Hostile Product Recall

Hey, what's this? Can it be? A review of the first graphic novel I bought in 2025, only three months into 2026!

Volume 1 of Jef Bambas' Model: A revolves around a robot that, due to an incident with a weather vane that damages its antenna, stops receiving the command to stay shut down. Making its way out of the storage room, it finds itself in what appears to be a run down factory. Before long he runs into a different model of robot which, given the nightstick it carries, is some sort of security guard.

The remaining five issues are a prolonged chase. First between Model A and that Model B and then, a whole bunch more Model Bs. The story is silent, although Bambas uses caption boxes on two occasions, when the mysterious overseer robot is receiving status updates about all the robots that are being taken out.

Bambas plays the chase like a cartoon, with Model A as Tweety and the Model Bs and Sylvester or Elmer Fudd. Gags where Model A, while evading the attacks of a Model B, causes a girder to get damaged so the entire building falls on Model B. Or gags about Model A hiding in a barrel, looking both ways to confirm the coast is clear, then hopping out and immediately running into a guard.

The factory location provides a variety of settings for those gags. Model A fleeing into a room with only one exit, that turns out to be the arsenal. A stretch of Model A trying to scale the wall of the compound and escape. The Model Bs are building new structures, so there's an issue that's mostly Model A trying to pretend to be part of the construction crew, with all the potential for physical comedy that allows.

Besides the differences in their shapes, Bambas also makes Model A more expressive. Which is impressive for a rectangular prism with one eye. But the bent antenna and the crack in one corner of his casing give him something distinctive. The antenna can flop around as Model A panics and flails. The bent corner causes a crease that acts like an eyebrow when Model A squints at things.

The volume ends with Model A's attempt to scale the wall thwarted by the first Model B he encountered, now significantly more battered. With a bent antenna of its own, it seems to have also gained the ability of more expressions. Like the expression of revenge! 

Sunday Splash Page #420

"Dead Duck Pond," in The Punisher (vol. 6) #19, by Garth Ennis (writer), Steve Dillon (artist), Matt Milla (colorist), RS and Comicraft's Wes (letterers)

The Punisher was originally an antagonist for Spider-Man, a guy who took it upon himself to punish criminals by killing them, tricked by the Jackal into thinking Spidey was a criminal. After that was cleared up, Frank Castle hung around, scuffling with Spider-Man and Daredevil over his lethal approach. But the U.S. loves a guy who shoots people we think "deserve" it, especially if he uses high-powered firearms, so he got an '80s mini-series, which, well, what I remember of it, Mike Zeck's art was really good.

Then Punisher got an ongoing series. And another, and another. And maybe also a quarterly series. Yep, the '90s were banner decade for punishing, but things got stale, so then you got the stunts. Frank is badly injured and gets a surgical procedure that gave him black skin. Went crazy and killed Nick Fury, had amnesia for a bit. Then he died, and there was an "angel Punisher/supernatural hitman" bit. We, uh, we don't like to talk about that.

Then they gave the character to Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon for a 12-issue maxi-series under the Marvel Knights imprint. They took it back to basics, just Frank targeting a crime family, but with a dark comedy twist that let them get away with depicting some excessive violence. Like the issue where Ma Gnucci and her guys hunt an injured Frank through a zoo, and Frank uses the animals to thin out their numbers. Culminating in him punching a polar bear to get it pissed off enough to swat a guy's head clean off his shoulders. Or Ma Gnucci hiring the Russian, a mountain of a guy, who also happens to be president of the Smolensk Daredevil Fan Club and dies, as I believe Wizard put it, choking on man-boob. Wizard loved that maxi-series.

And I guess the fans did, too because Marvel, never one to pass up a chance to run something into the ground, gave Ennis and Dillon an ongoing Punisher series, also under the Marvel Knights label. Except all Ennis could really do was be more extreme with the absurd aspects. So the Russian survives suffocation and decapitation because some military agency put him back together. Oh, but the procedure gave him huge boobs! And the Russian loves them! Or Spider-Man shows up, gets immediately knocked out by the Russian, and the "team-up" is Frank holding Spidey up as a punching bag. Or Frank and Wolverine fight a gang of little people, and Frank runs over Logan with a steamroller.

The one person who might pass for a supporting cast was the pitiful Detective Soap, part of the task force assigned to catch Frank in the maxi-series, now passing info along to Frank and generally being the butt of every joke. I think at one point a story strongly implies, if not outright says, Soap picks up a hooker in a bar that is actually his mother.

The other writers who occasionally took a turn weren't much better. Example, Tom Peyer wrote an arc about a guy outfitting taxis with all sorts of lethal weapons, so it's essentially the Punisher in Twisted Metal. Frank steals one of their taxis, but because he didn't pick up the Daily Bugle's editorial cartoonist, and said cartoonist is black, the Bugle soon has a cartoon about racist cab drivers. The bad guys recognize Frank Castle from a caricature. Like there are at least 2 million scowling, dark-haired white guys in New York City.

Ennis came back after that for the remainder of the book's 37 issue run. Sometimes with Dillon on art, but sometimes Tom Mandrake or Darick Robertson. The only issues I have are this one, where Frank runs into his old neighbor from the maxi-series Joan the Mouse, and issue 28 (by Ennis and Mandrake) where Elektra keeps killing the guys Frank is targeting before he can. I read somewhere once, that was the only Marvel comic that referenced the Frank Miller/Bill Sienkiewicz Elektra: Assassin. It's only a brief reference Frank alludes to in terms of what he's able to learn about her, but apparently every subsequent Elektra writer just kind of decided to ignore that book.

Basically, Marvel Knights Punisher is the comedy bits of Hitman, minus any of the meditation on brotherhood, the human capacity for self-justification, or the cycle of violence. It's just Frank killing lots of criminals, and sometimes it's presented as absurd, so you should laugh.

Saturday Splash Page #222

"Opaque," in The Ray Annual #1, by Christopher Priest (writer), Oscar Jimenez (penciler), Chip Wallace (inker), Pat Garrahy (colorist), Starkings and Comicraft (letterers)

The Ray got one Annual, in 1995. The theme for DC's Annuals that year was "Year One," which for a lot of characters I assume meant a flashback to some tale in their earlier career. In Ray's case, Priest said it had been one year since he learned the truth about himself, and maybe the reality of the life he was living was setting in.

The crux of the story is Ray trying to stop an airliner from crashing. He didn't stop the crash, but he managed to control it enough to save most of the passengers. 112 people, alive because of him. But as Ray sees it, 18 died, also because of him.

Because the one who attacked the airliner was Death Masque, the computer program Ray built and forms with his powers, that's gained independence. Death Masque wanted to teach Ray a lesson, specifically about being concerned with anyone other than Masque itself. Ray's old friend Jenny was coming into town on that airliner, and Ray, worried about the rift he was sensing between them, planned to propose.

The issue is a little confusing, as it hops between the aftermath of the crash and the events leading up and including the crash. Ray's considering getting drunk for the first time, his father shows up and unsuccessfully tries to give him a pep talk. Death Masque pretends to be Happy Terrill once he hears Superman is lingering around the crash (because every passenger is certain they saw Superman saving the day, which Ray is almost relieved about), and asks if he would speak to Ray, because Ray looks up to him. Superman initially declines, then appears to reconsider. Except wait, it was actually Happy using his powers to disguise himself and Ray kicks his ass, revealing him to be Death Masque. Except Ray thinks that's just another trick by his dad. Then Jenny, who Ray notes wasn't among the survivors, shows up, because she missed the flight entirely.

At that point, I wasn't sure Ray's grief wasn't causing him to hallucinate. Or, since she responds to his proposal with "Good-bye," if he wasn't replaying some earlier conversation in his head that actually lead to her being on the plane. Like, that's why she died, moving away from him, and he made one last-ditch play, Death Masque objected, and she died. And then Superman actually does show up, except Ray thinks it's his dad again and well, *gestures to the top of the post* When Ray wakes up, the two of them talk about how hard it is to live up to people idolizing you, but it's something you have to consider, blah blah, Ray doesn't get drunk.

I'm still not sure if we're meant to read the fight as Ray really beat Death Masque, so all his later fears and whinging that he can't do it was wrong, or that Death Masque threw the fight to sell his trick that this was really another manipulation by Happy. Considering Ray loses every other single time they fight directly, I assume the latter.

The point seems to be that Ray still hasn't moved on from his childhood. He's still trying to date the girl that was his best (only?) friend. When the grief over everything gets too much, Ray tries to return to his childhood home, which someone else owns and inhabits now. He's idolizing Superman instead of trying to be the best Ray he can. I don't think that was a necessary story, considering the point of the mini-series was for Ray to embrace his new reality and move forward, but Priest seemed to think it was relevant. Seems undercut by all Death Masque's manipulations.

Maybe Priest just wanted to write Jenny out, since she never appears again. I don't think he really replaced her in the supporting cast. Ray's main girlfriend ends up being a future cop who gives him instructions how to return to his time, and it turns out Ray saved her when she was a little kid and gave her those instructions to give to him, which implies a fairly large age gap, and we mostly see them interact in a future where Vandal Savage did shape Ray into a ruthless corporate type.

But if the point was removing useful voices around Ray so, "ask Vandal Savage for help," seems like a good plan, then mission accomplished?

What I Bought 3/25/2026

It was 90 here yesterday, but I will not turn on my air conditioning. Not yet. Plus, it's barely into the 50s today. Lousy Smarch weather. Here's two comics from this week.

Fantastic Four #9, by Ryan North (writer), Humberto Ramos (penciler), Victor Olazaba (inker), Edgar Delgado (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - 

The FF get their tails kicked by Evil Sue and run with their tails between their legs. Galactus gets left behind. Ha! Regular Sue tries to reason with Evil Sue, since fighting her isn't working. Talking doesn't work either. In fact, Evil Sue decides she ought to make another just like her, and Johnny barely manages to cut in before his sister gets the same brain surgery.

Oh, and Earth is being attacked by aliens of some sort. I don't know what they're supposed to be; Ramos just draws them as big purple things with sort-of grasshopper legs. Don't really think that should be such a serious problem just because the FF aren't around. The Avengers and the X-Men deal with aliens, too!

I have to wonder at Evil Sue's motives for wanting to make Regular Sue just like her. If she can do everything, if the rest of the FF are useless, if Galactus is no match for her, what does she need a duplicate for? I kind of hope this isn't a Killing Joke, where she wants to prove anyone that goes through this will end up acting like she does.

I'm toying with the possibility she wants to die, and figures another Sue like her is the only thing strong enough to do it. A death wish wouldn't really track with her notion that she no longer feels guilt, but unless Evil Sue has a very different educational background from Regular Sue, she's not a brain surgeon. How could she be sure she burned out the right part of her brain? She admits she's holding back, that she lets Sue hit her with some attacks to see if she'll go for the kill. She's playing with the rest of the team, just throwing things at them to keep them busy while she tests Regular Sue.

I guess that could just be villain ego. Get to the end and find out Evil Sue is just like Doom, she like monologue and show off too much.

Generation X-23 #2, by Jody Houser (writer), Jacopo Camagni (artist), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - Laura is this how you make friends?

All the teenagers with powers were kids being experimented on in the facility where they currently live. But, as the apparent leader, who calls himself X-Infinite, tells us, one of the test subjects got loose and released some kind of vapor that killed everyone. And X-Infinite is the only witness. Not suspect at all! 

The handful who didn't die stuck around and call it home. They tend to have several powers, as a result of being experimented on, and they all refer to themselves by their experiment numbers. X-73, X-92, and so on. More concerning, X-Infinite insists on referring to Laura as "X-23", despite her repeatedly saying her name is "Laura." Not concerning!

Scout participates in a little training exercise with the others - just enough to give us some general sense what their powers are - until X-73 suddenly starts generating heat. Or fire. Either way, he's not immune and despite Laura's encouragement - to the extent, 'You have to control it!' qualifies - he blows up. And when she wakes up, X-Infinite says she has to answer for his friend's death.

I don't feel like Houser is being particularly subtle that something isn't on the up-and-up with X-Infinite. On the other hand, he isn't wrong that maybe they're safer in this secure facility than accepting Laura's offer to join whatever mutant school is currently available. If they don't think of themselves as mutants, or even if they do but don't particularly want to get missed up in X-Men nonsense, that's their business. Laura doesn't need to be proselytizing. 

Brains: A Zombie Memoir - Robin Becker

Jack Barnes is just another victim of a zombie apocalypse, or maybe not. Even if he shuffles like a zombie, moans inarticulately like a zombie, and wants to eat brains like a zombie, Jack still thinks like he did when he was alive. Unfortunately, given he was an English lit professor, he thinks in overwrought terms, thinking of himself as a spokesperson for his kind, when he's not comparing his situation to popular culture, which he tends to sneer at.

Barnes travels to Chicago, with the idea of meeting Howard Stein, credited as the guy who created the virus that caused all this. Surely his creator will recognize how monumental a zombie who can think and write is! In what he surely sees as a promising development, Jack encounters other zombies who retained different skills, forming a makeshift family of sorts. Joan, a nurse who's retained those instincts and can sew zombies up as their bodies degrade. Guts is a fast zombie. Ros (short for Rosencrantz, as Jack dubbed him) can speak.

(Although the book is fairly inconsistent about what zombies are capable of in general. Even though Jack remembers how to start a car, he can't make his body do it. Neither can Ros. But Jack and another zombie figure out how to start and sail a ship later on, and the group figures out how to put on waterproof gear before hiding in the bottom of Lake Michigan.) 

I imagine you need a character with Jack's inflated sense of self-importance to drive the script. A guy who alternately thinks of himself as a Moses, or a civil rights leader, or a new Adam when he brings along a pregnant woman he bit. I can't imagine any of the others, if they had been the one to retain that level of cognition, deciding the thing to do is find the guy who created the virus and convince him the undead are some new race that needs to be accorded equal rights. Maybe Ros or Joan would try to find Stein and see if he had a cure (other than a bullet in the head), but I doubt it.

So Jack's personality is essential to how things play out, the urge to make some great mark, to leave a record. Hence his memoir. That said, reading his delusions of grandeur can get tedious. I rolled my eyes a few times, thinking this guy needed to get over himself. Maybe it's supposed to be funny, his earnest writing about how proud he feels of Guts, scampering off to bite someone's ankle, or discussing how the undead are really the next evolutionary step, then rambling about brains for a paragraph.

Occasionally he sees the way his body is decaying and he can't bear to look, or he thinks about his wife (who he ate) and misses her deeply. Maybe it's meant to be him making the best of his situation. He got bit, he turned, nothing he can do about that. So, put a positive spin on it. The cold doesn't bother him! He doesn't need to breathe! Zombies could be a net positive for the planet, helping dispose of the people nobody wants around!

'"You shot my friend," Ros gurgled.

Annabelle looked up. "Dude, you can't talk," she said.

"Says who?" Ros said. Annabelle looked at me. I shrugged my shoulders and attempted a grin. A dollop of my cheek fell off at the dimple. Joan would have to repair that when we got back.'

A Little Turnover in June

Well, I was expecting a drop-off in the books I'd buy from the solicitations for June, and there is the possibility of that. Certainly it feels like the circle of publishers is continuing to shrink, but I found a couple of things I might buy, which is something, at least.

What's new? There's another It's Jeff book from Marvel, Brand New Jeff Week, although the Gurihiru team isn't listened as the only art team, which may be a caution. DC is releasing a new book, The Deadman. I find Deadman sort of interesting, but I can't really tell from the solicit whether W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo's meditation on life, death, and everything else is going to be up my alley.

Mad Cave has the first issue of Junk Punch, by Paul Tobin and Carlos Olivares (with a back-up story by Colleen Coover), about a world where people have all sorts of strange compulsions. The main character's, as you may guess, is hitting people in the groin. Is that going to help her solve a string of other compulsion-related crimes? Actually, I'm more curious if this compulsion strictly relates to male genitalia, or she just hits anyone in the groin, regardless of the equipment.

What's ending? Ahoy says the final issue of Babs: The Black Road South will be out in June, but given issue 3 didn't show up this month I suspect that will not be the case. If you think of it as a one-shot, It's Jeff! would also be ending in June.

And the rest: Batgirl has Cass investigating a murder, but also she's missing memories. Fantastic Four has Reed and Johnny traveling back in time to stop an alien who decided it would be easier to conquer Earth in the past. Marc Spector: Moon Knight and Generation X-23 are both on their fifth issues. Moon Knight's doing a focus on the Asgardian drug dealer Achilles Fairchild, while Laura's still attacking the X-Facility. Moonstar has Dani either saving her parents or the world, which definitely feels like one of those things where whatever choice she makes, she'll second-guess it.

Is Ted OK? is having a big reveal in issue 5, setting up the finale, where we will finally learn whether Ted is in fact, OK. Meanwhile, D'orc is contending with a lava dragon and a fortune teller. 

The First Wives Club (1996)

Elise (Goldie Hawn), Brenda (Bette Midler), and Annie (Diane Keaton) were old college friends who reunite after another friend commits suicide in apparent depression over her ex-husband marrying a much younger woman. Something the trio can relate to, as all three of their husbands - played by Victor Garber, Dan Hedaya and Stephen Collins, respectively - likewise threw them over for younger women. So they decide to get revenge on the guys who used them up and spit them out for a newer model.

I think I got curious to watch this after it came up in someone's retrospective on Diane Keaton after she passed away. And I think Keaton gets the best role of the three leads. Brenda seems to mostly be dealing with things by trying to maintain the connection with her teenage son, and keeps worrying about her weight. Midler kind of defaults to sarcastic all the time. Elsie is confronting the lack of roles for women in Hollywood once they reach 40, basically fighting mortality in service of her ego. She's bitter (understandably), but in an entitled way. She's owed the starring role in the hot young director's new film (the director played by young Timothy Olyphant, was not expecting him.) 

Annie, meanwhile, is this overly cheerful, stammering Polyanna who makes excuses for everyone and tries to get everyone to get along. Not the free spirit types Keaton often played so much as someone willfully ignoring reality in favor of, not so much a more pleasant alternative as a blander one. Then, every so often, she snaps. You get a glimpse of it in her therapy session, where she resists her doc's orders to hit her with the foam bat, but once she goes for it, hits her three times in rapid succession. She's a bundle of energy and expression, locked down tight by years of trying to coddle her husband's insecurities.

Sometimes it breaks free in quieter ways, when Elise and Brenda convince her to sing aloud. Sometimes it's explosive, like when she gets tired of the other two attacking her for trying not to take sides in their argument and shrieks that they're both selfish and storms out.

No wonder her ex-husband turned what was supposed to be him asking for divorce into one last roll in the sack, then asking for the divorce. She must be dynamite in bed.

*beaten to death*

Ouch, jeez, I'm just kidding. I did expect I'd laugh more than I actually did, though I didn't know going in it kicked off with a suicide. There were a couple of scenes - their trip to a lesbian bar to enlist Annie's daughter in their plan - but it's not so much a movie that makes you laugh as one where you grin at a good one-liner. But it also has a lot to get done in 100 minutes. Establish each woman's current situation, get them together, get them started on revenge (while periodically returning to developments in their individual lives), the part where things hit the rocks between them, the reconciliation, the eventual turning of their plan to a higher purpose.

Maybe I was too invested in them pulling off their plan to laugh at their failures along the way. 

What I Bought 3/21/2026

I'd like to congratulate Afroman for beating the bullshit defamation charges filed against him by all those cops. If they didn't want to be immortalized in a bunch of music videos mocking them for looking for "kidnapping victims" in the pockets of a man's coat, maybe they shouldn't have done it in the first place. Also, "Lemon Pound Cake" made me laugh so hard the back of my skull hurt.

D'Orc #1, by Brett Bean (writer/artist), Jean-Francois Beaulieu (color artist), Nate Piekos (letterer) - The remains of another harvest festival gone awry.

So we got a medieval fantasy land split between light and dark, which as the map helpfully included on the inside cover shows are basically reversed mirrors. The land of light has an island on the northwest coast called "Heaven's Spleen," the dark lands have an island in the southeast shaped very similarly called "The Goblin's Teet." I thought it was spelled, "teat", but maybe the point is goblins are bad spellers?

The stretch of land in-between is called The Scar, and the two sides fight there constantly, making it a no man's land inhabited only by the title character. Whose name is not actually "D'orc", but we never learn what he's called, because as soon as he makes the mistake of explaining his parentage to two parties, but sides try to destroy him. Which suits his bloodthirsty talking shield just fine, but D'orc (sorry, kid) really just wanted some food.

So it's off to a tavern, where he gets involved in another brawl, this time trying to defend a poor chicken waiter from two fighters from each side. In the process, he loses control, does a Captain America with his shield and - decapitates the chicken. Whoops. The actual decapitation is off-panel, but we see the aftermath, although Bean's still is not going for realism, so it's not graphic or particularly horrifying. It's not even graphic in the way, say, Skottie Young's art can be.

Which is fine, the chicken's only sort of dead. Why the shield having a soul trapped inside it makes it a "death shield", and this allows the chicken's headless body to move while its spirit floats nearby? Not sure. I guess because Bean says so. He really wanted the visual of a headless chicken running around? I suspect that'll be D'orc's situation soon enough.

The gist seems to be, D'orc would just like to live his life, staying out of the either/or battles of the two sides. Or better yet, the two sides could stop being so bent on destroying each other and stop fighting. But everybody hates a centrist, so both sides are going to kill him. And he's likely going to get increasingly frustrated, or desperate, and destroy both sides just to survive. Maybe he'll meet someone that will ask his real name along the way?

Sunday Splash Page #419

"Feed Trough," in Prez (2015) #3, by Mark Russell (writer), Ben Caldwell (penciler), Mark Morales (inker), Jeremy Lawson (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

The original Prez, a DC series about the United States' first teenage president, came out in 1973. Created by Captain America co-creater Joe Simon, it ran 4 issues, and from what I can tell, was about as accurate a representation of teens in the U.S. as you would expect from someone who had been writing comics for over 30 years by that point. Which is to say, not very. Ed Brubaker and Eric Shanower did a one-shot in the mid-90s under the Vertigo imprint, about Prez Rickard supposedly emerging during the '96 election, after two decades off the radar.

Then, in 2015, as part of one of DC's various post-New 52 branding exercises (DC You?), we got Prez, by Mark Russell and Ben Caldwell. Rather than set it in the present day, Russell sets the series in 2036, where Beth Ross is a 19-year-old working at a Li'l Doggies House of Corndogs in Oregon, and trying raise money to treat her father for some initially unknown illness, which turns out to be the deadly cat flu.

Beth goes viral when she accidentally dunks her pony tail in the deep fryer while filming a training video about proper grill cleaning. This doesn't help her raise the $4 million dollars her dad needs for nanotech treatment but, in a world where people can vote through social media, Beth wins Ohio in the 2036 Presidential election after a popular online personality touts her. To be clear, Beth is too busy trying to pay bills and visit her dad to ever run. The guy just gets the video extra exposure, and his followers decide to vote for this person they've heard of, rather than either of the lame-ass, middle-aged white men the two major parties are running.

The least believable part is that the other candidates are only middle-aged, rather than octogenarians.

As a result of Beth's win, no candidate gets enough electoral votes, so it goes to the House of Representatives, where each state gets one vote. This sets off a furious, hilarious and deeply pathetic scramble by each candidate to promise various spending projects and perks in return for a state's support. One side offers Ohio NASA. Texas' rep in turn demands 2 NASAs, plus a football stadium. In an attempt at extortion, states start voting for Beth, without keeping track of how many of them are doing so, and she gets elected. The system works - you over like a speed bag.

Beth isn't even sworn in until issue 3 (although it seems like Russell intended this to go longer than six issues), and spends most of issue 4 trying to pick a Cabinet (including a Neil Degrasse Tyson stand-in) and staff. Prez Rickard shows up as an aged, outcast Senator, offering to be her VP on the grounds the major powers won't try to kill her if they risk him becoming President as a result. Which doesn't stop random, gun-toting guys in hunting vests and American flag hats from taking their shot, literally.

I would give Russell credit for predicting the January 2020 insurrection, but white Americans waving guns around like fucking idiots whenever they feel the slightest bit aggrieved is, in the words of Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, not a prediction Meat-man, it's a fact of life. Likewise, the U.S. having armed sentry robots stationed around the world that are controlled by guys in beanbag chairs treating it as Call of Duty, getting yelled at by their boss for getting crumbs on the keyboard, feels less like satire or a prediction, than simply reality.

Morales has a loose enough style to pull off the exaggeration (or attempted exaggeration) of the story. Panels are filled with what I think are holographic pop-ups that, for example, offer a patient in the hospital more info about cat flu, if they pay a subscription fee, of course. The major antagonists are various CEOs, faces always hidden by glowing cartoon logos. Like Pharmaduke, or "Jack Smiles", who is always a big gold smiley face as he proclaims they run things, or he parachutes in to tell his employees the product they sell is time, because they make sure the consumer doesn't have to wait as long for stuff they could buy any number of other places. Or the news debate program - hosted by the blonde with the ludicrous hair in the upper left, or another one just like her - which has updated results on who the viewers think is winning, with the losers' face being covered by the flag as the outro music starts.

There's also a subplot about a self-aware killbot - developed in the notion it will save money if they can fire all those guys in the beanbag chairs - that doesn't like the things it has done, changes its name to Tina, and finds religion. Morales makes Tina appear both large enough to be menacing, but with an expressive digital face and body language.

Russell writes Beth as sarcastic, yet idealistic. Bright, but unfamiliar with how things are typically done in politics, which Russell (via Rickard), paints as a positive. Beth owes no favors for getting this far, so she doesn't have to give a Cabinet post to some incompetent dickhead because he campaigned for her.  Some of the outcomes are silly in the optimism, not so much Beth shutting down all the armed sentries and visiting other countries to apologize, but that many of the countries (though not Iran) accept the apology without say, demanding reparations.

Also, her end run around the CEOs and their pocket Senators is. . .to rely on someone even richer to help out? A guy who built a powerful computer, that has written every conceivable story in every language (we're shown the Oscars at one point, and he's credited as writer for 4 of the five nominated films.) Counting on a benevolent trillionaire doesn't seem any likelier to produce a positive outcome than relying on billionaires has. Maybe that was going to come back to bite Beth subsequently, but the book never got a second arc.

Saturday Splash Page #221

"Dark Light," in The Ray (vol. 2) #3, by Christopher Priest (writer), Howard Porter (penciler), Robert Jones (inker), Pat Garrahy (colorist), Ken Bruzenak (letterer)

About 2 years after his mini-series ended, and after he'd gotten some play in that era's Justice League titles, The Ray got an ongoing series. It lasted 28 issues, counting the Zero Hour tie-in #0, Christopher Priest the writer, Howard Porter the penciler for most of the first half of the series, Jason Armstrong illustrating most of the second half.

Jack C. Harris' mini-series was about moving beyond adolescence, growing and coming into your own, with Ray accepting his powers and symbolically shutting the door on the home where he'd spent his entire life up to that point. Priest carries that forward, but with more emphasis on the reality of being a "grown-up" versus the illusion.

Ray's an adult now! He gets to live in his own place! Earn his own money! Date the girl that was his childhood best friend! Hang out with his birth father! Be a superhero!

Except it's not such a great time. The only apartment he can get has no fridge, and comes with an ugly industrial sculpture bolted to the floor. He works at a fast food chicken restaurant. He has almost no furniture, because he spent his money on a souped-up laptop and a cardboard standee of Superman. Jenny, who was not only accepting, but encouraging of Ray embracing his powers, no longer seems to have time for him. Eventually there's a young woman he meets first in the future, then the present, then her future self travels back to his present to avert a bad future. There may have been at least one other brief romantic interest, but if so, the character made zero impact.

Happy Terrill turns out to be not just a congenital liar, as he's still deceiving Ray and Ray's mother - Ray thinks she died in childbirth, she thinks Ray was stillborn - but a domineering, frankly, abusive prick. When he thinks Ray isn't taking his powers seriously, Happy somehow makes Ray think he stole his powers, then dumps him in Chernobyl. Later, when Ray seems to have adjusted to not having powers, Happy disguises himself as a robber and jams a shotgun in Ray's face to terrorize him. It's like Happy took all his parenting techniques from Silver Age Superman.

I was entirely OK when it appeared Happy was killed by Death Masque, the game program Ray designed as a training tool, which subsequently slipped his control and eventually conquered a country. Unfortunately, Priest revealed Happy wasn't dead near the end of the series, which might have been with some notion of reconciliation, as part of a larger thing Priest was doing about family, but I wasn't really having it. If there was some chance Happy could fix all his mistakes, maybe, but he hadn't demonstrated that level of competence in anything, so everyone's really just better off if he's dead.

Ray's superheroing doesn't go so great either. Obviously the issues with Death Masque, which hang over the book throughout. Especially when one of the Justice League squads - I don't know which, that Triumph character was leading it, straight to the dollar bin I assume -  refuses to help, so Ray turns to Vandal Savage for some reason I'm sure was addressed in another book. Priest tried to acknowledge developments in Justice League comics that might impact Ray, but as I didn't buy those comics or care about them, it just ends up being confusing. Ray was gone for months because of what? Long-distance space travel time dilation? Huh?

His team-up with Superboy almost results in Ray killing Superboy, then almost dying against Brimstone because Ray exhausted all his power. Black Canary takes advantage of his school boy crush to get him to help her chase a crook through a dimensional doorway to another world, which later results in Ray having to fight Lobo, then time-traveling and messing up certain details of his father's life. The better half of Dr. Polaris contacts Ray to warn him about the return of the Light Entity, but when Ray can't make heads or trails of the warning, and neither can anyone else, he busts out Emerson. Which backfires when Polaris retakes control. Neron approaches Ray, initially as a woman, and after revealing his true form, Ray's more freaked out he kissed a guy than that the devil is bargaining for his soul.

Porter's work in less exaggerated than Quesada's. He tones down Ray's frankly ridiculous hair and Jenny stops looking like her skirts and suits are going to tear apart if she breaths too deeply. But he and Garrahy don't have the same knack (interest?) in playing with contrast in how they depict Ray's powers or appearance. He still looks similar when powered up, but there's less flair to it, less exaggeration for effect. Ray's not suddenly turning into a little bowl-cut version of himself while interacting with the Light Entity.

Though Priest doesn't entirely forgo embarrassing Ray for comedy's sake. Ray has to kick Lobo out of a space station bar to get Canary medical treatment, and on his initial approach, Lobo simply tears the top off Ray's helmet, taps his cigar ashes on Ray's head, then slams the helmet closed again. Ray gets attacked by Happy while still a little power-drunk from contact with the Entity, and after getting knocked into a clothing shop, emerges wearing a sun hat and a body-length green dress with polka dots. Porter's art has the pacing and body language to sell those moments, despite the times where you can feel his work veering into that '90 Image style of too much cross-hatching or characters gritting an impossible number of teeth.

It's strange, a big part of the series revolves around family. Ray's strained relationship with Happy, especially when he thinks Happy's dead. Ray trying to covertly kindle a relationship (not romantic!) with his mother, by pretending he wants to earn money mowing her lawn. (His mother assumes he's the result of some affair Happy had.) Death Masque is like a jealous child, especially once Vandal Savage starts sniffing around. It turns out Ray has a brother who is both older and younger than him, who comes into play in the last-third of the series. Ray's cousin Dean pops up occasionally, dealing out sage "wisdom."

I'm not sure what the goal is, given Priest also seems to be making the point, as an adult, Ray has to solve his own problems. Ray ultimately stops Death Masque, and settles down the Light Entity. He has to protect his mother and his younger/older sibling. He has to find their dad. He has to recognize Vandal Savage is a scumbag who was never going to help Ray, but instead groom Ray into something Savage could use. That fits with the notion of adulthood that, at a certain point, you have to take ownership of your life, but as far as the "family" aspect, I'm less sure. It's caring about his family that makes Ray stop whining about not being able to beat Death Masque, and just knuckle down and do it to save their lives?

What I Bought 3/18/2026

I did, in fact find a lot of books at the sale last week. Reviews of those start next week! Plus three movies, which I won't get around to reviewing for months yet. Still have all the movies I got at Christmas, plus Pluto's actually let me back in to a limited extent without an account, so I'm trying to finish off the films I had on my watch list before they change their minds. Plus I'll visit my dad sometime in the next month so, that'll be more old movies to review.

Marc Spector: Moon Knight #2, by Jed MacKay (writer), Devmalya Pramanik (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Just another, ordinary, "getting the shit kicked out of him," day for Moon Knight.

Moon Knight and Zodiac are tearing through the Agence Byzantine guys, while Mr. Fear and Mr. Smith look on. Pramanik seems to be having a lot of fun with the layouts. One page that all the panels are of Moon Knight tearins through guys, the panels contained with the outline of his arm pulping a guy's face, with Rosenberg using bright red for the outline of the victim and the borders.

Fear's ready to get out of there, but Smith simply asks him to hand over a box with a set of sharpened dentures and starts telling a story of his childhood. And the reveal is, it's Bushman. You know, the guy whose face Marc cut off 20 years ago (our time.) I was under the impression he was dead but not no more he ain't.

Meanwhile, Marc's gone from pulping idiots in red outfits to trying to strangle Zodiac. Zodiac runs, still spouting nonsense about being determined to make Moon Knight all he can be. Then Bushman steps in, and before he can fight Moon Knight, Zodiac's found the control room, and pumps the room full of fear gas, encouraging Moon Knight to cut Bushman's face off - again. Well, that'd be rather trite, wouldn't it? Oh you fixed your face, I'll trash it again the same way. A little too Punisher and Jigsaw, innit it?

Actually, I'd wonder why Zodiac doesn't target Punisher, but I assume Frank's too straightforward and clinical in his killing for Zodiac to take an interest in him. Frank just shoots them or blows them up and goes on to the next. To the extent there's artistry, as Zodiac might define it, it lies in the sheer relentless attrition the Punisher inflicts.

Or Zodiac's really a punk that knows Frank would just blow his head off at first sight.

Hell Cell Motel

There are no good answers to what was going on in this room. 

Oxide Room 104 puts you in the role of Matt, who returns to a motel after some sort of crime, only to get ambushed by a weirdo and wake up naked in a tub. The bathroom door is locked, his name scrawled on it. 

So you have to find your clothes, and figure out how to unlock the door. Search the cabinet over the sink. Search the dresser. Search the toilet. Once you find your way out, you learn the door out of the room is locked. So are the windows (as far as I can tell, you don't need to bother with the windows. While the game will always let you check them, they never open.) The key is on a plate, a giant centipede coiled around it.

If you make it out of the room, you find yourself in the inner courtyard of the motel. And there's a strange woman whose face is shrouded by her ink-black hair! And she vanished, in her place some creature with a human's lower body, but the upper body is just a set of jaws.

At this point, what has been a sort of horror puzzle game, with you searching your (creepy) surroundings for items you need to escape the room, becomes a quick-time event, as you hit buttons when prompted to help Matt avoid other monsters. You make it to another room, and the item hunt/puzzle aspect resumes. That's what dominates the game. The quick-time stuff is sporadic, saved for when, I guess, the game designers decided they needed to shake you up a bit.

If you die, from blood loss or poisoning or stupidity - like firing a gun at a monster in a room filled with gas, whoops - you wake up shackled in a different tub, Orange Jumpsuit standing over you. He tells you what a useless idiot you are - in a profane and British voice that nonetheless has a breathy aspect that reminds me of the Abominable Snowman character from Looney Tunes - and cuts off one of your limbs with a saw. Then you wake up again in the tub where you started, all limbs present and accounted for, and start your attempt to escape from square 1.

You get up to 3 "deaths" before he decides you're not worth the hassle. Four if you find a picture of the girl, which somehow acts as an extra life. My impression is the subsequent attempts will take a different route, in terms of which rooms you visit and search. The puzzles may be simpler, but there are a lot more monsters, including roaming the courtyard. At least the game doesn't skimp on bullets for your handgun.

I don't entirely understand what's going on. Something about Orange Jumpsuit using Mysterious Girl's mind as sort of a computer in a bio-engineering experiment. A way to rifle through people's thoughts and memories? You find a lot of documents as you search the rooms, some signed as "Eva", some as "Evil", some as "Matt", and some as "Doc", which is Orange Jumpsuit. Those didn't really tell me much other than someone in here is suffering a break in their mind, darker impulses taking over. Whether Evil is Eva or Matt, I don't know. Maybe one, then the other? Some of Matt's writing you find later suggests his worst impulses are getting stronger, so maybe he's getting infected while he's here?

The game ends rather abruptly. You wake up in the tub where you usually lose limbs, but Doc's not there. You can see someone strapped in a chair under a tarp, but can't do anything to help. You stumble into the hall, and then Doc is chasing you as you try to reach an elevator. Apparently that turns out differently, depending on how many times you died, but none of the endings seem to tell you much. I gather there's a sequel, Oxide Room 208, which may be set concurrently with this game and tells another side of it, but I'm not buying it.

I got the "too many deaths" ending, and the "no deaths" ending. The latter at least gives you a fun option, once you make it to the elevator. Doc keeps futilely trying to reach through the gate, and the game lets you click a button like he's an object to interact with. Normally when you do that, the button options are things like "Examine", or "Inventory." This time, the only option was "Revenge." Well, you know I love me a good revenge opportunity, so at least the playthrough ended on a high note (even if there's a phone call between Doc and his benefactor afterwards where he states he doesn't think Matt will make it through the forest.)

Overdue Movie Reviews #10 - High Plains Drifter (1973)

A stranger (Clint Eastwood) rides into the town of Lago, and within a matter of minutes, guns down 3 men who were hassling him, and rapes a woman. Curiously, rather than insisting on his arrest, the leaders of the town send the sheriff to offer the stranger a job: protect Lago from 3 other men, about to be released from prison, who swore revenge.

The stranger agrees, for a price. The price turns out to be the townspeople's dignity and self-respect as much as anything. He takes, and takes, and takes, and they bear it, because the alternative is to fight for themselves, or to simply take the revenge they've got coming.

My dad would say this is definitely a '70s Western, and he'd say it in the most scornful tone possible. Basically everyone is an amoral scumbag, constant betrayals, backstabbing and abuse. Promises are made with no intention of honoring them. There's no loyalty to anyone or anything, all that unites the townsfolk is the idea they can always put off the point when payment will come due. Two rapes, because I'm hesitant to define what happens between the stranger and Sarah Belding (Verna Bloom) late in the film as anything other than that. He not only takes over her bedroom, but drags her along with him, then kisses her when she tries to stab him with scissors, and things progress from there. The movie certainly frames it as Mrs. Belding being into it once they got started (and does the same with the first as well), but I'm not really prepared to make that allowance.

There's no real good guy. Mordecai (Billy Curtis) isn't an awful person, but once he figures out the stranger at least tolerates him (or finds him a useful prop to humiliate the townsfolk), he milks it for all he's worth, just like the stranger. Sarah seems to have a conscience, but she has, as her conniving lickspittle of a husband points out, kept quiet about it for a long time. She wasn't happy, she could have left Lago and that useless bastard anytime. He wasn't going to abandon his precious hotel to chase her.

The closest thing to a good person would be the marshal, who we only see in flashback (sort of), because he got whipped to death in the street by Stacey Bridges and the Carlin brothers while the entire town looked on over a year before the movie begins.

I'm curious why they decided on whipping him. It wasn't to terrify the townspeople, the townspeople hired them to do the killing, so he wouldn't blow the whistle about the town mine being on government land. Why not just shoot him?

I guess because whipping is more brutal, and the movie wants to be brutal. Wants to provide a reason for the stranger to whip one of the Carlin brothers to death. Because otherwise, there's no real difference. Shot or whipped, the marshal died because he was going to insist on following the law, and that would have hurt the townspeople's economic status, so he had to go. And it allows for one of the two moments where Eastwood isn't scowling or smirking, when he first arrives in Lago and whips around at a whipcrack.

(The other moment is when the stranger, having ordered all other guests out of the hotel, hears the preacher promise they'll find shelter in the homes of the townspeople - at regular hotel rates, of course. Eastwood does this surprised jerk, almost a spasm, as though even he can't believe they sink that low.)

Of course there's the supernatural element, the stranger riding out of the heat waves coming off the desert, giving the impression he materialized from the air, then departing the same way at the end. The creepy intro music, I'm guessing that's a theremin, really helps establish an odd atmosphere, along with the first 5+ minutes of the film having no dialogue. Like we've entered a land of the dead.

There's also the stranger's ability to seemingly cover a lot of ground quickly and without notice.  His brief attack on Bridges and the Carlins in the rockpile, where he seems able to move from one side to the other within seconds, but also when the men attempt to ambush him in his hotel room. The time between when Callie slips from the room to when the men charge in couldn't have been more than a few seconds, yet he got out the window with all his clothes, and had a stick of dynamite ready. Also, when Callie first tried to kill him herself, she fired 4 shots into a little metal tub where he was submerged, and somehow didn't even scratch him. Which doesn't seem possible, but it's almost like once he went under the water, he was gone until he chose to stick his head back out.

It's a little like Charles Bronson's Harmonica character in Once Upon a Time in the West constantly appearing by stepping from behind something (a door, a pillar, a train.) Suggesting that in their quest for vengeance, they've transcended human capabilities somehow.

It's, I wouldn't say a happy end to the movie. The stranger leaves, satisfied his work is done. The marshal is going to have an actual grave marker. Seems strange they wouldn't have done that already, if just for appearances' sake. Sarah Belding is indeed, getting the fuck out of Lago. Not that there's much left of Lago. Most of the town was burned down by Bridges, what's left is painted bright red. A bunch of townspeople are dead, at either the stranger's hands or Bridges', the remainder look like war wounded, watching the stranger leave with shell-shocked expressions.

Back in 2009, I wrote a post wondering if the stranger spent all that time prepping the townspeople to defend their town because he wanted to give them the chance to clean up their own mess for once, or if he knew they never had a chance and just wanted to humiliate them a little more. It's hard for me to picture him being satisfied with Bridges dying at their hands, so I suspect it was one more prank he pulled. There's never any indication the practice is having an effect; their aim is no better, they're still counting on him to take care of business. They're just going along with this because he insisted and they want to keep him happy and willing to solve their problems.

This isn't the kind of film where people confront their fears and triumph, it's one where they keep running until their fears trample them into the dirt.

Honeymoon Headache

If it was that easy to make Harley be quiet, everyone would try being smelly. 

Starting immediately after the end of the second season of the animated series, Harley Quinn: The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour is Harley and Ivy celebrating their honeymoon - although they didn't really get married so much as just drove off together - by crashing in other villains' houses on short (or no) notice, while trying to outrun an increasingly deranged and pathetic Commissioner Gordon.

While writer Tee Franklin throws in plenty of public (and private) displays of affection between Harley and Ivy, things get increasingly rocky as the mini-series progresses. Ivy's having a variety of doubts, from the pain she caused her fiance Kite Man by messing around with Harley behind his back, plus some childhood trauma from her father telling her no one would ever love her. There's also the part where she realizes a relationship with Harley is never going to have much in the way of peace or tranquility.

All the guilt and self-doubt and whatnot results in her repeatedly snapping at Harley, only to get cuddly and apologetic moments later. In Ivy's defense, Harley does repeatedly do shit that's pretty rude or flat out stupid. When they decide to leave town, Harley suggests leaving her hyenas with Catwoman. Does she call Selina ahead of time to check if this is OK? Well, if you count texting as they get out of their car in front of Selina's building, then sure. Harley suggests they crash in the home of a villainess who got arrested at Ivy's wedding-that-wasn't, again without asking for permission. There's just a real lack of impulse control or consideration for anyone other than Ivy.

In Harley's defense, Ivy should have known about these tendencies long before now and possibly taken them into consideration before making major life decisions, but the heart wants what it blah blah blah.

By the back half of the mini-series, they've reached Detroit and run afoul of part of a Justice League (Vixen, and to lesser extents Cyborg and Zatanna), and some sludge-villain called Mephitic. Harley gets captured, Ivy has to try and deal with her own shit so she can rescue her girl.

Max Sarin draws 5 of the 6 issues (issue 4 is drawn by Erich Owen) with Marissa Louise as color artist throughout. Sarin gets to draw a lot more fight scenes than they did on Giant Days, and they handle Harley's acrobatic flips and bat swinging very well. And their art is perfect for the roller-coaster of emotions the characters are going through. In particular, I love how Sarin has the plant life around Ivy react to her emotional state. And with Mephitic's power being essentially stench-based, Sarin and Louise combine to give the smell a physical weight to it. The color is nausea-inducing, and the little flourishes as it jabs its way into Harley's nostrils really add to the toxicity.

I wonder why Franklin chose Mephitic as the main villain of the mini-series - unless you figure it's Gordon, or Ivy's issues - unless it was because he provides the opportunity to make all kinds of cracks about how bad he smells. 

Sunday Splash Page #418

"Multiplication Problem," in Power Up, by Doug Tennapel (writer/artist), Jennifer Barker (letterer)

Hugh works at a copy shop with his buddy Doyle. They have an idea for a video game, Earth Dog Jim, but Hugh can never work up the nerve to submit it to a game company. So he keeps working at the copy place, dealing with a boss who promotes him, then gives him the job of firing Old Man Wembly so they won't have to pay his retirement.

Hugh finds an old video game that, when you press a button hidden in the controller, sends the power-ups out of the screen and into the real world. So many problems solved! Gold coins to make him rich. An invisibility power-up to make to make the boss think Old Man Wembly got fired (doesn't that mean he's not getting paid?) Extra lives that provide extra Hughs to take care of other tasks around the house.

Obviously, this all backfires, as the pursuit of happiness through material wealth is always shown to do. (I would at least like the opportunity to see if purchasing my own island can fill the yawning hole in my heart.) Old Man Wembly eventually reappears, Hugh's attempt to help his son in paintball instead gets the kid banned, his wife doesn't like this fixation on stuff. Oh yeah, and their cat hits the special button when the final boss is on the screen, and Hugh ends up in a battle for his life with a scowling guy with horns and a cloak, who Tennapel drenches in black ink, with just a little bit of white around the joints and eyes for contrast.

That's one of Tennapel's recurring themes, that you can't live your life retreating into fantasy. You have to interact with real people and pursue dreams and stuff like that. Although he illustrates the pitfalls at the very end, as Hugh and Doyle present their game to the CEO of "Electronic Artisans," who replies to Doyle's comment about this being paradise with, 'If it was paradise, I wouldn't make you sign all the rights over to me in a rapacious, one-sided agreement.' Well, then.

Despite some of the fantastic elements, Tennapel keeps his art grounded. It's still his distinctive style, but the characters mostly look like regular people going about their days, and the power-ups are low-key. Old Man Wembly just vanishes and goes about his work, and we aren't updated on him until it wears off and he reappears. The extra Hughs look just like original Hugh, save a number on their shirt and an off switch under their chest that makes them vanish.

The running battle with "Lord Doomus" is a little different, as Hugh's trying to escape in his new muscle car, given the ability to leave a Tron-style wall behind it via power-up, and Doomus can shoot missiles out of his chest. But Hugh's still just a guy. He's no ace driver, and he drops most of his power-ups during the fight, leaving him with only one option.

Saturday Splash Page #220

"First Light," in The Ray (vol. 1) #1, by Jack C. Harris (writer), Joe Quesada (penciler), Art Nichols (inker), John Cebollero (colorist), Stevie Hayne (letterer)

In 1992, Jack C. Harris and Joe Quesada introduced a new version of the Golden Age hero, The Ray, via 6-issue mini-series. The character, creatively named Ray Terrill, was the son of the original, but didn't have any idea about that, or his father's past until his father, well, passed.

The first issue I owned was #3, purchased off a spinner rack in a bookstore in a mall. I still can't recall what made me want to buy it; I'd never heard of the character. The cover is probably the least dynamic or eye-catching of the mini-series. But I did buy it, and Ray saving a village from a volcano - plus how cool Quesada, Nichols and Cebollero made his "powered-up" form look - apparently sold me. It took time, but I eventually tracked the rest of the mini-series down.

I discussed this in my Favorite Characters post on The Ray, but in addition to the usual "superpowers as a metaphor for puberty or adolescence," Jack C. Harris is focused on another theme of growing up: "lies my parents told me." Sure there are parts where Ray struggles to control his powers. He tries to chase bank robbers, but goes so fast he lands in front of them without realizing it and gets hit by the van. Also, he burns off his pants in the process. He saves the village by flying into the volcano then carving a tunnel underground into the sea, only to surface and remember he never learned how to swim.

But isn't just superpowers he gains, it's the knowledge so much was held back from him. He spent his entire life up to that point believing the sun would kill him. He was "Night Boy," living indoors, with nothing more than candlelight. His one childhood friend, Jenny, gets hauled away by her mother at his 8th birthday, when a camera flash triggers a reaction in Ray. He learns the truth as his father dies, so there's not even anyone to demand answers from, or to rage at, save his cousin Hank, who shows up at the funeral (and who Quesada draws as basically the Fonz.)

The lies keep coming. The man who died was Ray's uncle. His father shows up and turns out to be the original Ray, but he's a ghost who needs Ray's help, yet keeps running away rather than explaining what he needs help with. Also, he's not actually dead. There's a weirdo with a candle fetish in a mental hospital monitoring Ray through light or flame, because there's something Ray needs to handle, and he ropes Jenny into helping push Ray where he wants him to go. Ray's finally able to go out in the light, but he's still in the dark.

The manipulation gets to the point that, when Dr. Polaris attacks Ray, he thinks this is another kooky test his father lined up. It takes nearly being crushed to death underground to clue him in Polaris really is trying to kill him, but he still thinks Ray Classic set it up.

For all my issues with Quesada as an Editor-in-Chief, as an artist, he's got a distinct style. Ray's eventual costume is a little goofy - the ankle boots and the yellow-on-white pants aren't something I particularly love - but the powered-up form looks great. He shifts to mostly black, with only the yellow highlights on the jacket and gloves for contrast. Where they depict Ray Classic in flight as an upper body with a yellow trail, Ray is a dark form surrounded by a rectangular yellow field with a dark edge, like he flies so fast he cuts the sky.

To this day, I don't really understand the "Light Entity," the threat Ray's meant to confront. There's a whole thing about some wacky scientist in the '30s believing the Light Entity was created with the Earth, and it'll return some day, and that's bad, and they need someone born of the light to communicate. So Ray Classic getting powers was the scientist trying to set that up, because the powers would be passed along to his kid? Ray and the Entity mingle, it's trying to get him to lead it home, but Ray 'shuts the door.' 

I think it's supposed to dovetail with the fact, throughout the mini-series, Ray keeps retreating to his childhood home, even as the family lawyer is selling it and finding him a new apartment. The Entity tries to guide Ray by showing him a vision of the home, and Ray rejects it, shutting the door on that part of his past as well? It's the weakest part of the mini-series, which is kind of a bummer, since it occupies the entire final issue.

What I Bought 3/4/2026 - Part 2

It's the annual big book sale for the regional library this weekend. I plan to hit it today with my dad, even if, as my mother says, bringing him is like taking an alcoholic to a brewery. Hopefully, this means lots of book reviews in the near future!

Moonstar #1, by Ashley Allen (writer), Eduardo Audino (artist), Arthur Hesli (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - I've never thought to ask, what is Dani's belt made out of, with all those big ovals? Are they glass, polished turquoise, something else entirely?

So there's a dwarf-forged sword, cursed with a valkyrie's desire to keep fighting and a host that made some sort of deal with it. A group Moonstar was working with were responsible for keeping the pair under lock and key, but Moonstar and Magik took the group down, and everybody's forgotten about Asgard (and apparently the other seven realms besides), so the sword and its host are on the loose.

Two members of the group show up, wanting Dani's help finding the sword, because whoever is using it is killing larger and larger numbers of people. Dani knows Norse mythology - as they don't accept she was a Valkyrie, since they've forgotten such things existed - and they figure it was her actions that let the sword escape, so she can help clean up the mess.

They find the guy, Kyron, doing some sort of ritual that's going to collect an entire city worth of dead souls. Or just souls? I'm unclear if he only collected the souls of those already dead, or everyone's souls, living or dead. The attempt to stop him fails, one of Dani's allies sacrifices herself to give them time to escape, but the ritual wasn't enough for whatever Kyron and the sword are after - an end, apparently, to avoid nothingness - so he'll need something bigger.

Allen writes Dani as someone who wants to help, whether that's mutantkind in general - she apparently joined this Society of the Eternal Dawn thinking she could help protect mutants' future - or a person specifically - a comatose child, a friend. But she also tends to take the most optimistic view of how things will work out, and this perhaps causes her to rush into things without weighing consequences. So when things go wrong, she beats herself up and bleeds (metaphorically) for the people who she feels she failed.

I think the idea driving the conflict is going to be Kyron suffered losses at some point that made him decide it was better to simply not suffer, but there was still enough kindness and empathy in him the sword convinced him that really, it would be better to grant everyone that same gift, of no longer losing anyone. And if Dani's attempts to stop him keep failing, her doubts about her judgment will grow, and there'll be a moment where she may be ready to stop losing.

Audino makes Dani look really young. The fact she seems significantly smaller than everyone doesn't help with that. Maybe that's always been the case. Kyron's design isn't bad; the tattoos on the sides of his skull that curve onto his cheekbones help draw attention towards the eyes, which Helsi makes an attention-grabbing gold-yellow pupils surrounded by red. Action scenes are, OK. Not sure how Kyron went from winding up for a full, two-handed swing to simply bopping Dani on the forehead with the pommel. I'm curious to see if the red coloration begins to cover more of Dainself as more lives are taken into the sword, like a warning it's hitting critical mass.

Hide - Kiersten White

Mack was the lone survivor of a tragedy when she was very young, one she only survived by being very good hiding. And since then, she's done her best to stay hidden, unnoticed, drifting through the cracks of life. Maintaining as much distance from everyone else as she can manage.

But that sort of life tends to leave limited opportunities for employment, so Mack isn't left with many other options when she gets an offer to join in a contest sponsored by a sports equipment company. Spend a week in a long-shuttered amusement park with 13 other contestants, where the goal every day is to hide. Last one to be found wins 50 grand. Who is doing the seeking, isn't exactly explained.

Would it surprise you to learn that the people putting the contest on have nefarious motives? That the amusement park - which seems deliberately designed to be as difficult to navigate as possible - has a dark secret, a terrible horror lurking at its heart? No? Well aren't you special. Why don't you pat yourself on the back some more. Careful not to tear your rotator cuff doing it.

One nice thing, the book includes a map of the park on both the inside cover and the facing page, front and back. Not only so you get a sense of just what a boondoggle it would be finding your way in there, but also so you can kind of figure out who hides where.

White spends maybe the first 20% of the book on the run-up to the start of the game. Most of that focuses on Mack, specifically her circumstances and how she got cornered into this. But she doesn't ignore the other characters, and takes different opportunities to delve into their backstories, their psychology, why they're here. For example, all the contestants are offered a spa day ahead of time, and White describes how each of the women approach the pool, where they sit, what they're thinking about, whether that's what they'll do with the money, or how they hope to impress these people and get an actual job, and so on.

That continues into the actual game, where the book will flit about from one character to the next, letting us see their thoughts about where they're going to hide, or how annoying they find it to hide in one place for hours (the battle between needing to pee and not wanting to reveal their location comes up a lot.) It's enough that even for the ones the audience probably finds unlikable, you can at least understand the desperation that brought them this far.

And spreading the focus around at least adds some mystery to who's going to make it. Mack is certainly more focused on some characters than others, but she's also got enough survivor's guilt that you aren't sure she's secure, or that, just because she doesn't pay much mind to the guy with the notebook or the "other" Ava that those people are necessarily cooked.

It's pretty tense and I wasn't sure how things were going to be resolved. I could see them marching into the lion's den for a final confrontation, or just getting out and running as far as they could. There are some journals floating around with entries I thought might provide clues to how to end things. Whether anyone was going to find them that knew what to do was another matter. Either outcome seemed possible, depending on who was left to make the decision.

I do think the very last line was a mistake, like White was trying too hard to end on a cool moment and instead it just kind of hung there. Maybe it was meant to symbolize a new path for that character, being more vocal about their feelings, but I thought a disinterested shrug might have worked just as well. Especially considering it's directed at someone that works themselves into knots justifying their selfish actions as actually being for everyone's benefit, complete with big speeches and accusations that, actually, it's all of you refusing to die that are the selfish ones. Giving that the barest minimum of response feels like it would have been a great rebuttal, but oh well. 

'The floor is black marble, so polished they can see themselves in it. The walls and the furniture are pristine white. The kind of white that screams Don't touch me to people like Mack. The kind of white that purrs You deserve me to people like Rebecca.'

What I Bought 3/4/2026 - Part 1

Last week was rainy, which beats snow. And I suppose we needed the rain. Far as I know we've been in drought conditions since August. For now, we leave February and January behind, and move on to books from March.

Batgirl #17, by Tate Brombal (writer), Takeshi Miyazawa (penciler/inker), Juan Castro (inker), Mike Spicer (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - Might want to clean that sword, Cass. It's giving off quite the miasma.

Cass is back in Gotham and headed to dinner with the Bat-fam. Dinner Tenji and Jaya aren't invited to, although Stephanie is eager to meet Cass' new brother. But Cass is going to miss that dinner, because her blood starts going nuts. As in, it is somehow outside out her body, whipping around and tangling her up. Miyazawa draws it such that the tendrils obscure parts of the voice balloons for whatever Stephanie is saying over the phone, which is a nice representation of how this is seizing Cass' attention, and cutting Cass off from them again.

Or Cass is cutting herself off, because she goes to Tenji and Jaya for help, unwilling to let her family see her like this. Learned all the wrong lessons from Batman, I see. This is related to Shiva's family, the ones her parents took her and her sister away from. According to Jaya, Cass shouldn't have these abilities without a ritual, but here we are.

The Wu family's moved into Gotham, but something's up, because the guy in charge gets shot in the back of the head, by his assistant. Man, there are so many betrayals in this book. Call it Backstab Monthly or something. But the guy isn't actually dead, instead there's a portal to the Spirit World inside his skull. I'm just saying now, I didn't read that mini-series where she got lost there and Constantine and some new character Alyssa Wu created had to rescue Cass.

It feels like Brombal is making a point about Cassandra needing to accept her family's history as part of herself, instead of hiding or ignore it. The blood/shadow tendrils literally tie her up the harder she tries to control or deny them, which seems pretty on the nose. And I just don't know if she really does, in a real world sense of that being a message.

Some people just need to get away from their families and stay away. Shiva's sins, or the Wu Clan's sins, are not Cass'. She isn't guilty just because she's descended from them, that whole notion doesn't fly with me. It's too similar to the genetic determinism shit that got her turned into a killer post-Infinite Crisis. "Your biological parents are killers, so even though you've hardly met one, and rejected the other, you'll become a killer, too." So I don't know, guess we'll see.

Nova: Centurion #5, by Jed MacKay (writer), Alvaro Lopez (artist), Mattia Iacono (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - I know it's just the perspective, but it looks like Nova's the only one of the two smart enough to know you need to aim at your opponent.

First things first: Where Della Fonte drew Peter Quill with a beard and a really stupid mustache, Lopez draws it as a beard and goatee. Which has the benefit of making Quill look less stupid, but also takes a little of the joy out of Richard ditching the Nova helmet and immediately punching him. They fight a bit, usual break-up stuff. "You betrayed me, all the other Novas are dead (again)." Same song and dance we've heard a million times.

Quill is there because he knows Nova stole all that mysterium. More critically, the Kree-Skrull War (still a dumb name for a crime syndicate) know it, too. If Rich hands it over to Quill, he can get them to take it back and call it good. But Cammi really needs the mysterium for medical treatment. As in, the mysterium is the medicine she takes to keep some freaky monster from overtaking her.

My first thought was, we're dealing with another thing from the Cancerverse, given all the mouths and teeth and appendages. But no, it's some sort of weird monster thing the Worldmind found scattered records of in its databases. There's a nice panel before the exposition starts, where Lopez draws the Worldmind's face within the star on Rich's helmet. 

There's no time to settle that, the Kree-Skrull War are here (to be eaten by the Cammi-monster.) Because that Eden Rixlo guy double-crossed Quill, who apparently never considered this possibility. So has Marvel decided to include the original Star-Lord stuff, Engelhart and Claremont and all that, and the movie shit, and the stuff Giffen did in the early-2000s in Quill's history? I feel like that isn't compatible. Original Recipe Star-Lord was pretty on the ball, minus Doug Moench writing him, while Movie Star-Lord is a fucking idiot I wouldn't trust to tie his own shoes.

Can Richard rescue Cammi from the thing that's swallowed her up? Can he get the crime syndicate off his back? Can he get Star-Lord to ditch that terrible facial hair? Will Eden Rixlo suffer hilarious comeuppance? We'll find out next month.