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.

What I Bought 6/1/2026 - Part 2

Unfortunately, my boss is out on various vacations most of this month. It's good he's taking time off. I shake my head in amazement when he mentions he came in on weekends to take care of stuff, given how often he reminds us not to stress overly about things (I am maybe 50% successful at this.)

However, him being on vacation means I become him in the interim, with all the irritating phone calls, e-mails, and other mind-numbing crap that implies. Will I make it to the end of the month without running screaming to the South Seas?

Fantastic Four #11, by Ryan North (writer), Stan Sakai (writer/artist), Pat Boutin (penciler), Serge LaPointe (inker), Edgar Delgado (colorist), Brittany Peer (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - The FF don't fight enough dinosaurs.

The Four are trying to decide what this new Future Foundation they're going to build with Maria Hill will be. If Hill's involved it'll be. . . a disaster! *rimshot* Reed, Sue and Johnny are all disagreeing, but Ben excuses himself from the discussion, claiming he's just the muscle. As opposed to Johnny? I'm pretty sure only one of the two of you qualified to be an astronaut, unless they've revamped Johnny's origin significantly.

Tempers are still high the next day when they find a mechanical T-Rex robbing a bank, and it seems like the FF can't get on the same page, until Ben realizes the robot's got the device Doom used to incite emotions and make people attack at Reed and Sue's wedding. I figured Psycho-Man was trying something new, but no, it's some guy the FF haven't seen in over 500 issues that bought his gear from some "super-weapons" auction. Then Ben tries writing a mission statement for the Future Foundation, and it's about everybody working to better things instead of just the "elite."

Whatever, it's fine. I was here for them fighting a robot T-Rex, although from the solicitation, I was really hoping Crimeasaurus Rex was actually a sentient Tyrannosaur, committing dino-crimes for dino-reasons. Maybe North would have fun with the FF trying to reason with a lizard intelligence that operates differently from a mammalian one, or something. Given that hope, "robot controlled by total loser," is kind of a letdown.

Then there's the Stan Sakai story, which is a pretty standard old-school FF adventure where a building falls into a big hole, so the team travels underground to confront Mole Man. Except he's not the problem, it's just a big creature that likes to dig. The FF work briefly with Mole Man to confront it, then everybody uses their powers and their current location in a plan to defeat it. Then Mole Man tells them to get lost like he's Namor or something. It's pretty close to the distilled essence of the FF, but mostly it's a chance to see Stan Sakai draw them, if that's of interest to you.

Is Ted OK? #4, by Dave Chisholm (writer/artist/letterer) - They shoulda put that cover behind a content warning tag or something.

The lady in the van that seemed to be waiting for Ted and Sarah is doctor Christina Paganini. She wants to destroy Ayn-Styne, because she knows weird stuff is going on there. Because she used to work there. Further explanation has to wait, because Man-Bun Idiot is after them, in an admittedly cool mech-suit, with a bunch of other robots or mech-suits. He catches up and asks Ted to come over and sign a form for paid time-off, or else. Then he does a countdown. When that doesn't work, he brings out the stray cat Ted likes, and starts the countdown over.

Which made me think of Woody Harrelson asking Sam Rockwell to please "go back to 5," when he was trying to get his gun to work in Seven Psychopaths. Ted agrees to surrender, if the cat is given to Sarah (who is maybe remembering this scene while she leaves another voicemail for whoever she keeps calling, this time about how 35% of our memories are shit our brain makes up to fill in the gaps.) Cat released, Ted starts asking Brody what this is about, Brody behaves like a dick, Ted, loses it and releases a massive burst of energy that fries all the mechs. And Brody! Good.

It's a nifty scene, although I was trying to figure out "PPPPPPPPPP" as a sound effect, until I realized on the previous page, he clapped his hands to demonstrate how quickly he died earlier, and the discharge came from that. So it's the tail end of an extended "CLAP" sound effect. Nice work on the layouts, albeit in a way that doesn't lend itself to scanning. A pair of two-page sequences, the first, with the clap, one panel running across two pages, getting shorter as it moves right, while on the second, it gets larger as it progresses. Under each of them, a bigger, irregular 4-sided panel, one of the machines, outlined in blue, the other of dark brown and green wreckage.

And then a few panels at the far right on both pages. In the first two-page sequence, it's 3 panels, stacked on top of each other. Brody's "oh shit!" face, Sarah running with the cat, and the doctor looking on in stunned horror. The second two-page sequence, it's 4 panels, and they're all basically focused on Ted's reaction to what he just did.

After that, there's some sort of answers from Christina about what Ted is, at least in the sense this Noah had something to do with it, rather than aliens. Meanwhile, the reporter follows Noah around, trying to ask questions, or at least question Noah's self-aggrandizing bullshit, without much success on either count. And then Noah takes him inside the Dome, where radiation cooks the reporter almost instantly, but Noah is completely fine. I say that, because I assume the ranting about 'meat-suit husks' and 'spaceship Earth' are everyday shit for this guy.

The yellow tone Chisholm uses inside the Dome seems very similar to what was used in Ted's nightmare at the start of issue 3. And Ted's posture as he rants over the reporter is the same as the blood-covered Ted's in the nightmare as he loomed over a terrified version of himself. What that means? I have no idea.

The Obstacle Course - J.F. Freedman

Set in the first six months of 1957, The Obstacle Course follows Roy Poole, ninth-grader in a little Maryland town. Roy's a smart-ass, a liar, a small-time hoodlum, a king in his own mind. In other words, a teenager. Roy plans to get accepted to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, and some day become an officer who commands a great warship.

To that end, he often sneaks away to run the obstacle course at the Academy on weekends, hitching rides there and back if he can. His parents don't know, neither do his friends. That's the way Roy keeps his life, compartmentalized. He builds model ships, and only his parents and the guy at the model shop know. He robs washing machines in an apartment complex to get the money for the models, and only his pals Burt and Joe know, because they play lookout. He makes friends with a retired admiral, and no one knows, and what the admiral thinks he knows about Roy, save his interest in the Navy, is lies. Surely, this intricate web of falsehoods can be sustained indefinitely.

This was the last book from the pile I grabbed at the book sale in March. I figured, at a glance from the back cover, that the obstacle course was metaphorical. That this was your typical thriller about a man who learned something he shouldn't, and must run through a gamut of foes and danger.

And in the sense that Roy thinks he's the slickest thing ever, that he can be all different things to different people, and everything will work out his way, it is. He doesn't try in junior high because that wouldn't be cool, but it's fine. He'll just start trying in high school to get his grades up enough to be accepted into the Naval Academy. The admiral thinks his grades are better than they are, and that Roy's dad has a good enough job he can afford to send Roy to a military school that would make it easier for Roy to get into Annapolis. Every day is him trying to only show a certain specific face to each individual person, always with the purpose of tricking them into giving him something or thinking he's something more than he is - smarter, tougher, richer, cooler.

Except he either can't see how he's working at cross-purposes to himself, or doesn't care. Roy won't talk about the academy with his parents, won't stop stealing, won't stop picking fights. He tries wheedling homework answers out of classmates, or breakfast out of midshipmen, but he won't stop needling or embarrassing the kids who help him, or insulting the midshipmen who won't.

Halfway through, the fact everything was going to collapse around him was obvious enough I lost interest, so I flipped to the back and starting reading from the last chapter forward. Got through another quarter of the book that way, right about the time things fell apart with the admiral and, in frustration over that, Roy starts being even more hardheaded, burning all his remaining bridges while insisting none of it matters, he's forging his own course.

Which, judging by the last chapter, may be accurate. Roy's played a particular role so long everyone has pigeonholed him as a certain way, and his attempts to step outside it isolated him to the extent there's no choice but to go it alone. I have no idea how that's going to work, because he still seems determined to get into the Academy, but that's how it ends. Roy, alone, sure that he can just keep pushing ahead and he'll get what he wants. I can't tell if Freedman expects me to be impressed, or pity the kid.

'They're my best friends, Burt and Joe, but I'm not going to tell them everything about me. I never once mentioned the admiral or any of that, that's a secret I'll take with me to the grave. What they don't know can't hurt them.

Can't hurt me.' 

What I Bought 6/1/2026 - Part 1

As we begin June, I now have the last four comics from May I was looking for. Busy couple of weeks, comicswise, for me. Four books out last week, and potentially six(!) this week. And then just 1 over the next two weeks combined. Having big weeks and empty weeks isn't weird, but May was pretty even throughout. 3-2-2-4 comics from the first week through the last.

So it goes. For today, a last issue and a first issue.

Spirit of the Shadows #5, by Nick Cagnetti (writer/artist/colorist), Daniel Ziegler (writer), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - The one Kirby monster is drooling all over poor Erik's leg. Gross man, he doesn't need marinating, just eat him!

Helena's about to kill Erik for good, per his wishes, but the spell that brought out all these ghosts brought back her sister. I note that while Elizabeth has a monster-hand in the Spirit Realm, as she's been there too long and was starting to turn, her ghost has regular human hands. She only remembers she had a sister, nothing about her, but is still horrified by what Helena is doing. So Helena relents, the spell ends, the ghosts go back where they were and Erik follows.

Which puts him in position to save Elizabeth from the angry father that had him killed in the first place, now basically a red, 4-legged monster, with an Arnim Zola face. Erik figures he'll be that way soon, too, but Elizabeth finds the last pages of his book and insists they take the carriage to the Judgement Hall. The last pages also reveal how Erik died at the start of the series. Katrina's ghost reached out to him, via some weird scepter and begged him to stop trying to bring her back. So he had the doc work out something to kill him for real.

So, the Realmkeepers, a couple of giants in robes and opera masks with their colors swapped. They also have lizard-looking guys dressed like the Nutcracker, but with no legs, for doormen/guards. Neat design choice by Cagnetti, he really let himself get bizarre with some of the creatures in this mini-series. The Realmkeepers start to review Erik's case, and he tells them to skip it. He's guilty, but Elizabeth's a good person, please let her into the Sacred Realm. This causes them to ponder their system of judgement, they let her in, and Erik gets a role as someone who roams the Spirit Realm, seeking others who might have been misjudged. He does get to accompany Elizabeth long enough to speak with Katrina, and then it's off to work. First person we see him protect - and it's strange Erik talked about remembering having powers in life, but we only see him use them in the Spirit Realm - the doctor that resurrected him in the first place.

So Erik accepts his loss and tries to make amends. I'm not really clear on why Elizabeth was sent to the Spirit Realm in the first place, and since her book is gone, presumably she doesn't know either (though she claims her memories are coming back.) The story ends with her ghost visiting Helena (now setting up shop in the mansion where Erik and the doc lived) and admitting she doesn't even remember this argument she had with Helena, which Helena blames for driving Elizabeth into the night.

Which is a little bit of an odd way to end. Not the idea that the disagreements we think are so important in life really aren't. But Cagnetti and Ziegler have Katrina says she wasn't even aware of it. I guess the point is it doesn't matter what they disagreed about, it wasn't what killed Katrina, and it didn't mean Helena needed to go around killing people and seeking vengeance. But something about framing that way is sticking in my craw. Maybe that it leaves open the possibility Katrina regains the memory later and changes her mind.

The Matron #1, by David Bowles and Drew Edwards (writers), Monica Gallagher (artist), Hary Saxon (color artist), Stephen Kok (letterer) - Great, now she's tracked blood all through John Byrne's Alpha Flight blizzard fight issue.

The issue shifts between February of 1975, and February of 2021. In 1975, Rozina Krenek was apparently a cannibalistic serial killer called The Matron, who killed people. Possibly only criminals, possibly only men. That's just going off what we've seen so far, plus a "FBI file" on a murder from the 1950s as some extra material.) One potential victim, who hadn't really been on board with robbery anyway, escaped and told the sheriff. Who Rozina seemed confident would look the other way, being a relative.

He didn't look the other way this time, for reasons presently unclear. There was a shootout, Rozina got lit on fire, she died, although she killed two or three cops first. The rest of the family except her granddaughter died too. The granddaughter works in a diner and still carried a grudge. Her granddaughter Roz is attending college and is friends with the great-granddaughter of the sheriff, to the displeasure of said grudge-holding grandma.

That's where we're at. There may be a supernatural element. The Matron's axe has some runes on it, and when she captures the reluctant robber a storm seems to have started from nowhere. When he escapes, she yells something at the sky that Kok puts in much larger, bolder letters, and the rain turns to snow. 

During the shootout, Rozina is still standing while on fire, only falling after the sheriff's last bullet bounces off the mask. Doesn't penetrate it, doesn't crack it break it, nothing like that. But if comes loose, and Rozina falls in a creek. Or maybe it's a moat. It seems very straight and very deep for as narrow as it appears.

Gallagher depicts Rozina's strength casually. She hauls the reluctant guy - old enough to have gone to 'Nam and returned, so we're not talking about a child here - out through the window of his truck with one hand. She cuts through both of a cop's legs with one swing. She's as tall or taller than anyone else and tends to dominate panels she's in, either taking up the foreground or looming over other characters. Roz is similarly tall, and has the same hair and facial structure, so that's either foreshadowing or just making clear the familial bloodline.

The Devil's Own (1997)

Rory (Brad Pitt) is an IRA soldier that travels to New York City to try and buy some Stinger missiles to deal with the British Army's helicopters. A friendly judge sets him up to stay at the home of Tom O'Meara (Harrison Ford), a New York cop.

While Rory is pretending to work construction and cleaning up the boat that'll be used to haul the missiles he's going to buy from a sleazy arms dealer (Treat Williams), O'Meara is doing the family man thing, going to work, trying to get his teenage daughter (early career Julia Stiles) off the phone, or score a little alone time with the wife, Sheila (Margaret Colin.)

We also see how Tom does things as a cop, where he tries to use minimal force, tells a guy stealing radios from cars to throw his gun away so he (meaning the thief) won't get shot. Except Tom stops to collect the gun, and his partner catches up to the guy and shoots him in the back. Tom doesn't agree, but ultimately lets his partner drop the gun next to the guy he shot.

(As there are several scenes where Tom runs, I was able to tell my dad my observation on how strangely Harrison Ford runs. I thought I mentioned it in one of my reviews of the later Indiana Jones movies last year, but apparently not. Point being, Harrison Ford runs weird, like he's trying to run without fully committing to it, or he's got bad plantar fasciatis. My dad's contention is it's not strange, Ford just runs flat-footed, and also never wears sneakers or other athletic shoes. He's always in boots or what I'd call dress shoes but my dad calls "proper" shoes.) 

All that's meant to contrast with what we see of Rory's life. Rory's father was shot at the dinner table by a masked man when Rory was a kid, just for having rumored Republican sympathies. When a team of plain-clothesed guys in cars can't catch Rory, the British military rolls in the armored vehicles and soldiers. One of his comrades is already dying of a gunshot, and when he won't give up Rory's location, an British Intelligence officer shoots him again, just because, basically. 

In Rory's life, being unarmed offers no protection. Relying on the honor of the people against you is a fool's bet. Even keeping a simple photo a friend took of Rory dancing with the sympathetic daughter of the judge that helped him ends up being a mistake, helping Tom pick up his trail. The only choice is to arm yourself and hit back.

And Tom, for all that the movie gestures at the potential for a surrogate father role towards Rory, doesn't get that. He decides to retire over covering for his partner murdering that guy, feeling dirty and unsuited to what he thinks being a cop is supposed to be. Rory's the one who has to retrieve Tom from the bar, and they talk a bit, but you can see Rory doesn't entirely get why Tom is so bothered. Tom's ancestors might hail from Ireland, but he's taken very different pieces from it. The beer, the food, the religion. Things you can take with you across an ocean, keep alive from a distance. For Rory, it's a place to fight for until its free, or die trying.

And then there's Williams' sleazy weapons dealer. Always smug, always trying some line on Rory, who he clearly sees as some dumb hick kid. Rory's got a cause and his anger. Tom's got his family and his own values. Williams just loves money. Tom doesn't want Rory to kill more people, doesn't want to kill Rory. Williams doesn't give a shit. He'd just like to get paid for the missiles more than once, if possible. If killing Rory makes that happen, then kill him. Violence has no meaning beyond getting him what he wants. 

I was a little surprised the movie didn't do more of Rory interacting with Tom's family, but I think it really wanted to keep the focus on Rory and Tom, their differing outlooks on life and violence and what's acceptable as shown through how they spend their time. We mostly see Tom's life during the day, and Rory's at night, though it seems significant the two almost always interact at night. They're traveling in Rory's world, whether Tom knows it or not.

The Terms of the Engagement

Somei Yoshino: Mom Friend, or Probation Officer Friend? 

Volume 6 of Yakuza Fiance starts with Kirishima going to great lengths to start a fight with Shouma. He steals Shouma's lighter - a gift from Yoshino, that says "Stop Smoking" on it - then announces he and Yoshino are dating, so Shouma's place in her life belongs to him now. Then mocks Shouma for refusing to fight him. Just really acting like a dick.

Yoshino has an idea something's up, and Shouma hasn't returned the GPS tracker she put in the stuffed animal keychain she gave Kirishima, so she hunts them down and starts swinging a bat. And missing. The whole sequence is kind of confusing.

Kirishima supposedly picked the fight to try and disguise the fact Yoshino's grandfather kicked the crap out of him (and Shouma) last volume for endangering Yoshino. Setting aside the fact Renji is the reason Kirishima is in Yoshino's life to the point he can endanger her, why bring knives to what only needed to be a fistfight? (Plus, Yoshino knows her Gramps beat them up, so it's a futile effort.)

Then you've got the fact Kirishima supposedly likes getting beat up, but dodges all Yoshino's swings. I get he won't answer her questions about why he did this because he likes her yelling at him, although it runs against his claims of how important she is to him, and how devoted he is. Maybe the masochism even explains why he refuses her order to fix Shouma's torn shirt (Shouma also refuses, so Konishi undermines the notion Yoshino has much control over either of them.) But she was willing to yell and physically injure him, which is apparently arousing to Kirishima, so why dodge?

Konishi does subsequently give Yoshino the upper hand. She knocks Kirishima on his heels by explaining she agreed to be his boyfriend so he'd stop picking fights with Shouma out of some insecurity about his position in her life, relative to her lifelong friend. In her words, 'Shouma's the reason you're my boyfriend. never forget that.'

The real power move comes once they return to Tokyo, when she employs *ominous drums* The Silent Treatment. For three days, she pretends as though Kirishima doesn't exist. It's funny, watching them walk home from school, Kirishima at her heels jabbering the whole way, Yoshino acting as though she's alone. Kirishima soon resorts to desperation baking in an attempt to get her attention. Because, see, this version of punishment isn't fun for him. Which again raises the question in my mind of why he didn't take the hits with the bat.

Once the three days are up and Kirishima understands the land mines that now surround him, they have a conversation about their new relationship. OK, that's a reasonable thing to do. Kirishima asks if they can hold hands, which seems benign. Yoshino even expresses concern about a scar on his hand from an old wound he didn't get looked at. That's sort of sweet. She offers some lotion for his hands, wearing a bizarre facial expression. I can't even guess what Konishi was going for there.

Kirishima proceeds to dump the lotion in Yoshino's palms and licks it. And then she headbutts him, which he takes without blinking. Oh, so now he wants to get hit? It's just another weird sequence all around, even allowing for how fucked in the head I think Kirishima is.

After a brief chapter hinting at infighting within the Kirigaya family (the group Renji's part of), and some hints about creepy scar-face bastard Azami's next plan, there's a school culture fest! Great, I loved the culture fest episodes of Azumanga Daioh! But it's really more about Shouma showing up as an escort for Yoshino's heretofore unseen mother, Hitomi. Hitomi seems like a spacecase and a klutz, but we're told she had a nervous breakdown when Yoshino's dad died and her mental health has waxed and waned ever since, especially if she gets stressed caring for Yoshino. Hence, Yoshino living with her grandfather.

Mostly this serves two purposes. One, showing Kirishima will behave himself around Shouma now, suggesting he's possibly actually listening to Yoshino. Two, offering another hint towards the circumstances surrounding Yoshino's father's death, as Kirishima privately mentions to Hitomi he knows how horrible she must find it, Yoshino staying with the Miyama family. Which makes me think Gaku killed Yoshino's dad in a botched attempt to kill Renji, and that's the thing he thinks he owes Renji for (which comes up in volume 8, whenever we get there.)