Saturday Splash Page #217

"Drive Thru", in Red Before Black #1, by Stephanie Phillips (writer), Goran Sudzuka (artist), Ive Svorcina (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer)

Val is a former soldier, looking for a job from her old comrade-in-arms, Miles. Miles works in drugs now, and there's a lady who was supposed to be establishing contacts for distribution, but decided to keep some of the drugs to sell for herself. If Val wants the job, she needs to eliminate this problem. And Val wants the job, since she's out of prison because an FBI agent thinks she's an "in" to the org Miles works for. For Val to stay out of prison, Leo needs to die. Instead, Val and Leo end up on the run together from Miles, the FBI, even a relative of Leo's that owns a gator ranch.

Val is prone to episodes where the world around her fades, shifts, is overlaid by a jungle. Sudzuka and Svorcina usually depict it in solid colors to start. Red vines twining around Val, tropical birds emerging from a purple chasm tearing apart the ground beneath Val's feet. Eventually it develops into a jungle, dense grass and trees, downed logs, all colored something close to natural. And somewhere in there, someone needs help. Usually it happens when Val gets violent, which is too bad, because being around Leo results in a lot of violence. Though the red tendrils appear during calmer moments a few times. 

Oddly, Leo is able to see the jungle - and thinks it's neat - though Phillips never explains that quirk. Leo has her own trauma, and Phillips shows the parallels in how neither of them got any support or help. Leo was dismissed as making it up by her family and the doctors. Val was turned away by the groups that were supposed to help people who had bad experiences serving overseas. Maybe that's the "why", but in that case, shouldn't Leo have a "jungle" of her own?

But Leo's more manic. She leverages it, in that she acts goofy or flighty to make people underestimate her.  Meanwhile, Val is repressing everything, trying to pretend nothing happened, nothing's wrong, all business. Until she's not. I don't think either character has addressed their problems, but Leo's more accepting of hers?

Phillips puts the work in building the peculiar relationship between these two. Leo seems so eager to have a friend, while Val starts out unsure if she wants to protect Leo, strangle her, or just get far away. It doesn't ever entirely end, because Leo seems so flighty and random to Val, but there's a gradual softening as the two save each other. Phillips slows the plot to allow for quiet scenes between them where they talk about something other than their impending doom. It's during those where we see the tendrils emerge from Val's chest, reaching towards Leo. They don't form into a full jungle, and it's not clear whether Leo can see them.

When the mini-series was coming out, I thought the pacing was off a bit. I think I was expecting more focus on a sort of cat-and-mouse chase between the Val/Leo duo and everyone after them. Spending an issue at Leo's relative's gator farm felt like an odd choice. Leo bringing Val to a spiritualist community, where two old women were waiting to tell Val she needed to stop running from her ghosts, only for Val to die like 10 pages later, felt like an odd choice.

Still does, a little bit, but I think the point is Val has been running all this time and refusing to acknowledge it. Isolating herself, throwing herself into things as distractions. All the people after them are a sideshow as far as Val's issues. Another thing she can use to avoid dealing with her past. So when she faces it, really looks at the guilt she feels, and the opportunity comes to possibly do it right this time, she seizes it. Not really sure where that leaves Leo, but Val's struggle is over, at least. 

What I Bought 2/18/2026 - Part 1

I was, by process of elimination, thrown into this stupid work group last year, for people who lead without actually being in leadership positions. I have no business being there, no idea what I'm supposed to be bringing to it, or taking from it. Which is not a huge surprise, considering the guy who I'm positive came up with it uses idiotic phrases like, "people leaders." As in, "consult with your unit's people leaders." What is that phrase supposed to convey that just saying "leaders" wouldn't? We don't have any dogs or robots at my job!

I'd do my job a lot better if they'd just leave me to it. 

Fantastic Four #8, by Ryan North (writer), Humberto Ramos (penciler), Victor Olazaba (inker), Edgar Delgado (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Sue is rocking a spiked outfit! Be on alert, but also get some popcorn in case she's finally ready to off Reed.

Most of this issue revolves around the notion that a universe is so vast, that you don't even need parallel universes for the same situations or people to occur more than once. So in another section of the 616-universe, there is another Earth-like planet, with homo sapiens-looking folks, including 4 exposed to cosmic rays who develop familiar powers. I mean, OK, seems a bit much to be that similar, but maybe it'll turn out to be another world of Skrulls convinced they're Earthlings.

But in this world, this Sue twigged to the fact her powers go beyond being invisible much sooner, and Reed encourages her to explore the full potential of what she can manipulate. Which seems to be pretty much anything. Magnetism, gravity, electromagnetic energy all that jazz.

Seems groovy, until this Sue has a nightmare of being besieged by enemies. And the fighting she does in her nightmare, translates to the real world. Her forcefields cut off this sorta-Earth from heat, and kills everyone. Except Johnny. There wasn't anyone else with heat powers on this sorta-Earth? Whatever, Sue hides in her guilt for a while, until she convinces Johnny to let her use his heat to perform a little brain surgery on herself.

Props to Ramos on that image, which will no doubt replace the whale in my nightmares. Now she doesn't feel bad about killing every human! Things went downhill from there, and the FF are about to find out just how downhill as they find a battered Galactus and the so-called "Invincible Woman."

Can you actually disable the portion of your brain that feels guilt or regret, but still feel joy, as this other Sue declares? Or is it just the absence of the pain, after weeks of dealing with it, translated by whatever's left of her brain as joy? And does that really mean she'd start going around, attacking people? Although it's a good beat Galactus tried eating her Earth, in which case the FF should really step aside and let this Sue finish Galactus off. Cosmic consonance, my ass.

The Party that Never Stops Restarting

Alex is headed to Edwards Island for the high-schoolers' annual wild party with her best friend, Ren, and her new step-brother, Jonas. On reaching the beach, they find only two other people: the queen bee, Clarissa, who has issues with Alex, and Clarissa's friend, Nona.

But that's OK! Because Ren really just wants to investigate the spots near a cave that emit strange signals, which is why he had Alex bring a radio. And it does pick up some strange signals. It also makes a strange floating triangle Jonas finds inside the cave vibrate until it forms a big triangle. At which point everything goes to hell. Something got loose, and it's angry and desperate to stay loose. If that means hijacking the bodies of 5 teenagers, that's what it'll do.

Oxenfree's gameplay is; 1) you guiding Alex from one place to another, 2) having her tune in various signals on the radio, and 3) dialogue trees. Characters will say something, and Alex has three possible responses, each mapped to a button based on its location. Something I didn't recognize until the second playthrough, you have the option to say nothing. Dialogue balloons will (usually) fade in a few seconds if you don't say anything. I don't feel like your choices make much difference to how the plot plays out, but they do impact your relationships with the other characters.

How they do that, in terms of which dialogue options prompt what shift, I couldn't tell you. Sometimes when a character says something, their face will appear in a dialogue balloon above another character. Clearly whatever was said caught that character's attention, but in a good way? A bad way? No idea! Until Dawn had a screen you could check that would show how relationships between whichever character you were playing and all the others where trending, but Oxenfree's got nothing similar I could find.

Which is accurate - not like you can be sure how a comment will go over in real life - but frustrating in a game where so much is about talking. I played through 5 times - doesn't take more than a few hours once you know where to go - and when the game tells you how things turned out with everyone at the end, I kept getting basically the same results. Jonas and Alex were always distant, Ren moves across country and Alex rarely hears from him. She has only a vague notion what Nona's up to.

The 5th time, I got it where Jonas and I are tight-knit siblings, and Ren and Nona are dating. I have some idea what I did for the latter, but no idea what prompted the change in outcomes for Jonas and Alex. If anything, I thought I was doing worse than usual with him. Now I did somehow create distance between Alex and Ren, so I'd figure that was enough, except it didn't change anything vis-a-vis Jonas when I did the same thing on playthrough #4.

Maybe that's just down to me. I tried to pick different responses, or make different choices. There's a point you decide to check if the museum on the island might have any clues, and one of Ren, Jonas or Nona is coming with you. I usually pick Ren, since it's his idea, and between he and Jonas, "best friend" wins over "step-brother of 5 minutes." But one time their arguing was so irritating I picked Nona. It didn't seem to change anything, but everyone's incredulous reactions were funny.

Still, certain situations I always responded to roughly the same. Sometimes I couldn't remember what I picked the time before. Or I didn't like the other options. Too cruel, maybe. The last 3 playthroughs, I told myself going in that I'd take the spirits up on the offer to let them have Clarissa in return for letting the rest of us go.

And, without fail, when the spirits made the offer, I'd refuse. The first time I chalked up to a sense maybe their hold on us wasn't as secure as they claimed if they were bargaining. After that? It was just stubbornness. Or else a feeling that, even if Clarissa was cruel to Alex, she didn't deserve that.

I don't understand the time travel - time displacement - aspects of the story. How characters vanish and appear somewhere else. Yes, sometimes the spirits possess you, and so you lose time, but you wake up in the same place. I can sort of square the notion that this throws Alex back into memories of her and her deceased brother, maybe because the spirits are trying to distract her (although you can apparently alter past events, at least according to subsequent flashback trips.) Doesn't explain people appearing or disappearing or dying in front of you, then turning up fine later. I also don't understand how winding antiquated tape players gets you out of smaller time loops.

Part of the reason I kept playing was to see if I could get them free entirely. First time, I tried closing the doorway from the other side, consigning Alex to a horrible fate. Didn't work. We've already discussed my reluctance to give them Clarissa. At a certain point, you can find letters around the island that tell what happened to the spirits. I was banking on that info to help Alex reach the spirits' humanity, convince them to let go and move on, if I could just find the right thing for Alex to say. No dice, and a cursory search online suggests I can't get this group out, only maybe save a different Alex from falling into the same fate.

Which is not an ending that puts a guy in the mindset of having accomplished anything by finishing the game.

Overdue Movie Reviews #9 - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

Sure, I've written about this film before, but never what I'd consider a real review of the entire thing. And this might very well be my favorite movie of all time, so 1-2-3, let's jam.

A bandit (Eli Wallach) with a price on his head. A bounty hunter (Clint Eastwood) with a scheme to make some dough. A hired gun (Lee van Cleef) trying to track down a man who knows the location of $200,000 in gold coins. Tuco learns the name of the cemetery where the gold is hidden, Blondie, the name of the grave. And the race to the money is on.

In the barest bones of the plot, there's not a lot there, yet the movie is nearly 3 hours long. Leone takes his time, right from the start, the slow build of the three men marching towards each other down an empty street, only for all three to charge into a saloon and gunfire to erupt. It's 20 minutes before Eastwood shows up, around a half-hour before "the good" appears on screen beside him, in what is more than a little tongue-in-cheek, given he's in the middle of betraying Tuco and stranding him in the desert.

But Leone fills the film with smaller set pieces and odd characters. The scam Tuco and Blondie run, Tuco constructing himself a new pistol. Tuco's painful reunion with his brother the priest. The prisoner of war camp, although this does serve to bring Angel Eyes into the chase more directly. The drunken captain commanding the Union forces trying to take the bridge.

The build-up to violence is long, the violence itself brief. Nobody gets shot, only to stagger back to their feet and keep shooting. No running gunfights where characters dive for cover. People draw their guns, someone fires first, the other person dies. Even in the Civil War battle scene, there's Tuco and Blondie's conversation about their respective pieces of information while rigging explosives. Then the bridge explodes, and a few seconds of cannon fire, impactful as two kids hurling insults at each other, and it's done.

The exception would be Tuco's beating at Wallace's hands in the POW camp. But it's non-lethal violence, a rarity in the film. Plus, Leone seems to have some fascination with main character(s) getting the crap beat out of them, as he used it in A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, though those beatings are administered by a gang, not an individual. And this one seems more brutal, maybe because Leone focuses more on Tuco's increasing distress. The choking noises he makes, the futile attempts to grapple with the bigger man, while one arm is shackled to the chair. Fistful might show Eastwood's battered face after the fact, but during, it's him staggering about, getting punched by whoever is closest. Or maybe it's that, in the other movies, those administering the beating are having fun. They're usually laughing, but Wallace isn't. I imagine he enjoys it, but it's also work, and he's got a specific purpose in mind: hurt this man until he talks. 

It was Roger Ebert's entry on his Great Movies list that clued me in to one quirk Leone maintains in this film: If the audience can't see something (because it isn't in the shot), neither can the characters. Right from the first seconds of the film, when a long shot of a distant ridge seamlessly becomes a close-up when a bounty hunter Tuco steps into view from off-screen, that's how things work. The world outside the camera is invisible to those within.

This plays out repeatedly. Tuco and Blondie ride up on the massive Union encampment at the bridge - where two battles take place a day - without knowing it until they're surrounded. In the cemetery, as Tuco claws at the dirt on Arch Stanton's grave, Blondie catches him by surprise, only for them both to be surprised by the arrival of Angel Eyes. Blondie's first appearance in the movie is him somehow walking up on Tuco and 3 other bounty hunters without any of them noticing until he speaks. While Blondie's distracted in the hotel by the men Tuco brought, Tuco was clearly sitting on the windowsill for several moments before announcing his presence. It's a curious approach, though it allows Leone to have repeated dramatic reveals and arrivals, and it may speak to these men's blinkered approaches to life. They're locked in on their desires, and when they sense it close to fruition, become blind to everything else.

Tuco would be easy to reduce to a comic relief character. His grandiose expressions and threats, the bluster. Hands tied and still creaming threats at Blondie. But Leone takes the time to list Tuco's crimes at both occasions of his hanging, many of which imply not just cruelty, but a level of planning, notably the one about getting paid in advance to lead a wagon train, then abandoning said wagon train on the Sioux hunting grounds. (Also, he's charged specifically with arson in a prison, which makes me wonder if it was part of an escape plan, or he just did it for kicks.)

And Eli Wallach gives Tuco enough cunning and sheer determination that he remains a threat. Sure, it seems unwise for Tuco to keep running his yap at Wallace, but he eventually gets the man's guard down and throws him off a train, then bashes his head against a rock to make sure he's dead. Tuco keeps his gun on him when he bathes, keeps it hidden until needed.

Tuco may appear the butt of the joke in the final showdown, unaware Blondie emptied his gun, but it speaks to how much of a threat Blondie considers Tuco. Initially, he had so little regard for Tuco he figured it was enough to leave him in the desert and ride off with the money. After only escaping death in the hotel via dumb luck, and nearly dying in the desert because Tuco wouldn't stop hunting him, Blondie knows better. He surely knows, as they near the cemetery, that Angel Eyes is out there, somewhere.

I doubt Blondie had the whole thing with the name on the rock planned, since the most planning we see from him is the scam he ran with Tuco, then "Shorty," but he must have figured there was a point it would come to shooting. And while Blondie seems confident he can handle Angel Eyes, he does not want Tuco in the mix. Whether because he can't trust Tuco choosing him over Angel Eyes, or he just isn't certain he can kill both of them, Blondie hedges his bets.

(He also decides Tuco's presence evens things enough he can go against Angel Eyes and his gang in the town being shelled. 6-on-1 was a no-go, but 6-on-2, where the 2 are Blondie and Tuco? Those are odds Blondie likes.)

And Tuco is the one who drives the story. It's his bounty that brings he and Blondie together, that leads to the betrayal, and ultimately the death-march. Which is how they meet "Bill Carson" in the desert and learn about the money. Minus Tuco, Blondie would have continued with his penny-ante scam of turning in criminals, then freeing them. Angel Eyes' plan to join the Union Army and scour prisoner of war camps would come to nothing, because Carson and everyone else who knew about the gold was a corpse in the desert. Tuco's also the only of the three we get any backstory for. He had wives - more than one if his remark to his brother is to be believed - and a brother, and two parents.

(Leone creates this trio, but tends to focus on duos. Tuco and Blondie as allies, then enemies, then allies again. Tuco and Angel Eyes briefly in the POW camp. Angel Eyes and Blondie as uneasy partners. When it looks as though it'll be Tuco and Blondie vs. Angel Eyes, the latter withdraws, leaving it a duo. And in the final gunfight, Tuco being unarmed means it's really just Blondie vs. Angel Eyes.)

One of my dad's complaints about Leone's films is there's no one who's good. Everyone is a scumbag, he says. While applying "the good" to Blondie seems sarcastic, and there's definitely a joke to the heavenly choir music that plays when Angel Eyes spots him at Tuco's second hanging and opines that a 'golden-haired angel' watches over Tuco, there are hints that Blondie has humanity or capacity for empathy the other two lack. The comfort he offers to the dying soldier in the burned out church, just prior to the final showdown. Covering the boy with his coat and offering a cigarette isn't much, but at least the kid doesn't die alone. The fact he asks Tuco whether he can save Shorty from being hanged, and apologizes softly to Shorty when Tuco says no.

Heck, it would have been simpler for Blondie to let Tuco hang, if he really thought their partnership had reached its logical endpoint. But he saved him, though we can question how seriously he meant it when he said he thought Tuco could make the 70-mile hike back to town. And he did leave Tuco half the gold, which Angel Eyes certainly wouldn't have (and I have my doubts about Tuco doing the same for Blondie, were their circumstances reversed.)

Leone sets the movie in the Civil War, yet the war is, at best, an impediment. None of the three characters have any investment in the outcome. Blondie regards it as a waste of lives. Angel Eyes uses it as cover to search for Carson, while lining his pockets by robbing the prisoners. Tuco puts on Carson's uniform because it makes it easier to demand treatment for Blondie. If he had recognized the soldiers riding towards them as dusty Union soldiers, he'd have thrown the Confederate uniforms away in a second, because their only use is as something to clear paths. They blow up the bridge simply so both sides won't have it to fight over, and will get out of their way. That those soldiers will be sent to fight and die elsewhere is not their problem. They don't notice the Union Army until they're captured because it wasn't in the shot with them, and it wasn't in the shot with them because they weren't giving any thought to it. All that mattered was crossing the river to get closer to the gold. 

It's not clear anyone else cares either. Carson enlisted to try and hide until it was safe to dig up the gold. Carson's the girlfriend, the 'fresh young whore,' as she's described by the legless soldier, is introduced as a wagon of drunk soldiers throw her into the street after having their fun. The hotel manager shouts support for Dixie, while muttering under his breath about the Confederates being cowards, and how he can't wait until they leave, so he can make money off the Yankees. Wallace is a goon, lording his strength over prisoners who can't fight back, rather than actual combat. Ditto for the Union guard who makes the prisoners play music while Tuco is beaten. The soldier Tuco taunts, who probably didn't get a penny for the arm he lost. The half-soldier sells any information he can, even if it relates to someone ostensibly on the same side as him. The captain of the Union forces at the bridge is a drunken wreck, hating his orders but unwilling to defy them. Just waiting for death, or someone who will do what he can only dream of.

The one guy who seems like a believer is the commandant of the prisoner camp, who believes prisoners should be treated with respect, and hopes to get Angel Eyes court-martialed. But he's dying of gangrene, making these vows sprawled on his back, while Angel Eyes smirks at him in unconcealed contempt. He knows he'll be long gone before this man could ever hope to prove anything. Of course, Angel Eyes expects to be rich, and instead ends up in Hell.

You really can't discuss The Good, the Bad and the Ugly without talking about Ennio Morricone's score. Unfortunately I'm not much good at discussing music, but the music is indelibly linked with the film in my head. (Also, fortunately, this Youtube video knows how to discuss music.) Morricone had some of the pieces ready before filming even began, and it's neat to watch how the music and the shots are interwoven. Tuco running among the graves, the names blurring as the music accelerates to match his pace, more instruments joining in as he darts from one row to another. The music is hopeful, Tuco thinking he's on the precipice of everything he wants, but also chaotic, the sheer enormity of the task of finding one grave among 5000.

And then the final showdown, with the guitar strumming signaling the beginning as Blondie sets down the rock. The castanets, and then the trumpets as the three slowly take their places in a long shot. A few shots of ambient noise before the music begins again, and Leone starts moving the camera closer, focusing on the expressions and twitches. Blondie giving Tuco a small smile and a nod, camera cutting between them like a signal. 'Hey, the two of us are a team, right?' Followed by a shot of Angel Eyes glance darting towards Tuco, reassessing his situation. The way Angel Eyes' hand starts towards his gun, then withdraws at a glance from Blondie. Tuco's fingers twitching, and Blondie's hand, perfectly still the whole time, even when everything else is speeding up. The cuts are coming faster, the music is building up, everyone's hands are starting to move, eyes are widening. But Blondie's impassive, just waiting for a conclusion that's foregone. 

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.