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?

What I Bought 6/5/2026

The week is over. Finally. Blessedly. I've been ready for it to be over since at least Tuesday. Next week, I get to return to just caring about my usual responsibilities, and Bill can spend two days trying to get through all his e-mails. I picked this last book up while on the road last week.

It's Jeff! Brand New Week #1, by Kelly Thompson (writer), Gurihiru (artists/color artists), Goodman Yamada, Jim Campbell (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - I actually ended up with the Todd Nauck variant. He gives Jeff fingers and toes instead of flippers that can fold or bend in such a way as to form fingers. It's very disturbing.

The material that's actually new to me is a single story where Jeff visits a boardwalk amusement park and uses some magic rock that gives him a bunch of tentacles so he can earn enough tickets at whack-a-mole to win a gigantic lollipop. But once he wins, he finds a fuzzy pink octopus stuck to the lolly, and he can't get it to go away. Gwenpool seems to recognize it, or at least calls it "Ken", but otherwise takes no action.

Jeff and Ken roam around, get captured and thrown in a glass case by someone, all we ever see are their shoes and pants legs. But Ken, who had been grabbing stuff earlier, turns out to be a lot like Captain Marvel's cat, in that it can apparently store a bunch of stuff inside itself. Including a blowtorch, which Jeff uses to help them escape. Jeff notes Ken is starting to dry out being away from the water so long, but Ken refuses to leave his new pal, so Jeff steals a bunch of stuff from various stands to construct a mobile fish tank for Ken to ride in.

The rest of the pages are devoted to Ken's introductions to Elsa Bloodstone and Deadpool, but where I expected these to be humorous new encounters by Thompson and Gurihiru, they're actually reprints of earlier stories. The Bloodstone meeting is a single page from Marvel Comics #1000, and the Deadpool meeting is from the Deadpool series Thompson wrote and Chris Bachalo (briefly) drew. So those were kind of duds.

The art on the story with Ken switches over from Gurihiru to Yamada about the time Jeff finds that fleeing into the Ferris wheel didn't get him away from Ken. Yamada's art is very expressive, in a similar simplified vein to Gurihiru, though I notice Ken is less fuzzy and the red spots far more prominent in his version than theirs. Also, his Jeff is a lot chunkier. Looks about like he did after he ate that entire wheel of cheese in the previous one of these It's Jeff! books. Yeah, it's hell when the metabolism slows down, and you can't just eat whatever you want without repercussions. . .

The Hunter's Tale

A medieval kingdom is under siege by seemingly every force of darkness in the world. Which is probably very relaxing for the rest of the world. But it's all hands on deck for the Hunter's Guild to try and deal with the problem, and that includes Victor Vran, a Hunter with a little demon heritage in him, about which he is naturally broody and dour. You think he'd be happy he could create a bubble around him that slows his opponents, or shoots beams of pure sunlight from his hand, but nooooooooooo, not our boy.

In terms of gameplay, Victor Vran is much like the Diablo games. That isometric perspective as you run through halls and streets and sewers. Hordes of enemies swarm you, and you kill them with weapons or special attacks. The weapons also have various attacks, but there's a recharge time between uses. What seems like an excruciatingly long recharge time in some cases. There's also a recharge time on support items, like health potions, which is a really stupid game mechanic. If Victor has 50 health potions, and he needs one, why would he not use it, just because he used one not long ago? You can't take them with you when you die! (Although maybe you could if you died and were reborn as a vampire, but that's not what happens in the game.)

There are a variety of weapons, ranged and melee, and seemingly endless varieties of each one, all with different stats or special perks. This one has better armor piercing, or a higher chance of critical hit. This one causes frost damage with a crit, or gives you health back for a kill, or boosts your Overkill meter (which is the yellow bar, that lets Victor use his Demon powers.) You can switch between weapons and Demon powers and these little Tarot cards you pick up, that provide different boosts, when you return to the castle. Which usually happens whenever you complete a specific mission, but if things are going badly, you can always just call it a day and go back when you want.

I tended to stick with the scythe and the shotgun. I started with the rapier, because I think one-handed swords are cool, but the scythe had a certain stylistic appeal. I also tried the lightning gun for the ranged weapon, but just didn't like how it was working (or not, as the case may be.) Back to the boomstick it was! If it's good enough for Ash Williams, it's good enough for Victor Vran. 

There are a lot of levels in and around (and under) the city. Caves, sewers, marketplaces, farms, even a circus. Oh, and tombs. Lots of tombs, actually, which I guess isn't too surprising, but given the size and number of cemeteries, it feels like one of the Old West towns where the undertaker is the only one with any business. Only some of these levels have to be visited for plot purposes, but when you access the map from the castle, you can pick basically whichever level you want to explore. A few do have level restrictions, where they won't open until you reach Level 10 or whatever (I think you max out at 30.)

There are usually hidden chests and a handful of challenges to try and complete. Kill x number of spiders in a certain amount of time. Kill this many enemies without potions or shrines in a certain amount of time. There are also certain runes or something like that you can apply to Victor which make things harder, and are required for certain challenges. I didn't mess with that. I wasn't here to try and set some world record, I'm just trying to beat the game and save the city.

Plus, once I got into the later levels, I started dying a lot. Maybe because I wasn't switching to new, better weapons or being smarter about using Demon powers, I don't know. I just kept using the same scythe and shotgun for like 15 levels, and most of the time I didn't even think about the Demon powers. Honestly, the powers didn't seem that great. The special attacks usually require you to stand in one place, and simply weren't killing fast enough for that to seem like a good tradeoff, given the amount of damage I was taking. Again, maybe I just wasn't using them properly. There was some sort of Transmogrification machine in the castle to combine items to upgrade your stuff, but I couldn't figure it out enough to bother.

Perhaps recognizing Victor's near-whispered internal monologues would get depressing to listen to, God (or the game designers) abruptly add another voice inside his head. A cheerful, mocking one, that encourages Victor to get a better hat, or taunts him when one of his oldest friends and allies has become a vampire (that Victor must kill.)

It's the same voice actor as the Narrator in The Stanley Parable, which adds a whimsical touch. Really brightens up the endless slaughtering of the hordes of the night. One level is set around pumpkin farms, where you, of course, have the option of destroying the pumpkins. Which I did. Those pumpkins might have had gold or health potions stored inside, just like the crates, barrels, bookcases, desks, chairs, wagons and tombstones did.

Later on, we're in another subterranean level, and the voice tells Victor, if he find all the secret chests, they'll make him some of their special, scrumptious pumpkin pie. Intrigued as to how a disembodied voice is going to make a pie, I made sure to find every last hidden chest, the voice at one point remarking I must really want that pie.

When I found the last chest, it asked if I was ready to have some of that pie - before telling me, too bad, there's not going to be any pie. Someone destroyed all the pumpkins. It was a cheap gag, but I got a good laugh out of it.

What I Bought 6/3/2026 - Part 2

My coworkers are having a good laugh at my misery as Emergency Unit Chief (or "yuc" as my mom put it.) To be fair, I'm also laughing. If I didn't, I'd be miserable. So I vowed to lead with apathy and cruelty, and feigned disappointment when I got off a lengthy phone conversation and found everybody had left for lunch.

Although when one of my coworkers said it was a mutiny, I pointed out a mutiny is supposed to involve them throwing me out and taking command for themselves. What they did was just desertion.

Marc Spector: Moon Knight #5, by Jed MacKay (writer), Devmalya Pramanik (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - The House has decided it will be the one bringing it down tonight.

Marc charges into the people-eating house with his dragon-sword. The house creates all kinds of greenish, half-formed ghosts or constructs or something. None of which have souls, to the sword's displeasure. All of which are capable of hurting Marc, to Marc's displeasure. Ginnaar swears if Marc gets him to the house's heart, it will drink up its soul, so Marc keeps going. And he finds the heart.

It's Achilles Fairchild, the Asgardian farmboy turned drug lord. Or, it's his body, being controlled by the house. Which explains the door he vanished through in the previous volume. It, and it says its name in The Mansion Ravenous, heard the Midnight Mission's death cries and came looking for the one responsible. Because they're of the same kind, but the Mission is just a child, and the Mansion's a full-grown adult.

Still, the monologuing lets Marc stab it in the heart. To no avail. Ginnaar decides the Mansion would be a better boss, because it can give it back its old form within those walls. It's a lovely image. The dragon, but its form is only partially real. So there are details - the teeth, the claws, some of the scales, but other parts are a swirl of this dull orange that just imposes itself on the page. Marc becomes this tiny white outline in the corner.

So, yeah, Marc's royally fucked, but they let him escape. Because he'll have to come back. With help. That they can also devour. He goes to Clea (since Strange is stuck in Asgard), and she's going to assemble a Midnight Sons, which Marc doesn't remember being a part of. I don't blame him, if Clea's referring to Damnation. I got hold of the complete collection last year. What a pile of shit. The Ewing-written stuff was OK, but the Donny Cates-written stuff was as bad as I'd expect. He wrote Moon Knight (in his "Mr. Knight" persona) as basically Deadpool. I'd blot that experience from my memory, too.

Fantastic Four #12, by Ryan North (writer), Pat Boutin (penciler), Serge LaPointe (inker), Edgar Delgado (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Well, it's happened. Reed's finally acknowledged what an egotistical prick he is and declared himself Emperor.

The aliens that attacked while the FF were in space a few issues ago decide to take a different approach and conquer the planet in the past. The team tries traveling to the point of the change, but only Reed and Johnny are sent back before the others get erased. So it's the two of them, posing as Gauls, helping some Roman legions fight an alien spaceship.

Also, because the attack was sudden, everybody was in bed when the warning came. Which is how we learn Reed Richards wears pajamas that say "Mr. Fantastic" on them. I'm sure this comes as a great shock to all of you, Reed being such a modest guy. 

The aliens also have a superweapon charging that could wipe out all life on the planet if they decide that's the best remaining option. Reed and Johnny must beat the aliens, but not badly enough they opt to go scorched Earth. At least until figuring out a way to neutralize the weapon. Against an alien force that all the non-Fantastic Four heroes in New York apparently couldn't drive back.

But they manage all this by, OK, you've maybe seen articles about those weird metal dodecahedrons that are dated back to Roman history, and nobody's sure what they were for? Reed invented them, because a whole bunch of them intercepting the superweapon refracts its energy into some less harmful wavelength. I have no idea which wavelength. Maybe all the legionnaires got really tan that day. Or got skin cancer. Presumably they didn't become Hulks, or the U-Foes.

To minimize effects on the timeline, Johnny suggests the Romans not tell anybody how they needed 'two weirdos' to save them from strange invaders, because it would make the Empire look bad, and the general vows to crucify any of his men who talk about it. Which, and I agree with Johnny here, was not an idle threat. Johnny is, apparently, less successful getting them to melt down all the "prismatic refractors", but to be fair, nobody talked about them. Except now Sue has to explain to the Archaeological Society that the answer to yet another long-standing mystery is, "The FF did some shit while time traveling."

I kind of groaned when Reed showed the Legion what he needed them to build, because I could see the punchline, but Sue's exasperation made it work. Even if it does sort of fall under the same notion as aliens building the pyramids. Although aliens totally, definitely exist in the Marvel Universe, and have done a lot more mucking around on Earth than building pyramids, so maybe that's not a big deal.  

Black Moon Rising (1986)

Quint (Tommy Lee Jones) steals a cassette tape from a company the feds are about to prosecute for something. Tax-related, probably. It's not a quiet theft, so he hides the tape in an experimental, hydrogen-fueled car that's being hauled to L.A. Except the car gets hijacked by a top-notch car thief (Linda Hamilton), working for a sleazebag (Robert Vaughn) who doesn't respect her skills.

When the back of the DVD case described a futuristic car, I thought this was going to be sort of a cyber-noir thing. Low-budget Blade Runner or something. In my defense, the case made it look like the car was flying. It's actually just smashing through a window. From several stories up, and crashes through the window of a different building, also several stories up. Quint jumped so Dominic Toretto could fly.

Anyway, Black Moon Rising is a heist flick, with several moving parts only vaguely aware of each other. You've got Hamilton, growing dissatisfied with Vaughn's presumption that she owes him and looking for an exit. You've got the cars designers, who rebuff Quint's initial offer to team-up and try breaking in themselves. It ends in vehicular manslaughter and a reassessment of options. Neither of those parties are aware of the other, so Hamilton ends up being the ace in the hole that doesn't even know that's she is.

There's also a rival or competitor of Quint's, played by Lee Ving, who was security for the company Quint robbed and wants the tape back. He pops up maybe every 25-30 minutes to cause trouble for Quint. Mostly in the form of beatings or attempted murder. He's basically an element you're meant to worry about when things are going well. Is Marvin going to show up right now, when things are going well?

This is young Tommy Lee Jones, although I'm not sure he ever looked young, exactly. But that means he's not playing a crochety old man, but a, I hesitate to use "dashing", but charming? Yeah, charming thief. He has an easy smile, and Hamilton is playing Nina as someone frustrated by the lack of respect by her boss (Vaughn plays Ryland as someone who is probably charming, but has gotten so cocky the charm curdled into condescension), so you can see it as stress relief.

Hamilton's playing Nina as intelligent, skilled and professional. She's the one who actually steals the experimental car and out-drives Jones. She figures out the engine extracts hydrogen from water when the mechanics can't. One thing the movie doesn't explicitly state that I think is implied is that Ryland is getting complaints from his buyers about the cars they're receiving. The complaint focuses around damage to the cars, but I think there's an issue that they aren't getting any cars they couldn't get somewhere else. Nina steals a car that's literally one of a kind, and Ryland is annoyed because he can't see any value in it.

That wasn't really the point I was initially driving at. The point was, Nina doesn't abandon those traits once she tumbles into bed with Quint. As soon as she thinks he's asleep, she goes through his wallet, finding out how many i.d.s he has. She remembers he was at the bar where she stole the car, and she knows someone chased her, and Ryland told her someone found their hidden garage, so she's suspicious.

What I Bought 6/3/2026 - Part 1

While in a meeting for something at work I have no interest being part of, we were told they were going to introduce some AI stuff. This after they tested 10 scenarios, and found one 1 where AI actually helped. I asked if we were required to use it, and they said no, if we didn't want to sign the agreement, we wouldn't be able to. Easy enough call for me. Toss that agreement in the trash.

Told my dad this, he suggested I buy in from the start, so I'd be familiar with AI, rather than having to learn it in a rush if they make it mandatory at some point. I have to wonder if he understands me at all. When have I ever shown an inclination to be early adopter of the flashy new bullshit tech thing? Never. Look at me, running a blog on fucking Blogger in the year 2026. I don't need AI to do my work, I wouldn't trust its results, so why use it? To kiss somebody's ass?

The Deadman #1, by W. Maxwell Prince (writer), Martin Morazzo (artist), Chris O'Halloran (colorist), Good Old Neon (letterer) - So is it that Deadman is protecting all those souls by containing them, or that he keeps a little piece of every person he possess or touches?

Deadman's working off his karma or whatever for Rama Kushna by acting as a, otherwordly doorman? Docent of the Afterlife? He's hanging out in a hospice, greeting people as they die or, in one case, keeping a person from dying too soon by, I don't know. One of the nurses passed through him, and he caught a glimpse of a memory of her making rice pudding (with saffron) with her long deceased grandma, and later he held up some "floral-energy chimera" of saffron and a girl's soul went back in her body and her cancer went into remission.

Then Deadman takes the bus home, spies on his widow who lives in a suburb where lots of lost souls turn up, until he has to go greet some biker about to turn into street pizza because of a deer. Except a four-armed, winged demon that seems maybe Hinduism-related given the helmet/crown thing eats part of the soul. Deadman dispatches it - by tearing off its wings after a smaller version of himself crawls out of his mouth and speaks in a different font - but he finds this unacceptable.

So Rama Kushna, who appears as a child of sorts, tells him this is a new job, and he gets a different costume. It's like when David Aja ditched the high collar and plunging neckline on Iron Fist and replaced it with more of a green turtleneck. Except it's red, and Morazzo doesn't give Deadman any sort of mask. I don't dig the look, frankly. It's a little dull for a guy who was a showoff when he was alive.

As first issues go, it's, intriguing, I guess. I don't know that I love it, but I can't say Prince, Morazzo, O'Halloran and Neon didn't do their best to give me my money's worth. It's funny in places, or trying, anyway. Between the 4th wall breaking as Deadman explains stuff, and the spoof of the 4-panel character summary from All-Star Superman. But I feel as though there's going to be a lot of metaphysical or religious stuff that'll fly right past me. Like the thing with the flower, or Deadman with a little Deadman crawling out his mouth (that was really damn weird.) Am I on the right wavelength for this book?

The colors are kind of subdued tones, moreso for the living, but even the spirits don't exactly burst off the page. Morazzo draws Deadman as more gangly than the brief glimpses we get of Boston Brand. Makes him a bit more skeletal, maybe playing up the "dead" aspect over the "man."

Batgirl #20, by Tate Brombal (writer), Stephen Segovia (penciler), Jason Paz (inker), Rain Beredo (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - The chalk outline implies Batgirl has a lamprey mouth. Disturbing, if true.

Someone left a child's body in a warehouse with a note to Batgirl. The ink is from a fungus, the initials of the scientific name are "C.C.", so it's for Cass. And the corpse is in the dress she wore when she killed that one guy for her dad. Which starts triggering memories of a flower swinging back and forth on a chain. Like the flowers they find around the body. Forget-me-nots.

At which point Cass has a seizure and starts remembering some time where her dad had her spar with Bronze Tiger, and things got out of control. Or rather, the Tiger got out of control, to the point Cain tased him to save Cass. Which does not match my recollection of how David Cain - the man who shot his daughter when her guard was down - trained her, but OK. I mean, he apparently let her eat multiple bowls of ice cream, so he must be a good guy!

I felt like Segovia was drawing Bronze Tiger as too much of a tiger-man, in terms of the mask he wore looking more like his actual head, and the huge, clawed hands. But maybe the gloves disguise claws on brass knuckles wrapped around his fingers. Except the gloves have five digits and there's only three claws, so that doesn't make sense. Maybe that's how he was pre-Suicide Squad, but I don't think so.

Tenji tries calling his dad for help, and he just so happens to be in Gotham. As soon as Tenji mentions "Forget-me-nots", Bronze Tiger starts having a seizure, too. Meanwhile, the cops show up - the Bat-family is apparently persona non grata with Gotham cops these days, because Vandal Savage is police commissioner, which is, OK, sure, let's take a Silver Age plot and treat it seriously, the immortal caveman crook is police commissioner, whatever - and Cass is still in her own head, talking to some guy swinging the flower on a chain and with more of them covering his face. Which would be kind of stupid-looking, but I'll give Segovia credit for making the guy's almost-rictus grin terrifying enough to make it work.

There's also a panel where Cass wakes up to Batman standing over her, and another in the dream/memory where it's David Cain. Their postures and our perspective are similar, but she reads entirely different things from their bodies, which was a nice touch. And I guess the things she reads are meant to be contemporary with the time of the memory, because she thinks of Cain as "father", and I'm not sure she's applied that title to him for a long time. But if she's accepting Shiva's her mother, then it wouldn't make sense to deny Cain the same, considering he was actually part of her life for a long-ass time. 

Sunday Splash Page #430

"A Fractured Mirror," in All-New Wolverine #1, by Tom Taylor (writer), David Lopez (penciler/inker), David Navarrot (inker), Nathan Fairbairn (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer)

Around 2016, Marvel killed Wolverine. Marvel, being Marvel, didn't let the concept lay fallow. They pumped out more Wolverine books than ever. Wolverines, about a bunch of characters that weren't that particular Logan, but liked to carve things up with claws, so close enough. Old Man Logan, because some dumbass thought we needed more of Mark Millar's bullshit in the Marvel Universe. And All-New Wolverine, which was about Laura Kinney trying to take on the legacy of her genetic donor. I hesitate to apply the label of "father" to Logan, given how bad he was at it.

Tom Taylor wrote the title, which ran for 35 issues, plus an Annual. It had a host of artists, because of course it did. Pretty much a different primary penciler for each arc. David Lopez on the first six issues, Marcio Takara and Ig Guara splitting the next six, Nik Virella and Djibril-Morissette-Phan on the third story, Leonard Kirk on the fourth arc, Juann Cabal on the fifth, and mostly Ramon Rosanas in the sixth arc, some "Old Woman Laura" thing I didn't keep, as should be self-explanatory given my comments in the previous paragraph.

Taylor's focus is on Laura trying to branch out and build a life, with friends and loved ones, while also moving beyond her past as a weapon. He starts by establishing Alchemax - this was when Alchemax was a thing in the present, rather than just in 2099 - cloned Laura. The clones were implanted with nanites to block their healing factors and lack claws - or so it seems - but the few survivors are trying to take out the ones responsible before they die. Of the four, only one appears to survive, the youngest, named Gabby (later Honey Badger or Scout.)

Gabby's the one constant presence throughout the run, despite Laura often trying to handle things alone to protect her new kid sister. Taylor writes Gabby as very quick to get excited about things and equally quick to judge. She's usually got some funny or clever remark ready, but a lot of Taylor's writing seems to revolve around that kind of quippy dialogue. It probably works here because Laura is mostly subdued. She's the quiet core all the more bubbly or outgoing characters orbit.

Besides Gabby, Maria Hill and Nick Fury (the one they put in the Marvel Universe that looks like Sam Jackson, 'cause Whitebread Nick Fury was/is busy being a Watcher) show up a few times, usually with something they want Laura's help with. Critically, Taylor makes these tasks Laura trying to rescue or help people, rather than kill. In the second arc, they need her to look for several missing SHIELD agents. In the fourth arc, it's a dying alien child who said Laura's name before keeling over of some engineered plague. People wanted her to kill, to take advantage of how much punishment the healing factor would let her take, but now she's using it to save lives.

To that end, Taylor uses the third arc to get rid of the "trigger scent" that sent Laura into berserker furies. As far as I know, nobody's undone that yet. Fittingly, that arc is the one that seems to delve most into previous Laura Kinney stories, as she's being hunted by Kimura, the woman who trained and/or tormented her in the Facility, and Gambit shows up for support, after being a big part of Laura's first ongoing series.

There's also the fifth arc, where a group of people who lost loved ones to various Wolverine-themed characters formed a support group to hunt down and kill them with bullets made of broken shards of the Muramasa Blade. Laura has to convince them she understands what they lost, because she lost part of herself being made into a killer, so she wants to help them by finding and punishing the ones who did that. Which is swell, but doesn't really address the fact she saved Sabretooth, Lady Deathstrike or Daken, who don't have the excuse they were kids when they were slaughtering people, nor have they demonstrated much regret.

But regret never stopped Logan from killing people. Why should the knockoffs be any different?

At times, though, the book feels like Wolverine Team-Up, as every arc has some guest star. Dr. Strange and the Wasp both appear in "Four Sisters", as well as the time-traveling teen Angel, who at least has the excuse of being Laura's boyfriend. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl shows up in the story Marcio Takara drew, which is a fun little team-up about rescuing a squirrel that Laura's actions endangered, and then Old Man Logan and HYDRA-Cap show up in the obligatory Civil War II tie-in. You've got Gambit and Teen Jean Grey in the third arc, plus Tyger Tyger, Maria Hill and Nick Fury, then Laura travels to space with the Guardians of the Galaxy to find the source of the sick alien kid.

It's old hat for the new kid to meet up with established characters and get their stamp of approval. In the '90s, Spider-Man was a lock for a guest appearance by issue #3 in every new Marvel book. But it feels like Taylor spams that particular button. I guess the point is to use people who knew Logan to contrast Laura to her predecessor, but if the idea is her reinventing herself to be someone who protects, then maybe the focus could have been on non-super powered characters that were being saved by her?

I know, that's silly. All supporting cast members must be supers themselves now.

As far as the artists go, I'm always partial to Lopez's art. He's got that clean linework with expressive body language and faces I enjoy. It works with Taylor's tendency to do 3-panel sequences of "action-silent panel-reaction." Laura tells Angel not to hug her until her ribs heal. He pats her head instead. She asks if he did that, he freezes, then acknowledges the obvious. Or Taskmaster catches Laura's kick, talks shit, she extends the claw in her foot through his hand, he screams in pain.

Takara's work is a lot rougher, the characters more blocky, but the art captures Squirrel Girl's cheerful and earnest personality, as well as Gabby's excitement and Laura's resignation that she needs to make things right. Kirk, I think is like Rick Leonardi: He needs a strong inker or his figures get a little like a wax figure left in the sun. Things kind of stretch and elongate abnormally. There are four different inkers in that story, including Kirk himself, and sometimes the details start to slip, but mostly it works. The Guardians of the Galaxy look appropriately alien, if there's slippage, it's when Laura gets emaciated because her healing factor is overworked by the alien plague. Deadpool and Gabby hit it off and are all smiles with each other.

Cabal's work is a little stiff in the fights, but he's good with emotion and he's the only artist I've seen that leans even a little into the fact part of Laura's DNA comes from a stocky, burly man. Laura's traditionally drawn as sort of a waif. Partially (OK, mostly) because it's usually guys drawing the comics for guys and they want the girls to look the traditional sort of cute or hot. But also somewhat so she looks like this unsuspecting girl, who turns into a tornado of murder. It's not as though Cabal gives Laura body hair, or a square head, or hair swooped into little wings, but he does give her more musculature, especially in the shoulders and back, than I can recall most artists doing.

Logan came back eventually, somehow. Laura went back to being X-23. Then she was Wolverine again, at the same time as Logan. Now she's back to X-23, but still dressing like Wolverine? I don't think they've ever given her a brown-and-orange costume like Logan had. It's only ever the yellow-and-blue, or sometimes black-and-red when she's in X-Force mode. I'm not sure what that means, if anything. The artists want to use colors that are more sharply distinct? 

Saturday Splash Page #232

"Batter Up," in Yakuza Fiance ch.24, vol. 6, by Asuka Konishi

As far as I know, Yakuza Fiance isn't finished, but it's been over 18 months since volume 8 was released in the U.S., and I haven't seen a listing for volume 9 in months. So, rather than wait indefinitely. . .

Somei Yoshino is a high school student and granddaughter of Somei Renji, a major figure in the yakuza that dominate the Kansai region of Japan. Renji announces he's looking into Yoshino possibly marrying the grand-nephew of his old friend Miyama Gaku, a major figure in the largest yakuza org in eastern Japan. It's decided Yoshino will live at the Miyama house for a year and get to know this Kirishima.

What she gets to know is there's something off about him. He's a sadist, a masochist, hiding all that behind a polite facade until he gets bored and tells Yoshino she's too normal and boring too interest him and should just go into sex work. Or run home and report to her grandfather what he said so there'll be a turf war and Kirishima might get killed. Yoshino refuses to let herself lose to this guy, but in revealing her inner mettle, shows him a side of herself - read: violent - he finds incredibly appealing. Now he wants to marry her, while she finds him alternately infuriating and terrifying.

Yakuza Fiance is a weird reading experience, because I really like a lot of it. I like Yoshino, who is mostly very polite and even a little socially awkward, but has an explosive temper in the right circumstances. Plus, her hair sometimes covers one eye and I'm a sucker for that a lady with look. I like her childhood friend Shouma, who broods a lot, but has good banter with Yoshino and is generally a sarcastic smartass. Renji's goofball exterior is more of an act than Yoshino's, but it's still funny. Yoshino's friend Tsubaki is the kind of person who just loves drama, and will try to create it if it doesn't happen organically, but she legitimately cares for Yoshino and tries to help her.

There are some funny parts, and a fair amount of hand-to-hand fighting that Konishi depicts very cleanly and with a nice mixture of acrobatic moves and people just wailing on each other with whatever limb is available. There's a mystery Konishi's slowly been peeling back around the death of Yoshino's father, and some sort of internal power struggle in the Kansai crime families that I'm curious to see a resolution to, even if I don't understand all the relationships involved. So much of this book is enjoyable.

Just not half of the co-protagonists. I'm sure Konishi intends for Kirishima to be unsettling. Certainly in the first volume when he makes his abrupt shift in character, but I've never really stopped finding him unsettling. Even as Konishi shows how besotted Kirishima's become with Yoshino, or delves into Kirishima's past to show he's never been able to find someone that really understands him and what he wants, he still creeps me out. He's slipping tracking devices into Yoshino's electronic dictionary, or hacking her phone so he can follow her or track her social media.

And it's not like Yoshino doesn't tell him to stop. She does. Repeatedly. She gets new phones and he's immediately got the unlock code. She can't outmatch him physically, she's not smarter than he is, not savvier than he is, not luckier than he is. The only edge she's got is that he's apparently in love with her enough that she can maybe keep him in line, but, again, it's not like he does what she says all that often. He goes behind her back constantly, and while some of that is due to the real reason she's living with him (which is related to that mystery), I guess I don't expect that to change if the threat passes. 

Kirishima certainly seems dedicated to protecting her, but so does Shouma, who at least tends to keep Yoshino in the loop about what he's doing when it involves her. And yeah, Kirishima seems charming and pleasant towards her, hanging on her every word, but he acts that way to almost everyone, and that's all it is with those other people. An act. The same act he put on for Yoshino, until he got bored. He can say that won't ever happen, but given his whole personality, that's hard to take at face value. Tsubaki sees that he just agrees with whatever other people say, because he doesn't really care. He's just letting them talk, and most people are fine with that. Yoshino knows that he apologizes for things when she yells at him, but doesn't actually stop doing those things. What he says and what he means or does are wildly different.

It's weird, because I know I'm doomed to disappointment. There have been a few bonus chapters that show us glimpses of the future, and Yoshino and Kirishima are living together. This is, somehow, going to work out between them, and yet, I haven't stopped buying the series. The positives, thus far, have outweighed the negatives.