Six Isn't His Lucky Number

"Yo mama" jokes are passe. It's all about "my daddy" jokes now.

Venom: The Savage Six is the end of Rick Remender's stint writing Flash Thompson's - aka "Agent Venom" - adventures, and the beginning of Cullen Bunn's. In fact, the two of them co-write issues 18-21, which form the actual "Savage Six" portion of the trade.

The three issues prior to that revolve around Flash having been drafted into the "Secret Avengers", which Remender was taking over as writer from Warren Ellis. Flash trying to adjust to being on a team with Captain America (until Hawkeye takes over as leader), putting his foot in his mouth around Valkyrie, and having a whole other set of people to lie to about the fact the new Crime-Master knows who's wearing the symbiote. All of which also means more lying to his mother, his now ex-girlfriend Betty Brant, and his pal Peter Parker.

The Savage Six story itself is mostly Flash scrambling to protect his mother, sister and Betty from the fairly random assortment of villains the Crime-Master assembled. There's the Jack O'Lantern Remender and Tony Moore introduced in this series, but also The Fly, Death Adder from the Serpent Society(?), some digitized goof called Megatak, and the Toxin symbiote, bonded to Eddie Brock. It's not a great team since I'm not sure what history Flash has with Death Adder or Megatak. There's no meat to their presence, they're just here to make numbers.

At least two of those are Flash's own fault, as the Fly plays him with some sob story about a kid so that Flash lets him escape custody in issue 16. As for Brock, he was going around trying to kill all the symbiotes, and messed up Flash's attempt to put a bullet in Crime-Master's skull. Flash had to bail, and let Eddie webbed up to another symbiote bonded to him.

Flash ends up pulling the Fly's wings off, while Flash's mom watches, while Brock goes up like oil fire along with the symbiote because Flash can't pull him free in time. Not sure what point to draw from that. He showed mercy to one guy, and that guy turned around and tried to kill him. He left Brock to the wolves, then fucked up saving him.

Maybe the conclusion is Flash sucks at this. The last issue in the trade is his final showdown with Jack O'Lantern, who went ahead and stole Flash's dad's corpse as a taunt. How convenient Flash spends the entire issue thinking about his abusive drunk of a dad, and how similar they are.

Artist-wise, this collection is a mess. I know, no big surprise from Marvel in the early 2010s. Lan Medina draws issues 15 and 18-21, with Robert Atkins handling some pages in issue 20. Declan Shalvey draws issue 22. Kev Walker draws issues 16 and 17. There's 7 inkers, including Shalvey inking himself, and Walker doing likewise, but only on issue 16. There's 3 separate colorists, and no, they don't correspond to the primary artists, as Chris Sotomayor handles issues 16-21. There's even two different letterers!

Of the various art teams, the Shalvey/Lee Loughridge pairing is probably the best for setting mood. Shalvey sticks to a lot of wide, short panels, and more than the other artists, remembers the way the symbiote looks when Flash wears it is just something he's making it do. So as Flash loses control or gets angry, spikes start to protrude from it, and there are panels where you can see it's shifting more towards its classic appearance. And Loughridge drenches panels in a particular shade, playing up melancholy or fury.

Walker's art has rougher texture, and he tends to illustrate the violence more vividly than Medina or Shalvey. He likes tilted panels with rough-edged borders, although at times it's difficult to tell if I'm supposed to read across two pages or finish one then move to the next. Either way, the more graphic approach feels like a good choice; this is Venom, not Spider-Man. What's more, it's a Venom desperate to fix his earlier mistakes, proves he's not a fuck-up who lets people down all the time.

Comparatively, Medina's work is cleaner, more straightforward. Easy to read and tell what's happening, but kind of flat next to the others. Walker's Flash looks tired, eyes narrowed, face pinched, and he's not even scrambling to keep people alive yet. Medina's looks way too clean for someone already beat up and allegedly feeling a lot of pressure.

What I Bought 6/1/2020

All the world's a trash fire, but at least I have comics to help me ignore that fact. Less corrosive to the liver than alcohol. Now here's two comics about dying worlds!

Rogue Planet #1, by Cullen Bunn (writer), Andy MacDonald (artist), Nick Filardi (colorist), Crank! (letterer) - I don't think that suit is still sealed against the outside.

There's a planet that drifts, not tethered to any star or other celestial body. And a salvage crew picks up a distress beacon, so they go to investigate. They find a whole bunch of downed ships, then some weird fleshy structure. They get attacked by a giant snake thing made of teeth and mystery meat and one of them dies. Most of the crew is, understandably, ready to leave, but the boss guy insists they are going to make money on this stop. Then some bodies appear.

This didn't land with me. It should. Strange setting, weird monsters, vague mysteries to theorize about. Ought to be right up my alley, but no luck. I don't know why, other than something about Bunn's writing doesn't connect with me. The dialogue doesn't get any reaction from me, doesn't have any punch to it. The closest attempt to something snappy is one of the characters agreeing they should wear their environmental suits, because he needs extra protection for his junk. But it falls flat.

Maybe that's the point. These folks have been a crew for a long time, it's not working from a profit standpoint. They're tired, they're a little lackadaisical. They all know each other well enough they know each other's tics and dumb jokes. Them being tired and on the brink is in the text, them being too well-acquainted with each other is me extrapolating.

MacDonald is definitely going for an Alien vibe with things. The design and shape of the ship is boxy rather than anything sleek. The weird creatures that seem to get inside and attack from within. Granted that instead of structure that look like ribs or skeletal structures, you get weird fleshy obelisks and whatnot, but that same sort of thing. Except nothing has quite the same dingy, battered look as the Nostromo. The mechanic, Franco, mentions the environmental systems have always been a bit tweaked (in response to the Captain's question of why it is snowing inside his ship), but the ship looks perfectly fine. There aren't a bunch of panels pulled open to expose wiring, nothing dented or with peeling paint. Maybe that just means these people take better care of their stuff, but for a crew that sounds like it's about to go under if this mission doesn't produce a big score, that doesn't make a ton of sense to me.

Sera and the Royal Stars #7, by Jon Tsuei (writer), Audrey Mok (artist), Raul Angulo (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - I see the flaming serpent lady has made herself a nice anime sword. But is it a gunsword? I've heard those are kinda essential.

Sera wants to chase after her captured sister, but is talked out of it by Antares. It's one of those "everybody will suffer if you don't get your shit together" speeches. Aldebaran and Fomalhaut almost get killed by a couple of the Draco siblings, but reach the Demon Star, Algol. Algol tells them why and how she succeeded in killing another star once before, and what the price was.

The question becomes, how much are the Royal Stars prepared to sacrifice to restore themselves, which will allegedly aid this world? From what Algol describes, the star she killed became a black hole, which then destroyed many worlds, stars, and lives. More than what that star had already destroyed? Don't know. More than it would have destroyed if left unchecked? Probably not based on her description. We don't know how many other worlds might benefit if the Royal Stars regain their old power, and we don't know how many stars they'll have to kill to achieve that. The two siblings are planning to call in the rest of their family, so the numbers are gonna go up. It's a murky ground.

I like Algol's design. I always have to remind myself blue is hotter than red when it comes to flames and stars, which would mean she's burning hotter now than she was before. Not sure what I should make of that, though. She's also the first star we've seen that wasn't strictly a biped. All the others conform to "two legs, two arms". She has the arms, but no legs obviously. It's not related to her actions killing the first light, because even in her original form, she was like this. I was going to wonder if it had something to do with her perhaps being a much older star, if she was possibly the second star, after the one she killed. That may not be how it works, as the Seven Sisters were around for her to consult before she acted, and the First Light was bipedal as well.

What I Bought 3/7/2018 - Part 1

They build vending machines now to recognize if your selection didn't actually drop. When it senses that, it makes the little coil spin again, and then you can get two bags of Skittles for the price of one. It's a nice bonus that happens every once in a while. Some days at work, I take what I can get.

Tick 2017 #3, by Cullen Bunn and JimmyZ (writers), Duane Redhead (artist) - Welcome to the X-Men, Tick and Arthur, hope you brought enough pie for everyone.

Spotted Fever saves Arthur from the clowns and ninjas, and smacks some sense back into the Tick. She takes them to La Chambre Rouge where they find the newest batch of prospective heroes being twisted by Dr. Daedalus. Their attempt to escape runs them smack into an army of ninjas and clowns.

I feel this was a play on Larry Hama's Wolverine run, when Logan finds the Weapon X facility they staged a lot of his and the other victims' memories at. Mostly it was the scene when Tick wanders into a room he swears is Arthur's living room (although Arthur doesn't see it). I don't know if that's what Bunn and JimmyZ are going for, but given the Tick originally played a lot with spoofing Miller's Daredevil, it wouldn't surprise me. They've given the Tick a backstory of a nefarious doctor trying to turn him into a weapon, plus a lost love he didn't remember, plus speaking French all of the sudden. OK, that last one isn't a perfect comp to Logan's connections to Japan, but you get my point.

Redhead's artwork fits the story. It's still, at this point, a fairly straightforward superhero story, and Redhead has a clean, straightforward style. He can make the evil Doctor look sinister when he needs to, and the Tick is very expressive, and it seems like all the information that is supposed to be on the page is there, presented clearly. I would like a better look at the designs on those other heroes that showed up, especially The Gesture. I feel like his costume ought to evoke the era his moves supposedly come from, but the little bit we see of it doesn't suggest that.

I'm not sure if I'm planning to stick with the book going forward, though. Still not convinced we really needed the Tick's origin, assuming this doesn't wind up being some sort of fakeout or a false memory. Also, they write the Tick as very stream of consciousness. Was he always like that? Maybe it's all the buried memories. I guess we'll see.

Empowered and Sistah Spooky's High School Hell #3, by Adam Warren (writer), Carla Speed McNeil (artist/letterer), Jenn Manley Lee (colorist) - I'm glad my high school bathroom experiences were not like that.

After surviving a sing-off against in the music room, Spooky and Emp wind up in the ladies' room, where Emp finds herself stuck in a stall that is filled rapidly by her own tears, and Spooky's being torn apart by cutting words from another girl as it cracks her reflection. But Emp has dealt with enough cruel taunts that she's able to bust out and kill both their tormentors. That's six more down, total.

Last issue, I wondered why no one was trying to backstab the Queen Bee, Ashley. I guess it's because she's more powerful than the others, with her Absolute Solipsism Field, and they're just terrified of her. It's seeming more and more likely she expects our heroes to kill all the others so she gets all of Spooky's power, and it might be interesting if that didn't go as planned. I can't shake that feeling Spooky's going to be offered a chance to rescue Hannah if she'll just betray Emp, and I'm not sure how that's going to play out.

The other part that's come up again is how for the most part, these girls are stuck in the same patterns they had in high school. They haven't changed their tactics, and think their targets haven't either. Spooky was nervous about singing, but the shit the girls hurled her way only irritated her. The insults Olivia whispered to Emp might have worked when the series started, but she's come far enough to know it's not true and not surrender. Brooke's insults didn't start to have the maximum impact until she attacked who Spooky is now, as opposed to how she looked back then. Attacking her survivor's guilt, her regrets, that seemed to take Spooky's will to fight.

McNeil and Lee did a heck of a job on that bit with Spooky trapped in front of the mirror. The way the cracks show in her reflection as these red voids, and then appear as cuts on the real her. The way the red that saturates those panels contrasts the blue that's threatening to drown Emp. Hannah's image appearing in the mirror, but mostly not showing the red hue, even though it's supposed to be part of Spooky's torment. The panels that have Spooky in them keep moving in closer as her situation goes downhill, even as Emp's move back as she takes control of hers. And the number of panels per page goes up a little near the end of it. Not a lot, from five to seven over the course five pages, but it works. Time is running out, the tension goes up. Surprise, Carla Speed McNeil is good at this drawing thing.

What I Bought 12/27/2017

I was hoping to grab all three comics that came out this week, but the store was missing one. I should have it by next week. Hoping to review the remainder of December's books then, so I can do all the Year in Review posts the second week of January. Will I manage it? Eh, probably not.

Despicable Deadpool #291, by Gerry Duggan (writer), Scott Koblish (artist), Nick Filardi (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - Deadpool using those stupid filters for his selfie is the most heinous act he's ever committed.

Wade presents Stryfe with Old Cable's heart. Then Regular Cable bursts in and there's a fight. Wade gets a call during the fight from Stryfe, standing over Eleanor as she dies of Madcap's bioweapon, threatening to withhold the cure. So Wade turns on Cable, telling him he planted a bomb to kill Hope at some point. Cable leaves in a huff, Wade goes home to sulk.

There are a few points that are enjoyable. Wade being 'ported into Stryfe's HQ in the middle of pissing in a phone booth, while drinking a beer. Mostly for Stryfe's appalled look. Heck, Stryfe has a blimp HQ, which is way cooler than I ever would have given him credit for being.

Part of me thinks this is an extremely long-con between Wade and Cable. Meaning, they know Stryfe would still be wary of Deadpool double-crossing him at this stage, so they're pretending to have a dramatic falling out to ambush him somewhere down the line when he doesn't have vampires or whatever planned. I doubt it, since I think Duggan intends to burn all Wade's bridges, but I'm always suspicious of the swerve.

I'm not sure that's a good idea. Leaving Wade isolated and friendless sounds suspiciously like what Daniel Way did with him, and that wound up being a meandering, pointless run. Wade is hopefully going after Nazi Cap next issue, so fingers crossed he guts that guy like a fish, then defiles the corpse. Then we can all agree to pretend Nazi Cap never happened, OK?

The quiet moments at the end, when Wade is left alone, those I like. Koblish shows him being carried along by the water passively. No energy in him. Just tired. It's been a different look for Deadpool, who even when depressed usually shoots something or drinks and swears loudly. He doesn't even have the drive for that. Koblish and Filardi handle those well. Colors are dark, but calm and fairly monotone. Wade, when he does move, has his shoulders slumped, leaning on the wall for support.

The overall idea Duggan's going with is one in theory I want to see, but the execution so far, not hitting it out of the park.

Tick 2017 #2, by Cullen Bunn and JimmyZ (writers), Duane Redhead (artist), Jeff McClelland (back-up story writer), Alex Harris (back-up story artist) - I can't imagine the Tick is very good at chess. Then again, I wouldn't have thought he could play the piano, either.

Tick and Arthur reach Canada, where the Tick is flooded with memories of being a regretful lumberjack and fledgling hero as part of some superteam-in-training. Which means he's not much use to Arthur when the clowns and ninjas show up again.

That's pretty much it, as far as plot goes. How much they plan on having the Tick's current personality and character be a result of who he was is something I'm curious to see. Sometimes writers have the character become entirely different when they lose their memory (see Mitch Shelly in either version of Resurrection Man). Other times certain things are retained, or leak through whatever the blocks are. With the Tick, he seems to have retained his desire to uphold justice and fight evil, but had forgotten French.

Redhead seems to draw almost all the other characters with more detailed faces than the Tick and Arthur. Even the ones with masks have more shading and inking. Except Spotted Fever, which seems significant. Redhead's art works pretty well, although panels seem crowded and almost claustrophobic at times. Which could be the Tick being overwhelmed by all these memories. He spends the entire issue rushing from one place that he now remembers to another, Arthur struggling to keep up (and unable to understand the Tick's French).

What I Bought 10/4/2017

Of the two books I was looking for that came out last week, the first issue of the new Tick series was not the one I expected the store to have. Really, I didn't expect it to have either book. One is better than none!

Tick 2017 #1, by Cullen Bunn and Jimmy Z (writers), Douglas Paszkiewicz (artist), Erika Rolbiecki (colorist), Jeff McClelland (writer, back-up story), Duane Redhead (artist, back-up story) - I've read Arsenic Lullaby often enough I recognize how Paszkiewicz draws heads, in that peculiar manner that makes them look kind of flattened front-to-back. Those ninjas should probably be more in a ready stance. They have to know it isn't gonna end well for the ones on the crane.

Tick and Arthur survive a combined assault from Murder Clowns and ninjas, but a shipping container is dropped on the Tick, and the combination of head trauma and all the pulverized sugary cereal unlocks repressed memories. As well as the ability to speak French and play piano. The next day, Arthur returns home from a food run and learns Tick's booked them a bus ride to the Canadian Rockies, in search of La Chambre Rouge, which is The Red Room, correct? Why couldn't it be German?

The back-up story is about a poor ninja who tries to bluff our heroes about the contents of a small case he's carrying. It ends with the Tick stealing his lunch, which doesn't seem very heroic. But the universe rights itself as the lunch contains circus peanuts, and neither of our heroes enjoy the horrible taste.

So we're going to explain the Tick's origin? This seems like one of those things that's only been hinted at for so long, the imagination of the each reader has come up with their own answer better than any someone else can devise. 'Course, there's no guarantee we'll get answers. The Tick may even be remembering someone else's memories. That seems like the kind of bizarre thing he'd do. I suppose the important part of the story will be the friends they make along the way. Or enemies, more likely.

 I enjoy Paszkiewicz' art, the little touches he adds. One of the clowns is pulling a ten-pin to use out of his mouth, like a reverse sword-swallower. The box on the wall in Arthur's room labeled "Emergency Wings". And he really captures Arthur's schlubby, nervous demeanor in the body language. The big fight scene that comprises much of the issue is fine; I don't think that's necessarily Paszkiewicz' strength as an artist, but he can get the job done. Knows when to draw back for a wider shot to give a sense of the number of foes, or go close-in for a bunch of narrow panels of the Tick dispatching enemies.

I kept expecting some sorts of punchlines. Reach the end of a page, here's a joke or a gag. Not really the case. Maybe if Paszkiewicz (one of these times I'll remember the "z" the first attempt) was writing it also. I'm curious to see how Bunn does, although I don't know the breakdown of labor on the writing between him and Jimmy, or how Paszkiewicz is involved in that side of things. I haven't been terribly impressed with the stuff I've read of Bunn's in the past, but it was all Marvel stuff, and much more serious in tone than this. So we'll see.