Sunday Splash Page #292

 

"Scheme-atic", in Kaiju Score: Steal from the Gods #2, by James Patrick (writer), Rem Broo (artist), Francesco Segala (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

First rule of sequels: Do the same thing as last time, but more of it. Or do it bigger, whichever. And so, this time around, the heist involves stealing a lot of treasure from the gut of a partially excavated but sedated ultra-kaiju out in Siberia.

Patrick actually sticks with the conclusion of the first mini-series as far as its protagonist, Marco, goes. Man retired and, brief appearance to offer some planning assistance aside, stays retired. Instead, the lead is Michelle, the girl who impersonated the master safe-cracker to raise the funds to save her crew. She's leading a crew of her own now, sticking to small, safe heists. Until circumstances force her to take the big, risky, crazy job.

The circumstances, a contract placed on her and her crew, is only there to force that issue. Patrick largely leaves it as a specter in the background, because he doesn't waste time pretending the people who hire Michelle aren't going to stab in her the back. So the tension is in what shape the betrayal will take, and whether everyone in the crew can make it out. Only one of the three characters in her current crew is left over from her first crew, and he's the one who always seems to fuck up somehow.

It raises the question of whether people can change, and if so, is it something you consciously do, or something that happens? Can Glover actually get it together enough to carry his share of the load? Is Michelle the same person she was before the first score, just pretending to be harder, or has she actually changed?

Broo's art is able to make people look very cool and stylish, and also, when needed, make them look like the most insufferable jackasses on the planet. That's important, since the people trying to mess with Michelle are written as incredibly insufferable and arrogant. Being able to make characters look cool is important since Patrick still loves giving people cool one-liners or Tarantino-like dialogue, which we're meant to take seriously at least some of the time. So the characters need to look like the sort who could say such things without being ridiculous.

Sunday Splash Page #291

 

"Problems Bigger Than They Appear," in Kaiju Score #4, by James Patrick (writer), Rem Broo (artist), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

Marco is the master of coming up with creative plans to heist what's supposed to be impossible. Unfortunately, he's also the master of missing one crucial detail that fouls everything up. So when he has a plan to steal a vault full of priceless art under the cover of a kaiju landfall, he's not in any position to form a crew of the best of the best.

His financing comes from a loan shark known for brutality, who insists his man-bun wearing goon goes along. The one responsible for getting all the equipment's available because he's considered practically cursed at this point. The one thing that went right, his getting world-class safecracker Gina? Well, that's fool's gold, too, because what's he actually got is a rookie named Michelle who killed the world class safecracker and took her identity because she had to do this job.

Patrick and Broo efficiently lay out how this world has adapted to the existence of kaiju, from the early warning systems like we have for hurricanes, to evacuation protocols. It's all dressed up as part of Marco's sales pitch, so they get world-building and the set-up for the heist taken in one swoop. It helps outline Marco as being creative, clever, but also a bit too glib. That last may just be Patrick's writing style, as almost every character is armed with a snappy comeback or one-liner at all times, similar to his Hero Hourly.

Broo captures the size of the kaiju, mostly by keeping them in the background. It shows off their scale and the differences in design - and I like how he they look wildly different - This is really about the desperation of the cast. Marco to pull off a score that will make his rep. Michelle to save her crew. Palmiero to prove he's not a jinx, and too that end, there are a lot of short, widescreen panels to focus on their faces as they try to keep up brave fronts, or start to snap at each other as things go wrong.

Patrick makes sure to have things go wrong in several ways. Some of them are predictable - which doesn't make the resolution less satisfying -  but others are more of a surprise. But they're done in such a way that it feels logical that it happened. The reader (and the characters) might not expect it, but they can each see how it could happen.

What I Bought 7/30/2022 - Part 1

Ended up not finding three of the books from last month I wanted. Six isn't bad, but I did want to see how Lead City wrapped up, and the start of She Bites. Maybe I'll have better luck at the end of this month. For today, a couple of mini-series that are wrapping up.

Broken Eye #4, by Martin and Xabier Etxeberria (writers), Inaki Arenas (artist) - It's always tragic when a child learns their mother is a Blue Man Groupie.

Seamus is in the middle of being interrogated by the cops about the judge's murder. While the cop's distracted getting a call about the IRA weapons buy, Brendan shows up and hauls Seamus out. Brendan explains he's Seamus' uncle, on his ma's side, and further explains Seamus' father was Chinese and the government just made him vanish one day. He explains this on the way to the weapons buy, where his partner is gunned down and he and Seamus part ways. I especially like how Brendan promised to always be there for Seamus, then had to separate from him three pages later because he just had to do this gun buy.

Seamus had the chance to touch the knife that killed Victoria, so he knows who actually did it and confronts them, convincing them to surrender. Then the cop explains the deal with Seamus' father, and that's pretty much it, other than the girl Seamus met has a father with the same gift, but in both eyes. I assume one, based on the overlying narration, he can see the future in at least one eye, or maybe both. Also, I didn't realize until this issue other characters are able to see Seamus' eye glowing when he does his "sight" thing. I knew they could tell his eyes didn't match, but I figured the glowing and lava lamp things were just a visual cue to us, but Brendan's partner comments on it, so apparently not.

Well, at least some of the questions I had about the sequence of events and motivations of the characters in the previous issue were answered. Mostly I was thrown off because I had the wrong people pegged as Victoria's killer. I don't know how I feel about the identity of the actual killer. It seems tied to this larger idea of not letting anger or frustration rule your life, which is a nice parallel to Brendan, who is determined to go on fighting the British forever, which I guess makes him an easy target for someone like Delporte.

But how does Seamus fit in? He doesn't seem motivated by anything like that. He wanted to find justice for the man whose hand he found. He wanted to help Victoria. He could have that resentment for what happened to his father, but he learns that so late we don't get any time to see him really process it.

Kaiju Score: Steal From Gods #4, by James Patrick (writer), Rem Broo (artist), Francesco Segala (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer) - Snow-white hair doesn't look bad on the goober. Makes him look more distinguished.

Prodathu is up and moving, which is bad for humanity. So, maybe good for the world? Michelle thinks they could wake up the other kaiju to stop it, but they need to also have an escape plan and get the gold or there's still a hit on their head. Glover, as the last member of the crew standing, offers to handle that part. And remarkably, he doesn't fuck it up!

There's one panel as he tries to convince Michelle to trust him where the backdrop goes from white to black as he grips her shoulder. Then it goes back. Based on something he says later, it's like he momentarily switched roles with her, taking on the responsibility of making her feel like she can handle this, instead of the other way around.

Michelle beats the shit out of Dmitri (see below) and cuts off the anesthetic to Stateron. I have to wonder what kind of drugs you can give something that large, and in what amounts? Oh, and T.G.'s not dead, just wounded. They make their escape, although Glover almost falls to his death and they lose half the gold. Still enough to pay off everyone and make sure Sung's family got a cut. I honestly thought Stateron would have woken up on her own and Sung would be precariously perched on her head or something.

I like the designs on the kaijus. Broo makes them weird and very differently shaped, but maintains bilateral symmetry, which makes sense to me. These aren't some Resident Evil monsters half-assed whipped up in a lab. They're presumably the result of evolution as well, and even if Stateron has four limb, plus 6-8 tentacles, there's no reason she'd end up unbalanced.

Prodathu is stopped, they get out of Russia, T.G. offs the jackass behind all this, and Michelle shows up with an offer. She's got a seat on a new council that's going to implement rules into the heist economy once more, and she wants her guys to work with her. Which is not a development I expected. And they both turn her down, which sorta is? Like, I figured Glover had enough sense to know that's out of his league, but T.G. was harder to gauge since Patrick intentionally writes him as the man with a lengthy and mysterious past who takes an approach of looking for the right path. Maybe he would think helping establish less bloody chaos was a good thing.

Apparently not. Most of that discussion is colored in this twilight purple-pink, but then there are a few panels that are bright red backdrop. The three of them clinking glasses, Glover and T.G. absorbing her offer, Glover and Michelle hugging. It feels like any of them, taken individually, could be interpreted different ways. The glasses as a celebration and a future together, or a farewell, for example. Which makes me wonder if Michelle and Glover won't cross paths again. T.G.'s good-bye wasn't in the same colors, so I think it's meant to be unambiguous.

I don't know if this is it for this concept with Patrick, or if he's going to try and follow Michelle as a member of this council. I think this would be a good place to leave it. Marco made his big score and retired. He proved he wasn't a fuck-up and that was enough. Michelle proved she could handle bigger things, and she's moving up.

What I Bought 6/22/2022 - Part 1

Managed to find both comics from this week, plus one from last week this same store didn't have on the shelves when I swung by then. Better late than never.

Kaiju Score: Steal From the Gods #3, by James Patrick (writer), Rem Broo (artist), Francesco Segala (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer) - Hoodie designs of a death foretold.

Time to infiltrate the Russian base around the frozen kaiju. And it goes well! Sung is still being a smartass, and Glover is still trying to dump his guilt complex on Michelle, but their forged papers pass muster. The retinal scan gets T.G. in the security office. The others ride the rail car down into Prodathu's gut to get that gold.

Which is when Pavel springs the betrayal. T.G. takes three to the torso and judging by the blood, he wasn't wearing a Kevlar vest. Pavel cranks up the thermostat which wakes the beast up, and it's time for a panicked rail car ride back out of the creature's gut. I especially like the panel of Glover and Sung looking back and seeing that the rail line is becoming rapidly vertical and starting to twist as Prodathu gets moving.

So Pavel and these other idiots want Prodathu awake because they believe it will cleanse the earth of all the "garbage". Meaning people that aren't them. I suspect the creature does not distinguish one human from another and that Pavel will learn this firsthand. People are very bad at seeing the possible consequences of their actions. It'll always end up being someone else's problem.

Although in this case, I think they've forgotten that Prodathu was in battle with another mega-kaiju when it got frozen. One I think was buried under it, and is probably also going to wake up. We just glimpse its outline through the ice in the panel of Sung falling to his "death". I suspect he's not actually going to die, because I doubt Patrick will kill more than half the crew and with T.G. bleeding out and Glover not having died fucking up yet, someone else has to survive beside Michelle.

Anyway, the other kaiju will either save humanity, or lead to its total destruction as the two creatures rampage across the globe. Guess we'll see next month!

Slumber #4, by Tyler Burton Smith (writer), Vanessa Cardinali (artist), Simon Robins (colorist), Steve Wands (letterer/designer) - And then, the swans showed up.

Stetson figures out it isn't Valkira possessing the memory of Finch's dead brother, but some dream demon with poor grammar instead. Feels like a bit of a cheat, but it does play into the sense that Stetson's been at this a while, while we're like Finch who has been thrown into the deep end. Meanwhile, someone showed up at her office and knocked out Ed, but seemingly didn't take anything. Stetson suspects Valkira possessed Finch's fiancee and they rush to the hospital where she works. 

Stetson's rapidly losing her grip, looking sweaty and vaguely disoriented in some panels, and starts accusing Sadie of being possessed. Then Finch's cop partner shows up, because they found the murder he committed, plus Stetson's card. And here Finch is, with Stetson. Stetson tranqs the cop, and the fiancee. But Sadie's not possessed, so who is?

It's a credit to Smith that, when Stetson got out of Finch's dream and found Ed not dead, and nothing missing, that I thought I knew what was going on, but he got me to doubt it. Because Stetson was so sure she understood what was happening, and, like Finch, we just got swept along in her wake. I still don't understand exactly what Valkira is after. Is she planning to hook Ed into the dream machine, then walk her own body out through the interface into the physical world? It seems like she could have managed that anytime, just by hiding in someone's mind and guiding them to Stetson. Then just slip out the door while Stetson and her partner are busy running around in the person's dreams.

In the hospital, Stetson mentions see sees the nightmares she takes from other people everywhere she goes. Cardinali draws them in all through that scene. Some we've seen before, like the talking cockroach with the backwards ballcap, others we haven't. The memory of them lingers in her mind, even as she erases it from theirs. Which explains why the nightmares call her a "dream eater", while her business card says "dream healer".

What I Bought 5/18/2022 - Part 2

Was not expecting to find all four books from last week I wanted at the store here in town. Maybe three, tops. But pleasant surprises are welcome. It would almost encourage me to look on the bright side of things, if I weren't the person I am.

Slumber #3, by Tyler Burton Smith (writer), Vanessa Cardinali (artist), Simon Robins (colorist), Steve Wands (letterer) - Man, don't litter in somebody's grave. Unless it's a trash hole. Some graves are essentially trash holes. I think the difference is based on the amount of care used in placing the body. Lower it slowly? Grave. Toss it in? Trash hole.

The story starts with a quick flashback filling in a little more about why Stetson's after Valkira and hints towards how she got involved in running around in people's dreams. From there, it shifts to the present, inside Finch's dream, as he gets dragged along with Stetson and Jiang as they seek Valkira. They end up at a funeral, which Finch badly wishes to avoid. So Stetson "kills" him and wears his skin. Things still go sideways and they dive into the grave, where they find a subterranean cavern and the body of Finch's brother. Which Valkira has possessed and Finch is rather protective of.

Smith explains a couple of things in this issue which become immediately relevant, one of which I had been wondering about. Namely, why shooting the bad thing in a dream does any good. Apparently, if you kill it in a dream, it's gone forever. The person no longer remembers it and can therefore no longer be haunted by it. The other point is that the person whose dream they're in, can't be killed. At least not permanently. They just respawn through the nearest door. Seems like it wouldn't kill them, just erase their sense of themselves, but OK. Stetson uses the latter to her advantage a couple of times, and Valkira's using the former.

It only lasts a page-and-a-half, but I like Robins' color work after they dive into the grave. The cavern is this monotonous greyscale, as is everything in it (Finch has little four-armed fish-head guys who clean in his dreams, which I like as a random detail). Except for the lake of red liquid they fall into. It's a stark contrast and it really grabs the eye. The flashback is done with dull, muted colors and lots of black backgrounds. The characters are occasionally surrounded by light, but it doesn't brighten them much. It's there, but like it isn't interacting with them somehow.

Kaiju Score: Steal from Gods #2, by James Patrick (writer), Rem Broo (artist), Francesco Segala (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer) - I don't think the white lettering of the title set against T.G.'s cream-colored hair is a good set-up. Need more variation between colors.

Having committed to taking the job, Michelleand her crew get a rundown on the facility and how they can get inside. Unfortunately, there's a lot of security measures, and those they have to work around themselves. Also, after Michelle put a bounty on Carlito, he raised the bounty he put on them. So Michelle asks the creepy guy who financed the first kaiju score for a loan to up her bounty to match, and then goes to ask Marco for help. He won't come on the heist, because apparently pulling off one successful score was enough for him (smart man), but he does help her identify the way past the security measures. Great.

Except Glover almost screws up the retinal scan, and the Russians hit treasure sooner than expected, and the guys who hired them have something else in mind with this job than what they said.

I've been wondering who was going to make it out of this, or where the inevitable double-cross was coming from, but more and more that looks irrelevant. The way Patrick writes this, the whole thing is a maze nobody (except Marco, oddly enough) can actually escape. Even if Carlito gets killed, even if these guys who hired them get killed (because I'm guessing they've got a lot more cash than Carlito if they decide on revenge/tying up loose ends), Michelle's gonna have to pay the hitman broker back, and he must charge ridiculous interest, and now she's got to pay Marco for his time, and look after her crew. It's just an endless cycle of getting in debt to do a score to pay off debt incurred to pull off a previous debt.

Broo uses a fair amount of short, wide panels to zoom in on people's faces, at least during the tense conversations. When Michelle's talking with the guy that hired them, or she and Glover are arguing. The talk with Marco, he pulls things back a little. The pressure is still there, there are still some tight panels to make it seem like Michelle's boxed in, but Marco's in the panel with her. She's not on her own, she isn't having to pretend she has everything under control because this isn't someone looking for weakness or needing reassurance.

What I Bought 4/15/2022

I only found one of the three books from last week, but I also only tried one store. At the time I didn't think I had time to try a second one, but I underestimated Alex's capacity to run behind schedule. Being the punctual person with consistently late friends and family might be more annoying than being the one sober person surrounded by imbibers. Certainly less entertaining.

Kaiju Score: Steal from the Gods #1, by James Patrick (writer), Rem Broo (artist/colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer) - I like incorporating the kaiju into her outfit more than the covers on the first mini-series, where all those details were in the background.

So this mini-series is focused on Michelle, the safe-cracker that was pretending to be a better, more famous safe-cracker the first go-round. She paid the debt to save her old crew, and has started up a new crew, sticking to mostly safer, low-end jobs. Which doesn't mean she's safe from people trying to rip her off, or that word of that previous art heist didn't get around.

A man named Javier wants her to break into a secure Russian facility where an immense kaiju is frozen underground and steal a bunch of original Aztec gold from galleon sitting in its digestive tract. Michelle, not being an idiot, declines. Unfortunately, the guy who tried to rip off her last heist (who looks like a complete fucking doofus. Like he stole some newscaster's hair) decided to kill her to make an example, and she doesn't have the financial resources to go to war with him.

Why does she need to go to war? One of the guys on her crew is apparently a top-notch sniper (among other skills), and when we see this Carlito, he's out on a golf course in broad daylight with only two goons, one of which is preoccupied holding Carlito's phone for him. Can't be that hard to find out where he hangs his shingle. Just find a nice grassy knoll and put one in his skull. Apparently that's not on the table, so Michelle and her crew are taking the job.

Patrick understands that Marco, who brainstormed the last heist, would be the guy to approach, so he addresses that by having Javier explain he tried Marco first, but he's lost interest. And there's some backmatter at the end that's supposed to be a journal Michelle keeps where she notes she tried to recruit Marco for this crew of hers originally, and he turned her down, too. So I think it's not a smokescreen, and Marco's not going to pop up at some crucial moment later on.

Patrick's also setting some things up with her crew. T.G., the sniper (who is also her gardener) seems like he's got something going on only he knows about, like he was waiting for her to hire him. The journal notes Sung tends to move between crews a lot, which Michelle says is a red flag. The other guy, Glover, is from her old crew and he seems to keep screwing up. Michelle leveled up whether she wanted to or not to pull off that first kaiju heist. Glover hasn't, and so when things go wrong, he's almost certainly going to be the problem. Or one of the others is going to kill him first, which will create its own problem.

Broo seems to have pulled back a bit on the exaggeration. Characters don't jut their lips or chins out as wildly as they did before, the angles are their joints aren't as ludicrously sharp. It's still recognizably his work, but now I'm not having moments where I'm pulled out of the story because he's trying too hard to sell an emotion.

What I Bought 3/2/2021 - Part 1

I originally hoped to have these comics in time for this to go up Monday, but that didn't happen. Mail service difficulties of some sort, I guess. We'll get to a pair of Marvel comics on Friday, but for today we've got one mini-series that's wrapping up, and another that's just starting.

Kaiju Score #4, by James Patrick (writer), Rem Broo (artist), Dave Sharpe (letterer) - Don't look at me, Pierson, I'm glad you're dead.

The kaiju fight is on, but Marco figures there's still a chance to crack the safe because Mujara will lose quickly. And for a minute, he's right, and Michelle cracks the safe. At which point Pierson knifes Marco, laughs at his request to let Michelle live, and then dies in an extremely satisfying manner when the monster fight starts back up. Because Mujara didn't get the memo she couldn't win.

Seriously, Broo draws this one silent panel of a bloody smear on the wall and one of Pierson's hands stuck to it, and it was just, really good. Patrick had done a good job making Pierson an entirely unlikable (if perceptive) dick, and Broo helped that along with the obnoxious man-bun and all the sneering faces, and then they gift us with a lovely send-off. Actually, I wish Broo made that panel bigger.

So that's good. Monster fight over, backstabbing asshole dead, safe opened, everything's roses. Except for the little matter of water displacement when the beaten monster retreats to the sea. But Marco comes up with a way to protect the loot and not die. So yes, everything's good. Except for him not feeling as satisfied as he expected. But there's always another job.

I'm guessing Marco's feeling unfulfilled because he's finally completed his dream. He actually pulled off one of his ludicrous heists. But without that to drive him, he's left adrift. You'd think he could appreciate his success a little more, but humans are weird like that. As for Michelle, Marco was apparently right that she wasn't going to leave this life as she said, and she seems to have gotten a taste for more high end jobs. She's gone from being like the little sister on her crew, to setting up jobs and hiring talent. The ability to self-motivate is a valuable one.

One thing I am intensely grateful for is that this actually told a complete story, and didn't set it up as one of those things where the heist has repercussions that cause problems. You know, where Marco and Michelle have now pissed off some other powerful person by stealing his paintings, and must pull off another monster-related job to settle things. There was something I'd read in one of the solicits that made me think that was going to happen, and I was just dreading it.

But, it didn't. So, hooray!

White Lily #1, by Preston Poulter (writer), Jack Nolan (breakdowns), Lovalle Davis (penciler), Walden Wong and Diana Greenhalgh (inkers), Alonso Espinosa (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - They look so happy! Yeah, that's not gonna last.

Lilya Litvak is a Polish Jew in the Soviet Union, who, when the story begins four months after the Nazis invaded, is a flight instructor. Katya Budanova is also a flight instructor, and possibly Lilya's girlfriend. I mean, she offers her a flower (the white lily) to work into the fur collar of her flight jacket, that means something, right? 

They spend their days taking young (male) pilots up in biplanes trying to teach them how to fly. They're both drafted into a new, all-women fighter squadron, although their instructor doesn't seem to think much of training women, and tells them they're really just going to be delivering planes to the front, and that they should dive and flee if they encounter Nazis. 

Well yeah, a Yak-1 against an Me-109 is a huge mismatch. You had to get to like the Yak-7 before it was worth a shit. Anyway, Lilya shows what she can do, and although her Captain (the proverbial old battleaxe of a woman) is pissed, her instructor is impressed.

Poulter works a bit about Lilya's turmoil over her heritage into the story. The Soviet Union has not really been kind to Poles, or Jews. We see in a flashback (as she and Katya recite the Citizens' Pledge) they hung her father right in front of her when she was a child. Her mother is very disappointed in her for helping the Soviets. But I think Lilya figures at least the Soviets are giving her a chance to fight a different group of people who would kill her simply for existing, which is more than the Nazis would do if she were under their control. There may turn out to be more to it than that, but after one issue, I think she just really wants to be able to hit back for once.

It's interesting that while we see Lilya lose her father in her flashback, Katya's is her as a young girl being excited about seeing a plane fly overhead and getting the pilot to wave back to her. Also that her mother didn't approve (and still doesn't, since she doesn't think fighting is work for women.) So Katya might be driven more by her love of flying, and maybe the opportunity to be herself more.

One stylistic thing either Nolan or Davis does (Nolan isn't listed in the credits on the inside cover, but is listed in a small credits box on the 3rd page/title page) during flying scenes, they flip the page on its side, as in the example above. That's how it looks in the comic, like that sideways Spider-Man comic Todd MacFarlane did. 

It's like a widescreen movie, probably to offer more space, the illusion of the open air the pilots are in. The pages are nice; I like that they use the cockpits or gun-sights as panel boundaries. But it's a little awkward when you turn a page, and then you have to turn the comic to keep reading, then turn it back a couple of pages later. Maybe they could have just run that across the top half of two pages, then used the bottom half for either another widescreen panel, or smaller ones if it was time to go back to a more conventional layout.

I'm curious to watch the colors in this as the story advances, because the first issue everything is surprisingly bright and clear and clean looking. But Lilya and Katya haven't been involved in the fighting yet. It's still early days, and I wonder if Espinosa will muddy things up as thing progress. I know Lilya's going to be in action near Stalingrad by issue 3, that's going to be a very different experience from avoiding a single scout plane while on a training run.

What I Bought 1/30/2021 - Part 2

It took until early February, but I feel like the cold's finally starting to set in. At least to the extent I started thinking about turning up the heat in my apartment. I didn't do it, but I thought about it.

Kaiju Score #3, by James Patrick (writer), Rem Broo (artist), Dave Sharpe (letterer) - Don't be worried, Palmiero. I'm sure that knife is meant for someone else.

So there's two giant monsters, and they hate each other. This is bad. But, they need two hours of build-up to get ready before they'll actually fight (and destroy the city in the process). Given that, I find it strange they'd even bother to fight. Just eat and leave. I guess kaiju are as stupid as humans.

This gives Marco time to modify his plan. Instead of getting Gina down to the vault, they're going to hook cables to the vault and a support pillar in the nearby mall, lure one of the kaiju with chum so it hits the wires, and that will pull the vault out to them. That is some Wil E. Coyote-ass nonsense and I love it, but Mujara goes the wrong way. So Marco drives in front of her and makes an impassioned plea to either take the other street, or eat him.

She takes the other street. Maybe the wind shifted and she picked up the scent. And the cables hold, the vault is out, but it's monster fightin' time and Pierson is making his own play to bolster his retirement portfolio.

 

While the plan's being putting in motion, there's a nice conversation between Marco and Gina about doubt. Gina wondering if Marco ever allows himself to doubt, or question whether he's just not cut out for this, and admitting that she has doubted herself. She also admitted she's growing to like being Gina, which could be foreshadowing for a lot of things. Broo does some good work with the expressions and body language, where Gina is trying to look casual, sprawled in a chair smoking a cigarette, but she keeps pulling her arms and legs in, and she and Marco are rarely looking at each other directly. If one of them is, the other either has their back turned, or is watching them from the corner of their eye. Both hiding something, or trying to.

Sympathy for No Devils #4, by Brandon Thomas (writer), Lee Ferguson (artist), Jose Villarrubia (colorist), Simon Bowland (letterer) - Raleigh does not seem like he's got a firm base there, especially in the middle of a rainstorm.

Raleigh and Winston got thrown off the same bridge, but Raleigh fishes Winston out. Then he admits that mobster's got him in his pocket and they argue a bit, and figure out Winston's assistant was spying on them. But Floyd's busy visiting the Mayor and confessing his love. That doesn't go well, so he kills her, which may have removed Winston's luck. Too bad, because Jacinda's out for blood and Winston's down a hand.

Well, I was definitely right that she was bad news, but it's a noir so no credit for knowing the tearful widow's trouble. I kind of figured she wanted to use Win to get rid of Raleigh and keep her own hands clean. Hence jumping into the water after him last issue, but apparently not. The conclusion of the thing with Floyd's unrequited love and idealization of the Mayor kind of happened abruptly, but this story doesn't seem like it can decide what it wants to focus on. The mystery of the dead colossals, or the whole thing with Floyd, or whatever. So it swings from one to another, and I don't feel like they're ever build much momentum. 

It's probably unrealistic and too neat for all the threads to be interconnected and dovetail. But if they did, I think they'd be able to support and build off each other better than they have up to this point. Maybe if I read it all in one go after the next issue it'll hold together better.

 

I did like the set-up of the page where Jacinda does her big reveal, even though I made the mistake of reading it from the top down initially. I think you're supposed to go from the last panel of the previous page to the one directly opposite it, then go diagonally up the page so you're back at the top when you flip the page and get the payoff. Ferguson's art is definitely the selling point for this series.

What I Bought 1/4/2021 - Part 1

Work is gonna suck today. Nothing like getting yelled at by hysterical morons for two hours over shit that is beyond your control. The last 2020 comics to review have arrived. Current plan is to start Year in Review posts next Wednesday, and go from there. But we gotta get through these first. Two second issues to look at today.

Sea of Sorrows #2, by Rich Douek (writer), Alex Cormack (artist/colorist), Justin Birch (letterer) - Would the flesh even decay, trapped inside a sealed container like that? Especially with it being so cold deep in the ocean?

They found the sub, the found the gold. Problem being, the sub is on the precipice of a deep undersea trench, and it won't take much shift in weight for it to go over. And it's too damaged to haul up with a crane. So no taking gold until they address those problems. Which they're gonna do through the making of big balloons they'll inflate inside the sub. I feel like this was the strategy they employed in Raise the Titanic! Or maybe that was a superlight foam they pumped in.

Other problems: The main dive guy, Nick, probably has a death wish. Scratch that, definitely has a death wish. Not really who you want leading the show in such a hostile environment. The different parties on the ship are definitely not getting along. The siren is starting to pick people off, above and below the waves.

I'm not quite sure why there are so many sharks around the sub. Feels like Cormack draws three or four in every panel set underwater. Unless the siren can command sharks, too. Seems like they'd just be competition for food. This issue seems more focused on establishing mood. The rapidly decaying mental state of several people. Get people on edge (or more on edge in Nick's case), then turn them loose on each other. But it doesn't make for a very exciting issue.

 

The art on the undersea parts is nice, though. The way their lights don't illuminate much, but what they do is almost washed out in the glare. Like how I'd assume those lights would play havoc with night vision. The constant bubbles, the sometimes vague outlines you can barely make out. There's one that is probably a shark, but maybe it's the siren. The graininess of the work gives the blood kind of a peculiar texture, like its trying to partially solidify under the cold and pressure. Just a different way of depicting blood than I've seen in other comics set underwater.

Is that enough to make me want to keep buying it? *waggles hand indecisively*

Kaiju Score #2, by James Patrick (writer), Rem Broo (artist), Dave Sharpe (letterer) - I see she has her Rubik's Cube. Little known fact that kaiju are fascinated by those. Also easily infuriated by them, though.

They get an opportunity to pull the heist. The kaiju's even sleeping right near the museum. But Marco's figured out his ace safecracker isn't who she says she is. Rather, she's a small-timer trying to save the lives of her crew by sneaking into this job on behalf of the Romanian mob. However, he doesn't any choice but to roll with it. Unfortunately, Pierson decided to audible and just kill the security guards, including their inside guy, which I'm sure won't come back to bite them. And the one thing Marco always overlooks rears its gigantic head.

Of the two, I like this second issue a little better. There's more going on, it's not relying so heavily on my investment in the mood to carry it. It spends a little time on the other characters, their motivations. Pierson isn't being a dick strictly because he's convinced Marco's going to botch this. I mean, he is a dick, that's clear, but he's also just unhappy with this situation. He's supposed to be on vacation, and he just wants to get it done as quickly as possible. So he's going to cut corners anywhere he can, because he doesn't give a shit about whatever beautiful design Marco had in mind. It's not about that for him, or protecting a family, or rebuilding his rep. It's just shit work. I been there.

While Rem Broo does an excellent job making it look completely disgusting, I could have gone the rest of my life without the concept of "ticks, but for giant monsters" in my mind. Yikes. I guess next issue we might get to see how Broo handles drawing a giant monster fight. Or at least part of it, since I assume that'll be in the background while Marco and the others try to make this work.

What I Bought 11/28/2020 - Part 1

Had five comics left over from November that showed up over the weekend, so let's look at them as we kick off the last month before we escape this twisted hellscape of a year. Today's focus is two first issues. One is a tie-in to an event, always a dodgy proposition, while the other is already been optioned to be a TV show.

Kaiju Score #1, James Patrick (writer), Rem Broo (artist/color artist), Dave Sharpe (letterer) - Ooooh, look how he has his jacket casually slung over one shoulder. So cool. In 1957.

Marco has a plan to steal a bunch of paintings from a museum. To deal with less security, he plans to pull the heist during a giant monster attack, which he is sure is going to happen because the fish the kaiju likes are migrating earlier this year due to climate change. Well, well, look who reads Scientific American. He has a little trouble getting a crew, because while he dreams big, he tends to fuck up the small details, so his rep is shot. 

Plus, the idea of stealing things while in close proximity to a giant monster seems questionable.

So he ends up with an equipment guy that's on his own string of bad jobs, and a safecracker who is too good for this nonsense. If it was actually her, and not another woman who killed her and took her place. The loanshark bankrolling things is the bottom of the barrel, and insists on sending his shaved Wookie of a goon (who seems to hate Marco), along. So, you know, no chance things can go wrong.

 

Still, the concept is interesting. Caper and heists are something I'm into, and Patrick's writing has some good lines in there. Although everyone's constant attempts to one-up each other on the threats and insults could get old eventually. At least it isn't strictly about how many curses someone can throw in the sentence, fun as that can be.

Broo's characters tend to be just exaggerated enough to look a little strange, but not inhuman. Gina and Marco seem to have impossibly long, thin arms sometimes, enough I notice, but not enough it throws me out of the story entirely. Some people are just proportioned weird, you know? The loanshark has the nice suit and the cane, while having skin the color of a cadaver, and his goon has one of those stupid topknots. Because of course he does. So each character feels like a sort of archetype or stock character, with just enough emphasis to make them sort of distinctive.

Power Pack #1, by Ryan North (writer), Nico Leon (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - I know it's not great if you don't want to be tracked, but I always like characters who leave some kind of cool trail when they fly.

The story opens with Katie showing her siblings the comic she made detailing the origin, which she intends to gift to their parents for their 25th anniversary. The others talk her out of it, although it sounds like Katie is only willing to hold until Christmas, so not much peace gained there. During dinner, the Boogeyman is reported as attacking an orphanage (because he eats children, apparently, Jesus Louise Simonson) so Katie fakes a bathroom disaster and the kids sneak out to stop him. Then their battle is interrupted by the newest ridiculous acronym in the Marvel Universe, C.R.A.D.L.E. (fucking seriously?), who are here to arrest children for interrupting a hard-working industrialist's attempts to extend his life at the expense of the younger generation. I mean, to arrest them for fighting crime while underage. 

It sounds as though the law went into effect that very evening, but this is the same universe where SHIELD agents tried to arrest Luke Cage like 30 seconds after the Registration Act went into effect. When all he was doing was sitting in his apartment, not even fighting crime. So, you know, authorities in the Marvel Universe are always doing their best to be assholes.

I'm going to assume Ryan North is not taking this "Outlawed" event seriously. Between the "Boomer Dinnertunes FM team's" 'unexpectedly thorough breaking news bulletin' detailing the Boogeyman's origin and personality defects, Katie insisting she needs all her siblings' help with a clogged toilet, and that character summary of Boogeyman, plus his demand to just be allowed to eat some dang orphans. Which is fair, because again, C.R.A.D.L.E. This thing is probably best mocked relentlessly before it even begins.

 

I do, however, look forward to the Power kids kicking the crap out of these jackbooted scumbags with their tasers, bullhorns, and stupid armored assault vehicles. Leon's clean, expressive style works with North's delayed punchlines and gags, and his kids look like kids. Although I guess Alex might almost be an adult. They mentioned something about him getting artificially aged-up, and I don't know if that's from his time in space with the Future Foundation, or something else, like from back when he was in the New Warriors and bogarting all the powers.