Monday, November 02, 2026

Time for a Close Encounter

Let's kick the tires and light the fires, big daddy.

Volume 12 of Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General focuses entirely an alien invasion, as all the different parts of the cast work to repel the invaders. Jin starts right off with a renegade alien, Lien, trying to warn the planet of its impending doom. By standing on a piece of playground equipment with a megaphone. But she picked the park where the General and Braveman regularly tussle, so it works out.

OK, it works out after some insults and low kicks. Lien reveals that not only are her people planning to exterminate humanity, they are responsible for all the people with weird powers on Earth. To see what would happen, basically. After Earthlings chose violence, the aliens decided it was better to not give them time to get off the planet. Hard to argue with that logic, really. Lien took her sweet time getting here, so Earth has about 90 minutes. Oh, and the aliens have decided to collect some samples before they depart.

As tactical blunders go, that's on par with Napoleon invading the USSR. Or Hitler invading the USSR. Or anyone invading Afghanistan. Or, you know, let's just move on. The General breaks containment and runs amok through the mothership, dropping the ship's cloak in the process. At which point it comes under fire from RX, the Monster Benefits Society and Mother Justice, who ultimately punches the ship into the sea. Jin made sure to establish the alien's leader has full control of the ship as an extension of itself. Mostly to keep making this particular joke.

And it was hilarious, I loved it. While Omega recuperates in a healing tube, the aliens plot a counterattack. Which the General 95% sabotages, as only 5 of the 100 assault capsules actually hit their targets. The rest zoom out of the Solar System. Good thing, because the powers the aliens gave Earthlings were derived from their own, so even just a handful of their elite are a serious problem.

Jin moves between at least 4 different battles where the advantage seesaws, including the alien's ill-fated attempt to release villains from prison as an added distraction for Earth's defenders. The main focus is RX's assault of the downed mothership to rescue the General. The big moment here comes after the alien's Vice-Admiral, a psychokinetic like Boss, takes down the entire group in one brutal whirlwind of an attack, Boss picks himself up, and puts the alien into the ground. More importantly, he finally ditches his mask. How will Secretary-san react to finally seeing his face?!

That tracks. Even when Boss is easily beating one of the elite aliens - who has both stretching powers and the same explosion power as Secretary-san - he's still acting like a dork. Doing silly little dances as the alien grows increasingly pissed off. Jin is very good at not letting any character go too long without making a fool of themselves, or becoming the butt of a joke.

Sunday, November 01, 2026

Sunday Splash Page #451

"Annual Cannon Fodder," in Black Cat Annual (2021) #1, by Jed MacKay (writer), Joey Vazquez (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer)

Despite the two volumes lasting only a combined 22 issues, MacKay's Black Cat run got two Annuals. I prefer the first, also by MacKay, Vazquez, and Reber, where Felicia gets Spider-Man to help her swipe $2 million - or is it 3? - from the Maggia by posing as a bride and groom from rival branches, who are supposed to enter a sealed room after the vows are exchanged, and fight to the death. That one-sentence description doesn't do it justice, but it didn't have a splash page, so I went with the other option.

Set after the conclusion of the arc with the Black Fox and the Gilded Saint, it's ostensibly tied into the thing about the Infinity Stones becoming people, or manifesting inside people, whatever. That's relegated (thankfully) to a few pages at the very end, where Nick Fury Jr. is chasing down someone hacking his database and runs afoul of Squadron Supreme Nighthawk.

Most of the comic involves Felicia and her guys trying to take a vacation, and Felicia getting press-ganged into helping the South Korean super-team Tiger Division (seen above), by White Fox injecting a small bomb in her neck. Look, we all want to be Amanda Waller, but it's just not likely you can be that complicated and cool. Good try, though.

The team's Superman, Taegukgi, is being mind-controlled. The crime family responsible vows to unleash him on Seoul if not named leaders of the country. Except the guy doing the controlling - who looks like he escaped from that South Park World of Warcraft episode - has no interest in that. He'd rather turn the country into a wasteland of corpses. Even if they stop him, break his hold, Taegukgi will be shattered by the realization someone used his body to commit such an atrocity.

Felicia cuts that short, along with Mongdal's life, via some sleight of hand. She also does it dramatically enough to annoy White Fox, which seems fair considering the lady stuck a bomb in her neck. It's a decent little done-in-one adventure.

Despite the fact they're relegated to getting their asses kicked by the mind-controlled Taegukgi while the Cat and Fox sneak in and find the source of the mind control, I was intrigued enough by the character designs and brief blurbs to buy the Tiger Division mini-series that came out across 2022 and 2023. That was a mistake. It focused exclusively on Taegukgi, rather than splitting the focus between characters and diving into their backstories and personalities a bit.