between the dumb hair and dumber mustache, and the stupid outfit that has what looks like backpack straps growing from the shoulders, it looks more like, I dunno, Andy Richter playing a cruise line captain. And he'd speak in some goofy accent. Something Scandinavian by way of Swedish Chef, maybe. At least the shoulder straps should make it easy for Nova to throw the Cruise-Lord into the airless vacuum.

Parental Supervision Declined

In Loco Parentis, you play as a young woman who's just moved into a new apartment. An apartment smaller than any of my dorm rooms. I don't think the room is even wide enough to have a bed, and lengthwise, all the wall space is taken up by desks and cabinets. If she's paying more than $100 a month for this play, she's being robbed. The hallways are dark, there's garbage bags and boards and desks and old refrigerators just sitting in the halls or on the landings between floors.

Oh, and there's a little girl that's calls for help as she's dragged into an apartment by an old woman. An old woman indifferent to the revolver you find to try and threaten her into releasing the kid. Which, to be fair, could simply be her being so old death holds no terror for her.

But there are also the spirits, or whatever you'd call them. Floating, translucent things with squid mouth that will float towards you if they see you. You can push them back with the flashlight you find, provided you don't run out of batteries, and bullets do disperse them. But you need the bullets for the old woman, too, and they're scarce.

If you dispatch the "crone", you then have to deal with the handyman, who the little girl also doesn't like. He made too much noise while she was trying to watch TV. I didn't get far in this game, but it seems pretty clear helping this kid is a bad idea. Which means I don't feel bad I didn't get very far in the game.

As far as I got, the levels seem to boil down to simple tasks. First, destroy or remove something the person cared about. You have to run between different floors - up or down doesn't seem to matter - chucking tools down the garbage chute or whatever. Then shoot something else. The shooting has to be completed within a certain amount of time, or you die. Which was where I got stuck, because I only had two bullets, which apparently wasn't enough, and couldn't find more before I was killed.

And the game feels very inconsistent about what you're supposed to do. The handyman occupies random objects, which you can tell because you see bugs crawling around them or hear snoring. Don't touch those objects. Until the game changes it's mind and wants you to shoot something. Except sometimes I can see the handyman as an actual person, messing with a floor's circuit breaker, and other times I can't. So am I supposed to shoot him, or the objects?

The controls are obnoxious. You can't readily open doors or drawers if you're carrying something,s o if you want to chuck something down the garbage chute, you have to drop it first, then open the door, then pick it back up. It feels like the cursor has to be in just the right spot for you have the option to interaction with something. The game relies a lot on jump scares, where you turn around and someone's swinging at hatchet at you, then they disappear.

Some games, if I get stymied, I'll go online to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Loco Parentis isn't worth the time that would waste.

Track of the Cat (1954)

A cattle ranch comes under attack by a mountain lion during a blizzard. While two of the brothers, Curt and Arthur (Robert Mitchum and William Hopper) head out to hunt it, the remainder of the family stews in their various issues in the house. The matriarch (Belulah Bondi) is a severe, gloomy woman, always talking about God or accusing people of blaspheming or immorality. The father is a loud, useless drunk. The youngest son (Tab Hunter) is a spineless milksop, unwilling or unable to speak up about what he wants, including his love for Gwen (Diana Lynn.)

(There's also an ancient-looking Native American who works there, that Curt abuses of course, who is supposed to be scared of the "black panther." But at the end, he says the black panther is the "whole world", whatever that means. It's the things inside yourself that you can't face? The most interesting thing is he was played by the guy who played Alfalfa on The Little Rascals.) 

Arthur dies to the cat fairly early, and Curt sends the body back on the horse and continues on, confident he'll find and kill the cat soon. But the blizzard only gets worse, and Curt either runs out of food (because he was confident enough he'd handle this he didn't pack much) or he lost the food at some point. At which time, he breaks. 

The movie poster describes it as a love story of  'real, raw, runaway emotions,' which is a load of tripe. The closest thing to a love story would be between Lynn and Hunter, and their emotions never get out of control, because Hunter is basically a lump. That's the whole dynamic between them, Hunter refusing to man up and do anything to seize control of his life.

Arthur is the one who tries to make their mother back off, who tells Curt to let their little brother have part of the herd to start his own ranch with Gwen. Hunter can't muster the nerve ask Gwen to marry him when Curt taunts him about it, or stand up to his mother when she insults Gwen. Hunter's sister-in-law (played by Teresa Wright) at one point implores him to take Gwen and just leave, get out of this miserable place, but he won't do that, either. He always bows to his mother's wishes. Except when it comes to keeping his dad away from the whiskey. It wouldn't be hard to take away these bottles that are apparently stashed everywhere, but he doesn't do that, either.

Hunter is ultimately the one who kills the panther, which is supposed to symbolize his becoming the man on the ranch, since Curt ran himself off a ravine in a panic. It would have worked better if we'd seen him actually stand up for himself sometime earlier. Like finally asserting himself gives him the wherewithal to confront the animal. But the kill is anticlimactic, as the cat snarls from a stand of trees, Hunter marches in, there are a couple of gunshots and that's it.

As far as Curt, Mitchum plays a very good sneering "big" man, but the break in his demeanor is too abrupt. The point is Arthur was right when he said that if Curt were given total control of the ranch, he'd run everyone off and be left with no one, and that inside, Curt can't stand that idea. He doesn't want to show what he perceives as weakness, but once he's alone, with no one to bully or place himself above, he crumbles. But it happens so fast, and gets him killed so fast (in terms of how much time the movie spends on him), it lacks dramatic impact.

Since Arthur dies because he forgets to chamber a round in his rifle, and we see Hunter resolutely do just that before marching into the trees, I guess he's supposed to be a combination of Curt's strength and Arthur's compassion, but the movie doesn't establish that properly

I kept hoping it would take a horror turn, have the panther double-back and start picking off people in the house. Kill the old lady, kill the drunk, and everything would have been a lot better. Failing that, since Hunter never lives up to his promise to take Gwen back to her home, have Gwen and the sister-in-law leave together. In the early part of the movie, when everyone is showing no particular urgency in getting outside and hunting the big cat killing their cattle, we hear the two girls laughing together in their room, so they get along, at least.

A miserable viewing experience from start-to-finish.

A Rough Launch Cycle

I wonder how many times someone in the Marvel Universe has said that?

"Change of Decay" is the second tpb for All-New X-Factor. We looked at the first just before Christmas. The cast roster of Polaris, Gambit, Quicksilver, Danger, Cypher, and Warlock now in the same place - if not all on the same page - Peter David (writer), Carmine Di Giandomenico (artist), Lee Loughridge (color artist), and Cory Petit (letterer) can get down to the brass tacks of what a corporation's superhero team actually does.

As far as these 6 issues, the answer would appear to be, "create messes for their CEO boss to clean up." David introduces a new character, Georgia Dakei, whose father owns several newspapers and a conservative news network, and is extremely anti-mutant. Georgia is essentially confined to their (very large, very well-defended) house, and got in trouble for live-streaming against Dad's wishes. Cypher watched the video and, because the girl talked wistfully about being able to get out of her house and see the world, convinces the rest of the team (not that Pietro or Gambit require much convincing) they should kidnap, I mean rescue, Georgia.

Except by the time they get there, Georgia's over it. Dad was just being dramatic having his goon shoot her computer, and he already replaced it. Doug steamrolls right over that, and it turns out Georgia has some power over water, in that she desiccates Doug's body in seconds. Harrison Snow has to sort a situation that devolves to the point of Polaris threatening to kill a lot of cops with their own weapons, and convinces Dakei - somehow - to send Georgia off with X-Factor.

At which point it turns out Dakei wasn't her biological parent. And while her mother was a frightened young woman who gave her up for adoption as a baby, her father is a supervillain. A new one, Memento Mori, who has a costume (and, with the way either Di Goandomenico or Loughridge shades things, sometimes muttonchop sideburns) but also legitimate businesses. Like a mall, because it means lots of civilians around to act as potential human shields against superheroes. Except it turns out, that isn't as it seems, either, and there's a possibility Georgia loses both parents as fast as she finds them.

It's a weird choice, bring in Georgia and all these elements around her, then wipe most of said elements off the board immediately. Maybe David felt he had to have some big punch up fight, though I'm not sure fights are Di Giandomenico's strong suit. They often boil down to, "panel of one character posing dramatically, followed by panel of different character gesturing." 

Action? Di Giandomenico can do that. There's a nice sequence of Mori's goons first chasing Georgia on Segways, then chasing Georgia and Doug using Warlock as a motorcycle on hover sleds (the sleds remind me a bit of the Public Eye flying cycles in Spider-Man 2099, but that may just be convergent design between Leonardi and Di Giandomenico.) The panels of Quicksilver running convey a sense of speed and fluidity. But fights often lack flow or connection between what's happening in given panels.

The focus remains on interpersonal relationships and everybody's problems. Lorna's moods still seem to swing wildly, which may be the stress of trying to listen to her team's viewpoints, while still being a strong leader who follows her own instincts, but also is a good employee. Gambit can't keep it in his pants. Warlock's trying to flirt, badly, with Danger. Pietro decides to stick around even after Havok says he doesn't need to act as mole for the Avengers. He gets the most personal growth, since he cops to the crap he pulled with the Terrigen Mists, and admits he lied when he blamed it on a Skrull. All during the team's introductory press conference which caps this tpb.

It's still hard to see why most of these characters are here. Lorna probably believes she can do some good, and Pietro seems to want to support his sister. Warlock seems to be hanging around for Doug and Danger, not necessarily in that order. But Doug is pissed off most of the volume - especially because Georgia is friendly towards Gambit and Quicksilver, but cold towards Doug, who pushed for them to rescue her in the first place - so I'm not sure why he doesn't just return to his plan to chuck himself off a cliff to avoid the villain turn he was worried about in volume 1.

Gambit doesn't think the team cares about him, and expects it'll end up like most teams, worried about mandates and punching villains instead of helping people. He's still going to bars to get soused and flirt with women like he was when the series began, so clearly the job is not personally fulfilling. I have no idea what Danger is getting out of all this, other than maybe she finds everyone else's behavior interesting to observe.

Sunday Splash Page #412

"Skyrocket's in Fight," in The Power Company #10, by Kurt Busiek (writer), Tom Grummett (penciler), Prentis Rollins (inker), Wildstorm FX (colorists), Comicraft (letterer)

Power Company was a bit Heroes for Hire, but with more focus on the business side of superheroics for hire. The economics of it, the boardroom politics that cause friction, how other heroes might react to this, especially given the number of really sketchy companies in the DCU, stuff like that.

Co-creators Kurt Busiek and Tom Grummett put together a team of almost entirely new characters. They did use Bork from the Brave and the Bold story, "But Bork Can Hurt YOU!", and a clone of the Paul Kirk Manhunter that chose not to die fighting the "good" one. Otherwise, I think everybody was new, even if some of their origins involved established characters. Homeless runaway Sapphire happened to swipe a weird gem that was prized by Kobra (as seen in Random Back Issues #29), and the head of the company, Josiah Power, was an attorney who had his career ruined when that metagene bomb from Invasion! activated superpowers.

(There were a series of one-shots introducing each of the characters, each with a different artist, but I'm not going through all those.)

The set-up is half the cast - Bork, Sapphire, teched-up former stuntman Striker Z - are "associates", which seems to translate roughly to employees, the others - Josiah, Manhunter, pop star/sorceress Witchfire, and Skyrocket up there - are partners, who bought shares in the company and therefore get more of a say in how it's run, clients they accept, things like that. Manhunter is a merc, looking to diversify his holdings. Witchfire thought it'd be good for her public profile. Skyrocket's the only real hero of the bunch, but helping people because it's, "the right thing" don't keep the balance sheet in the black.

It's still, in some ways, a traditional superhero team book. Grummett's art runs to that style. Clean lines, smooth art. The colors are bright, the action is big. Other than Josiah - who mostly wears a suit - and Bork - who rocks jeans and a tank top - everybody has very "superhero" looks. And Busiek's writes to have subplots for most every character, which can be shifted from the background to the focus at any moment. There's a lot going on in the casts' individual lives, and in their relationships with each other. Manhunter and Witchfire against Skyrocket, Josiah trying to keep everyone going the same direction because he does believe there's value in this. Bork and Sapphire as sort of a mutual support group, the homeless teenager and the mutated ex-con. Skyrocket trying to make friends (or allies?) of the associates. Manhunter's past coming after him.

Unfortunately, the book ended after 18 issues, so a lot of things were never resolved. Bork felt a little bad about trashing some armed robbers he used to know from his criminal days, and worried about backsliding. Sapphire was probably going to be targeted by Kobra eventually. Witchfire learned something about herself that was never explained or delved into in any particular way. Josiah spends the about 8 issues in a coma, coming out of it just in time to help rescue the group from another dimension. His sidelining does allow more friction and backstabbing between the other 3 partners, letting them make moves they might not otherwise, but he felt like he was going to be a more central character, so the extended absence is notable.

(Busiek and Grummett don't really get to anything with Striker Z, unless we count the story where he and Manhunter run into trouble on what was supposed to be a publicity stunt, and Striker learns not to make assumptions about how easy or hard a job is going to be. He was present when Witchfire learned that thing about herself, so I wonder if there'd have been something there. She's a big star, with the ego to match, he's a stuntman, one of the guys who makes big stars look good.) 

While Busiek and Grummett introduce some new threats - at least, I think Dr. Cyber and the Dragoneer were new - they don't mind using what's already available. Third-rate super-powered goon squad The Cadre are hitting a lot of scientific research facilities and companies, which Skyrocket is trying to figure out how to protect when they won't sign contracts hiring the company to do it (because her sales pitch needs work), and Manhunter and Witchfire veto her using company resources for pro bono work. Dr. Polaris shows up as the man behind the Cadre, amped to new levels of power thanks to an alien (a Controller? I don't know DC aliens) he'd taken prisoner. 

(Coincidental, but Nicieza did something vaguely similar with Graviton in Thunderbolts around this time, ramping up the villain to new levels, taking all the other heroes out of play except for the book's cast. Except Graviton was being used by the alien, rather than using it. Which just proves he's more of a goober than Dr. Polaris, I guess.)

They can't have other heroes popping up all the time, but there are a few. Green Arrow, as much an antagonist as anything. Issue #15, drawn by Gary Chaloner (the only issue Grummett doesn't pencil), has Batman hounding Manhunter across Gotham. Firestorm pops in for a few issues, needing gainful employment. I read somewhere years ago, can't verify the accuracy, there was a poll about who the fans wanted to have join the book, and the Haunted Tank won. But it ended up as some experimental hover tank, piloted by Jeb Stuart's granddaughter and haunted by Jeb. Not sure that's what folks were looking for.

The book did not end with the company closing its doors, but other than Josiah Power appearing in a reboot of the Power Company last year, I'm not sure any of the others have shown up anywhere since. Which at least means they weren't fed into the Event Woodchipper by Johns, Meltzer, or some other writer. It's too bad. I tracked it down in back issues several years ago, and wish it would have gone longer. At least to see how some of those other threads played out.

Saturday Splash Page #214

"Delusions of Grandeur," in Revenge of the Living Monolith, by David Michelinie (writer), Marc Silvestri (penciler), Geof Isherwood (inker), Bob Sharen (colorist), Joe Rosen (letterer)

Real talk, I don't know if Sharen and Rosen were colorist and letterer for this specific page, but the credits list 9 different colorists and 5 letterers (plus 6 people credited with 'additional background inks'), with no breakdown of who did what. I'm not listing all that. Sharen and Rosen are listed first, so it seems a safe bet they handled the very first page.

Anyway, part of the same Marvel Graphic Novel series as Starlin's Death of Captain Marvel, or The Aladdin Effect, Revenge of the Living Monolith apparently came out because Jim Owsley wanted to do something like a '50s, giant monster movie. He and Michelinie hammered out this plot about Ahmet Abdol, the old X-Men foe The Living Pharaoh, regaining access to the cosmic rays that make him the Living Monolith and rampaging through New York.

(Although he gets the cosmic rays by trapping three-quarters of the FF, because they constantly absorb cosmic radiation, so he has machines draw it off and feed it to him. Which is not a way I've ever heard the FF's powers described. I thought they got hit once and that was it. If they still absorb cosmic rays constantly while on Earth, why can't Abdol?) 

The conflict is basically an outer expression of all the crap in Abdol's heart, where he's always been convinced he was descended from royalty or divinity, then got pissy when people didn't bow and scrape and kiss his ass. Which causes him to lash out, then blame everyone else for it, that people are awful and so they deserve it. This is not a guy I'm inclined to pity. One of his prison guards is an old childhood bully. When Abdol escapes, he brings the bully along, essentially to go, "neener-neener, bet you feel stupid for doubting me now." The bully is unimpressed, and later goads Abdol in killing his own daughter, though we never see Hassan after that scene. No idea what happened to him.

(Abdol's daughter chose to be the one who sets the trap for the FF, but finds herself cornered when it turns out you can't break a window in the Baxter Building just by chucking a chair at it. It's almost funny, except, you know, the part where Abdol allows his own fear of betrayal or looking weak to make him him remote-electrocute his own kid. But he won't just kill Hassan to shut the guy up.)

The three heroes opposing the Monolith end up being She-Hulk, Captain America, and Spider-Man. She-Hulk was excluded from Abdol's trap because her power isn't cosmic ray based, and she calls Cap. Since the other Avengers are on the West Coast, he uses a computer program to pull up someone with a science background to help, and gets Spidey. The way it's framed feels less like Cap searched a database for an answer, and more like he typed requirements and the computer just spat a random name at him.

And Spidey ends up feeling useless against the Monolith (who somehow travels to NYC in a Concorde, despite being ginormous enough his head looks taller than the jet, let alone the rest of him), leaving most of the fighting to Cap and Shulkie. Spider-Man does free the FF, but by then the Monolith is so large he's again able to absorb the rays on his own. Freeing the FF isn't crucial to finding a solution to the issue of the Monolith, so Spider-Man is basically irrelevant. They could have picked Hank Pym, or Curt Conners, or any comic book scientist and it would have made about as much difference.

Random Back Issues #167 - Our Army at War #229

That is pretty much the only way I would end up in a leadership position, too.

Not quite an 80-page giant, because it's only 64 pages, this comic reprints 5 stories from the first half of the 1960s. Including one we saw an image from a few months ago, but we'll get to that.

Leading off, "Battle of the Sergeants," contrasts Sgt. Rock with Sergeant Krupp. The differences in their training - at one point Rock comments that they both went to "school", but learned different lessons. Krupp is hearing a speech about their superiority and how they will rule the world, Rock and the other GIs see a picture of people in concentration camps, and are told not to play big hero with them, because they already fought the Nazis - and how they look when they're done. Rock says Krupp looks like he just stepped out on parade, while Rock looks like the parade stepped out on him.

Krupp earns his stripes by playing to win, whatever it takes. Like pretending to be a wounded motorcycle courier, then blowing up an Allied tank that stops to help. Rock, well, see image at the top. Krupp loves his stripes, Rock just feels the weight of obligation. On his first patrol as a sergeant, they find a camouflaged base, but Krupp shows up in a weapons carrier before they can leave. Rock's unit gets steadily picked off until it's just him and Ice Cream Soldier, who gets shot by a pursuing fighter. So Rock starts carrying him, determined to get at least one guy back alive.

But Krupp's still on their tail, telling the halftrack to lay mortar fire in front of Rock, driving him back to them. Krupp wants to have fun, to the point he's mad when he thinks his prey were blown up. Doesn't seem to jibe with his "anything to win" attitude. Rock's not dead, and takes out the halftrack, but Krupp uses the smoke for cover. Out of ammo, Rock tries to lead him away, and gets his gun smashed, then shot. Which brings Krupp in close - he wants to gloat - where Rock can pull him down and handle things hand-to-hand. As he staggers away from the late Sergeant Krupp (now likely sporting a broken neck) and towards Ice Cream Soldier, Rock notes his stripes feel lighter with every step. Well, yeah, your sleeves are gone. 

Second, we have "The Mouse and the Tiger," where an Allied pilot is shot down in a snowstorm. He has intel about a Nazi surprise attack, and a broken leg that says he's not going anywhere under his own power. It's a race to reach him, a Nazi Tiger on one side, and what's probably a U.S. Stuart (the basis for the original Haunted Tank) on the other.

Both tanks come under fire from enemy aircraft, but in keeping with the title, the Stuka that attacks the mouse is called a "hawk", while the Mustang is dismissed by the Tiger as a "pigeon". The mouse survives because the Stuka's cannonfire sets the forest ablaze, and the pilot doesn't see some treetops through the smoke. The Tiger shrugs off the Mustang's machine guns and blasts it from the sky. Both arrive at the downed pilot, but the "mouse" can't get anywhere near close enough to actually hit the "tiger", let alone hurt it. Especially with its treads leaving a perfect trail in the snow. . .

Third is "The Fighting Blip", where an American "daylight" ace gets lost on a photo recon mission. At least he's got a belly tank of extra fuel. Too bad he's out after dark and comes under fire from a Nazi night fighter. The night fighter has radar, so the American can't get away no matter what he does. Unless he can give the enemy something else to shoot at. 

In "Two Men - One Hill!" Nazi and American paratroopers try to take a hill. Someone forgot to check the forecast, because high winds blow everyone far away, except one soldier from each side. The story plays up the gap in experience, as we're told Corporal Karl Schmid has 'planted his big boots on 20 battlefields - and never lost yet,' while PFC Andy Allen's boots, 'had only touched training fields.'

They land at the same time, the wind catching their parachutes and flinging them around until Schmid hits Allen's gun, breaking it so it hits Allen in the chin. Allen picks himself up and follows the trail, right to a narrow passage where Schmid is waiting. Allen takes one to the jaw and rolls over the edge. Schmid seems confident that's that, but still holes up in a tank they tried to unsuccessfully air-drop on the mountain. So when Allen, who caught a tree growing from a seam in the rock, hauls himself up and resumes the ascent, Schmid chucks a potato masher at him. Third time is the charm?

You know that's not how it works. Allen somehow dove for cover behind the tank - even though he's nowhere near it - they fight, and Allen's the one who crawls out of the tank. Good thing his buddies are just as tough. Woulda been awkward, him holding the hill and all those Nazis show up. 20 battlefields' of experience right there.

Finally, "Surrender Ticket!" Colonel von Kritz decides it will be a big propaganda win if they can subject some of these green GIs to such pressure they surrender without a shot. But he picked Easy Company as his target (the air recon photos are detailed enough you can see the stripes on Rock's helmet), so he's shit outta luck.

Kanigher keeps introducing some Easy Joe, then immediately kills them, then the airdrop of the "surrender tickets." So "Prince Charmin'" and his hair care routine interrupted permanently by Stuka dive bombers. As the temp rises and water runs low, the C.O. advises everyone save their canteens. Then an artillery barrage. The C.O. leads them out (at an oddly slow walk, isn't that a time to run?), then collapses because he was mortally wounded. Which leaves Rock in charge, as von Kritz insists they 'tighten the nutcracker on these G.I. peanuts!' Now really low on water, a couple of guys aren't willing to wait when two Tiger tanks perched on a ridge overlooking an oasis open fire. Rock catches the second (and threatens to shoot anyone else who tries), but one guy runs out there and gets killed. 

Alas, the Nazis filled in the oasis. Can't drink sand, and this time, some of the Joes don't toss their tickets. There's another waterhole ahead, one Rock assures the guys can't be filled up (doesn't say anything about whether it could be poisoned, though) while worrying about their morale. But good old Beanpole is always willing to lend a hand. Help a tired guy walk. Shoulder his rifle. Act as a human shield. Uh, about that last one. . .

Easy reaches the waterhole, but all of them, except presumably, Sgt. Rock, kept their surrender tickets last time. Which is what von Kritz was counting on, and the reason why the soldiers and tanks barring the path to the water aren't firing. Fed up, Rock grabs the bazooka and fires it at a tank, while running. (Probably the least accurate part is an American bazooka doing that to a Nazi tank in one shot.) He hits some quicksand, but that seems to spur everyone into action. Bulldozer runs up to act as loader, and some of the guys climb into the burning tanks to provide cover fire for the ones climbing the hill. Von Kritz's insistence the G.I.s must break is met with a punch in the mouth.

The kicker is Rock hands von Kritz a surrender ticket, admitting him to any American POW camp for the rest of the war. Boom! Roasted.

{8th longbox, 15th comic, Our Army at War #229. "The Battle of the Sergeants," by Robert Kanigher (writer), Joe Kubert (artist), Gaspar Saldino (letterer), colorist unknown. "The Mouse and the Tiger", by Ed Herron (writer), Ross Andru (penciler), Mike Esposito (inker), colorist and letterer unknown. "The Fighting Blip," by Bob Haney (writer), Jack Abel (artist), Saldino (letterer), colorist unknown. "Two Men, One Hill," by Haney (writer), Mort Drucker (artist), colorist and letterer unknown. "Surrender Ticket!" by Kanigher (writer) and Kubert (artist), colorist and letterer unknown.}

If Chins Could Kill - Bruce Campbell

Campbell's first autobiography, following his interest in acting from making Super 8 movies with his buddies in Michigan, up to appearing in the first Spider-Man movie. He spends a little time on his personal life, mostly in his childhood and school years. After that, it's mostly to the extent his career intersects with his personal life (like how all the traveling helped bring about the end of his first marriage.)

I didn't realize how much other stuff related to movies he'd done, in terms of being a producer, helping with editing or filming second shots for movies, even directing several episodes of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. The nice thing is, these aren't treated as simply parts of his resume. Campbell spends time describing the process and the work behind the different roles.

There are multiple chapters about he, Sam Raimi, and others' efforts to raise money to film Evil Dead. He details the process, breaking up paragraphs about who you ask with brief examples of phone calls he might have with old acquaintances, or how he asked his dad if he could put the family farm up as collateral to get a bank loan. Once the film is made, all the work that goes into preparing it for release, all the things you have to put together to convince a distributor they should want to sell your movie, the trailers and translated titles for release in other countries. In the chapters about Adventures of Brisco County Jr., he talks about the process of being selected for a role, the number of times you may have to audition, and how many different people you have to sell yourself to.

Kind of amazing to me that anyone gets anywhere in show business at all. 

The book has a lot of visuals. Photographs of him as a kid (still easily recognizable, although it was the brow line more than the chin), stills from the various films he and his friends put together - with names like Bogus Monkey Pignut Swindle - or a "Kiwi Primer", translating various American words to their New Zealand equivalent. "Body Shop" becomes "Panelbeater", apparently.

My favorites were the diagrams of the different rigs they came up with to capture some of the shots Sam Raimi wanted on the Evil Dead films. The "Vas-O-Cam" in particular, where the camera sat on a U-shaped bracket that could slide over over tape coated with Vaseline and stretched across two sawhorses. It's a poor man's dolly, as Campbell notes, but has the benefit of being portable, light, and cheap.

It's a quick read. Most of the chapters are short; some read more like a collection of brief anecdotes that a true narrative. This paragraph details something funny that happened, the next paragraph details something else funny, without any particular connective tissue or overarching theme other than this is stuff you may deal with in acting. But the anecdotes are funny, or failing that, informative. I went in expecting a standard autobiography, and learned a lot of things about acting I didn't expect, so I'd consider that a win. 

'Raising money for the Man with the Screaming Brain was a little like being trapped in a slow-moving elevator after someone farted - the ride took too long and the atmosphere was foul.'

Steady State in Spring

April looks to be a pretty neutral month in the solicits. Not much new that caught the eye, just a lot of things that I figure I'll be buying going into the month, and I'll continue to do so in April. I did notice Marvel seems to be double-shipping some of their X-books. I hope they're not going to get back in the habit of doing that.

What's new? Marvel gets their turn at the Spider-Man/Superman crossover. Setting aside the cost being prohibitive to my cheap ass, the list of creators was not encouraging. Geoff Johns? Bendis? Brad goddamn Meltzer?! Fuck outta here.

The other thing I noticed was from Abrams Comics Art, Soviet Land by Pierre-Henry Gomant. Set after the fall of the USSR, but following a character who gathers things, remnants of the state, that other people might pay money for. I assume as curios, and that we're not talking about codes to nukes, but who knows. 

What's ending? So far as I can tell, nothing I'm buying is wrapping up in April.

And the rest: Batgirl has Cassandra still dealing with her strange new powers, Fantastic Four is going to wrap up this "Invincible Woman" arc. You know, I've seen the first issue and still have no idea what that's supposed to be. Nova: Centurion, there's an odd comment in the solicit about Rich 'skipping town whenever it all comes down.' Not sure what that's about.

Babs and Spirit of the Shadows are on issue 4, so nearing conclusions for both. It's a May release, but the 4th and apparently final issue of Touched by a Demon was solicited this last week as well. In the question of Is Ted OK?, issue 3 would suggest he is not. D'Orc has the lead being pursued by some dwarf looking to erase him from existence. Not just kill him, erase him entirely. This feels like it's going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. All these people try to kill D'Orc because he's going to do bad stuff, and that makes the bad stuff happen.

Marc Spector #3 suggests Moon Knight's going off the deep end. What, again? Everyone hold tight to your faces! Generation X-23 makes it look like things are going bad for Laura, while Moonstar is trying to stop a god(?) from removing the pain of existence from everybody. By killing them.

Hey, catch me on the right day, I might not object to that plan. . .