Sunday Splash Page #335

 

"Trolls Love Basements", in Marvel Knights #2, by Chuck Dixon (writer), Ed Barreto (penciler), Klaus Janson (inker), Haberlin Studios and Dave Kemp (colorists), Richard Starkings and Troy Peteri (letterer)

Marvel's late-1990s/early-2000s Marvel Knights imprint is probably best known for Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's 12-issue Punisher maxi-series, or the Christopher Priest/Mark Texiera Black Panther book (the longest running of the bunch.) There was also the Daredevil revival by Kevin Smith and Joe Quesada, and Inhumans, by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee. I got back into comics a bit late for most of those, but I did arrive in time for the last few issues of Chuck Dixon and Eduardo Barreto's street-level heroes team book.

The basic set-up is that Daredevil has once again decided Frank Castle Must Be Stopped. (No mention is made of the humiliating beatdown Castle gave him in issue 3 of Ennis' mini-series.) Since he hasn't had any luck doing that solo, DD decides to enlist some other friends and allies for the job. He encounters the Black Widow during a whole thing where Ulik the Rock Troll has come to Midgard looking for a valuable artifact. Natasha had met Dagger, who's looking for Cloak, during that. Dagger has no place to go, so she becomes a bit of a younger sister to the Black Widow.

It's got to be a measure of when the book was written that Black Widow by herself isn't enough to deal with the Punisher. I feel like these days she'd be written as taking him down in her sleep.

Shang-Chi was also defending a subway car full of people from Ulik's minions, and he's not happy about some of the crime in the area, so she's in. After that, the thing almost takes on a life of its own. Moon Knight hears about it and asks to not only join, but offers to bankroll them. With a headquarters and everything. Spector is not written anywhere near as dangerous or competent as he is these days, either. He takes a lot of damage, but less in the sense of "holy crap, we can't stop this guy." More, "this guy is overmatched." Zaran the Weapons Master shows up, working for Shang-Chi's unnamed dad and pretty well takes Moon Knight apart.

Oh, and Moon Knight hired Luke Cage, back rocking the yellow shirt and tiara.

The joke of the thing is, the group barely even sees the Punisher. Frank gets wind of the idea early on and tries to use his various stoolies to feed the team info so they'll take out possible roadblocks for him. They spend a couple of issues trapped inside Cloak's world while Dagger tries to reach him (with an assist from Dr. Strange.) They have a throwdown with Tombstone (colored more pink-tinged than I've ever seen) and a group of super-powered leg-breakers he hired. Black Widow gets targeted by someone using a Nick Fury LMD. Yes, that old bit. Shang's eternal problems with his dad derail the team before it can really get going.

Barreto draws 14 of the 15 issues, the exception being issue 14. Klaus Janson inks the first 6 issues. Concluding with, of all things, a Maximum Security tie-in that's all about Frank Castle fight some giant insectile alien in a crackhouse full of mind-controlled addicts. I've often heard that Klaus Janson inked book just looks like Janson's art, regardless of the penciler. And while that's mostly been my impression, Barreto is somehow the exception. The linework is definitely heavier, and with more cross-hatching than in other comics I've read Barreto drew, but not as heavy as other Janson-inked titles, and it's not as stiff, either.

I don't know if Janson consciously pulled back, if the preponderance of shadows in the settings made him dial back to avoid the whole thing being too dark, or if it was something else. Barreto's work is in a very superhero style, most of the characters with the idealized physiques and shiny costumes. Blood or violence is shown in outline or alluded to, rather than anything explicit or gory. The setting inside Cloak's dimension is rendered as just New York city under an eternal sunset sky. It's not the sort of bizarre, twisting architecture or swirling nightmares a Ditko, Colan or Mandrake might adopt. It's street-level superheroes, the emphasis on "superheroes" rather than "street-level."

Saturday Splash Page #107

"Denial," in Supergirl (vol. 2) #21, by Paul Kupperberg (writer), Eduardo Barreto (artist), Gene D'Angelo (colorist), Milton Snapinn (letterer)

I've got just this one issue of Supergirl's second self-titled solo book. I don't remember how it came into my possession. My best guess is in some random grab-bag of comics I picked up at a grocery store or something like that, but it may have been part of a gift from a family member that just knew I liked comics.

This issue is essentially the second part of a story that started in Superman. Supergirl follows some alien spacecraft to Metropolis and finds Superman tangling with the Kryptonite Man. His people species lived on Krypton long before, and were in hibernation when the planet blew up. The mountain he was in was thrown clear and turned to Kryptonite, which his body fed on. He thinks the later Kryptonians made the planet explode, so he wants to kill Superman. Supergirl's basically a throw-in, since he didn't know she existed until she gets involved.

There's also some mysterious group of aliens after the K-Man for stealing one of their ships, and they've booby-trapped it to kill him. They talk of themselves as some big wheel, the unknown movers and shakers in the galaxy, but they're played as a bunch of losers. Their played as indifferent to the lives of anyone other than themselves, to I guess make the K-Man look a little better in comparison.

I don't guess it's representative of the book as a whole, given no members of Supergirl's supporting cast appear, nor are there any updates or even allusions to any subplots going on in the book at the time. Of course, the book ended 2 issues later. Then Supergirl was killed off in Crisis on the Infinite Earths. Then DC decided they wanted to go back to Superman being the only Kryptonian, so no cousin that also survived (no Kryptonite Man either, presumably, unless you count Metallo.) That didn't mean they were satisfied keeping the concept out of circulation. . .

Random Back Issues #89 - Xero #9

We'll check back in on how that works out for "The Doctor".

One of the two issues of Xero drawn by Eduardo Barreto rather than ChrisCross, issue 9 is a waiting game. Level 0 "Closer" Xero (aka, super-awesome basketball player Trane Walker) is cooped up in an American Embassy in Bulgaria. A CIA section chief named Tony somehow became aware of Xero's existence and tried to use him to kill a weapons dealer named Draga. This is did not work, and now Xero's trying to kill Tony. But a) Tony's on American soil at the moment, and b) since Tony works for the government, there's a question of if Xero can kill him. That's being argued over by Xero's boss, Decker, the Attorney General, the Department of Justice, and the Central Intelligence Director.

The caption boxes use a series of abbreviations for those, but then there's a handy key at the bottom of the page. Since I think all this is a book Trane's brother is writing years after the fact, odd that he would take that approach.

So Xero waits, and Tony waits and they play golf, and Tony generally acts like a smug prick because he knows who the blonde white guy is, and why he's there. While Xero dreams about killing him and deals with a persistent headache. 

Back in the States, Xero's brother Tre is in the midst of a huge bender. He was sleeping with the local sheriff's daughter and she broke up with him, because she was tired of being unfaithful to her reverend boyfriend. Who is also one of Tre and Trane's teammates. And guess who has come to visit Tre and use the power of the Lord to free him from the evils of the demon liquor?

Rev notices one of Sabrina's jackets hanging in what Tre calls his 'shrine' to her. He's also been spritzing her perfume on his sheets, which Rev smells. Rather than resort to violence, Rev does something worse: He prays. Tre's not even worth throwing away his vows to God for. That can't be good for the ego.

Meanwhile, their other teammates, The Doctor and Twig ("The WhIte Guy") are involved in a charity street game of sorts. Twig is more than a little unnerved that the refs are wearing Kevlar and packing heat, and that there are an awful lot of boxes full of cash being toted around by other people with guns. The Doctor assures him that these are just friendly wagers and that their victory will get a bunch of local children some new sneakers. If they survive.

Through all the waiting, Xero has left a gap in the sensor net he established to make sure Tony didn't slip away, and it's centered on the foosball table. Once Tony finds it, Xero is sure Tony will ask him to play and try to kill him there. At which point Xero can kill him on grounds of self-defense. The moment comes, and Xero walks away instead, to continue reading Confederacy of Dunces and wait for confirmation to act. When he next speaks to Decker, Decker tells him it's his call.

Which Xero knows would never happen. The reason Draga got away from Xero is he's a 'techno-merc' who can hack the system that sends Xero information. This whole time Xero's been seeing Tony, he's really been sitting across from Draga, manipulating the information (the source of the headaches) and pretending to be Decker. Now Draga's gone, leaving Xero a taunting message that he'll see him in St. Louis.

Then the Embassy blows up. As for the charity basketball game? 

Well, The Doctor doesn't appear to have been lucky in love, but Twig gradually gets in the spirit of the game, flattening a guy grabbing his jersey. Doctor scores a winning bucket, then has a bullet go through his Afro and hit some other guy in the head. Time to, as the song says, take the money and run.

{12th longbox, 160th comic. Xero #9, by Christopher Priest (writer), Eduardo Barreto (artist), Jason Scott Jones (colorist), Willie Schubert (letterer)}