Sunday Splash Page #413

"Pipe Organ from Hell," in Power Girl (vol. 2) #3, by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Amanda Conner (artist), Paul Mounts (colorist), John J. Hill (letterer)

Power Girl had a 4-issue mini-series in the late-80s, then bounced between team books - not to mention origins and powersets - for almost 20 years. Infinite Crisis bringing back the multiverse meant it was OK for her to be a Kryptonian from a different, now-deceased, universe, which at least settled the origin and powerset. Still, now that her past was concrete - as concrete as anything gets in a Big 2 superhero universe - what to do with her present?

Amanda Conner, Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti started with trying to get her a civilian life again. In the arc in JSA Classified that led into Infinite Crisis, Geoff Johns established that while Power Girl had an apartment, she was hardly ever there. Dust on everything, she couldn't keep track of where her key was (Conner drew a pile of doorknobs just inside the apartment from Peej breaking them to get in each time she actually came by.) Not even bothering with a disguise or secret identity, just walking to the door in her costume.

So, get her an apartment. Have her try to maintain, with limited success, a secret identity as Karen Starr. Get her a cat, which allows Conner to draw all sorts of interesting or funny stuff in the background when Power Girl's at home. Continue building the friendship with the current Terra (as started in the Terra mini-series from this creative team the year before), but make sure they interact outside superheroics. Doing stuff like going to the movies together. Get Peej back in charge of her old company, Starrware (I don't know how many reboots of the character ago that was), with a focus on technological solutions for environmental and ecological problems. That provides the opportunity for supporting cast members who aren't costumed adventurers, while also offering a setting which can provide both conflicts and solutions to conflicts that don't strictly involve a Kryptonian punching stuff (fun as that can be to read.)

Then throw her up against a wide variety of foes. The arch-villain of this creative team's run was the Ultra-Humanite, himself a refuge from Earth-2 like Power Girl, though I'm unclear how he's still around. U-H has a superiority complex related to his intellect, and a chip on his shoulder because his body let him down, resulting in his brain being implanted in an albino gorilla. He initially plans to move his brain into her body, which is an inversion of the typical focus on Power Girl's appearance. Where often it's the male gaze about her physical appearance, for U-H, it's about the power inside that body, and what he thinks he could do with it, rather than the usual lust motivation. He's still reducing her to a body for him to use, but in a different way. Not that it ends any better for him.

And there's plenty of the other kind of reduction dealt with in the book. Lots of brief scenes of people talking down to Power Girl or otherwise behaving inappropriately, which she then shuts down in some way. An egotistical scientist interviews for a position at her company and dismisses her concerns about his plans to bio-engineer psychological change into people to match what he thinks is "healthy"? That dude is shown the door. Some bum tries to flash Power Girl? Freeze breath on his junk. The 2-part story where Vartox shows up, having decided Power Girl is the ideal woman to help kickstart a population boom on his planet, is one long exercise in her dealing with an annoying dickhead with no respect for her (or boundaries.) There's a lot of yelling, followed by punching.

I'd like to solve more of my problems with yelling followed by punching. Maybe skip straight to the punching.

Beyond that, there's a teenage girl who tries to use a magic book to destroy aspects of industrialization in an effort to protect the planet, and a trio of wild alien ladies looking for a planet to have a party. And there's Satanna, looking for revenge after Power Girl's initial defeat of the Ultra-Humanite. Except this was at the same time the Humanite had gotten his brain transferred into Terra, so that played out strangely. Satanna went to the trouble of getting weapons from Dr. Sivana to kill Power Girl, only for the Humanite, in Terra's body, to destroy the weapons. Satanna helped with the brain transfer, so why are they working at cross-purposes?

Conner fills the pages with all sorts of background details and foreground action. Wherever Power Girl goes, in costume or civilian clothes, we see people passing by take notice. (Sometimes she comments, sometimes she doesn't.) Two people may be talking while one of Karen's employees is chasing her cat in the background. Colorist Phil Mounts uses vivid colors, nothing muddy or restrained. The Ultra-Humanite's weapons fire bright-green beams, Satanna's armor she got from Sivana has a gaudy leopard-print design. The subterranean land Terra comes from has clothing that changes into dayglo colors in response to the wearer's emotions. Even if things get ugly at times, these are still bright, exciting adventures for the most part. Weird science stuff, magic, aliens! Satanna's chief henchman is an angry badger scientist, a detail I really loved.

Conner makes Power Girl a big presence. Taller than most of the guys at her company, so she often has a noticeable height advantage in the profile shots of two characters conversing. She shifts easily from amusement to exasperation to anger as the situation changes. Not that she can't play diplomatic, but this is not a character who is going to bite their tongue and play nice to avoid stepping on some jerk's feelings, or worry about being called a bitch for it. They play up the "power" in her name, too. She swings cars like she's waving a paper fan. A panel full of Bioshock-looking machines is followed by a panel full of shattered junk. Or she survives an explosion that vaporizes an alien spaceship with nothing more than some scorch marks on her skin and mild disorientation.

Unfortunately, the creative team left after 12 issues, replaced by Judd Winick and Sami Basri. Winick proceeded to tear down Starrware and embroil Power Girl in Justice League: Generation Lost-related plots, and Basri's Power Girl seemed like a much more reserved and remote character than Conner's. A lot of narrowed eyes and harsh glares. I gave that 5 issues and then bailed out hard.

Random Back Issues #149 - Power Girl #7

Well, that's one way to get yourself killed.

On the planet Valeron, Vartox fights to defend his kingdom from Yeti pirates. He routs the army, but, gasp! The pirates snuck a bomb into the Crystal City that rendered everyone sterile but, no worries! Vartox uses a Cosmosis Crystal to find potential mates to help kick-start a new genetic lineage, and one of them is Power Girl. Vartox is very impressed by the fact she survived the death of her universe, among other attributes, so it's off to Earth!

Where Power Girl is helping Dr. Mid-Nite capture an old Wonder Woman enemy, the Blue Snowman, who stole a sapphire Mid-Nite figures is worth less than the pipe that shoots icicles. Just as Power Girl gets in a groove lampshading the economic impracticality of comic book super-villainy, Vartox arrives in his head ship. It doesn't look a thing like him. Because Vartox is a man of surprising humility! Surprising in that he has any.

While Peej is not excited, Dr. Mid-nite suggests he could be nice, if eccentric. Mid-Nite has no time to revise this opinion, as he collapses once Vartox uses a 'seduction musk rifle', which Power Girl thinks smells of 'burnt armpit hair and elephant urine.' Then, as seen above, Vartox shushes Power Girl.

Well, that result is no surprise to anyone (other than Vartox, the universe proving uncooperative today.) Blue Snowman wakes up and turns out to be Blue Snowoman, and the musk worked on her. Which is too bad, because Vartox is on to his next plan in the wooing! He brings out Ix Negaspike, a creature that required an entire galaxy's worth of superwarriors to give their lives imprisoning it in a 'gravity well beneath the known universes.' Palmiotti, Gray, and Conner were clearly having fun coming up with ridiculous shit for this story, and I am here for it.

Power Girl is not here for it, or Vartox's plan to fight Ix Negaspike to demonstrate he has sufficient prowess to "take" her. Especially once Blue Snowman attacks Negaspike to protect Vartox. You see how that went. While PG flies Mid-Nite to safety, Vartox gets knocked through about 4 buildings, which doesn't hurt him (or his mustache), but does destroy the transport leash that would let him send Negaspike back home. Power Girl returns and starts to throw down, but it's not going great, so she flies the thing somewhere into the Arctic and chucks it into a mountain.

Vartox, still not reading the room, thinks Power Girl's just playing hard to get, but admits he maybe should have tried a more romantic approach. Did he mention he's a good cook? (This is a lie, he's absolutely not a good cook. Maybe his widow's peak is because his hair's growing inside and constricting his brain.) Truly fed up, Power Girl tries the old, "freeze and shatter it" approach.

Unfortunately, the Negaspike is self-replicating, so now there are a lot of them. On a positive note, Vartox did listen to her constructive criticism and stop referring to himself in the third person!

{8th longbox, 108th comic. Power Girl #7, by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti (writer), Amanda Conner (artist), Paul Mounts (colorists), John J. Hill (letterer)}

Saturday Splash Page #94

 

"Malpractice," in Terra #2, by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Amanda Conner (artist), Paul Mounts (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

This mini-series came out in late 2008. I don't actually know what prompted it. There was the original, New Teen Titans Terra. The traitor, the Judas Contract, creepy relationship with creepy-ass Deathstroke, all that jazz. There was a second Terra, who looked a lot like the first, and got killed a year or so prior to this mini-series, by Black Adam when he declared war on the entire world for some reason I no longer remember.

And then this, with a Terra who looks very little like the first two. Who comes from a subterranean civilization which she defends from threats both native to that realm and from encroaching surface world dwellers. Who doesn't seem to want to associate with anyone or explain anything. She's all about that world-saving grind, 24/7, or however they measure time underground.

That can only fly so far, and Palmiotti, Gray and Conner do offer some backstory when she runs into Geo-Force, who is at least a natural person for a team-up, given his connection to the previous Terras. That's mostly in issue 3, which is when Conner gets to show us what Terra's (or Atlee, as that's her real name) home looks like. It's a giant cavern, with a lot of tall narrow buildings and bridges presumably formed from existing rock formations. A lot of their technology seems to be biologically based, as Geo-Force gets helped by some floating jellyfish thing that rewires his neural interface. It fits with how the society is presented, as watching the surface world warily, concerned about humanity's track record of using technology in the worst way.

Geo-Force ends up helping her with a guy that wanted to be a great underground explorer and stumbled into something he didn't understand. Even after the guy, who is acting out of grief and anger because, again, he's a stranger in this world, causes a lot of damage, Atlee's hope is he can be helped and restored. Which helps establish her as someone with a lot of compassion and an optimistic outlook on things. Of course, I feel like she got sucked in some "teen heroes forced into gladitorial combat" thing I vaguely remember from Teen Titans of that time. That would seem to do a lot to blunt someone's optimism about humanity. Or maybe I'm confusing that with whatever Terror Titans was.

But Conner, Gray and Palmiotti would make Terra a major supporting cast member in their Power Girl series that came out in 2009. That had its rough moments for the character, but built up a big sister/little sister relationship between the characters that was usually a lot of fun to read. We'll get to that when we get there.

Sunday Splash Page #285

 

"Public Works Disaster," in JSA Classified #1, by Geoff Johns (writer), Amanda Conner (penciler), Jimmy Palmiotti (inker), Paul Mounts (colorist), Rob Leigh (letterer)

Again, on my first attempt, I typed it as "Geoof". The universe clearly wants me to lean into it, but I do try to avoid typos.

JSA Classified was an earlier attempt to get two titles out of the Justice Society, following in the footsteps of JLA Classified. Rather than splitting the cast into two teams, JSA Classified tended to give characters a solo spotlight. I bought one arc, the first four issues.

On the plus side, you have the Amanda Conner/Jimmy Palmiotti/Paul Mounts art team doing good work. Conner's great at background details that help it fell like the story takes place in an actual world with people and things that have their own lives going on, and also can add a bit of levity. The body language Conner gives Power Girl - alternately confident and fragile - does a lot to try and carry along the story.

On the negative, you have Johns twisting himself into knots trying to resolve Power Girl's conflicting origins.

Except, not really. Because while he does provide an answer - she's not from the future, not Atlantean, but a Kryptonian from a dead universe - he doesn't really spend any time on why that matters. Lots of pages on Power Girl insisting she doesn't care where she came from, when Conner's art reveals she clearly does. Because Johns saves the reveal for the very end of the fourth issue, during a whole thing with Psycho Pirate that feeds into Infinite Crisis, he doesn't show us how this knowledge affects Power Girl. Does it make her feel happy, to finally know (or remember, maybe?) Is she sad, that (almost) everyone she knew is even more dead than she thought?

She's a strange artifact of a multiverse that no longer existed. She hasn't had much success building a new home or life on Earth, and now it seems there's no previous home left to go back to. Seems like that might prompt some sort of reaction. To the extent there's any of that, it's buried under Old Earth-2 Superman yelling at Earth-1 Superman to get off his lawn, while Superboy-Prime and Alexander Luthor do their thing.

Oh, this is also the story where Johns tries to explain the boob window in Power Girl's costume as being because she never decided on an appropriate emblem to put there. I suppose it could tie into the way her origin had drifted for years, leaving the character looking unsuccessfully for something to anchor to, but it doesn't really fit. She's had costumes without a logo that also didn't have any sort of window over the chest. The (in-universe) explanation up to then seemed to be, "it feels comfortable to her, and she's confident enough to rock the look." That was probably good enough, unless the writer was fixing to give her a logo, which Johns evidently was not.

Saturday Splash Page #66

 

"Die Streaming," in Two-Step #3, by Warren Ellis (writer), Amanda Conner (penciler), Jimmy Palmiotti (inker), Paul Mounts (colorist), Ken Lopez (letterer)

So, yeah, Warren Ellis is the writer for this, and he's turned out to be a huge creep, so this may understandably be a non-starter for some people. I mean, if you want to look at Amanda Conner's art, which was my primary reason for picking this up in back issues maybe 10 years ago, there are plenty of other things she's drawn that weren't written by Ellis.

The art would be the selling point here. The story, such as it is, involves Rosi, an extremely popular online personality who films every second of her life as she travels through some future version of London which seems to be a hodgepodge of a dozen different stereotypical cultures. So there's a neighborhood that breaks into Bollywood dance numbers, and Chinatown is filled with John Woo-style gunfight choreography. Conner takes these opportunities to fill panels with lots of details of people going about their lives, often taking advantage of the multiple cameras Rosi employs to show additional angles or details in smaller panels running with a larger panel (as in the above example).

Rosi's bored off her ass by all of it until she crosses paths with Tony Ling, a gangster hired by one gang to steal some sort of oversized, pneumatic cock the leader of a different gang ordered. Rosi tags along and ends up getting hunted alongside Tony. Tony seems to be trying to reach a state of Zen, and is a coolly sarcastic guy in a dark suit who smokes cigarettes and shoots people. In other words, typical Ellis protagonist. Rosi is more wildly dressed, more loudly sarcastic and profane young woman who says things like, 'I hate him so much I can taste it in my womb.' They are at one point menaced by a large young man named Ron, who due to some cyberlink to his eyes, sees people as cars. This is bad, because he enjoys fucking cars. Until they explode.

The sophomoric mania of the book will either work for you, or make you roll your eyes. Or possibly one, then the other. But the Conner/Palmiotti/Mounts art team is a good one, so it looks nice.

Sunday Splash Page #228

 

"Harley Home Makeover", in Harley Quinn (vol. 2) #4, by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Stephane Roux (artist), Paul Mounts (colorist), John J. Hill (letterer)

It took over a decade, two Crises, a Countdown and a Flashpoint leading to a New 52, but Harley got herself a second chance at an ongoing series. Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti worked as the writing team, with Chad Hardin (who I'd first encountered as an artist on some of those Bloodrayne comics I bought years earlier) initially as the primary artist, though the book had frequent other artists because DC seemed to take a page from how Marvel handled Deadpool and started shipping a crapload of Harley Quinn mini-series, one-shots, annuals and whatnot on top of this book. Sometimes Hardin would draw those instead, or this title would double-ship, so there had to be guest artists.

Through the first 2 years of the New 52, Harley had been mostly an unambiguous villain, commtiting such crimes as distributing handheld gaming systems packed with explosives through Gotham, then setting them off, killing dozens or hundreds. Conner and Palmiotti backed the hell away from all that as fast as they could, setting the character more firmly in a morally grey, anti-hero space. Harley would still commit violent acts, but typically in self-defense or against people who could be said to deserve it (if not quite to the extent she dished out.)

It also, at least for the 17 issues I bought before dropping the book, felt like Conner and Palmiotti couldn't decide what they wanted Harley to be doing, as they kept introducing new settings or jobs, then seemingly dropping them to move to the next idea almost right off. She inherits a building in Coney Island, which gives her the difficulty of being a landlord and potential plotlines involving her tenants. But they also had Harley join a roller derby team, then almost immediately abandon that in favor of a roller derby-themed underground fight club, which also sometimes working as a psychiatrist at a nursing home. By the time I dropped the book, she'd even started a gang of Harleys, for reasons that escape me.

There was strong streak of absurdist, referential humor. Harley frees a bunch of animals from a testing lab, but all their waste is stinking up the joint. So one of her tenants builds a giant catapult and the first launch hits DC's offices with dog shit. She keeps a stuffed, half-burned beaver around that she hallucinates talking to her. Harley faces a string of hitmen trying to collect a huge bounty, and finds out she put the bounty on herself in her sleep. She teams up with an old Cold War cyborg super-spy (who made it into her animated series) she met at the nursing home. 

Hardin's work was a little stiff early on, but as time went by, he loosened up his linework. With the comic (sometimes darkly comic, but still comic) tone of the book, being willing to exaggerate his art better fit the book. I didn't laugh out loud much while reading it - Conner and Palmiotti's sense of humor doesn't quite work for me somehow - but there were parts here and there that worked. Mostly, I wanted the book to just settle on a status quo and run with it for more than two issues. Pick a few supporting cast members to really focus on rather than just constantly throwing more, more, more at the wall.

What I Bought 2/21/2020 - Part 1

Dan Didio's out as chief editor or whatever the heck he was. I guess we can all rejoice until they announce whatever person is going to replace him, who will probably be entirely unacceptable. Take your victories and pleasures where you can. In other news, here's two reviews of comics I figured I'd take a chance on.

Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey #1, by Amanda Conner (writer/artist), Jimmy Palmiotti (writer), Paul Mounts (colorist), John J. Hill (letterer) - I was very confused by Cassandra having all Huntress' arrows until I remembered they made her a thief in the movie rather than a super-awesome martial artist.

Harley heads to Gotham because the loan shark she took out a mortgage through had her hotel burned down for failure to pay bills, and kicked the crap out of the guy who acts as landlord. Also, she kind of pissed off Ivy, so it's something to do other than sit around and feel bad about her failed relationship. People try to kill her on the train ride, but Huntress and Cass show up and help. They get to Gotham, Renee Montoya tells Harley to leave, issue ends.

This feels like some weird amalgam of the movie continuity and the comics. All the stuff about Harley and Ivy, and her henchfolk, the old cyborg spy guy, that's from the comics. But all the stuff with Renee, Cass, and Helena seems like its movie stuff. While Conner and Palmiotti take the time to explain some of the backstory for the first group, there's really nothing about the second. Like, how does Harley know Cass, what's their backstory, are she and Helena in an actual supergroup in this timeline. I haven't seen the movie - although Alex told me there's very little sign of Cass being as serious asskicker in it - I don't know what the fuck's going on.

It seems taken for granted I understand why Renee Montoya, who I assume is an honest cop, is trying to send Harley away rather than take her in for questioning about the large number of people she just killed on that train. (It was self-defense, but the police would still want to confirm that, yes?)

I didn't laugh very much, which is how it went the last time I tried Conner and Palmiotti's writing on Harley Quinn, but you can always figure things might change. There were a couple of bits - here bad luck-stricken vacation with Ivy, the bit where she keeps trying to tell the goons what the "F" in Harley F. Quinn stands for (although I thought the eventual answer overdid it.)

Conner's artwork is lively and full of cheesecake as usual. Which is fine. The emotion is there, Harley being a very expressive character, the fight scenes are good, easy to follow, sort of graphic. That's not a complaint, it seems par for the course with the character. Actually, I don't know if a guy getting his head cut off with a sign qualifies as "graphic" these days. Is the violence by itself enough, or does the presentation matter? It's not like they did a series of slow-motion panels of the head tumbling through the air, blood and gore drenching everyone in the room while his tongue falls out the back of his head. But the also didn't do that old bit of just drawing it in outline, or cutting away to show it via his shadow. Anyway, people get beat to death, pencils in the ears, arrows through the skull, that kind of thing.

The After Realm #1, by Michael Avon Oeming (writer/artist), Taki Soma (colorist), Shawn Lee (letterer) - Props to the person who built a massive skull sculpture on top of that skyscraper. Or did they carve it from the building itself?

Oona's an elf. Her people retreated beneath the surface when Loki brought about Ragnarok, although they were able to imprison him and some of his lackeys. Oona wants to return to the surface and find her friend who was left behind, but keeps screwing up her chances by being too impatient or taking shortcuts. In her despair, her mind is contacted by Loki's and he finds the way to free himself. Sometime in the future, Oona's writing all this down as she flees from a living Statue of Liberty. It's trying to incinerate her, so the ectoplasm must have been exposed to a lot of angry vibes.

I'm actually most curious about this goat of hers, Pooka. He helps her, he says because he is magically bound to protect her, and that he's not her friend. And it's his help that gets her kicked out of the Rangers (the only ones who might be allowed to go to the surface) the second time. Which is what drove her back to Loki's prison. Which is how Loki got out. And Oona doesn't know who bound him to protect her. So I'm wondering what the long game is.

Other than that, it's really just a lot of set-up. Granting that the last page could be a pretty effective cliffhanger, I wonder if it wouldn't have been more effective to leap more into Oona's present, and gradually reveal the backstory. Show the moments with the friend left behind and the elves retreating below ground, then shift to the present. You can compare and contrast however competent or do-gooding she is now (if she is a do-gooder) with what a selfish, foolish screw-up she was before. Maybe get a little further into whatever the story is actually going to be in the first issue, considering the next issue isn't out until May.

Oeming doesn't get nearly as wild with page layouts here as he did with Cave Carson has a Cybernetic Eye. Soma goes with all black backgrounds quite often, especially the further into the story they get. Like there's just an immense void around Oona. Which, if they're in a massive cavern, might make sense.

Oeming's Loki is very, treelike? His horns are branches, his coloration is that of bark, long limbs that project tendrils that look like roots. Is that a more traditional look for Loki? Plants and trees in general seem pretty prominent. Oona's friend had learned to speak with thorns. She was carving his face into a tree when she noticed one of the other Rangers-in-training going to check on Loki's prison, which is when she got the idea of trying to get in the Rangers again.

What I Bought 12/30/2015 - Part 2

Hopefully you had a good night celebrating the new year, or not celebrating if you didn't want to. And hopefully I didn't come down with something from the party I went to.

Harley Quinn and Power Girl #6, by Justin Gray, Amanda Conner, and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Stephane Roux, Moritat, Elliot Fernandez, and Flaviano (artists), Paul Mounts (colorist), Marilyn Patrizio (letterer) - It's a good Star Wars homage cover, as those things go, I guess.

The sham wedding of Vartox and Power Girl does not occur, because Harley says something that somehow triggers all three of them being shunted into some weird, artificial location Vartox set up as like a fantasy world where they are married, complete with alcoholic 60s-style domestic Power Girl, and bunch of irritating kids. Much punching in all directions ensues, Peej eventually shames Vartox into just using the ring to send them home without a ceremony, and doesn't even wait to hear his dramatic monologue about the burden of his affections, and that's it.

I was trying to decide how I felt about this mini-series now that it's over, and I'm not sure. It's very much something I read in the moment, but it doesn't leave much of a lasting impression. Kind of just slides off my brain. Power Girl punching Vartox through buildings repeatedly was nice. Vartox having essentially a holodeck fantasy in a pocket dimension seems about right for him. You can almost squint and see it as his practicing to try and be a good husband in the hopes that'll happen some day, but no, it's just creepy and a bad idea all around. I'm curious about the fact they used four artists on this issue. There's no real rhyme or reason to them. It isn't one of those things where they move through several different worlds, each illustrated by someone different. I think Moritat does that page where Peej initially hits Vartox 9and the two before it), and then it shifts to Fernandez when Robo-Kara starts swinging, and I think stays with Fernandez the rest of the way. Either they handed pages off to whoever could get it done, since it's already a month late, or they just wanted to let everyone who'd been involved up to then get a little work in.

Maybe this would have worked better if it was shorter. 4 issues of, "Harley and Power Girl run into some weird thing in Vartox' world. Harley makes enthusiastic inappropriate comments while Power Girl is angry and/or exasperated," was probably enough. Cut some of the chaff with Oreth, or the Harvester of Sorrows (that scene where Harley goes nuts for 5 pages really sticks out as an unusual bit in this whole thing). I was thinking yesterday it was an extended Looney Tunes cartoon, with Harley as Bugs Bunny and Peej as Daffy. Which doesn't seem entirely right, but Harley's the one who seems able to adjust and manipulate the rules of the setting, and Power Girl's the one who is continually frustrated. Which would make Vartox Elmer Fudd? Or maybe the Abominable Snowman that was based on Lenny from of Mice and Men. "And I will hug Power Girl, and squeeze her, and call her George. . ."

Rocketeer at War #1, by Marc Guggenheim (writer), Dave Bullock (artist), Ronda Pattison (colorist), Gilberto Lazcano (letterer) - Cliff's right arm looks too small. Otherwise, it's a solid cover.

Cliff turned the rocket pack over to the government when he enlisted, and the government, in its infinite wisdom, promptly put a trained, highly skilled pilot in the infantry (but he also works as a mechanic at an airfield?). Seems sub-optimal. Cliff's fighting in North Africa, and keeping busy, first rescuing a British pilot from a burning airplane (after she'd saved by him by strafing some attacking Nazis). Yeah, Molly's an attractive lady British pilot, naturally. Then he stopped some Nazi agent from stealing a Magnatron Navigation System from an airplane, that doohickey being a key component of the rocket, that's being adapted for use in aircraft I suppose. By the end of the issue, Cliff's reunited with his rocket, because apparently no one else can use the thing without killing themselves.

I notice Guggenheim is going with Howard Hughes as the rocket's designer, rather than Doc Savage. Stevens made it Savage, but the movie used Hughes, and subsequent writers seem to vary. I think Mark Waid was firmly in the "Doc Savage" camp, based on that mini-series he and Samnee did in 2012. Guggenheim's Cliff is less stupidly jealous than Cliff usually is. I expected him to get a little more steamed when his buddies grabbed the photo Betty sent him and started hooting over it. I was a little surprised he volunteered to hand the rocket over. I would have figured him for approaching the government to let him use it to help the war somehow, and them requesting he turn it over, so then he enlists.

On the last page, when Cliff has donned the rocket pack again and takes off, Molly is standing right there next to the general, with some other soldiers looking on. This after the general described things to Cliff as 'the toppest of secrets'. Granted, the project to mass produce rocket packs is apparently a collaborative effort, because there was a Soviet lieutenant present at the test flight at the start of the issue, but it still seems not in keeping with something being top secret, to have the guy zooming around as the Rocketeer in broad daylight in front of all sorts of people.

Bullock's art seems to shift a lot over the issue. Sometimes he's using a very fine line, and some of his faces remind me of Tim Sale's work (though usually more Bruce Timm's). Other times he goes with much thicker lines. I'm not sure if Pattison's coloring plays a role in that. I'm guessing it did on the page where Cliff pulls Molly from the burning wreckage, which I thought was the best looking page in the whole issue. Just some really good work with the lighting and shadows from the flames. It almost looks like Bullock went very sparse on the number of lines, and let Pattison's colors do a lot of the work themselves. Using shading and tone to help the eye infer lines that aren't that, if that makes sense. There's a phrase for that I'm sure, but it escapes me. At times though, the art feels flat, or characters in the same panel don't feel like they're in the same panel. I can't pin it down, but something feels off to me. There needs to be more shading, the lighting being portrayed isn't right. I noticed it more near the end of the issue, like maybe Bullock had to simplify things because he was running behind.

I'm not sure if I'll buy the second issue. There was some dynamic element I was wanting from the writing and the art that didn't appear. It isn't bad, and there's elements I liked, but I'd have preferred they just skipped right to those. Maybe Cliff being in the Army proper will pay off down the line, but why not have him working as an instructor to other prospective pilots of the rocket, and then he has to go on an actual mission? Did we need the sequences of him being a regular soldier?

What I Bought 12/1/2015 - Part 4

I tried to go to a comic book store I found out was not too far from here over the weekend. Just to look around. Its sign said it opened at 11:30. I hung around until 12:15, nobody showed up. There was a phone number, but what, I have to call the owner to get them to show up when their sign says they're supposed to be there? No.

Starfire #6, by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Emanuela Lupacchino (penciler), Ray McCarthy (inker), Hi-Fi (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - Bit of a change from the earlier covers.

We learn a little more about Sol's lost love, Maria, who worked in the Coast Guard like him. That happens in some dream flashback, while Kori's busy saving him from Dr. Soren, nearly killing the doc in the process. It seems important that, when Kori saw more of the doctor's memories, she still didn't see him killing the entire crew of the cruise liner. As still more bad news, that bounty hunter arrived on Earth, and starts hurting and killing people while demanding they bring him Kori. She shows up - advantage of living on a relatively small island - and beats the guy's butt. Then she throws him back in his cryopod, and sets his ship to drift in deep space, where I'm sure he'll remain for the rest of his days. And since the issue started with a lost love, here's Dick Grayson, who must have had a stopover on a flight.

I had kind of expected the bounty hunter to be more of a problem than that. Which is the sort of thing I remember being an issue when I was buying Harley Quinn. How Conner and Palmiotti seemed to flit from one story to the next, without anything seeming to stick or have real impact. I expect that plotline will come up again. The Citadel will find him and send him back, or her sister will send someone else to find her, but nothing sticks. They could be going for this sort of madcap, whirlwind feel, where stuff just keeps happening, but the characters don't seem to be reacting to it, outside of Stella's brief freakout last issue. Which ends up making it hard for me to care.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #2, by Ryan North (writer), Erica Henderson (artist), Matt Digges, David Robbins, and Chip Zdarsky (trading card artists), Rico Renzi (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - I think Dr. Doom always improves covers. Sometimes you need a guy with a metal mask to spice things up, and nobody likes Iron Man.

Doreen is mysteriously transported back to the 1960s, which has caused everyone except Nancy to forget about her. Which is making it hard for Nancy to get any help rescuing Doreen, once she finds the note Doreen cleverly left her. Fortunately, Dr. Doom arrives, wearing Kraven's pants as a fringe on his cloak? I don't know what it is, but he definitely has something made of fur with black spots on, so you tell me. Our hero, meanwhile, has already met one other person stranded, and has embarked on a plan to try to find any others, through the power of newspapers! But it appears someone else is trying to alter the future, which is not good, I guess? I mean, Hank McCoy's already fouled things up pretty well, not sure someone introducing the Ipod will make much of a difference.

I kind of hate the sliding timescale sometimes. My first thought when Doreen starts explaining to that robber that superhumans do exist and Captain America isn't dead was that of course they do. Then I remembered Peter Parker wouldn't have been Spider-Man since the '60s in the Marvel Universe anymore. Kind of knocked me out of the story. Otherwise, I enjoyed this. Mary and Doreen commiserating over the lack of microwave pizzas (a problem that would certainly terrify me), and being called "cupcake" all the time (a problem I don't think I'd encounter). I don't share Doreen's enthusiasm for the fashions of the era, but I could probably have shortened that to, "I don't share Doreen's enthusiasm," and left it at that. I'm rarely an enthusiastic guy. Except about this comic! And some of the others I buy.

I really liked the nine-panel grid of Doreen's quest for money to place an ad. Henderson altered her style in a way to make it feel appropriately old-timey somehow. Maybe it was just the stern, mustachioed face of the newspaper advertiser, but it felt a little, Tintin-ish, is the best comp I can come up with. I also enjoy that Tippy is extremely concerned about potentially altering the future, while Doreen pretty much blows it off.

And "Mr. Fantastic" is a much dumber name than "Deathlok", if for no other reason than I'm pretty sure none of the Deathloks named themselves that, while Reed absolutely felt like fluffing his ego a little more was the way to go.

What I Bought 11/10/2015 - Part 2

Related to Monday's post, a couple of days ago Amazon recommended I buy a dutch oven. Which was kind of sweet, that it assumed I can actually cook. Really it was just confusing, but at least it wasn't insulting.

Atomic Robo: The Ring of Fire #3, by Brian Clevinger (words), Scott Wegener (art), Anthony Clark (colors), Jeff Powell (letters and design) - Since I'm buying through an online thing now, I should have gotten the subscription variant cover. It was more dynamic.

Ultra has, by appropriating scientists and funds from wherever they please, gotten their giant robots up and running and combating the Biomega. They're sort of winning, though the Titans are getting trashed in the process, and thousands of people are still dying in the battles. Robo and his bunch are working with China's defense industry to build Robo a new body, and devise their own plan to save the world. The former involves a different design of Tesla's as a power source (since no one knows how he built an atomic heart for Robo that small and that efficient). The latter seems to involve supersonic nuclear torpedoes. Hopefully that's a viable plan against the Biomega version of Krakoa, the Living Island, because that's now a problem.

I understand why the Tesladyne bunch would have misgivings about working in the labs of yet another government super-secret science facility, and would be worried their work could be used to further possible nefarious schemes. Even so, I wasn't entirely comfortable with Robo's new power supply being a device which lets him siphon up to 1% of China's nuclear energy output from anywhere in the world, while neglecting to mention to the country in question they did that. Feels distinctly dishonorable. Though I have to wonder if the military has video cameras in the labs, and how the countermeasures Broughton designed can stop lip-readers. Not a problem with Robo, but Broughton is a human, speaking with a human mouth in English.

Speaking of Robo's new look, it's not bad, although his neck having a collared look will take some getting used to. And just offhand, I feel like it isn't as expressive as his old look. Wegener had a real knack for getting across emotions and reactions on a character with not much in the way of facial features. Just going by this issue, it wasn't there. Maybe because Robo tends to show emotion when things start going wrong, and they haven't yet. I wish Wegener could have gone nuts with the Titan designs, but they're being built for the military, and sticking to a standard design would make sense. He gets to have some fun with the Biomega, though, so it all balances out.

Harley Quinn and Power Girl #5, by Amanda Conner, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Justin Gray (writers), Stephane Roux (artist, pages 1-9 and 19-21), Flaviano (artist, pages 10-18), Paul Mounts (colors), Marilyn Patrizio (letters) - Vartox, it's generally considered polite to ask before introducing tentacles into the, well, I'm not sure what to call that. Hot tubbing, I guess.

The Harvester of Sorrow is a giant head that drives people mad and then feeds on the suffering. He's also so large communication is basically impossible, but his pores do serve as an easy way to get rid of Oreth. Harley decides to try getting inside to wreck things, gets captured, and ends up succeeding in her plans when the Harvester tries to feed on her sorrow, and gets a helping of the Joker, which drives it nuts. And also Harley, who rips the mustache clean off Vartox' face. Ow. Then she kind of snaps out of it in time for everyone to reach a safe distance from the explosion, and when Vartox returns, facial hair restored, he proposes to Power Girl.

I have absolutely no idea who the guy in the leather jacket and sunglasses was that Harley imagined right before charging into the Harvester. Was it Hal Jordan? The sunglasses were green. OK, the Internet tells me it's from a Bollywood film, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, which doesn't really explain anything, but I guess makes sense considering we're talking about Harley. I should stop expecting this mini-series to make sense. Like what the inner Joker in Harley was? Something the Joker actually put in her, or just the impulses that he would encourage, but which she mostly suppresses or redirects these days. If we're working off the origin they gave her in the first new 52 Suicide Squad book, he threw her into his vat of toxins, which had to do something to her mind. And that might just be the part she remembers, but not all that happened necessarily.

Flaviano and Mounts did combine to make her look suitably scary in the pages afterwards. The laughing while crying, the almost rictus grin where the teeth are clenched. The way she pounces on Vartox, but she jutting out her lower jaw in an aggressive fashion, even as she sort of tousles his hair. It's maybe the closest I've seen Conner and Palmiotti come to touching on Harley's portrayal in other DC stuff of the last few years. She's hurting people, but not restricting it to "bad" guys or whatever, but also allies. She only has limited control. So it becomes less funny and more terrifying how unconcerned she is with what she's doing.

What I Bought 10/20/2015 - Part 1

Six books for four weeks. And four of those books came out last week. It's a slow, sad time here, but oh well, make do with what we have. Quality, not quantity, I hope.

Harley Quinn and Power Girl #4, by Amanda Conner, Justin Gray, and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Stephane Roux (artist, pages 10-22), Elliot Fernandez (artist, pages 1-9), Paul Mounts with Alex Sinclair (colorists, Sinclair for pages 18-20), Marilyn Patrizio (letterers) - In another second, Power Girl will open her eyes, realize she was only dreaming about (insert character of your choice), and throw up in Vartox' facial hair.

Evil Vartox appears to have Power Girl on the ropes, only to be freed of the mind control by the purring of a caticorn that decided it liked Harley because she lured out a giant, carnivorous fish for it to eat. Vartox tries to explain where he knows Power Girl from, though no one bothers to explain to him this isn't that Power Girl. Oreth Odeox arrives with his gun-toting space nuns, which accomplish nothing, though he does blast Vartox' clothes off, which is much more an impediment to the bad guy than to Vartox. All seems well, but a force called the Harvester of Sorrows is about to arrive, and that will probably be bad.

Back when Annihilation: Super-Skrull was going on '06, someone explained to me Harvester of Sorrows is a reference to a Metallica song. it was used to refer to a planet-destroying weapon there, and I assume it'll be much the same here, though probably a much sillier one, given the tone of this series. Having both Power Girl and Harley to interact with Vartox is a good plan, since Peeg tends to be disgusted with him constantly, whereas Harley just keeps egging him on. It's a bit different to have a character who pretty much encourages Vartox to be himself at all times, but if anything, she's pushing him to be more Vartoxish than normal. And he's the sort who doesn't need much pushing on that score.

This was a fairly good issue, maybe because I felt like it tried moving the story forward a little more, instead of wasting so much time on drug hallucination sequences. Not that there's much of a plot, but at paying lip service to it is nice. I still wouldn't say any of the jokes made me laugh, though some of the expressions Roux gives Vartox are pretty great. His big grin when Harley compliments his "evil" wardrobe, and his haughty look when he's lecturing Oreth while wearing no clothes in particular. Power Girl said Harley had no shame, she just as easily could have been speaking of Vartox.

Starfire #5, by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Emanuela Lupacchino (pencils), Ray McCarthy (inks), Hi-Fi (colors), Tom Napolitano (letters) - I notice the rest of the sea life as unsure of how they feel about what's happening as I was. Good to know.

Kori has some drinks with the killer guy, they trade toasts, she touches his hand, and someone gets a flashback of his life. Wherein we learn he was a doctor with the power to cure cancer, except it made the tumor in his head grow, which eventually made him the crazy serial killer he is now. He flees, Kori doesn't follow, and isn't sure whether she should tell the sheriff. About the serial killer. Kori, you're an immigrant, not an idiot, c'mon now. The guy her sister hired to find her is approached by the Citadel, who want Kori dead, and they captured the guy's wife and kid. The guy agrees, but only after blowing up one of the Citadel's ships, which might have had said wife and kid. O-kay. Little nuts, though I did appreciate his wife's smirk after the Citadel guys started freaking out. I guess you don't marry a dude like that unless you're prepared for that sort of thing.

Back on earth, Kori goes to her interview at the aquarium, but a lack of experience leaves her out of luck. Isn't that always the way? You need experience to get the job, but need the job to get experience. Anyway, Kori does wind up getting the job, because the bounty hunter guy shows up and kills all the other applicants. I'm JOKING! Actually, she makes out with a sad dolphin so she can speak its language and find out why it's sad. The ability to communicate with sea life gets her the job. There's a big party, the sheriff seems to have been roped into Kori and Atlee's trip to visit Atlee's home (whenever that happens), but when Kori gets home, she finds Dr. Killer waiting, having already attacked the sheriff's brother. Oh, and one of those jewels she had was an egg, and hatched into a star-thing that flew off. It spoke in musical notes, so maybe it's from the same sector as that one Green Lantern? Probably not.

So the dolphin thing. It seems weird, but I know this is because I associate kissing as primarily a romantic thing - and not something done with animals - whereas it isn't that necessarily for Kori. It has been at times - I'm pretty sure she wasn't kissing Boone in issue 1 just to learn 'more English' - but that needn't always be the case. So I wonder if this wasn't Conner and Palmiotti trying to drive that point home in a particularly direct fashion. She wanted to communicate with the dolphin, that would enable her to do so, so she did it. Still, not something I was expecting to read in a comic this week.

There are certain panels where Kori's hair looks like something Lupacchino drew separately, then cut and pasted into place. Note I'm not saying he isn't drawing it, just that there's something about it that makes it note seem to be part of the same picture. Like the hair and her face aren't interacting like they should. The panel on page 3 where she makes her toast in particular. Something about the color of the hair (which I guess would be more Hi-Fi's doing than Lupacchino's), or especially the dark line around the outside boundary of her hair compared to all the lines inside the mass of her hair, just really make it feel like it came from something else. Of course, the dark line might be McCarthy's doing, in which case I need to stop blaming Lupacchino. So someone on the art side of things is making Kori's hair look out of place.

31 Days of Scans - Favorite Not-So-Canonical Romance

This is not a good category for me. I'm usually pretty much OK with romances the creative teams put forward, assuming they do the legwork to set it up (and don't crap all over a different pairing I like in the process), so I don't spend a lot of time musing on hypothetical pairings. The one exception is not from comics (not originally, anyway), and that's Buffy and Spike, because Season 6 napalmed that pairing for me, then salted the Earth it stood on. I would rather see either character (but mostly Spike because I hardly give a damn about Buffy) with any other character. But that's more suitable to a hypothetical "least favorite canonical romance", and like I said, I don't really consider it a comic book thing.

To the extent I do consider possible pairings that haven't been romantically involved, it's usually characters already established as being friends. It seems logical enough to me that they were friends, then it became something more. The thing is, I can't shake two concerns. One, that there are so few legit platonic friendships in comics that it kind of stinks to turn one into yet another romantic pairing, and two, since I'm usually thinking of two female characters who are friends, that it's just some pervy thing on my part.

But you know what, I did think of one pairing that's never happened in continuity that intrigues me.

Power Girl and Dr. Mid-Nite.

For whatever reason, Dr. Pieter Cross is one of the costumed types Power Girl hangs out with the most in recent history from what I can tell, albeit almost exclusively in comics whose creative teams involve Amanda Conner, Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray and Geoff Johns to varying degrees. But that's fine.

The two get along well, which is not something one can always say about Power Girl and other characters. The Doc is not threatened by the fact Kara is vastly more physically powerful than he is. Peej respects Mid-Nite's skills as a crimefighter and as a doctor. They seem to have an easy rapport. I feel like most characters' reactions to Power Girl's straightforward, confident personality fall into three categories: Mildly exasperated, admiring, irritated. Cross, probably from experience dealing with patients, just seems to accept it. He can enjoy talking to her, but if she starts to get defensive about something, he doesn't press. He recognizes that won't get anywhere with her.

Also, he's a moderately well-off guy with a strong community spirit, and Karen is a CEO who ran a company that tried to develop super-science that was helpful to the average person. I think the mutual interest in trying to improve the world outside punching things would provide some common ground, but there's enough differences they wouldn't overlap too much.

Also, Dr. Mid-Nite is a low-profile enough hero I don't think there's much risk of Power Girl becoming "Dr. Mid-Nite's Girlfriend", which is pretty important for the character, especially since she's largely avoided being a supporting character to a male hero up to this point. The nature of the threats they tend to face solo are different enough that, again, there wouldn't be too much overlap. They could each still have their own worlds, so to speak, and connect when and where it made sense. Plus, the adventures of Ollie the Owl and Peej's cat!

Power Girl and Mid-Nite react to this idea with predictable weariness in Power Girl #7. No, wait, they're reacting to the arrival of Vartox. Either way, the script is by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, Amanda Conner is the artist, Paul Mounts the colorist, and John J. Hill the letterer. And the Doc had better consider his words carefully, or this thing is over before it begins in JSA Classified #1, by Geoff Johns (writer), Conner (penciler), Palmiotti (inker), Mounts (colorist), Rob Leigh (letterer).

What I Bought 9/15/2015 - Part 1

Didn't even have to wait for Wednesday last week to pick up the previous three weeks' comics, since nothing came out for me last week. Five books total, 4 of those from the week of the 9th. And I'm only expecting two books total this week and the next. At least Squirrel Girl starts again next month.

Starfire #4, by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Emanuela Lupacchino (pencilers), Mirco Pierfederici (pencil assists), Ray McCarthy and Trevor Scott (inkers), Hi-Fi (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - Kori looks a little puffier in the cheeks than normal. It's Tamaranean mumps! Which probably causes Earthlings to pop like a balloon, so the street cleaners are gonna have a bad time of it.

Kori and Atlee deal with the Chida, by having Atlee hurl it to the sea, and then Kori blasts it until it grows so large it breaks through a weak spot in the sea floor and sinks in. Atlee also explains why the Chida's after her - she wouldn't marry his boss as arranged - and her origin, which does still include Power Girl being her best friend, which makes me wonder if that's why Atlee added a boob window to her costume, because her old one had a v-neck collar. Even so, I was glad to see they kept that friendship.

Kori and Atlee get really excited about both having super-powers, which kind of freaks the sheriff out, since she's concerned having superheroes around will get the town destroyed. That argument doesn't make much of an impression on the girls, but perhaps this Soren fellow, telepathic serial killer, will cause a reassessment. And it seems Kori's sister has hired someone to find her, which is certainly played as ominous. Her sister stays mostly in shadows, the guy she hires is a trained killer, she won't explain why she wants to find Kori (though it makes sense a ruler wouldn't feel it necessary to explain herself to a hireling). Which makes me suspect Conner and Palmiotti might make this into something relatively benign, just to mess with our expectations.

The biggest issue I continue to have is my uncertainty whether Lupacchino's art fits the tone of the book. Kori here seems very heavily drawn from Teen Titans Go! in terms of personality, but whereas the animation on that show doesn't really sexualize her, I don't know think you can say the same about the art here. Of course, Conner and Palmiotti have pretty much every character notice or comment on how attractive she is. The characterization puts me in mind of a much younger character, which clashes with that.visual presentation. I know Kori was portrayed as naive about Earth from her earliest appearances, but her she initially ignores the part she's supposed to play in Atlee's plan, to listen to Atlee explain why the Chida's after her. It's supposed to be a joke, but it does feel more like something a child would do. Lupacchino seemed to favor having characters place both hands along their face, in some expression of glee or surprise, but it just looks odd. I especially didn't buy it with Atlee, because her face doesn't really match the body language. It's trying for extreme excitement, but doesn't get there. It doesn't help her eyes are drawn looking at us, rather than Kori. That actually makes it a bit creepy. Anyway, there's a conflict there I'm struggling to resolve, but I'm not sure how that's going to happen.

Mrs. Deadpool and Her Howling Commandos #4, by Gerry Duggan (writer), Salva Espin (artist), Val Staples (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - It's the little touches in that cover. Frankenstein wearing the wizard's cape from last issue, Man-Thing with the flower growing out of his head.

I was wrong about Dracula killing everyone last issue. He killed everyone, except a fair number of his vampire minions. Shiklah spends too much time gloating about having a magic scepter with the power of starlight, and not enough killing Dracula with it. It turns into a scramble for the scepter, which kills the Commandos, save Man-Thing, and ends with Dracula seemingly triumphant. Wade finally gets involved and possesses a minion, tosses the scepter to Shiklah, she finally kills Dracula and vows to conquer the surface world. Then she and her followers are killed by the Thor Cops. The end.

That was a flat ending. The Commandos went out like a bunch of chumps. The series introduced Marcus the centaur as an unbeatable warrior (except for his diabetes), and Drac casually beheaded him in one panel. She decides to wage war on the surface world - and it goes worse for her than it ever has for Namor. Was it a lesson about overreach, or had Duggan simply written Shiklah as preparing to conquer the above world at the end of the last Deadpool series, and decided to nod towards it here? There are a lot of stories where the main character quests for some item, finds it, takes their revenge, and all ends well. Here it seems like that up to a point, and then we find out it went downhill because just finding a magic doohickey doesn't mean every decision is a good one. I'm just spitballing, trying to understand. Duggan probably just thought it was funny to end an ultimately meaningless story like this.

So neither book was exactly a winner. Friday's selections will be better.

What I Bought 8/19/2015 - Part 2

Comics Alliance had a poll up to see what were people's favorites out of Marvel's many, many events over the last decade. I naturally voted (repeatedly) for Annihilation, which is at least running second. Of course, it's second to Civil War, and the next is House of M. No accounting for taste, I guess. At least World War Hulk pulled ahead of Infinity.

Harley Quinn and Power Girl #3, by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Stephane Roux (artist, pgs. 1-7, 12-19), Moritat (artist, 8-11), Elliot Fernandez (artist, 20-22), Paul Mounts (colorist), John J. Hill (letterer) - I keep thinking that cover reminds me of a different one, but I can't recall which. I'm probably just thinking of all those covers with one hero unconscious and held by their cape, while another rushes to the rescue. That's not an uncommon type.

Our heroines reach their destination, and are immediately attacked by another space armada. They fend that off, then spend 4 pages on a drug trip thanks to Groovicus Mellow. About the time they come down from that, Vartox shows up, and Power Girl has to start fighting him. I'm starting to think this would have been better served as a 4-issue mini-series. I know the creative team is mostly just screwing around with this whole thing, there isn't any particular point to it, but it was a little too obvious here. Or maybe it doesn't work because all the Hunter S. Thompson stuff is lost on me. The closest I've ever gotten to his work is either those articles he wrote on ESPN's Page 2 in the early 2000s, or the X-Play episode where Sessler dresses up as him while he and Morgan Webb seek the fabled burial ground of Atari E.T. games. I'm still not sure if the bald guy with glasses who showed up as the ladies shook off the effects was supposed to be Thompson or Grant Morrison. I'm thinking Morrison, given the nice suit and lack of a hat, but hell if I know.

I may not have cared about the "montage homage", but Moritat and Paul Mounts did a good job drawing it. Moritat's draws Harley and Peej with a simplified looseness, it somehow suggests their faces could radically alter shape any moment, but they're still easily recognizable. Mellow's face doesn't do this as much, but you could at least argue that he has a higher tolerance from repeated exposure to starflower pollen. Mounts gives everything this sort of oversaturated feel, where there are these purples and greens that are all over the characters, even in the shadows. It works for them being in this haze, the grip of the drug, and so it colors everything. There's definite skill at work, I just didn't engage with it in terms of being sucked in.

Starfire #3, by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Emanuela Lupacchino (pencils), Ray McCarthy (inks), Hi-Fi (colors), Tom Napolitano (letters) - Nothing worse than being pursued by a giant, slobbering creature, who has your name written on its face. Everyone will just assume you bullied it, and so you deserve to get eaten.

The hurricane has passed, and the island tries to pick up pieces, and Kori starts moving into her new place, Stella and her brother's guest house. This is interrupted by a cruise liner crashing into the harbor. We had seen it pick up some poor shipwrecked guy, who is actually some sort of serial killer with mind powers. By the time Stella and Kori get on the ship, he's nowhere to be seen, and only one member of the crew is left. Since the ship is a crime scene now, Stella asks Kori to wait at a bar nearby, where every guy is interested in her, and she gets some advice from a helpful waitress. Then a monster that kind of looks like he's made of magma shows up, Kori assumes it's after her, but it's actually after the waitress, who is Power Girl's old friend Atlee (I don't know if she uses Terra as a codename).

I understand Conner and Palmiotti are playing up Starfire's lack of familiarity with Earth, but sometimes I think they take it too far. She spent time around other species while she was a prisoner. She lead them in a revolt/escape. She's had other adventures along the way. It seems strange to me she hasn't previously encountered things like sarcasm, greed, or police forces, or whatever. I'm not certain she needs to be this much a fish out of water, to the point she seemingly needs everything explained to her by everyone. Which is too bad, because the idea of Atlee getting to be the voice of experience is a nice potential switch for her, but I feel like it leaves Kori once again in the position of needing to be led by someone else. Maybe it won't turn out that way. Kori clearly knows things, she said she could build one of those weather controlling machines, so she isn't an idiot. Hopefully she'll get a chance to show off some of her knowledge and experience. I do like the fact Stella, even though she sends Kori away, asks her to stay nearby, just in case.

I did wonder how Kori was in her skirt and blouse when she met saw Stella running, but was in her costume by the time she flew Stella to the dock. She couldn't have been wearing it underneath, and it wouldn't have saved time to go back and change, then fly. On the other hand, Lupacchino did remember to draw six toes on the polydactyl cat, and the expressions on the faces of all Kori's possible suitors at the bar were well done. There are times Lupacchino's work seems kind of flat, the expressions are blank, or I can't shake the feeling a face is partially photo-referenced. When he loosens up, gets a little more exaggerated, I think it's an improvement, fits better with the tone. I mean, a bunch of guys and gals all buying drinks for Kori and being interested in her could be played as creepy, but it isn't playing it that way. It's a gag, everyone is attracted to her to the point she gets a ludicrous number of drinks. Everyone has little hearts above their heads, that one guy is sitting backwards in his chair with the classic "totally smitten" pose of resting his head on both hands (which are positioned on either side of his face), with a big smile. Even the cat is waving shyly. And that's a fairly normal tone for this book. Loosening up some might fit better, or at least carry the jokes farther.

What I Bought 7/22/2015 - Part 1

As promised, I ventured to the store and purchased comics, obtaining most of the ones I sought. They were missing a couple, but I’ll find those somewhere else and tack their reviews on later, maybe next week.

Harley Quinn and Power Girl #2, by Amanda Conner, Justin Gray, and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Stephane Roux (artist, pages 1-18), Elliot Fernandez (artist, pgs. 19-22), Paul Mounts (colorist, pgs. 1-18), Alex Sinclair (colorist, pgs. 19-22), John J. Hill (letterer) – Harley, you’re partially obscuring Peej’s boob window! How is she supposed to distract these guys when you do that? I guess she could just punch them without them being distracted first. Seems inefficient, though.

That’s what she spends most of the issue doing, trying to smash Oreth’s considerable army, while Harley flees from a cheerful killbot out to sew her orifices together. While Harley succeeds in transforming her foe into a cheerful pile of rabbit-shaped robot junk, Peej is overwhelmed by numbers, until a super-powered strike team of Vartox’ exes arrive to lend a hand. This team tends to bicker a lot and pointlessly shout their names, so it’s pretty much the ‘70s X-Men (albeit dressed more like the Mike Grell-drawn Legion of Super-Heroes). At least they don’t constantly describe their powers out loud. Harley shows up with a spaceship so they can rescue Vartox, who is busy being transformed into something by Oreth.

I’m guessing the chief bad guy is going to wind up have a lot of repressed urges he needs help getting in touch with. Good thing Harley’s a licensed psychiatrist. I was just joking about that, but I could see that being how this problem is handled, with liberal doses of trying to smash the problem with a hammer thrown in. Because it’s still not at all serious, from Power Girl telling Harley not to blow anything up, especially crap (and Harley didn’t blow anything up), to the XGF arguing about whether the one guy on the team should even be there, and him arguing that calling it an Ex-Girlfriend Force isn’t fair to him. Peej’s expression in that panel is great. She has her eyes shut and this sour expression, and you can tell she’s about to start hitting people if they don’t change the subject.

It does highlight a difference between pre- and post-Flashpoint DC. I think pre-Flashpoint Power Girl would have been exasperated, but she’d have rolled with the absurdity of all this, whereas this Power Girl just seems massively frustrated by everything about this world. Part of that is the old Peej had met Vartox, so she’d at least have context for some of these comments. But in general, she seemed at least a little more inclined to accept things were odd and enjoy it. Current Power Girl is a little more focused, but consequently much more easily aggravated by distractions.

Starfire #2, by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Emanuela Lupacchino (pencils), Ray McCarthy (inks), Hi-Fi (colors), Tom Napolitano (letters) – And on that day, Starfire learned parrots don’t like it when you try to remove their feathers to clean them.

Kori gets an introduction to severe Earth weather as the hurricane hits the island. She manages to get her landlord and her grandson to the school where everyone is hunkering down, then gets plastered with a big sign, which knocks her into some odd fellow’s bathroom, where he is hunkered down. He (and his pugs) go with her, but only because the Sun Goddess told him the Mistress of the Winds would be coming. I can’t tell if that’s going to be significant later, or if he’s just a random oddball Kori meets once. Sheriff Stella’s brother heads out in the middle of all this to try and rescue a couple in a busted boat, and they all get sunk. Fortunately the sheriff found Kori, and after a brief detour to rescue that freaking parrot again, Kori heads out and rescues them all, though it was a bit of a near thing with Gabe, who is possibly smitten with his rescuer. The storm passes, families are reunited, but Kori’s new home is destroyed. Wow, that didn’t take long, and this is why I don’t have much interest in living in coastal regions. Also, some odd thing crawled out a hole in the ground, looking for someone, and he at some poor guy with really obvious tan lines on his arms and legs. Possibly even worse than mine, which is impressive. Nice touch there by Hi-Fi, I assume.

One thing that concerned me about Conner and Palmiotti’s writing on Harley Quinn was that at times they seemed to just be throwing everything they can think of at the wall. The end result is that there are so many different things and characters around, most of them don’t really get developed. It still works to an extent there, because the title character is so scattershot herself, but I’m hoping a similar approach isn’t going to be taken here. Now that Kori isn’t going to be living at the trailer park, will we see Tina and Boone again, or is their part in the story done already? It’s too early to say for sure, and I feel pretty confident Stella and her brother will be regulars in the book, but it’s something to keep an eye on.

I’m curious how they did the rain in this issue. It’s a bunch of thin white lines, and so I don’t know if that’s something Hi-Fi did, or if Lupacchino drew all those in over the rest of the art, and it was understood not to color those in. In the places where they overlap other linework (a person’s hand for instance), you can still see that linework, but sort of faded. So maybe it’s not about not coloring those spaces in, but coloring them in with white? I don’t know, it was just something I noticed on the two-page splash on pages 2 and 3, and it got me wondering. I will say the characters don’t look like they’re inhabiting the same space as the hurricane. I feel like their clothes, and especially their hair, ought to be showing more effects from being in this storm. I’ve been drenched to the skin plenty of times in storms that are likely nowhere near as fierce as what those characters are supposed to be experiencing, and clothes sit differently on you in those situations. OK, Kori’s wearing some alien fabric, and she’s solar-powered, so maybe it’s different for her, but that doesn’t explain all the Earth folk. I mean, the poor joker who gets killed by the subterranean creature is wearing a shirt that ought to be clinging to him by the time he died, you know?

What I Bought 7/2/2015 - Part 1

Remember how I said 10 books over 4 weeks was pretty sorry? Now it’s 5 books over 3 weeks. Months with 5 Wednesdays are frequently disappointing.

Batman Beyond #2, by Dan Jurgens (writer), Bernard Chang (artist), Marcelo Maiolo (colors), Dave Sharpe (letters) – I can’t think of much to say about this cover. I feel like Batman should be trying to stop the cyborgs shooting at people rather than fleeing? Inque should maybe get her hip back out of sight, because it might ruin her element of surprise?

Max and Barbara try to keep Tim alive while cyborgs gather all the new arrivals for “processing”, which is to say Brother Eye pumps them full of drugs and scopes out everything they know, leaving them grinning, mindless husks. Lovely. Max gets caught, and before Babs and Tim can escape, Eye has their faces from Max’s memory, and his chief overseer at this place is Terry’s old foe, Inque. Tim’s first attempt to fight one of Terry’s rogues doesn’t go so well, because apparently he left his brain back in the past. If water proved to be a weakness of hers in the past, it stands to reason she’d be prepared for you to use it. Maybe he should have used Mad Stan as a warm-up? He gets captured, Barbara gets captured, and a shadowy figure on the Moon Eye is using for a host body demands they be processed.

I feel like Brother Eye must have moved the Moon closer to Earth for the picture on that first page. Both bodies seem too large for our vantage point. Either the Moon should be smaller, if we’re close to Earth, or vice versa. Maybe I’m wrong, or maybe Brother Eye really did hook the Moon up with an independent propulsion system. Darkseid has one for his world, Ego was forcibly given one, it’s all the rage with planetary-level threats. Chang and Maiolo are still using the panels with a blank red background, and the figures either in all black and white. They even stepped up usage, since there are about 15 panels in this issue like that. I still like it, it’s a very cool visual effect, the panels really grab the eye, but I worry they might be overusing it. There was a nice bit on page 8, at the bottom, where as Max is being interrogated, over three consecutive panels, the view keeps zooming in, and the colors shift from the more normal scheme in the first one, to the red-heavy style in the third, with the second in-between, heavily orange, but still with other distinct colors. I guess to symbolize her resistance being worn down, and the third panel being the point where she (and Tim and Babs by extension) are sunk, because the best lie she could manage didn’t take. I will say, I don’t understand why they tried to play Inque up as this shadowy, unseen figure for half the issue, considering she’s right there on the cover. It wasn’t exactly a surprise when she attacked Tim and Barbara. Catwoman would have been a surprise. Inque just on the cover as a ruse, to throw the reader off.

I’m still not sure this is going to be what I was looking for. The potential is there – I would have been fine with Tim gradually working his way towards a Big Bad he discovers is causing a lot of misery, just not immediately, I guess. Also a little concerned about Max now. Not really excited for Jurgens to take a weedwhacker to Terry’s old supporting cast just because Tim’s in there now, so hopefully this isn’t the start of some trend. Maybe she can bounce back from it?

Harley Quinn and Power Girl #1, by Amanda Conner, Justin Gray, and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Stephane Roux (artist), Paul Mounts (colorist), John J. Hill (letterer) – Harley’s hairstyle is just bizarre, even for her. It’s like a Marge Simpson split in two.

The entirety of this mini-series already took place between two panels in Harley’s ongoing series, but we hadn’t gotten to see what happened. Now we do, and the answer is, they wound up back in the pre-Flashpoint DCU, ran into some creepy Yoda-guy with a pet Hydra (I feel like these are jokes about Star Wars and Marvel both being under Disney’s umbrella now, but I could be wrong), then stumbled across one of Vartox’s headships. The ship, once it realizes one of the heroines is Power Girl, is only too eager to take them back to his homeworld, which has fallen under the boot of some uptight jerk named Oreth Odeox. Upon arriving at Valeron, they’re immediately shot down, then nearly charged with being prostitutes, until Harley “accidentally” blows the guy’s head off with something she took from not-Yoda’s weapon cache. About that time, Vartox’ chief science guy shows up, we get some discussion of how this is definitely the universe where Peej helped Vartox save his planet, then more of Oreth’s goons show up.

It’s all entirely goofy, but that’s fine. I’m not sure whether it’s Roux inking his own work, or if it’s Paul Mounts colors, but I really like Roux’s work more now than I have in the past. When I’d see it on Birds of Prey, there was always something about it that threw me off (there’s one cover with Misfit and Black Alice on it I’m thinking of in particular). Expressions were exaggerated to a comical extent, but it was trying to look realistic. The overall presentation clashed in my head. Not the case here. Harley’s expressions in particular are fairly exaggerated, as she tends to talk with her entire body, lots of hand gestures and such, but it works really well. Maybe it’s the silly tone of the book, or Harley’s character in general (though Power Girl has some excellent faces as well), but the whole thing just works.

I see why they titled this issue “Extrastellar Exploitations”, given there are more than a couple of panels that provide a pretty decent close-up on Power Girl’s rear end. They still work for conveying relevant information, but they probably didn’t have to be angled that particular way, you know? Or maybe they did, given this book. What the heck, right?

Also, I probably shouldn’t be surprised Vartox had Power Girl androids made, but I am a little bit. I thought he regarded her too highly for her assistance to his people to resort to pale imitations. Though I’m sure whenever Harley and Peej meet one, Vartox will insist it was done as a measure of respect for her.