Something Big (1971)

Colonel Miller (Brian Keith) is a cavalry officer about to retire, and his wife Mary Anna (Honor Blackman) is on her way to the fort to make sure of it. Unfortunately, there's Joe Baker (Dean Martin) to contend with. He's a dude from Pennsylvania that came out West to do "something big," which really means he's been having fun playing outlaw. But the woman he's supposed to marry (Carol White) is tired of waiting and on her way.

So it's now or never for the something big, which involves robbing the treasure hoard of Mexico's most famous bandit. For that, he wants to acquire a Gatling gun. The guy who has the Gatling gun (or will have it) wants a woman. You see where this is going. Baker is holding up stagecoaches, looking for a woman he feels would be appropriate according to the Scriptures, and eventually meets Mary Anna. I'm not aware of the Bible speaking of trading a person for a Gatling gun, but maybe it's a different edition. The Sleazy Bastard Edition. Meanwhile, Miller and his chief scout (Ben Johnson) try unsuccessfully to figure out what it is Baker's planning, beyond "something big."

My dad had autotuned his TV to turn to this because he'd never heard of it. He was not impressed, with any of it. It's more comedy than action movie - the first real action is over an hour in, when Miller catches up to Baker and beats the crap out of him for abducting Mary Anna - but it's not funny. There are some odd characters, but the movie is content to coast on the existence of their quirks, rather than have anyone do something that might prompt laughter. Here's a two-woman gold mine operation, and they're really horny! Baker's future brother-in-law walks around playing bagpipes and dressing like a Scotsman (while his sister speaks with what sounds like an Irish accent)!

The movie starts with a, I think bounty hunter, complaining to Miller that Baker killed his partner (for kicking Baker's dog.) When Miller makes it clear he doesn't care and won't do anything, the cranky guy vows to find someone with a 'fine, delicate hand', to write him a letter to Washington D.C. about this. The guy reappears only at the very end of the movie, still vowing to write the letter. He doesn't try to hunt down Baker, he doesn't try to hamstring Miller, nothing.

Baker has this whole convoluted plan about getting the gun, but he's also hijacking whiskey as a bribe to a local tribe to join his attacking force. Then he rides into town in broad daylight, the brother-in-law playing the bagpipes the whole time. But, having tossed the element of surprise (which it turns out he didn't have to begin with) in the garbage, he keeps the Gatling gun under cover, and half his guys are dead before he gets it into action. Fortunately, none of the bandit's men know how to duck.

Dean Martin expends no particular effort, all lazy charm, easily punctured. Keith seems to be trying to talk without moving his lips for some reason. Honor Blackman's carrying a high-class sensibility and ego, but is somehow taken by Martin's bullshit enough to encourage her husband to let him take the Gatling gun and try his stupid plan. That didn't make any sense whatsoever. He's been exhibiting the same sleazy, Gambit-esque "charm" since he held up her stagecoach, and she wasn't impressed then. And Keith agrees, but not because he's got some plan to recover the gun, arrest Dean Martin and the bandit all at once, just because she asked, I guess.

I'm legitimately disappointed. There were enough elements for either a good comedy Western, or a good action Western. The potential was there, I think the actors had it in them, but what they were given to work with was just kind of trash, and they didn't or couldn't elevate it. 

A Challenging Coursework

As Zuko is the brooding, morally conflicted bad boy of the series, the answer to that question is apparently, "90% of the fandom."

Avatar the Last Airbender: Ashes of the Academy centers around the difficulty in changing a people's culture and beliefs, especially about themselves and their nation, and how that starts with what you teach your kids. In this case, Zuko's half-sister is about to attend the prestigious the Royal Fire Academy. Given how Azula turned out, Ursa's got understandable concerns about risking a second daughter here, but Zuko's used Fire Lord Authority to devise a new curriculum, so everything will probably be fine.

It quickly becomes apparent the headmistress is not on board with the changes, and is still pushing nationalist, imperialist, classist doctrines. So Zuko, again via Fire Lord Authority, hires a new instructor. His ex-girlfriend, Mai. Without first asking Mai if she would do it. After she broke up with him, in part, because he treated her less like a partner in their relationship, and more like an accessory to escape from the responsibilities of leadership. Leading to him withholding important aspects of his life - like assassination attempts, or his asking his genocidal, abusive dickbag of a father for advice on governing - from her out of some misguided notion she needed "protecting."

I know the series' creators stated Zuko and Mai stay broken up for 3 years before getting back together. I don't know how far along they are in that break-up here, but Zuko clearly hasn't learned shit from his past fuck-ups yet (though he makes a halting step in the right direction in the last 15 pages.)

Mai takes the job, despite her own bad experiences at the Academy. Faith Erin Hicks (writer), with Peter Wartman (artist), and Adele Matera (color artist), give us several brief, sepia-toned, flashbacks to Mai's early days at the Academy as a student. Where her father encouraged her to befriend Azula because it would help her get ahead, and that it was better to be the powerful person (or friends with the powerful person) who does the trampling, rather than be the one getting trampled.

(Hicks puts all this social-climbing pressure at the feet of Mai's father, which I think is letting her mother off too lightly. From the bits and pieces we see of Michi in the cartoon, she was just as hard on Mai about behaving like a proper young woman and blah blah blah, think of your father's career, think of our status. Maybe the OGNs Gene Luen Yang wrote established it wasn't like that, or Hicks is making a comment on how Mai's improved relationship with her mother has led her to reduce Michi's culpability in the worse aspects of Mai's upbringing.)

We don't really see Zuko's curriculum, at least not in Mai's teaching. It's mostly when, on her first day, Kiyi keeps correcting one of her other teachers, who's reluctant to read the new, more accurate history of the Hundred Years War. Instead, Mai eschews having them read books in favor of going outside to dig in the dirt and learn about cicada-beetles or learning to walk a tightrope.

I didn't really picture Mai as being interested in insects, let alone digging in the dirt, but the point seems to be to show curiosity about the world around them (and Mai is well-established as hating being bored, which implies a certain level of curiosity), and not react to other people or creatures as threats to be destroyed. Which is contrary to what students were taught when Mai attended, a fact we see in flashbacks that the teachers encouraged - any slight against honor must be addressed in an Agni Kai - and Azula ruthlessly exploited, pitting friends against each other for seemingly no reason than she can. And that thinking has carried over to Kiyi's generation, like it carried from the generation prior, as one of her classmates says her parents warned anyone acting like her friend was secretly plotting to destroy her.

That's what Mai's facing, and in that sense, activities encouraging the students to work on projects together and treat learning as fun, rather than some zero-sum contest where they have to learn the most and apply it most ruthlessly against the other students, make a lot of sense. I do hope she's still taking time to teach them math. It can be used for things other than war and politics!

Sunday Splash Page #433

"Crystallized," in Amethyst (vol. 4) #2, by Amy Reeder (writer/artist/colorist), Gabriela Downie (letterer)

Released in 2020, Amy Reeder's Amethyst mini-series was about, I'm not sure. Not to believe in fairy tales, because things are rarely that simple? "Lies my parents told me?" Everybody loves to see a winner fall?

Given the sheer number of reboots, resets, re-brandings, whatever, I have no idea the specifics of Amethyst's situation in 2020. Reeder seems to incorporate the original Princess of Gemworld mini-series, but maybe nothing after that. Certainly nothing about Amethyst being a Lord of Order, which is one good thing. On the other hand, maybe there was some stuff from Bendis' Young Justice book reflected here? There's no explanation, for example, about why Amy's a blonde in all the flashbacks, but sports lavender hair here. But I sure wasn't reading a Bendis-written team book in the late 2010s, so I don't what, if anything, made carried over.

What we've got is, Amy's Earth parents are alive and aware she's a princess from another world. They're proud of her, even if Amy finds it embarrassing and can't wait to return to Gemworld. Where she finds her kingdom destroyed, and all her people missing. Worse, all the people she thought were her friends turn their backs on her requests for help, throwing in a lot claims about how they always suffer in Amethyst's battles, and then she just flies off on her horse, and they have their own problems. Basically behaving like a bunch of citizens of Marvel Universe's Earth.

Reeder increases the variety between the kingdoms. The citizens of Turquoise have four arms now, Aquamarine is much more of an undersea kingdom, the people sporting smooth blue skin. Sapphire is more of a Blade Runner look, with towers and neon lights and tubes that can transport you places (sometimes against your will.) 

Amy manages two allies: a young woman from Turquoise named Phoss (with a giant caterpillar named Stan, because Phoss' girlfriend thinks Earth is fascinating), and the alleged prince of Aquamarine, Maxixe, who rides on a narwhal. The further things go, the more Amy learns all those stories she was told about House Amethyst being the beloved protectors of Gemworld were lies. Not that Dark Opal wasn't a threat, more her parents weren't fending him off from the goodness of their hearts. 

And yet, in the '80s Amethyst books, everyone is always expecting Amy to handle everything. Yeah, she asks for help, but she's also always on the front lines, trying to deal with the problem, whether it was Dark Opal, or Fire Jade, or that creepy little Chaos kid. And it cost her plenty, even if some of that is no longer in continuity. But the Gemworld motto is, "like parents, like child," and so they all assume she's like her parents and expecting them to bow and scrape.

Reeder does write Amy as more than a little conceited, prone to making demands or ignoring suggestions from other people. So it won't surprise you that she's terrible at diplomacy. Again, these people she's asking for help have been expecting her to bail their asses out since she was 13, and even if she's older, she's not that much older. Reeder draws her as still a little gangly and awkward, all her expressions are big ones because she's not used to moderating her emotions. She never had to, other people handled the calm stuff, she handled the hitting stuff. So it's hard for me to judge her for being hurt they all tell her to hit the road.

(Also, somehow, the initial outfit Reeder gives her, while more successfully evoking "magic princess" than the '80s look, is somehow less practical for someone leaping around swinging a sword. High heels, a big flowy dress she has to hike up to try and run. I guess she was planning on a fancy party. Eventually she switches to something with actual boots and leggings, maintaining the shades of purple color aesthetic, but making it less eye-searingly bright.)

But hitting the road, rather than flying over it, exposes Amy to more of the "true" Gemworld, which is important for her to grow as a person. Apparently Gemworld, like me with my Skittles, segregates their different gems. Except for one ostracized community, called The Banned, who use all different types of gems and are generally being run out of one kingdom or the other.

End game, Amethyst saves her people, defeats Dark Opal, gets no help from most of the kingdoms that used to be her friends, learns her birth parents are dicks, but finds a new community of people who want her to lead them. Although I would have liked some explanation from the person from Emerald who said Amy was a natural at being a king. Because she fought? Because she tried to protect people who couldn't protect themselves? There are certainly worse qualities. Either way, Amy accepts and messy, happy-cries about it. 

Saturday Splash Page #235

"Out of the Box," in West of Sundown #1, by Tim Seeley and Aaron Campbell (writers), Jim Terry (artist), Triona Farrell (color artist), Crank! (letterer)

Dooley O'Shaughnessy's an Irish immigrant deeply regretting getting involved in the American Civil War. As it's only 1861, he's got several years of it to go. Unless he dies in battle. Or happens to unearth a vampire who tried to sleep out the conflict in a grave.

Remarkable though the odds are, it's the third thing that happens, and Dooley spends the next decade as Constance der Abend's loyal assistant, helping her to slake her thirst on the corrupt or wicked. Robber barons, child killers, highwaymen, people like that. Until someone burns her home, and the native soil within her coffin, forcing Constance to return to the place of her birth. A town sits there now, Sangre de Moro, and it's home to its fair share of monsters.

The book ran 10 issues, split into 5-issue arcs, in 2022 and 2023. The first arc was Constance (or Rosa, as her birth name) trying to get some soil from where she was born, and finding her birthplace now home to some strange cult. She and Dooley are also pursued by Frankenstein's Monster and a creepy little scientist by the name of Griffin. The Monster found God and decided the Lord said kill monsters. Griffin just wants to dissect strange things in the hopes of unlocking the keys to something more.

In the second arc, the quartet have come to an uneasy detente, but new agents move into town at the behest of Dr. Moreau, and play to both Constance's ego (she was a renowned opera singer in New York before the flight west) and her thirst (she's trying to only feed on the evil, but the town is too small and lacking in such people.)

Seeley and Campbell pull in horror elements from a lot of sources. Unfortunately, most of them are ones I'm not familiar with, so any significance kind of whizzes right past me. I recognize Moreau selling the land he'd purchased to a brokerage in England run by a Renfield is a Dracula reference. That the "blind god" Griffin sees when he lets Moreau experiment on him is probably Lovecraftian. Maybe the grey little things roaming the wilderness that cry "ooot!" and have a paralytic tongue are (Canadian?) chupacabras. The fact Constance's father became a werewolf by eating part of the dog he killed trying to protect his wife and child (killing his wife in the process)? Don't get that. Is that a normal method of becoming a werewolf? I thought they had to bite you, not the other way around.

That's probably not an issue, other than I'm missing details. Seeley and Campbell establish that this or that constitutes a Problem, and the cast need to confront it. Terry and Farrell, who illustrate the entire series, keep the threats grounded and solid, only veering occasionally into something that hints at being beyond perception. Moreau's beast-people are basically human, just with animals parts stitched on here and there. But there's a banshee in the second arc, and her face is kept in shadow, save for her teeth, which gleam out of that darkness. In the first arc, the quartet pass through some weak point between dimensions and encounter something that's possessed a horse. Terry and Farrell channeled some strong Berni Wrightson for that creature.

The series really revolves around Constance and Dooley's relationship, and that's where I think it falls short. Not that it's a poorly set up relationship. Dooley feels grateful to Constance for helping him escape the war and educating him, but is growing increasingly uneasy at what he's part of. Constance likes Dooley, probably sees him as a bit of a wayward youth (he's an adult, but she's over 200, so it's a fair perspective) to guide and tease. She cares about him enough to mediate her hunger, but at the same time, resents him a little for his morality that constrains her.

The issue is, Seeley and Campbell leave a lot of things unresolved, or meat on the bone, if you prefer. The first arc turns on Dooley and the Monster, and to a lesser extent, Griffin, deciding to try and deal with this crazy cult leader who has his followers drinking the blood of Constance's father to try and ascend to some higher plane. Constance wants no part of it, until her father (who she claims to despise and want to see dead) points out she cares about Dooley. Then she turns around and shows up to help. Why then, due to words of someone she doesn't care about?

That isn't resolved by the second arc, when Dooley seems bent on trying to protect the citizens of Sangre de Moro from supernatural threats, but can't do much on his own. Even the Monster is limited. A lot of it falls to Constance, who still doesn't really care. Even with her native soil readily at hand, she needs blood, and desires praise from people she thinks are worth it. (Bit of a social climber.) When the eastern businessmen, Moreau's lackeys, show up, talking about bringing the railroad through town, which will mean more people, specifically more evil people, Constance is all ears. That they promise to build an opera house, praise her singing, only makes the offer sweeter.

But even if Constance acknowledges they played on her ego, and she should have listened to Dooley, the core problem is not resolved. Whether she continues to help Dooley with his defender of the night act or not, she's a vampire. She needs blood. Sangre de Moro is a pissant, backwater town in the middle of the desert. If she's going to willingly restrict her potential prey, she's going to starve. No solution is offered, not even Dooley occasionally opening a vein for her. The friction between Dooley's Christian morality, and the necessities of Rosa's existence, remain unaddressed.

(She comments once during their flight west, that if he can't find someone, she may have to feed on him. Dooley treats it as a joke. I don't think it was.)

Maybe if the book continued, they were going to address that, but it's been over 3 years, so I doubt anything is on the way. 

What I Bought 6/24/2026

Alright, this is it. Last day - hopefully - I have to play fake boss. He's supposed to be back in the office Monday. I'm so ready to be done with the added stress. It makes me dread getting up, and makes me want to go to bed earlier so I can wake up and be one day closer to being done.

Here's two X-books.

Generation X-23 #5, by Jody Houser (writer), Marco Renna (artist), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - That is definitely a picture of Laura Kinney lunging at the reader, claws extended.

X-80, the time traveler that originally clued Laura into this whole mess, shows up to rescue her. This is a younger version than the one Laura met earlier, because time travel, although that power is one that was grafted onto her later. The energy blades X-Infinite uses are her original mutation.

While Infinite drags Gabby off to use as a genetic material source, and the rest of the cast figure out he's a bad guy, 80 takes Laura on a trip through the past to see how things got to that point. Infinite (X-39, then) used to try and protect the others by getting the guards angry at him, but eventually a Dr. Chiles (and for some reason that name seems familiar) convinced him to help her with this grafting of powers. Except she was only interested in powers rich humans would pay for, which apparently doesn't include having wings and feathers? I mean, there are lots of other powers I'd rather have, but it's not a bad power.

Laura and 80 rescue the others, then free Gabby. Whose enhanced senses somehow still work, even with the mutant power neutralizing collar on. Don't quite understand that. Laura's willing to leave Infinite there and take the others to safety, but 74 decides to blow him up. Except 66 - with the bird powers - throws herself on the grenade, so he's still alive.

If the point of this arc was to give Laura and Gabby a supporting cast - and the remainder of this bunch are going to live with them, so that seems to be the case - Houser probably should have moved faster. Speed-run Infinite's reveal as the villain, weed out whoever you were going to kill, get on with having Laura be a leader/mentor/friend to the survivors. Especially given Marvel's quick-trigger on the cancellation button these days, I'm not sure you can afford to burn 5 issues just getting to the actual point of your book.

(Also kind of strange to introduce the Kimura Scorpion-bot and not have it be a bigger deal. Maybe save that for after Infinite was dealt with, or vice versa.) 

Especially since none of the new characters Laura's going to be interacting with have much in the way of personalities yet. 92 is silent and lurks in the walls, 99 is chipper and playful, which seems to be designed for her to interact with Gabby rather than Laura. 74 is the one with a quick temper. That's pretty much what I've got on them so far.

Moonstar #4, by Ashley Allen (writer), Edoardo Audino (artist), Arthur Hesli (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - We got a zombie bear, zombie elk (stag?), zombie wolf, and zombie hyena? I was thinking this was in North America, in which case the hyena's a long way from home, but they end up in Iran, so maybe all those are native fauna.

Dani thinks it through and concludes Kyrion will want to kill her parents in front of her. So they have time to get to the tablet first, and hide it, then rescue her parents. Dani has enough of the residual magic from the sword infecting her to use it as a tracking beacon, so they fly to Iran on Brightwind. Dani says she learned a spell that can provide acceleration over short distances, but Colorado to Iran wouldn't seem to qualify as short.

As it turns out, this is where Kian grew up, and where he first started messing with magic, which is why his eyes are messed up now. Something else that's messed up: the native wildlife, which is back from the dead and running rampant. Kian tries some kind of spell to dissolve the reanimated corpses, but they just combine into a monstrosity that would make John Carpenter proud. I mean, that thing is truly disgusting looking, props to Audino.

Dani's able to panic the chimera by hurting it, then playing off the instinctive reaction that pain causes, which leaves them free to continue to the tablet. Kian keeps advising her to at least consider alternative approaches, like taking out Kyrion's backup and saving her parents, but Dani won't be swayed. She's certain she can save everyone if she does things her way.

It's funny she doesn't ever point out that if they don't keep Kyrion from getting the tablet, saving her parents will be a moot point, because he'll kill everyone. As it turns out, the tablet is somehow too big to move now, and Kyrion's brought her parents along to use it as a sacrificial altar. And Dani's arrows don't seem to be doing much. That's not a great turn of events.

I'm curious to see how Allen wraps this up. Kyrion and Kian both keep commenting on Dani's optimism or hopeful attitude, which feels significant in a story about accepting death as part of life. Or refusing to accept it, in Kyrion's case. Whether Dani saves people today, she can't save them forever, but she still persists in trying, and in believing she can save everyone today. I don't know where Allen's going with that. There's also the fact Kian's caught feelings, as we get a panel where he's very close and asking if she can lend him some courage, while Hesli colors the background a very soft focus pink. Dani's either oblivious or too locked in to notice, so I guess we'll see if Kian just booked himself a room in the fridge next month.

Redshift - Al Sarrantonio (ed.)

A collection of 30 stories by various authors, placed under the heading of "speculative fiction." The lengths vary, a few only a couple of pages, others closer to 50. It seems like they're supposed to be science fiction - Sarrantonio apparently wanted something like a modern version of what Harlan Ellison pulled together in the '60s - but some don't have much sci-fi. Joe Haldermann's "Road Kill" feels like the outline of a script for a serial killer thriller, with a tiny bit of science fiction tacked on at the end.

Sarrantonio's own offering, "Billy the Fetus," is a bizarre piece about the child of Billy the Kid and the woman who apparently killed him and every other man that fucked her, and what the fetus learned about the world from the songs she sang while he was in her womb. Harry Turtledove's is set in Afghanistan during the 1980s, and involves a dragon. It's not a bad story, I'm just not sure how it's either science fiction or speculative fiction.

It was rough sledding at times, is what I'm getting at. Thomas Disch's "In Xanadu" was probably the first one I actually enjoyed, and that was over 100 pages in. Either that or James Patrick Kelly's "Unique Visitors." Both are brief and focused on unpleasant forms of immortality people tried to buy themselves. In contrast, David Morrell has an entry, "Resurrection," about people sacrificing their present and futures for a bit of the past they can't bring themselves to let go of.

The most noteworthy thing to me about Joyce Carol Oates' "Commencement," was the realization I've apparently been confusing Oates with some other writer. Which one I don't know, as I thought she was part of the Lost Generation, hanging around Paris with Gertrude Stein and Hemingway. As for the story itself, I figured out the basic arc two pages in, and the rest felt like killing time until the climax. I didn't even attend my own college graduation ceremony, why would I want to read about a fictional one?

There were some stretches where I got into the stories more. Paul Di Filippo's "Weeping Walls" was farcical in a way I enjoyed. Meaning it was cynical towards targets I don't mind seeing take the hits. I wouldn't have minded it if were a bit longer (it was ~15 pages.) That was followed by Gregory Benford's "Anomalies," which was kind of clever, with a nice twist at the end.

I think I preferred stories where the characters are human or close enough the writer doesn't spend a lot of effort describing some alien being or setting, utilizing made up terms I can't visualize from what's on the page well enough to connect with the story. Like, "Pockets" had weird bubbles people can visit other places through and time moves differently, but the people are still basically people. Recognizable in their follies and desires, even if the setting is somewhat different. Stephen Baxter's "In the Un-Black," I couldn't really wrap my head around what sort of society he was trying to describe. Not well enough to care about the characters caught in it, anyway.

'He went to the bubble and kicked it angrily. He couldn't feel anything but "stop," with his sneaker on. It wasn't like kicking an object, it was like something stopped you, turned you back towards your own time flow. Just "stopness." It was saying "no" with the stuff of forever itself. There was no way to look inside it. Once someone crawled through a pocket's navel, it sealed up all over.' - from "Pockets, by Rudy Rucker and John Shirley

A Possible Autumn of Abundance

The title's not entirely accurate. In terms of single issues, there wasn't much new I'd buy in September, though there are a few things worth mentioning. It was collected editions and OGNs that caught the eye.

What's new? DC's got a handful of new series, some of which appear to be going unusual directions with the concepts. Teen Titans is Jason Todd helping new characters look for a missing friend of theirs, while they're uneasy about his lethal approach to problem-solving. Legion of Super-Heroes mentions "Brainiac 1 of 5" trying to put together a team of rebels from across the cosmos. I guess LOSH fans are used to getting something different every time. Doom Patrol is doing a heroes-for-hire approach, although the main takeaway I had was Elasti-Girl's costume on the cover makes her look like the Madame Rouge from the Teen Titans cartoon.

Marvel, in full panic mode as their hysterical flailing fails to produce results, is running their Armaggedon thing at the same time as Queen in Black at the same time as DNX. None of which are increasing the amount of their comics I buy. They're dragging Fantastic Four into DNX, so that's one comic I'm not buying in September. They're also doing a series of one-hots for the 25th anniversary of the Marvel Mangaverse, which I don't remember being terribly popular, but what the hell. A drowning man will reach for anything thrown to him. Also, a new Avengers book whose roster feels like Chip Zdarsky is nostalgic for Bendis' New Avengers.

I do not share such nostalgia. 

That depressing nonsense aside, here are some OGNs and TPBs from publishers that aren't hapless dopes. Avery Hill Publishing has Owen Pomery's The Hard Switch. I really need to write more carefully, I originally read my notes as "The Hard Scotch." This was released through some other publisher 3 years ago, but is being re-released now. Humanity's about to run out of what it needs for faster-than-light travel, meaning everyone will basically be stuck on whatever world they're on now. Or will they? Aksel Studsgarth and Daniel Hansen's Alva in the Dark, where a thief unleashes an ancient witch and finds herself in a lot of trouble, is being released through Titan Comics.

Mad Cave has Frederic Brremaud and Vic Macioci's Havana Split, where a young woman tries to rescue the father she just found by abducting a starlet for a mafioso. That doesn't feel like a story that needs more than 1 volume, but the solicit says "volume 1", so maybe there's going to be more 1950s Cuban adventures? Mad Cave's also releasing Ian Flynn and Ryan Jampole Hokis, Focus! about a young wizard trying to fix some mistakes she made, and a collected edition of a webcomic called Tiger Girls, by Felicia Low-Jimenez and Claire Low, which sounded kind of interesting.

AWA has a mini-series, Beast Mode 510, starring former NFL running back Marshawn Lynch as a sort of badass, problem solving-type guy for the 510 area code (which I think is Oakland, Lynch is from that area and still a big presence there.) I don't think I'll be buying it, but Denys Cowan's drawing the book, and the splash image for AWA's section of the solicits was an image of a giant Beast Mode punching out Godzilla's teeth, which was much appreciated after Marvel's being letting that stupid lizard run roughshod over everyone like it's a Jim Starlin creation, and Starlin's back writing him for the first time in 8 years.

What's ending? Babs: The Black Road South, allegedly. File that under "Believed when seen."

And the rest: Marc Spector: Moon Knight is still trying to get his friends out of that damn house. Generation X-23 is still dealing with the facility, only now Logan's broke-down ass is in tow. Can nobody just solve a problem with punching in a reasonable span of time any longer?

And while Fantastic Four #17 is crossing over with X-Men, FF #16 is a standalone story, so I guess I'm still buying one issue of the series in September. Speaking of books tying into crap I don't care about, all the Bat-books appear to be dealing with some invasion of Gotham via prehistoric plants, and that includes Batgirl. The Deadman is going to Heaven in issue 4 of his book, but we're promised it's no version of Heaven we've ever seen before. You mean Heaven isn't a customizable experience? What a ripoff!

D'Orc is going to encounter a vengeful boar. Or maybe it's a just a coincidence the character's name includes "Schwein." And in Chachu, it's time for a trip to Vegas! In just the second issue? I always figured that was more of a last-ditch relationship saver move. Junk Punch #4 is going to answer the question of whether zombies are vulnerable to punches in the junk. The cover implies "yes." I remain doubtful.

The Matron is going to respond to abuse of eminent domain with a feast. Which makes more sense - for a given value of the word - when you consider she's a cannibal. Some people just do recall elections on corrupt county commissioners, but you can always eat them instead. And the Vampyrates have a mutiny on the horizon. Are we sure it's not just a desertion? People apparently get those confused all the time.

Action in the North Atlantic (1943)

A cargo ship is sunk by a U-boat in the north Atlantic. To add insult to injury, the U-boat crew takes footage of the survivors huddled in their lifeboat, but when the survivors act defiantly, the U-boat rams the lifeboat, leaving them adrift on what looks like a giant pallet, but is apparently a raft.

The crew subsequently sign on to another cargo ship, the Sea Witch, but at least this one is crossing in a big convoy. 73 ships! Military escort!! What could go wrong? Well, they could run into an entire wolf pack of U-boats. The convoy could receive orders to disperse. The Sea Witch could find itself hounded by the U-boat that sank their last ship. Just a few examples!

Raymond Massey plays the captain of the two cargo ships, with Humphrey Bogart as his first officer. I guess so the captain can be wounded in the latter stages of the film, pushing Bogart into command, where he can come up with a way to trick the U-boat and get some poetic revenge. Bogart's character also punches out a guy in a bar that's blabbing about all the ships he saw leaving the harbor, then marries the lounge singer, but that never goes much of anywhere. Massey's character clearly thinks she's a gold digger, until learning they got married. Then he's OK with it, but there's no payoff beyond that one scene.

There's a handful of the crew that get a lot of lines. A guy who complains all the time, a guy who says there are subs around when his corns hurt, an older guy (Alan Hale) that's had several wives, that sort of thing. They bicker with each other, or with the regular Navy guys who man the ship's guns, and are probably meant to be the comic relief, but they're just kind of annoying.

The cat-and-mouse between the Sea Witch and the U-boat has a lot of twists and turns of fortune, rather than sticking to the formula of the cargo ship trying to dodge torpedoes or anticipate where the next attack will come from. Even when the cargo ship manages an escape via trickery, it's only a temporary reprieve. Likewise, the battle scene when the wolf pack falls upon the convoy is appropriately chaotic. Ships are blowing up, destroyers are dropping depth charges and blowing up subs, there's no sense of where anything is happening in relation to anything else, all the cargo ships are just looking for a way out.

That said, you can feel the movie grind to a halt each time a character has to give an Important Speech. When the guy who complains a lot explains he keeps passing up jobs on convoy ships because he's got a wife, with a kid on the way, the 4th guy in their little group goes into some spiel about whether the guys in Poland or Czechoslovakia were just thinking about staying safe when their countries got invaded. Or something like that. It was so obviously thrown in to appease the War Department - there is no way I believe that character would make that speech - I tuned it out.

There's a few scenes like that in the film, or like the one where the Sea Witch arrives in Halifax to join the convoy and we see how many different countries all the ships are from. Which, yes, it's nice to acknowledge it was a multinational effort to whip the Nazis' asses, but it's not what the movie's about, in terms of the characters or the plot. In those terms, it's about these civilians surviving getting sunk and being willing to go back out there and run the gauntlet again. And in the process, earning a shot at the guys who felt like it wasn't enough to sink them, they had to humiliate and then terrify them.

Plague-Bringing Angels

No one knows you like your best friend?

A Plague of Angels is the third, and I believe final, Dirty Pair mini-series Adam Warren and Toren Smith (co-writing, with Warren handling the art duties, Tom Orzechowski as letterer) released through Eclipse. Cory Emerson is a reporter who makes the mistake of agreeing to write a puff piece about the 3WA's "Lovely Angels", at a time when Kei and Yuri are trying to track down some inventory stolen from a major company that operates on the space station where they live.

Kei and Yuri do their best to put forth a positive image, but even when Kei isn't getting into screaming matches with the local cops over how much damage they did trying to break up the purchase of the inventory - a mech with holographic disguise capabilities and a gravity bomb that could destroy the station - their attempts to show their more human side only makes things worse.

Kei can't resist bragging about kicking Yuri's ass when they got a spur-of-the-moment bit part in a kung-fu flick. They take Cory out on the town, and over many drinks confess they only got hired by the 3WA because they found some old vids about "Randi Geller", and convinced people they were clairvoyant, as a joke.

Of course, it's not all failed attempts at girls' night out and image-washing, there's lots of action, too. The ones selling the holo-bot are themselves plugged into robots the Pair fight using those flying exo-suits with the bubble canopies '90s anime seemed to like. There's a shootout in a warehouse as the lead terrorist gets uploaded into the holo-bot, and a lengthy battle that starts in a strip club and tears across the station between the holo-bot, the Dirty Pair, the security forces of the company the built the holo-bot, and sometimes Kei and Yuri themselves. With a robot that can assume other's identities, a fight between the two was more or less inevitable, especially after Kei's mentioning the kung-fu thing.

Warren's art is still in transition to the state it would reach by the time he started writing and drawing Empowered. The linework is still a lot lighter and thinner, the figures not nearly as sharply defined by heavy black lines as in his later stuff. Outside of a few occasions where characters start weeping or their heads seem to expand as they scream at someone, he doesn't exaggerate for comedic effect nearly as much. Maybe that's a consequence of working with someone else's characters, or he just wasn't at that point in his career yet. Certainly with how much they squabble and overreact, Kei and Yuri are ripe for that kind of thing.

The tpb I bought has an intro from a sci-fi novelist, Walter Jon Williams. I don't know if I agree that this is satire, let alone excellent satire. Yes, lots of characters make assumptions about Kei and Yuri based on their appearance and their work outfits. Mostly guys, but Cory makes a few unflattering comments the more she comes to see her assignment as impossible. The main terrorist is an artificial personality with the libido cranked up too high, so of course he's drooling over them and making crass comments constantly. Kei and Yuri use that, first to locate him, then to draw him into a trap later.

I guess it's satirizing the people reading the comic. We are - or I guess, I am, since I don't know if you've read the comic - all these dopes in the story who slobber over Kei and Yuri and would get beat into oatmeal if those two actually existed. Yeah, hot girls with guns who were trained to make cool quips sound like fun, until you let them borrow your aircar because you were busy staring at their cleavage and they casually drive it through a wall while remarking how relieved they are it isn't their car. Being around Kei and Yuri, and their blithe disregard for chaos and destruction would actually be terrifying, and might to a nearly nihilistic response, as it does with Cory late in the story.

If so, that's most exemplified by Carvalho, the artificial personality. He's so fixated on women or their physical attributes - when he's not trying to destroy space stations - that he's constantly watching videos or checking out the Dirty Pair universe's equivalent to dirty magazines. Seeking the next unique thrill, the next novel act or look. Desensitized to the point that, when he's hit with an EMP, that's basically all that's left of him, the urge to seek out some sexy little thing, even when they're trying to kill him.

Sunday Splash Page #432

"Beauty and the Bowl Cut," in Amazing Mary Jane #1, by Leah Williams (writer), Carlos Gomez (artist), Carlos Lopez (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)

In late 2019, Marvel tried giving Mary Jane Watson her own ongoing series. I'm not clear on the thinking, maybe her fans were getting annoyed by all the focus on Gwen Stacy (albeit an alt-universe version with super-powers), or Marvel just figured there'd be enough carry over from people who bought Amazing Spider-Man to make it work?

Whatever the reason, they tried it. Whether due to sales or shipping disruptions with COVID, the book solicited 9 issues, but only shipped 6. The first 5 were collected into a tpb that I reviewed in November of 2024. Those issues involved MJ being cast as the love interest in a Mysterio biopic that turned out to be directed by the actual Mysterio, posing as auteur director Cage McKnight, who Mysterio suckered into visiting the Falklands to find the perfect penguin to use for the "Jaws of penguins."

MJ decides to go along with this insane idea, and ends up basically saving the film by managing Mysterio's over-the-top temperament, finding them a new backer when their funding gets pulled, covering for the actor playing Spider-Man when he chickens out over a little thing like irate super-villains attacking the set because they don't like their likenesses being used in the film.

(Although Cobra? Stegron? Tarantula? Really digging the bottom of the barrel there, Mysterio. Was Hypno-Hustler considered too cliche?)

Williams leans into Mary Jane's charisma and knowledge of the world of movies as things that keep filming rolling, along with the idea that hanging around Peter Parker has given her a commitment to helping people try to make the best of second chances. I'm not clear on what MJ and Peter's relationship status was, other than they're on good enough terms to talk regularly over the phone, but there's also an element of guilt for MJ that, while Peter knows she's working on a movie about Mysterio, he doesn't know Mysterio is actually the director. She's doing something she believes in, but recognizes there's a risk that it could damage her connection with someone really important to her if it backfires.

While it stretches my suspension of disbelief MJ can hold off the entire "Savage Six" by herself (with some help from robots of the Original 5 X-Men Mysterio built previously for some reason) long enough for the movie to finish shooting, I definitely prefer Williams' writing here to the work she did on Gwenpool Strikes Back, which may be the only other thing she's written that I've read. Meta-commentary humor is a tricky needle to thread, so maybe that's to be expected.

Carlos Gomez's art is very clean and expressive, really capturing the dramatic personality Mysterio has, as well as Mary Jane's range of emotions. When she decides they need to leverage Mysterio being much angrier than the actual Cage McKnight, she hams it up a little to appeal to Mysterio's ego. When their equipment is being repossessed, she plunks herself in the director's chair with a megawatt smile and chats with the repo guys like old friends. When she discusses the risk she's taking trusting Mysterio is genuine about this with a member of the crew, she draws in on herself and stops making eye contact.

I'm not sure what Williams had planned beyond this - I think issue 6 is a premiere for the film back in NYC, so presumably Peter was going to learn the truth at some point - but I wouldn't have minded seeing more.

Saturday Splash Page #234

"Action Figure," in Wild Dog #2, by Max Collins (writer), Terry Beatty (penciler), Dick Giordano (inker), Michele Wolfman (colorist), John Workman (letterer)

Created by Max Collins and Terry Beatty in the late 1980s, when, as mentioned when we discussed The Punisher, the United States loved itself a guy who ran around shooting people who "deserved" it. OK, fine, the U.S. always loves a guy who runs around shooting people who "deserved" it. We're a fucked-in-the-head country.

Wild Dog was sort of a homemade, street-level vigilante. A guy who pulls together a costume from stuff you could buy in stores. Camo pants. A jersey with a local school mascot on it. A hockey mask. He drives around in a pickup truck. No specially modified battle van for Wild Dog! He does however, have a fair amount of guns, a bulletproof vest under the jersey, and a taser built into his glove.

(At one point, a character states Wild Dog's used existing tech to give himself capabilities rivaling Superman. I know they powered Supes down a bit post-Crisis on the Infinite Earths, but let's be real here. Wild Dog hasn't even given himself capabilities rivaling Booster Gold.)

Wild Dog started with a 4-issue mini-series in 1987, revolving around him fighting a, you could call them a terrorist, paramilitary, or revolutionary group depending on your perspective. The "Committee for Social Change" were operating in the Quad Cities area (which is in eastern Iowa/western Illinois, on the banks of the Mississippi River.) They decide to punctuate their statement about tearing down existing political and social systems via killing a bunch of honor roll students, or attacking a military arsenal to steal a bazooka that launches some powerful "fuel air bomb." In both cases, Wild Dog shows up and tears down their existing circulatory systems via some hot lead.

Running through the mini-series is the question of who is under the hockey mask. A local reporter who was rescued in the first issue pursues the mystery as a way to bolster her career, and a government agent suspects one of his three high school football pals - now a police lieutenant, a Pulitzer-winning journalist and an car repair shop owner, respectively - is the vigilante and wants him to work for the government. We get a little bit of their backstories and philosophies to see why he thinks this, and so we can make our own guess. But Collins plays it such that we're left wondering if maybe Mr. Agent Man, Graham Gault, is just trying to throw people off his trail.

The final issue settles the question, as we learn why Jack Wheeler turned to vigilantism and where he got the money to open his shop (and presumably, buy all these guns.) But we're left with the question of what his cop friend is going to do with the knowledge. Turn Jack in, or help him by feeding him info? It's a different approach, keeping the protagonist almost silent and anonymous through most of the story. His motivations only hinted or guessed at based on which suspect you think he is.

The approach does mean the final issue is almost entirely flashbacks that give us more details about Jack. If you figure the mystery of Wild Dog's identity was the most important part, then it's a suitable climax to go back to the very beginning, the detective laying out the sequence of events. If you were expecting a climactic confrontation with the remnants of the Committee, either as they make some final push towards a goal, or just try to eradicate Wild Dog before he does the same to him, it falls flat. I must fall into the second category, because I was underwhelmed by the final issue.

Wild Dog would go on to get a spot in Action Comics during the stretch where it was a weekly anthology title. With the identity mystery resolved, I assume his war on crime took prominence there. I haven't read those, but when Action Comics went back to being a monthly Superman book, Wild Dog got a final one-shot where he was targeted by a guy hired specifically to capture him on behalf of a crime family. Which he did, but the fine print ended up getting the crooks in the end.

I learned about Wild Dog because he got some play in the mid-2000s comics blogosphere. The makeshift costume and taciturn personality seemed to make him someone bloggers liked to point and gawk at. Geoff Johns used him briefly in Booster Gold, as part of the last bit of resistance - with Hawkman, Green Arrow, Pantha and Anthro - in the "bad" timeline where Booster keeps Ted Kord from getting his skull perforated by Max Lord. Spoiler alert: A guy with some Uzis doesn't last long against OMACs and a mind-controlled Superman. There was a version in the Arrow TV show, and I think another version in one of the lousy New 52 Suicide Squad books (I'm not going to look at any of those comics, or even my old reviews, to confirm that.)

Then Gerard Way used the Jack Wheeler, auto mechanic version, in Cave Carson has a Cybernetic Eye, as basically the one friend Cave had. Which was a curious choice, but I guess Way wanted someone who was both out of his depth in subterranean empires, yet largely unconcerned about it as long as he had something to shoot and something to shoot at.

Random Back Issues #171 - R.E.B.E.L.S. #21

I didn't even remember I had a "rebels" tag.

This is a transition issue, as Bedard wraps up loose ends from his "War of the Brainiacs" story and segues into the Green Lantern Corps becoming more hostile towards Vril Dox's L.E.G.I.O.N. The events are related via flashback, as two rookie Lanterns, Altin Admos (the blue guy) and Gorius Karkum (the lady with the tail), relate how their attempt to arrest Dox for not keeping Brainiac in custody backfired horribly.

They told Dox he was under arrest, he told them they had no authority, then Lobo attacked Gorius. Altin admits that because Okaarans love fighting, Lobo's a legendary figure. Gorius tries a containment bubble and Lobo just pushes through, but Altin clocks him in the face and then impales him with a, it can't be a trident, it has 4 points.

Whatever, he impales him, which is just gonna annoy Lobo, but impresses Dox enough he has his son Lyrl give us Altin's backstory. He's a fighting prodigy, who the Okaarans thought would lead them to new glory. Except he joined the GLC, and Dox thinks it's because the guy wanted a challenge. (How we're getting that narration when the Lanterns are the ones telling this story, I have no idea.)

Back to Altin, who's ducking and weaving, but Lobo eventually hits him. Then hits him a bunch more times. Gorius creates a bunch of chains, with apparently enough will behind them Lobo can't break free. So he grabs the chains and swing her into a wall. Altin wants to keep going, but Dox intercedes. From the safety of his force field bubble, because the man's not stupid enough to interrupt one of Lobo's fights otherwise. Dox explains Lobo's working for him to earn money to pay off debts incurred as an Archbishop in the church of the Triple-Fish God. Which I think was part of that storyline with Adam Strange, Starfire and Animal Man in 52? 

The Lanterns are unimpressed with Lobo's commitment to maintaining his credit rating, but now an entire L.E.G.I.O.N. task force showed up, along with news crews. At which point Dox makes the pitch how much better his company is than the Corps. L.E.G.I.O.N. will help rebuild a government, and they work for people who hire them, while respecting those planets' laws, unlike a certain group of blue assholes we all know, who hand out rings to brain-damaged fighter jocks and say "Go nuts!" Oooh, maybe that's a bad turn of phrase, given Hal Jordan's whole, ya know.

Eh, screw him. If he who is without the sin of trying to erase the entire timeline because he's too sad his city got blown may cast the first stone, then I'm set to start pitching.

Vril also takes some creative license by stating Lyrl helped him defeat Brainiac and Brainiac's weapon, Pulsar Stargrave. When really, Stargrave was an actual star Lyrl turned into some kind of super-computer weapon intending to steal all of Colu's super-computer information, only for Lyrl to get outflanked by Brainiac. But who's alive to say different? Not much of anyone that cares to, certainly, and the sales pitch worked, as Altin admits Vril got a dozen more client worlds in the week since the broadcast.

The Guardians state they would have handled Dox in their own way - frown disapprovingly? create a mechanized corps of robo-enforcers? oh wait, they already did that - but now they have a P.R. problem. Honestly hard for me to believe the Guardians even know what P.R. is, let alone care about it. But they're even angrier about what Gorius did to her own people, the Psions! Which was detailed the next issue, and involved Starfire, who had her own bad history with the Psions. 

{8th longbox, 234th comic. R.E.B.E.L.S. #21, by Tony Bedard (writer), Claude St. Aubin (penciler), Scott Hanna (inker), Rich and Tanya Horie (colorists), Travis Lanham (letterer)}

A Sand County Almanac - Aldo Leopold

A Sand County Almanac was a collection of essays Leopold was drafting when he died in 1948. His son finished editing them and published the collection a year later. This particular edition, released in 1970, also includes 8 entries from a separate collection of Leopold's essays, released in the 1950s under the title Round River.

The first 12 essays, totaling about 100 pages in this collection, are a description of different features of a farm Leopold and his family purchased in the 1930s, in a section of Wisconsin known as the Sand Counties. Because the ground is extremely sandy, and generally wasn't considered high-value for agriculture. The essays take different angles and writing approaches. February's centers around the felling of a single aged oak, Leopold describing major events in conservation or biology that took place during the decade of tree growth the saw is currently cutting through.

Meanwhile, July's starts with an early morning walk by Leopold and his dog, and all the things they encounter along the way, then switches to discussing a little patch of Silphium that had survived in the corner of a roadside graveyard until the road department removed the fence and mowed everything, and from there into discussion of relative biotic diversity of his farm versus the campus where he taught and how humans are the only species that can be aware of extinction and maybe that's what elevates us above other creatures.

That train of thought, that Man has this awareness (or maybe capacity for this awareness), and therefore a responsibility to be more thoughtful in how he interacts with the world around them, comes up more further into the book. Usually in terms of how we aren't exercising that responsibility. That the land is seen strictly as something to provide economic value for us, and anything that's value can't be quantified in dollars and cents, is easily dismissed as irrelevant. That everything about how we operate is extractive, and what's more, extractive without understanding how the parts of the system are interrelated.

So we remove all the prairie plants that helped make the rich soil we grow stuff in, then wonder why soil productivity declines such that, even with advances in technology or fertilizers, total yield isn't improved. Especially considering all the soil, and therefore farmable acreage, lost via erosion. That the fledgling conservation agencies of that time keep trying to sell farmers on programs to preserve soil, or preserve plant diversity, but they let the farmers pick and choose which to use. So the farmers only adopt the practices they think will make them money, right now (and usually demand money in exchange for adopting them.) 

I can confirm this was still a pretty regular line of approach in wildlife management a decade ago. If you want the farmers to plant some of their field in native grasses, you've got to show them how that'll help their cattle gain weight in the summer, so they make more when they sell them. Of course, they're trying to pay their bills so they don't lose their land, so I'm not really surprised. Maybe you'd like them to think a bit longer term, but that's hardly a failing exclusive to farmers.

And there are definitely passages in the second half of the book where Leopold's tone comes off condescending towards everyone who doesn't see things like him. He's on a bus in Illinois, and he makes a comment that a farmer is more focused on the fertilizer bill in his pocket that the land around him, or that most of the people aren't paying any attention to the plants they're passing, and would probably dismiss those plants as weeds if they did notice, but these prairie plants are the reason why their farms are so good and so on.

Or that it's all well and good the government designated certain lands as parks or preserves, but they need to stop encouraging people to go there by adding roads (which also serve to break up habitat.) He remarks he doesn't need to be able to actually travel to the wilderness in Alaska to appreciate it, so people shouldn't need to go to these other parks, either.

He wants people to respect nature and understand how many different factors go into it and how often removing one thing - a plant, animal, soil - can have unexpected effects, and so we need to appreciate everything beyond what it can do to fatten our wallets. I agree, more education focusing on those interconnections is good, although maybe he's underestimating how complicated organisms and biotic factors can get, and how much a particular person may have to focus on a specific area to gain any understanding of it. As someone whose work was always more in the field side than the lab side, I'm certainly with Leopold on the value of getting out there and making observations. There are limits to what you can do with that, however. Certainly in terms of what you can quantify. 

I think it helps people to understand that if they can actually go out and see it. Certainly felt like it helped me, and getting to be outdoors was its own reward. Sometimes, depending on the weather and/or number of ticks. But not everyone owns their own land like Leopold did, where they can just go wander around wherever they like, whenever they like. And not everyone can get jobs that pay them to be outdoors, observing nature or carrying out experiments on timber harvest or tree planting strategies. And frankly, a lot of the jobs of that nature that do exist, don't pay enough or run long enough to be a career.

It seems like Leopold expects everyone who can't get their own bit of nature to explore, to simply take the value of it on faith, sight unseen, rather than risk tarnishing it with their noisy, automobile-fueled vacation.

'Land is the place where corn, gullies, and mortgages grow. Country is the personality of the land, the collective harmony of its soil, life, and weather. Country knows no mortgages, no alphabetical agencies, no tobacco road; it is calmly aloof to these petty exigencies of its alleged owners. That the previous owner of my farm was a bootlegger mattered not one whit to the grouse; they sailed as proudly over the thickets as if they were guests of the king.'

Overdue Movie Reviews #13 - Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Fleeing from a botched robbery in toy store, Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) stumbled into an audition to play a private investigator in a movie. Grief-stricken that his friend got shot by some lady determined to defend the sanctity of a toy store's Christmas product, he gave a bravura performance and won the role. Now he's in Los Angeles, getting tips from a real private investigator everyone calls Gay Perry (Val Kilmer), and running into Harmony (Michelle Monaghan), a childhood friend he had a huge crush on.

The case Harry accompanies Perry on ends up with a car in a lake, a dead body in the trunk. Harmony's sister turns up dead, an apparent suicide, though Harmony is convinced otherwise, given she was the one who hired Perry for the case with the body in the trunk. A body which soon turns up in Harry's hotel bathroom.

Harry reconnects with Harmony, fucks it up, tries to to fix it by lying, pisses off Perry, loses a finger, gets it back, sort of fixes things with Harmony, loses the finger again, fixes things with Perry, and ends up shooting a lot of people.

Harry is a creature of the moment. Part of that is he thinks he's clever, although this movie is full of people who think they're constantly making the wittiest comments imaginable. Sometimes they're even right. But he really just acts, in whatever way his emotions seem to dictate that moment. This is a guy who thought trying to rob a toy store to find a particular gift for a kid was a good idea, and when it went wrong, hid in an audition without knowing that's what he was doing.

He throws Perry's gun in the lake without stopping to check whether that's a good idea or not (it isn't.) He's got a lot of bitterness about women, and unleashes a spiel about how women who fuck a lot of guys all have fucked-up pasts, saying this to Harmony, who does, in fact, have a fucked-up past. He's impatient for answers, so he's tries the Russian Roulette interrogation technique on a hired killer, without being able to do basic math.

The, 'It was like an eight percent chance. Eight percent?! Who taught you math?!' exchange was one of those bits that I found as clever as the movie surely thought it was. Point is, Harry never really thinks before he does anything. The thinking comes after, when he has to reflect on how he's messed things up again. And maybe it works out. The final shootout, stationed on and under an overpass, involving a coffin, feels like a situation where Harry is simply reacting. He didn't really plan anything, because there was no time. He just did things, and it worked out. Maybe because it was actions and not words. He didn't have time to say something stupid that could ruin everything.

So it's a pretty good role for Robert Downey Jr. He can play a glib smartass in his sleep, but he's also good at the grief-stricken moments, and these moments of mostly impotent rage. Where's he mad, but he can't really do anything except spout more shit which is likely only going to make things worse. Or he has to backpedal instantly, as when he gets angry enough at Perry to snatch his sunglasses, but picks them off the ground and returns them the moment Perry tells him to.

Monaghan plays Harmony as simultaneously more grounded than Harry, but also more prone to getting blinders on. Harry tends to judge, quickly and harshly, off first impressions of what he thinks is happening. Harmony has actually lived in L.A. for a while, so she actually knows people and what they're like. There's a weary acceptance to her, except when it comes to something personal, like her sister. She has a dry wit, more controlled than Harry's. She picks her spots. She's not grief-stricken over her sister constantly, because she's angry, and she's also trying to decide what to do with Harry. The banter is easy between them, until Harry lets the wrong impulse control his mouth.

But she's also the one most likely to charge ahead without thinking. Harmony's the one that drives the plot, because she's the one convinced her sister was murdered. Harry plays along because he wants to stay close to her, presumably in the hopes he'll get out of the Friend Zone this time. His digging, done to impress Harmony, combines with the work she's doing, to drag Perry back in, largely against his will.

Kilmer's the alternately composed and frustrated center the other two whirl around like untrained puppies on leashes. He actually knows this work, knows how things usually work, knows what things a person should and shouldn't do, as well as what people are likely to do. Like, if they put a murder victim in your bathroom, they probably also phoned in a complaint to the cops. It makes him a bit of an exposition device at times - albeit one delivering exposition with biting commentary - but also keeps the plot moving forward at points the other two would hit dead ends.

It's a funny movie at times, but the plot's overly convoluted. You got daughters, fake daughters, assumed daughters. I didn't really even bother to try and keep track of everything. It's a film more about the style than the substance. There are multiple cases, they're connected. Everybody stands around saying clever lines, or trying to, and some people get shot. Harry's a little dazed the first time he kills someone, though that might be more about the person he let die just prior. By the end, he barely seems to notice how many people he shoots. They're just a body count.

Given that Harry narrates the story, I'd worry about an unreliable narrator, but he's so bad at it - forgetting to explain who people we see in flashbacks actually are - I don't think he could manage to embellish the truth if he wanted.

What I Bought 6/10/2026

The weather's been fantastic the last two days. I'm hoping, without much cause, that it may extend out to Wednesday for our work group's picnic. Which I'm actually looking forward to, because we're a small group, and we keep it chill, and the program director doesn't make up sit through a 90 minute meeting first. Or at all, for that matter.

We're into the doldrums, comics-wise. One book last week, and it's one that is teetering with me at the moment. I thought there was nothing coming out this week, but all of the sudden the 4th issue of Babs: Black Road South popped up on the release list for this Wednesday. Though I probably won't get it until near the end of the month.

D'Orc #4, by Brett Bean (writer/artist), Jean-Francois Beaulieu (colorist), Nate Piekos (letterer) - I'm sure the Death Shield enjoys all that lava upchuck landing on its eye. 

D'Orc's in Boarsmere, once again on the run from angry people with weapons, except this time he's got no shield, no ghost chicken, and no clothes. This is when I learn he keeps his hair in a little topknot/ponytail thing. For some reason, I hadn't even considered D'Orc had hair. Silly, considering he's part dwarf, and they're pretty hairy

He ducks into a fortune teller's shop, and it's through her demonstration of her powers that we see how this came to be. The ghost chicken was offended by all these people hanging out in the local hot spring sans clothes, and annoyed the local duke, who, later revealed the springs were heated by a captive Kaldera, which looks like a buck-toothed dragon. D'Orc freed it, it rampaged, the duke died, the guards blamed D'Orc (rightfully so), and you're all caught up.

This correct recap impresses D'Orc enough to toss down another coin - no one wants to know where he's keeping them - in the hopes of learning about his past. The fortune teller lays out cards for him to pick, then tells him to roll the bones. Which feels like you're mixing two kinds of magic, but it's I guess for a gold piece you get a good show.

One of D'Orc's parents is a berserker. I can't tell if they're wearing anything across their chest that might indicate father or mother, which feels deliberate. The second card says he was born on the battlefield, and that someone is trying to build him the family 'you so desperately think you deserve.' The choice of words, again, feels deliberate.

The third card, however, is linked to the fortune teller. Because it's a picture of her husband, the dwarf D'Orc killed two issues ago (assuming the guy is dead, he fell off a cliff, hardly conclusive.) Because she's the Bone Witch who created Death Shield, and now she's got D'Orc. For what purpose, I don't know. She recites the prophecy, but I can't tell that she's concerned about averting it. And if she's known him since he was born, as she puts it, that raises some questions.

I'm wondering if the dwarf was D'Orc's dad, and the berserker was his mom, and the Bone Witch was really into watching her husband fuck other women. Because the prophecy demanded it! Definitely not because she was into it, no way!

Sunday Splash Page #431

"Full Speed Ahead," in All-New X-Factor #1, by Peter David (writer), Carmine Di Giandomenico (artist), Lee Loughridge (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer)

In 2014, Peter David returned to the "X-Factor" concept for a third time. Having previously written a government super-team of dysfunctional personalities, then a detective agency of dysfunctional personalities, this time he took the approach of a team sponsored by a corporation, Serval Industries. Staffed by dysfunctional personalities, of course.

Polaris is team leader, but swings between trying to mediate amongst the others and getting extremely aggressive at the drop of a hat. (Or a scratch from a cat.) David doesn't ever explain what's going on there, just treats it as something everyone knows about. Even Warlock's dad the Magus knows about her mental instability. I don't know if David intended to delve into it later and the book got canceled first (20 issues, not a bad run for Marvel in the last 20 years), or simply considered it sufficient to establish the fact.

Similarly, he references Polaris attacking Quicksilver at some point prior to the book starting without ever explaining that. Despite this, Pietro joins, because if he didn't join teams of people who tried to kill him he'd have to be a hermit. He's there as a mole for Havok (currently leading the Uncanny Avengers), something Gambit, who decides this is a better gig than teaching at Wolverine's school, immediately picks up on.

Gambit's also apparently King of de T'ieves Guild, and one of his guys rips off Serval, which he pulled off by shackling Danger, Xavier's old sentient Danger Room. Once freed, but with her memories in disarray, Danger sticks around. Serval tries to buy out an up-and-coming company that turns out to be run by Magus, posing as a human, and working with Warlock. So the team visits Doug Ramsey, who is planning to commit suicide to avert dreams he has of becoming an awful villain in the future.

Why does Carmine Di Giandomenico (who draws all but two issues of the series) have Doug waking from these dreams with his eyes and mouth glowing? Why is Doug having these dreams in the first place? Why does he have a goatee in the dreams, wearing some mechanical suit with Doc Ock tentacles a bubble helmet that makes him look more like Trevor Fitzroy? Who knows, it's never explained! But he decides to join, with no indication he thinks this will avert the future, seemingly just because. Warlock decides he'd rather hang with his old buddy (and pine after Danger) than work with his dad, so he joins. Eventually the team emancipates a young girl with mutant powers from her wealthy, mutant-hating father. Without really asking her before doing it, but since her dad wants nothing to do with her (being a mutant) and her biological parents appear to die, she sticks around.

It's a haphazard roster of people who weren't happy where they were, and figured they might as well try this. Quicksilver seems to be there out of some desire to be a good brother to Polaris - David devotes a fair amount of pages to Pietro's moral conundrums and past messes - while Danger doesn't even seem to have a reason. She questions why they're a team, why they're doing the things they do. Then why are you there?! Watsonian, because being around people seemed to help her pull herself back together. Doylist, because David needed a character to be inappropriately blunt and it couldn't always be Pietro.

The antagonists are one-offs, dealt with over 1-2 issue stories. An AIM scientist drawing mutant power into himself to become (briefly) a mutant. A guy calling himself Memento Mori, who has a whole evil organization with loads of shell businesses and lots of power, who actually turns out to be sort of an offshoot of a spell gone wrong. An Egyptian death-goddess reborn in a child's body. Those all basically vanish at the end of their respective stories (the scientist ends up locked in Serval's basement, where the CEO makes a job offer, but we don't see him again.) Even Magus, or the technomancer thief that captured Danger, don't show up again.

If there's a unifying theme, it's each is drawing on someone else's life or strength for their goals. The technomancer couldn't get into Serval's systems alone, so he imprisoned Danger, to I guess draw on her computing power and adaptability. Hoffman is stealing power from mutants to make himself a (big, glowy, shouty) god. Memento Mori's a fringe case, because he doesn't know the truth about how he got the powers he has. His wife had, at the time, feared her own powers and pushed them off on him.

Granted, the Magus doesn't really fit. He willingly changed his approach, to keep the Technarch from extinction. He even employs humans at his company, embracing Warlock's ideas. When Warlock decides to leave, Magus lets him go. (It is really annoying Marvel has two different pairs of characters named Magus and Warlock.)

My guess is, the antagonists were to give the team something to deal with in standard superheroic style, while things were moving in the background with the CEO. Except the book ran out of time. Maybe if they hadn't wasted 3 issues on AXIS tie-ins. Shouldn't have taken half that. Longshot's powers shouldn't even work if he's now constantly using them for selfish ends because he got "inverted" or whatever it was called. Anyway, David reveals at the very end the CEO is connected to Miguel O'Hara/Spider-Man 2099 (also running around in the present at the time, also in a book written by David.)

As mentioned, Carmine Di Giandomenico is artist for all but two of the issues. I appreciate the level of detail in the surroundings, the depictions of Danger and Warlock's malleable forms. Individual cables or external plates are visible, and they shift in different ways as well. Danger largely sticks to turning limbs into cannons, while Warlock opts for more variety, turning into high-tech motorcycles or armor for Doug. One all-business and individualistic, the other whimsical and more cooperative.

I don't feel like there's great flow from panel-to-panel during fights, but the action within each panel is usually well-rendered. Di Giandomenico shows off Gambit's agility with a variety of flips and dodges, while Quicksilver's speed is sometimes depicted by having the movement handled off-panel (he beats Havok in a game of pool in the span of two panels, and we don't see a single shot) or with the light from the uniforms leaving trails in his wake. Quite why the costumes have glow-up parts on the ribs and back of the hands, I don't know.

Not a huge fan of the costumes, really. The color scheme is OK - yellow and grey is an unusual choice, at least - but I don't like the odd lenses Polaris, Gambit and later Cypher wear over their eyes. I guess the right angle lines are meant to simulate a business suit or something, or maybe a vest with the flap you can leave open like some British admiral, but it's kind of an odd choice for a team uniform.

I don't know if David ever played out the things he hinted at after this book ended. I'm guessing not, since it was about some amorphous future for Marvel, and I doubt Peter David had the clout at the time to set the tone for something like that at Marvel. That gets saved for someone's Big Summer Event Comic. Future Tensed. Forced Future. Something short and punchy like that. Plus, Hickman's Secret Wars was lurking in the wings to (briefly) upend the apple cart. 

Saturday Splash Page #233

"New Coke X-51," in X-51 #1, by Mike Higgins and Karl Bollers (writers), Joe Bennett (penciler), Slick (inker), Mark McNabb (colorists), Benchmark (letterer)

One of my back issue projects last year was the brief "Marvel Tech" line, consisting of a grand total of three series, all kick-started by events in various X-Annuals in '99, none surviving past a year. The Simonson/Ferry Warlock we'll see before the end of summer, and the Casey/Manco Deathlok next year. Today, it's Machine Man/Aaron Stack's first book since that mid-80s mini-series set in 2020. Michael Higgins and Karl Bollers wrote this book together for 4 issues, and then it's just Bollers. Bennett pencils all 12 issues, with Bob Wiacek as inker in most of the later issues.

So, Machine Man helped the X-Men keep the Red Skull from taking control of a Helicarrier. Yeah, I dunno. Machine Man appeared to die in the process of keeping the Helicarrier afloat to be evacuated. Nothing left but a head, he uploaded his consciousness into a blank LMD and, thinking itself "Special Agent Jack Kubrick", it set out to find what was left of his body. The head eventually gets attached to the LMD, and you get what you see up there.

Good news, Machine Man's body is now made of nanites, so he can rebuild and improve himself. Bad news, that's because at some point - I assume during Operation Zero Tolerance - he got captured by Master Mold, and Bastion's consciousness was implanted in his brain. So someone who gave his life working with mutants to save lives, is now overcome by the desire to kill mutants whenever he sees them.

That's the push-and-pull of the first 8 issues. X-51 sees Sebastian Shaw (hoping to prevent there being a Sentinel more powerful than the ones he sells) standing next to Gyrich (still unaware Shaw is a mutant)? He tries to kill him. (Gyrich, naturally, doesn't put it together. I like to think, when Krakoa happened and Shaw became an open mutant, Gyrich punched himself in the dick for being an idiot.) X-51 goes to the Avengers for help, and is greeted by Justice and Firestar? He tries to kill them. Shaw's Sentinels attack him and the X-Men try to help? He attacks them.

It's a constant, and frankly tedious, pattern. Especially since X-51 is now apparently so strong none of them can stand against him. The X-Men get trounced. Even when Vision shows up to help his teammates, X-51 is too much for him. A Brotherhood of Evil Mutants get rolled. The only things that slow him down are things related to him. Namely the apparent precursor to the X-Series, a big computer brain called X.E.R.O. It's mostly angry it was abandoned and forgotten for decades, until Gyrich woke it up to kill X-51. It failed, then took over AIM, easily overwhelming MODOK (off-panel), in an attempt to finish the job. I mean, I seem to recall Bastion lost to just Iceman, so I don't see why X-51 is suddenly such an unstoppable dude.

There's an issue inside Aaron's mind, a final battle between Aaron and what his father, Abel, taught him, and the piece of Bastion inside him. Aaron wins by erasing everything from his past (except, somehow, his memories of Abel.) So he's evolved beyond the hatred, but at the cost of all the memories of his friends and his past life. Earthly attachments discarded?

Except then we get two issues of Aaron trying to keep a young biker from destroying himself in a quest to avenge his buddies, who were killed by a rival gang. The rival gang get transformed into some weird techno-organic things that keep growing as they merge with other machines including, eventually Aaron. (Bennett makes them look appropriately awkward and clunky for how uncontrolled the process is, but otherwise, the designs are nothing to write home about.) Now combined, the lot fall through the Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but only Aaron emerges, with stars in his face.

The 12th and final issue is more visual novel than comic. One big image per page with a column of text on the outer edge. Most of that is wasted on a recap of Aaron's backstory - not like they hadn't done that already - and then he fights XERO with the aid of his buddy's biker gang (now wearing hideous mech suits like refugees from some '80s toy line cartoon) to avert a future apocalypse brought about by machine intelligence. Then he goes back through the Monolith to join the Celestials, the final page implying he'll become a Celestial one day. Less "God in the machine," and more "God is a machine." Either way, my eyes about rolled out of my head.

In line with the notion of Aaron Stack evolving, Bennett shifts his look over time. Ditches those weird straps in issue 6, when a killer Shaw hires tears them off and lashes Aaron with them. After deleting (most of) his memories, Aaron goes back to the look where the purple extends up the side of his head and over the top like a skullcap. In general, the design simplifies as the series progresses. Fewer visible gears and weird external struts, maybe Bennett trying to do Kirby-style. Then the "star field" look on his face at the very end.

OK, fine, the look changes as he goes through trials. I'm less sure about all the personality and mentality shifts. A demon in his mind, urging him to hate and destroy mutants for being different? Baser instincts he has to rise above. Aaron tries to hide (in the satellite X.E.R.O. initially used against him), running from the problem rather than facing it. When a friend from his old supporting cast is endangered, he reemerges. That lets Shaw's Sentinels (and the X-Men) find him. So he abandons his past, presumably to move beyond such connections that could be used against him.

Except not his memories of his father? And then he helps some random biker, trying to keep the guy from wasting his life on vengeance. Isn't he forming new connections that would make him a target all over again? Won't him flying around in broad daylight fighting techno-organic bikers get him targeted by Sentinels again? I guess he ascends before it matters, but it doesn't demonstrate much of a shift in his thinking.

Thankfully, NextWave established the Celestials found Aaron to be a complete loser and sent his ass back to Earth. Although I guess someone retconned that NextWave Aaron isn't the original Machine Man, but after all the destroying, rebuilding, memory wiping that goes on here, what would even qualify as the original at this point?