What I Bought 5/20/2026

As I glide into a long weekend (followed by a short work week), let's look at one comic from last week, and one from this week. The local store didn't have Fantastic Four again, so I don't know if he's getting shorted on it, or my buying a copy every month wasn't enough for him to keep ordering it.

D'orc #4, by Brett Bean (writer/artist), Jean-Francois Beaulieu (colorist), Nate Piekos (letterer) - Damn, that thing is too ugly to live. But enough about D'orc!

D'orc comes under attack from a Thrawg, which I guess is "Cerebus, but a pug." D'Orc avoids being eaten, though he learns Thrawg's have flammable saliva in the process. This is what's known as "Chekov's Gastric Fluids."

D'Orc then has a soliloquy about how tired he is of everyone trying to kill him, and frustrated it makes him, and that frightens him, because he's afraid if he gets angry enough he'll lose control and kill someone like he did the chicken. The talking shield gives him some reassurance that he's doing good and providing hope. And in the morning, D'Orc wakes up to a bunch of goblins accusing him of working with a different group of goblins, led by the leader's brother.

The shield was supposed to keep watch, but explains they snuck up on him and he can't hear. So how does he know what D'Orc's saying all those times D'Orc has the shield on his arm with the eye facing out?

The brother goblin shows up, and the two sides start to squabbling about which side gets to kill the Thrawg that destroyed their villages. Then the Thrawg shows up and eats all of them. Once it eats Barry the goblin, who was looking forward to going home and rebuilding their villages, D'Orc gets angry and dives inside the Thrawg's stomach, where he uses two stones to make a spark and ignite the drool. So, the Thrawg's stomach acid is also flammable, or are we just assuming it swallows a lot of its own drool? Barry was swallowed whole, and survives the explosion, so he can point D'Orc towards the Silver Witch, and that's that.

Outside of saving Barry, I'm not sure what D'Orc accomplished. And maybe that's enough, if there are other goblins that weren't part of the hunting party that will listen to Barry and get the villages working cooperatively. Otherwise, D'Orc saved one goblin, who is going to rebuild two villages to live in, alone. 

Moonstar #3, by Ashley Allen (writer), Edoardo Audino (artist), Arthur Hesli (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - No no no, you're supposed to attack with the focused totality of your mind, Dani. This is much too scattered.

Dani is inside her own mind, courtesy of the cursed sword. it's sifting through her memories, moving backwards from Krakoa, to her time as a Valkyrie, to her days as a New Mutant. The sword takes the appearance of Hildr (more of less, she's got chalk-white skin and red eyes where the skin around them looks burned), the woman trapped within the sword, and spends a lot of time attack Dani and critiquing her for being weak. Oh, you have to rely on spells to avoid my attack. Oh, you're getting help from the memories of your friends.

It does show how what the sword's told Kyron is a lie. Kyron thinks he's sparing people the pain of losing others to death, by keeping everyone inside the sword. But the sword clearly sees relying on others, or really anything beyond your own strength and speed, as a weakness. Unless this is just meant to dig at Dani, that she isn't capable enough to actually do anything on her own, so she'll give up.

But I don't think that's it, because the sword's been rifling through Dani's memories looking for someone whose soul it can take, if not Dani's. Or someones, more accurately, and it hits paydirt with Dani's parents. Dani gets into the sword's mind enough to see a little of Hildr's true past and what the sword needs for its plan, but the sword's already sent the location of Dani's parents to Kyron. It's a nicely done page by Audino and Hesli. Dani is seeing through Kyron's eyes, so we are as well. And we see things in the reflection of his sword. First Dani, then Kyron (with a similar complexion to the one Hildr is sporting inside Dani's mind) and then the Moonstar family ranch.

And the sword dominates more and more of each panel, as it gets closer to what it wants. Either outcome, because Dani can either go after her parents, or go after the tablet Kyron needs, but not both. I would say, if he hasn't killed them already, simply taken them somewhere, she should just go get the tablet, and make him come to her, with her parents. But it's easy for me to say, not my parents in danger of having their souls sucked up by a sword.