Random Back Issues #166 - Daredevil #356

When Sal Buscema's involved with the art, any object carries the force of a freight train. 

The issue opens with a gun to DD's head, while his caption box notes the day got off to such a good start. At this point, Matt and Foggy are working for famous lawyer (and Foggy's stepmom) Rosalind "Razor" Sharpe's firm. The client is Mr. Hyde, charged with murder and kidnapping of a woman named Angela Parish.

Hyde objects to the kidnapping charge, shattering the table in the prison visiting room. When Murdock points out that won't do much for a jury's opinion of him, Hyde says he just wanted to see one of them panic, and Foggy obliged. Hyde says there's a sealed letter in a PO Box from Angela, thanking him for keeping her locked up until she kicked her drug habit. So he couldn't have kidnapped her.

OK, first off, does Hyde change back to Dr. Zabo after a set amount of time, or does he require a potion to trigger that change? I've definitely seen Zabo change to Hyde by drinking something, but I'm not sure if it works the same both ways. Two, if the letter's never been opened, but he knows what's in it, how do you establish it wasn't written under duress? I guess you have to prove it was written under duress, innocent until proven guilty and all.

Matt and Foggy return to the office, where Karen Page is having a hard time dropping off a gift, because the receptionist is some scowly guy who was probably a Maggia enforcer. Matt and Karen retire to his office, with a lovely view of a brick wall, and Matt finds Karen got him a nice radio. A sign she got a job she really likes? Well, Karen won't commit to that yet. Give her a few days.. Not ominous at all.

Rosalind shows up, generally behaving like a dick. Calling Karen Matt's new secretary, bringing up Karen's rough past when she tried to be an actress. (Matt's putting up with this because Foggy really wants to work here, and Rosalind only hired them because of Matt. If he walks, Foggy's out on his butt.) Next up, a meeting with Liz Allen, currently running Osborn Chemicals (since Norman and Harry are both still dead at this point.) Angela was found in an Osborn warehouse, so Matt wonders if she was killed by someone connected to the Goblins. The warehouse was padlocked, but Liz points out Norman hid entrances into all his buildings.

As Foggy excuses himself for a call from his mother, a member of the moving crew tries to kill Rosalind. She got a senator's nephew off on a drunk driving charge, and six months later, Drunky killed the guy's sister. Matt knocks Rosalind clear, and the shooter is dropped with a fruit basket from the law firm's new neighbor, Misty Knight, hoping to make friends with the neighbors and get some work.

Which brings us back to page 1, as the person holding the gun is Misty, hired to find this secret entrance to help acquit Mr. Hyde. Misty wouldn't normally take the job, but Murdock being sure Hyde's innocent convinced her, and she doesn't think a person should be convicted for something they shouldn't do. Unfortunately, the warehouse is a mess after someone hired a Legacy Virus-infected Pyro to torch it, and he and Daredevil brought the place down.

Still, DD finds the hatch, I guess by his radar sense pinging off the odd shape, or it changed the acoustics in some noticeable way? He can't get it open, but Misty of the bionic arm can. Misty was hired to find the entrance, so her work's done, but the masked vigilante's is just beginning. Into the sewers he goes, where the tunnel is mostly collapsed, but there's silicon gel on the bricks. Could be Hyde's old partner, Cobra, but six hours of crawling through tunnels brings him to a room with several voices, including - Karen's?!

No, Karen Page's new job is not with the Enforcers, but they do have some new members. A contortionist named Snake Marston, who I've never heard of and DD thought was dead. The other, a guy named Hammer Harrision, a big mook with what looks like bricks strapped to his fists. Daredevil uses a nerve pinch to get loose of Snake and throw him into Hammer, in time for Ox and Montana to step in. Daredevil swipes Montana's lasso, but when he tries tying up Ox's wrists, he gets swung into a girder, then kicked by Fancy Dan.

The follow up karate chop hits the girder instead and gives Daredevil enough time to ask about Cobra. And get a bunch of confused and outraged responses in return. They aren't working for Cobra, but they do have one more new member. A guy that can also be slippery, and has electricity powers. Yep, it's the Eel. Please, no shocked gasps.

{3rd longbox, 96th comic. Daredevil #356, by Karl Kesel (writer), Sal Buscema (layouts, pgs. 1-13, 22-31), Cary Nord (penciler, pgs. 1-13, 22-31), Rick leonardi (penciler, pgs. 14-21), Matt Ryan (inker), Christie Scheele (colorist), Michael Higgins (letterer)}

Random Back Issues #141 - Harley Quinn #8

Gymnastics 101 with Dr. Quinzel was very popular, but also had a high drop rate. Dropped into a pit of hyenas, that is.

A three-person team's trying to catch Harley Quinn for theme park tycoon Jack Happi, and figure a fake ceremony awarding Quinn's old psychiatry professor, Dr. Markus, the 'infamous Wertham Award' is the perfect trap. Too bad Harley's watching in the rafters as they set up and Markus practices his speech, which says his work revolves around the idea people only ignore society's rules when they commit a crime, or when they're in love.

Cue flashback! Student Harley, inviting Markus to her dorm room to pitch him on that very idea to convince him to get her into the graduate program, despite her lousy grades. Markus, in a weak attempt to maintain professional decorum, recommends an independent experiment, supervised by him, of course. Harley's already got an idea: What's the worst thing a person can do and still be loved? But who would agree to be the subject?

How about her boyfriend, Guy? He barges in, frantically looking for his paper on Chaos Theory, wondering if his professor will accept losing the paper is connected to the Joker escaping. In an effort to remember, Guy grabs his own special "think drink", right as Harley hands him the paper. Setting aside the drink, he kisses her and rushes out, minus the paper, as Harley notes he'd do anything for her. 

In the present, Bo Donner and Dr. Carrie Chispazo spotted Quinn and tracked her to an equipment room. They've got her now! Or not. They get trapped between two sets of double doors, as part of some goofy attempt by Harley to create a romance between them. She's seen them arguing and thinks they're clearly into each other, indicating Harley spends too much time on early-2000s DC's equivalent to Archive of Our Own. The third guy was patrolling the exterior and is locked out, leaving Harley free to learn why Markus would help lure her out. Answer? The doc wanted to know what happened with Harley's experiment.

Flashback! Guy comes in, remarking the city should bow to the Joker's demands to pay him a smile tax so he doesn't poison the water supply. Plus, Joker smiles more than anyone, and he won't pay the tax, so they can bust him on tax evasion. Hey, the Timmverse cartoon established the Joker does not want to tangle with the IRS.

As Guy takes a swig of his drink, Harley's sitting on the couch, depressed that she ran a red light. Guy blows it off, until Harley admits she was fleeing the cops. In a car she stole after trying to blackmail Markus into letting her in the program by claiming he tried to rape her. Except Markus had a tape recorder and a gun and threatened to call the cops. She lunged for the gun - which she still has - and it went off. And Guy's off, hopefully to another state.

There's a couple of pages about how two of the guys in Harley's crew - which she calls the Quintets, though they can't keep more than 4 alive - are plotting to get her killed, but whatever. Harley's got Markus flailing on a balance beam before she finishes the story.

Flashback! Quinn finds Guy at the same gym. He killed a homeless guy, thinking it was Markus. He sticks the gun under his chin, asking her to pull the trigger. Her hands are on the gun as she pleads with him, but somebody pulled that trigger, and Markus wants to know who. Because he saw the aftermath, Harley back in her dorm room, crying and laughing about how everything's chaos, that Guy and the Joker both understood this. She recorded that initial conversation with Markus, with her asking why he wanted to meet in her dorm room, so he's got to get her an internship at Arkham so she can meet the Joker, or else. In the last panel we see of the Joker, Woods shifts his appearance towards the later, simplified Bruce Timm look, which in this series was shorthand for Harley divorcing herself from reality.

We never do find out who actually pulled the trigger.

In the process of the flashback, Harley remembers Markus poured the rest of Guy's drink down the drain, and in the present confronts him about that. Markus pulls out his pen, claiming it's loaded with Joker Venom. The last of a sample he acquired illegally, some of which he put in Guy's drink, thinking the euphoric effects would counteract the stress Quinn's test would place on him. Again, not sure why, as that's way too many variables in that experiment, but it means the whole thing is only sort of Harley's fault!

Markus smashes the pen on her head, but Quinn's immune to Joker Venom. Markus, who cut his hand in the process, is not. He's dead, Harley's gone, but Chispazo thinks she's got a bead on a way to use herself and Bo to trap Harley. Assuming the backstabbing in Quinn's gang doesn't get her first. . .

{5th longbox, 60th comic. Harley Quinn (vol. 1) #8, by Karl Kesel (writer), Pete Woods (penciler), Mark Lipka (inker), Alex Sinclair (colorist), Ken Lopez (letterer)}

Arcing to a Conclusion

I don't know. A solid portion of the U.S. sure loves the Confederate Army, who definitely lost. Or, for another example, Trump. Multiple times bankrupt, convicted of several crimes, lost an election. Complete loser, but beloved by a disturbingly large portion of the dumbasses in this country.

Tangent Comics Volume 3 collects the last 8 one-shots from the original Tangent Comics run. *Deep breath* In order, Superman (Mark Millar, Jackson Guice, Lovern Kindzierski, Comicraft); Wonder Woman (Peter David, Angel Unzueta, Jamie Mendoza, Pam Rambo, Comicraft); Nightwing: Night Force (John Ostrander, Jan Duursema, Gloria Vazquez, Comicraft); The Joker's Wild (Karl Kesel and Tom Simmons, Joe Phillips, Jasen Rodriguez, Moose Baumann, Comicraft); The Trials of the Flash (Todd DeZago, Paul Pelletier, Andy Lanning, Joe Rosas, Comicraft), Tales of the Green Lantern (James Robinson, J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray, Lee Loughridge, Comicraft, Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Mike Mayhew, Wade von Grawbadger, Georges Jeanty, Drew Gerard, Ostrander, Ryan Sook), Powergirl (Ron Marz, Dusty Abell, Dexter Vines, James Sinclair, Chris Eliopoulos); and JLA (Dan Jurgens, Darryl Banks, Norm Rapmund, Rob Schwager, Comicraft)

I'm not sure why they distributed the comics so unevenly between the volumes (6 for the first volume, 5 for volume 2, but 8 here.) Especially given the differences in goals of some of these stories. Superman, Wonder Woman and Powergirl fit in theme with the comics from volume 2. Each provides an origin and introduction for this universe's version of these characters, albeit with wildly different approaches.

Millar's Superman (real name Harvey Dent) is the sole survivor of a covert government experiment performed on a largely African-American town in an attempt to perfect a way to give people super-powers. It worked on one baby, in the sense that his mind is evolved far beyond a normal human's. A Man of Tomorrow. Wonder Woman's the result of an attempt to broker peace between two alien races by combining their genetics into one perfect warrior. Except both races consider her an abomination. And Powergirl is China's second attempt to create a superhuman warrior. She's a real success, but she's not sure she wants to be.

Millar's is fairly cynical, as Dent grows increasingly detached from humanity, dealing with crises because he just wants problems to solve rather than actually caring much about the people he helps. I mean, I doubt those people care, but his girlfriend does care that he's distanced himself from her. The bit where she confesses cheating on him and Harvey responds that he's a telepath, so he knew she was going to cheat before she did made me roll my eyes. I feel like this character heavily informs how Millar writes Reed Richards, but maybe it's just Millar in general.

Peter David turns his story into a running gag, as the title character spends an entire fight having an existential crisis. She's can't help but "wonder" whether she has any right to exist, or if she even does. It gets obnoxious after about three pages, but the payoff is apparently that she can reorder reality by thinking (or wondering) hard enough. She erases the aliens attacking her from existence by simply insisting they don't exist, to the extent all the damage from the battle vanishes, because the two who started the fight never existed to cause the damage in the first place.

Marz only actually brings Powergirl out at the very end of his issue, fitting into the idea of her as a designed weapon who wishes to make her own decisions. None of the people the story follows up to then - the U.S. President, formerly part of a black ops group, the guys from Nightwing, the Chinese government - see her as any thing but a tool to gain advantage. They're all just fighting over who has their finger on the trigger. When she finally arrives, in a design that makes me think of an elaborate doll crossed with NASCAR, they're left standing there gawking as she casually revives the dead and then leaves.

Trials of the Flash, The Joker's Wild, and Tales of the Green Lantern follow-up on the earlier appearances of each character. Green Lantern's is "multiple origins", as she relates three different possible ways (each by a different creative team) she came to exist. Sook seems to channel a lot of Mignola in his story, the characters very angular and sharply defined, while Jeanty's work is very similar to the Dodsons.

Dezago and Pelletier make Trials of the Flash into an extended cartoon, as the Flash's dad spends the entire issue trying increasingly elaborate super-science weapons to capture or kill her, only to have each backfire on him.

So that leaves Night Force and JLA, the former of which heavily leads into the latter, albeit with a lot of stuff about different covert organizations at war with each other. There's Nightwing, but also Meridian, which is like Nightwing but in Europe. Night Force, who think they're fighting Nightwing, but are actually being used by it. And there's a "Dark Circle" which may stand above both, or not. Really feels like something that needed more time to play out. But hey, we find out the USSR is still run by Vampire Josef Stalin. I still think "cryo-frozen, uses a giant mech suit" Stalin from Simonson's FF run is better, but that's pretty cool.

The big ending though is that Stalin's attempts to harvest the souls of three-quarters of the Doom Patrol goes haywire once Night Force shows up and end up combined into some missing puzzle piece monster calling itself the "Ultra-Humanite". Or maybe like a mech whose joints are connected by electric arcs. That rolls into JLA, where the Humanite somehow has armed soldiers surrounding the U.S. capitol building, while he's still busy crushing the Secret Six in two pages somewhere else. And yet another secretive cabal decides they need to kill every superpowered being they can find (except the Ultra-Humanite), and their fuck-ups bring together Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and the resurrected original Atom.

It doesn't really work, since it's hard to believe they could actually work together. Jurgens dials back Superman's detachment a bit (though he ignores that Millar's story ended with Dent offering his girlfriend the same powers), but this group just doesn't seem likely to mesh. Wonder Woman's off in her own world half the time and Batman's got his big redemption quest. And Atom's only around for as long as Green Lantern's power let him stay that way. And how did Batman get from London to Missouri so quickly? And why the hell not wait to try and kill the other superpowered types after the Ultra-Humanite's dealt with? See if they solve your problems for you, or failing that, at least wear each other out.

Maybe I just liked the Secret Six group more and wanted to see more of them in action.

Off on a Tangent

I'm absolutely sure that is not the case.

Volume 2 of DC's Tangent Comics, collects five of the one-shots from that imprint: The Joker (by Karl Kesel, Matt Haley, Tom Simmons and Chris Eliopoulos), Nightwing (John Ostrander, Jan Duursema, Gloria Vasquez, Dave Lanphear), Secret Six (Chuck Dixon, Tom Grummett, James Sinclair, Ken Lopez), Doom Patrol (Dan Jurgens, Sean Chen, Kevin Conrad, Ray Kryssing, Jason Wright, Dave Lanphear), and The Batman (Dan Jurgens, Klaus Janson, Gregory Wright, Comicraft).

Each one is a different type of story. Secret Six is pretty much a "put the team together" story with a bunch of disparate characters happening to run into each other investigating the same thing. Doom Patrol is your classic time travel story where attempts to change the future only bring it about. Joker is a mystery from the perspective of a cop the Joker seems to have taken an interest in, although the reasons for that seem pretty weak once revealed. But I think we're supposed to take it that the Joker's trying to process some trauma in a less-than-ideal manner. Nightwing is kind of a "shadow war/wheels within wheels" story of people vying for power out of sight of everyone else. And Batman is a monster story and doomed romance thing.

The art leans to standard superhero comic style. Grummett and Chen are the artists they've always been, making sure all the visual information is there, easy to interpret and follow. Duursema's the most distinctive, but also the most '90s in look. Lots of busy little lines and questionable proportions and anatomy for the characters. But Nightwing is the least "superhero" of the books, with the backstabbing, manipulation and working in the shadows, so it makes sense to not look like the others.

I've always read that if Klaus Janson is the inker, the art just ends up looking like his. No matter the penciler, Janson's heavy inks overwhelm it and make the look his own. I've read the Wolverine issues Byrne penciler that Janson inked, and I'd tend to agree, it doesn't look much like Byrne's work. Apparently Dan Jurgens is the exception, because The Batman still looks very much like a Jurgens-drawn comic, just with thicker, messier lines than when Norm Rapamund or someone else inks him. I don't know if Janson dialed it back or what.

Since most of the stories are also the first appearance of these versions of the characters, there's a fair amount of exposition or flashbacks. Four pages spent explaining how Batman is a suit of armor controlled by a knight who was tricked into turning against King Arthur by Morgan le Fay, so Merlin condemned him to live trapped within his castle (The House of Secrets) until he atoned. Exactly how he's supposed to do that if he hasn't managed it after several centuries is not outlined, but Merlin's always kind of a shithead, so that tracks. Dude's just pissed le Fay outflanked his withered butt.

Some integrate it into the flow better than others. In Nightwing, Ostrander handles explaining the mysterious magic-using cabal by having one character pass the information along to the President in a dream. With Doom Patrol, since the characters traveled back in time to prevent the Earth exploding, Jurgens just has them explain whatever particular event they're trying to stop as they're trying to stop it.

The re-imagining of the characters and concepts works better for some than others. The Joker as a female vigilante/pest that focuses mainly on mocking or humiliating authority figures isn't bad. Actually, it feels like some of this has been co-opted into Harley Quinn over the last decade (although Harley's got a lot more 4th wall breaking.) Batman as a true dark or disgraced knight, who carries on his mission endlessly because he sees it as the only chance he's got to be free, rather than from a childhood vow to end crime, that can work. Wildcat as a codename for a young lady who transforms into a feral werecat when she speaks her trigger word (Shazam)? Not so much.

All the issues suffer from what seems like a competition between the writers to name-check as many characters or concepts as possible. In Doom Patrol, the teenage daughter of the doctor leading the attempt to change the past says her mother called her "Firehawk" when she was just a kid. It never comes up again, and the young lady demonstrates no fire or bird-themed abilities, so it really feels like just checking a box. Secret Six references a bio-weapon used against Eastern Europe the year before. Codename? Red Tornado. I didn't do an exact count, but I feel like Nightwing wins, especially once the mage "Hex", starts referencing spells called "The Emerald Eye" or "Ring of Oa."

The re-designs vary in how similar they are to their namesakes. Batman's a big red suit of armor, and instead of pointy ears, has a pair of similar-looking (but larger) spines on the shoulders. Still the same emblem, though tilted on its axis. Joker combines bits of Harley Quinn with the Joker, and the poofy-sleeved coat reminds me of some of the Royal Flush Gang.

On the other hand, Hex (real name: Vincent Lord, don't know if that's a reference to something) looks like Constantine crossed with Gambit, and has the same sort of sleazy yet self-assured air you'd expect from a fusion of those two. Plastic Man's a big, shiny, green-faced living polymer that looks kind of like a robot. The look and the name don't fit, but the name does fit his powers and composition, and it was given to him by his government handlers, so I can see them taking a direct, literal approach.

What I Bought 6/3/2023 - Part 3

Friday, Friday, weekend time's upon us. Will I have a fun weekend? Who knows? Not me, because I'm writing this on Tuesday. Last two of the May books.

Grit N Gears #1, by Angel Fuentes (writer), Nahuel SB (artist), Carlos Mangual (letterer) - In a word of vague orange shapes, one robot, with one arm, stands. . .OK I'm bored with this bit.

So there's a one-armed robot named Screw Driver that gets run out of town for stealing. But he used to be a law-enforcing robot called Ranger One. Most of this is Fuentes and Nahuel showing how things got to that point. Ranger One was created by a woman whose deputy husband was recently slain. The robot's popularity caused them to make more cop-bots until one came to the idea the best way to prevent crime is to kill the people that could commit crimes. Meaning all people.

Cue the predictable human response to destroy all robots, and that's more or less how Ranger One ends up a one-armed fugitive, uninterested in helping his creator look after what is either her daughter, or a robot she built based on her daughter. That part is unclear. The kid was born alive, at least.

Nahuel avoids having all the automatons look the same. Ranger One has a tall cylindrical head, a bit like Scud the Disposable Assassin but with only one big eye. But the rogue, who calls himself Razoneck starts out with his central eye surrounded by a curved helmet and a circular microphone/exhaust port for a mouth. He may have alter attached a human jawbone to his face, too. None of his subordinates look like him. So there's a level of individuality that suggests these are real beings and not simple tools gone bad.

It's kind of an odd book, or I'm just not familiar enough with steampunk. Ranger One's activated in 1877, during the blighted presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes. But there are flying cathedrals, and Ranger One introduces himself by playing a song by Kenny Rogers, who explains has not been born yet. I'm disputing that fact, unless Highlander was about Kenny Rogers and I didn't know it, but it's a strange approach. Is Fuentes trying to do some evolution through the different types of Western heroes. Go from the Roy Rogers singing cowboy to more of a Randolph Scott sheriff to an Eastwood style antihero? If so, the story's cycling through pretty fast.

Impossible Jones and Captain Lightning #1, by Karl Kesel (writer/inker), David Hahn (penciler), Tony Avina (colorist), Comicraft (letterer) - The store only had the Dark Knight Returns parody, so I went with that. At least one of the character's has lightning powers, so it's appropriate.

Jones' attempt to let someone else steal an original printing of Shakespeare's writing, so she can recover it later and get the finder's fee, is ruined when the Bearded Lady and her Freakshow try to fight instead of just running away. So Jones ends up with the book, without it getting successfully stolen.

Then Captain Lightning shows up, asking her to stop the fabled Section Zero from stealing a mysterious rock from the local evil super-science corporation. Jones agrees, figuring it might make the Captain less suspicious of her. Section Zero does show up - two of them anyway - and they fight with our title characters across the city. Jones recovers the stone, then loses it down a geothermal vent when Captain Lightning tells her to hand it over. They argue a bit, a guy who looks like Mightor from the Hanna-Barbara cartoons finds the rock deep underground, that's pretty much it.

Kesel's still introducing more mysteries, or more hints. I'm pretty sure the "Volte Foundation" Captain Lightning mentions as someone the rock could be trusted with is probably run by the Captain's secret identity, and Jones thinks the guy is planning some run at becoming mayor. We got some more villains, though I'm not sure if ClownCar is just a bunch of clowns or one clown taht can duplicate himself, Multiple Man-style.

Not really much more on the origin of Jones' powers, beyond that we see them continuing to expand. She can make the lenses of her goggles function like binoculars, there doesn't seem to be a strict limit to how many additional limbs she can create. Let's Hahn play around with her look a bit, between those abilities and the stealth costume she whips up for the break-in.

Sunday Splash Page #259

 

"The Gold Ball and Chain," in Impossible Jones #4, by Karl Kesel (writer/inker), David Hahn (penciler), Tony Avina (colorist), Comicraft (letterer)

I think this was funded on Kickstarter originally, but I ran into it as a four-issue mini-series released through Scout Comics late in 2021. Kesel and Hahn do a variation on Plastic Man's origin - the thief who gains stretching/shape-shifting powers - but where Plas became a legit hero, Impossible Jones is mostly playing hero as cover to figure out who threw her in whatever super-science gizmo did this to her and then try to take revenge.

Also, the hero biz is good cover for pulling her own heists, or pawning loot she recovers from other super-villains.

We don't get answers to the mysteries, beyond her finding someone in her crew was hired to knock her out, but had nothing to do with the super-science. Kesel and Hahn sprinkle in hints, like the fact Jones' shadow seems to have a mind of its own (and Even Steven up there recognizes it, whatever it is). The story does more world-building, establishing several other heroes and villains, issuing vague references to all kinds of backstories. The city seems to have a hero identity that is passed around between citizens for a year at a time, though the specifics were not revealed.

Hahn varies the styles of costumes. There are the more classic spandex types, but also the folks with more regular clothes repurposed into a motif, like Homewrecker there. Impossible Jones' powers allow for a lot of different visual looks and gags, and they have some fun with that.

There's been a few one-shots released since the end of the mini-series, slowly coming out in physical media, but I don't think they've dived any deeper into the mysteries around the main character yet.

What I Bought 1/2/2023 - Part 4

Last two comics of 2022! Decided to group the books from Scout Comics together. Works as well as any other sorting method according to my talking baseball cap.

Impossible Jones: Naughty or Nice #1, by Karl Kesel (writer/inker), David Hahn (penciler), Tony Avina and Ryan Cody (colorists), Comicraft (letterer) - So um, what does the "naughty" option entail? Asking for a friend.

The one-shot has two loosely connected stories. In the first, I.J. is planning to swipe the original puppets from a beloved Christmas special when Holly Daze takes over the airwaves and makes threats of a big bomb if she doesn't get a white Christmas. Jones is willing to ignore that, but one of the other heroes shows up, and when it turns out Holly's got some superpowered back-up, Imp can't stay out of it. I like Demolition's design. It's very simple, a t-shirt with a logo and some wrist bracers, but it works. He doesn't talk at all, and based on Imp's description of him, I wonder if he's a bit like Mad Stan from Batman Beyond. A more elaborate look might not make sense.

As it turns out, Holly really did just want a white Christmas, and to steal the puppets while everyone is freaking out over her bomb threat, but she left one for Imp. The other story picks up near the tail end of the first. Even Steven receives an anonymous Christmas gift, and is frustrated that he doesn't know who to give a gift as a thank you. That can't stand, as it's uneven! A gift must be matched with one in return! 

Kesel sets it up that Even Steven's power about keeping things fair extends to his very nature. Not only that he won't join a fight that's an even match, but he seeks out Impossible Jones because he believes she can do impossible things. It's in her name, and heroes' names should accurately convey their abilities.

Imp does come up with a satisfactory solution, and Kesel adds in a little more about either her nature, or her powers, through what could be a throwaway comment by Even Steven. So both stories function as easily accessible standalones, but also work at building on the initial mini-series, which is nice.

She Bites #3, by Hedwig Hale (writer), Alberto Hernandez R. (artist), Dave Lanphear (letterer) - Those photo booths always start faster than you can get ready.

Brenda freaks out over her lifelong nemesis being dead in the dressing room. Elsie alternates between amused and annoyed by the dramatics, but they manage to get Amber out of the mall by stealing her car. When they're ready to dump the body, Brenda has a soliloquy about how even if Amber was a terrible person, it's too bad she didn't get to marry an asshole, have some kids, get addicted to pills. You know, live. Hernandez focuses those panels on Brenda and Amber's corpse, with  Elsie either off-panel or only part of her leg visible.

Probably because she's rolling her eyes, as that's when she reveals Amber's not dead (or going to become a vampire), and all this was to teach Brenda a lesson about the value of her own life. As approaches go, I would prefer a foul-mouthed undead child kill my enemy to an angel showing me the world if I never existed. Push that damn angel in a boiler.

After polishing off the evening watching Lion King - it gets two vampire thumbs up for surprising amounts of murder! - Brenda collects her pay and leaves. But maybe she's not ready to shuffle off just yet. I'm not sure which place on Elsie's list I want to see them visit most. The cockfight, Costco, a strip club? The possibilities for mayhem are endless, although Costco probably has an entire aisle devoted to monster killin', so that might be the way to go.

Amber also wakes up on a park bench, out for revenge, so maybe we'll get more of this some day. I doubt somehow Brenda's completely lost the impulse to end her existence, especially if Amber comes after her (or Elsie) in an ugly enough manner.

I'm curious if Elsie can sprout wings or turn to smoke or anything like that. Hernandez is good at shifting between her looking cruel or angry, with the occasional glimpses of something like childlike joy or happiness. But she never gets too monstrous looking, and I don't know if that's simply something she can't do, or there hasn't been a situation that required it yet. Given everything, I don't know if it would impact how Brenda sees her, but it might.

Sunday Splash Page #227

 

"Admitting It's the First Step. Murder is the Second," in Harley Quinn (vol. 1) #2, by Karl Kesel (writer), Terry Dodson (penciler), Rachel Dodson (inker), Alex Sinclair (colorist), Ken Lopez (letterer)

Having been a big hit in Batman: The Animated Series, Harley Quinn migrated into the Batbooks and after a half-dozen or so years, got her own ongoing series, running for 38 issues.

Whether because it didn't seem like a great idea for Harley to play second fiddle in her own book, or because they didn't want the protagonist of said book doing the kind of stuff Harley would get up to with the Joker, Karl Kesel breaks Quinn off from the clown to find her own path. Which isn't to say she's good. After a one-issue stint playing #2 to Two-Face, Harley decides to start her own gang. 

She's terrible at it. Every time they add a fifth henchperson, they die. In more than one of those situations, Harley sets the guy up to be killed or at least left behind. None of her heists succeed as Harley is more concerned with her personal obsessions. To the extent she kills her most loyal henchman because he's interfering in her matchmaking between a couple of private investigators trying to capture her. It would be easy to argue she learned well from the Joker, but Kesel goes into her past enough to let the reader see Harley's always been willing to do whatever she deemed necessary to get what she wanted. Working with the Joker just convinced her to stop masking it.

The Dodsons draw the majority of the first 19 issues, and it's pretty standard work for them. Clean linework, easy to follow action, expressive faces, the usual full-figured women. In issue 1, Ivy tries disguising herself as Harley to kill the Joker and Harley remarks she wouldn't dress like that if she had Ivy's figure. It's hard to really see much of a difference in them.

The first year ends with Harley and Ivy taking off for Metropolis. There's a stint of Harley manipulating Bizarro, only for that to get out of hand. Harley ends up in Hell for a while before getting out through some method I don't remember, but the Martian Manhunter got dragged into the mess. Craig Rousseau is drawing the book by then, his style is more animated, closer to Bruce Timm than Dodson. He draws a few pieces in the earlier issues where he's deliberately aping the Timmverse style, meant as a representation of how Harley sees all this.

The last year or so of the book is by A.J. Lieberman and Mike Huddleston, and involves Harley back in Gotham, tangled up in a whole thing with some girl that everybody wants. I think it revolved around what Harley was going to do, look out for #1 or look out for the girl stuck relying on her, as well as what being around someone like Harley for an extended period of time would do to someone. I picked up parts of it in back issues years ago - those issues are oddly pricey - but it didn't stick in the collection.

Next week, Harley gets another chance to headline her own book.

What I Bought 4/4/2022 - Part 2

Wednesday was all about second issues, but today is for fourth issues. Including the end of one mini-series.

Impossible Jones #4, by Karl Kesel (writer/inker), David Hahn (penciler), Tony Avina (colorist), Comicraft (letterers) - The old ball n' chain isn't interested in a gold mine, just in making sure Impossible Jones gets the shaft. Eh, that's not a great merging of two lamentations upon the misery of marriage.

Fresh off her first outing as a "hero", Isabelle goes looking for Jimmy. She finds his apartment wrecked, and Fosca snooping around. Fosca's finally recognized Isabelle, and knows what's happened to her, though she doesn't seem to be responsible. She at least gives Isabelle a lead on where to find Jimmy, who's about to lose his arm since he can't get the device they stole off. Time for Impossible Jones' second super-villain battle, and it doesn't go much better than the first until Even Steven shows up. 

Though you can see Isabelle gaining more confidence in her abilities. Hahn draws her not only using multiple arms, but different types. Human arms with boxing gloves, tentacles, rocklike arms. She's not surprised at what she can do anymore, either, which is a nice way to show progression. Though when Homewrecker gets in a really good shot, Isabelle notes she feels a lot of somethings break, but she's still up and fighting a couple pages later. So it may be an unconscious thing, her expanding the limits of her powers without realizing it.

So, four issues to get us back to where the issue 1 started, Impossible Jones with a stolen necklace she retrieved from a villain. We got her origin, though there are still mysteries afoot about who did this to her, why, and what exactly they did. She doesn't know where Jimmy ended up thanks to the device, and there's an unscrupulous former fed turned scientist who knows the true identity of the city's newest hero. She seems to have found a way to make the hero thing pay, but I feel like word of that is going to get around.

I don't know. The notion seemed to be, thief gets superpowers, pretends to be hero while finding the one who set her up. But we didn't get to "finding the one who set her up," because while Fosca certainly set up Isabelle's betrayal, she isn't the one who threw her in the weird science machine that gave her these powers. And the question of who did do that doesn't seem to be on Isabelle's mind any longer, since it apparently doesn't merit mention in her internal monologue at the end of the issue. I'm not disappointed in the mini-series; I'd certainly be interested in Kesel and Hahn doing more with the character. More dissatisfied, I guess. A lot of tease, but not much payoff.

The Rush #4, by Si Spurrier (writer), Nathan Gooden (artist), Addison Duke (colorist), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letterer) - First wilderness rule: No eye contact with a bloody-eyed child.

Nettie's ready to throw in the towel, and finally gives in to the polite Mountie's urging that she leave. She's not the only one, and the find once they get to the edge of Brokehoof that spring has arrived, just not in that blighted crater. And not everyone is allowed to leave, as the Pale arrives on its giant spider to inform them. Those who are far enough gone the gold is appearing beneath their skin, must stay. They belong to the ground. That includes M.P., who we see has begun digging at his arms at some point in a panel where Duke colors his arm noticeably red than his face and Gooden draws pointy bumps from under the skin. Otsmane-Elhaou adds in a "schlooorb" sound effect in a squiggly golden font that just looks unpleasant. 

At least a few object and try to fight it out with a man with a wormhole for a face and a giant spider for a steed. That goes as well as you'd expect. Nettie tries to retreat to town with M.P., but they're intercepted by the Pale and the spider. But they can't kill her, or they won't. The pale phrases it as the latter, but I kind of suspect it's the former. She's not her for greed or wealth, she's not tainted by whatever brought all this madness forth.

And it's getting worse, because even as we learn the Mountie used Nettie as bait, the weird winged creature shows up to attack the Pale. Then a giant golden salmon bursts from a frozen stream to speak to them. Then the giant, gold crying moose makes an appearance.

Is Nettie's presence what's causing all this? She has consistently shown no interest in the gold, only in finding Caleb. Even the Pale knows it, because it uses that to barter for its life, and then the "Carrion Kid" attacks. So these creatures aren't all on the same side, or there are rules they have to abide by, and the Pale was breaking one of them. I'd figure each of the monsters used to be a person, since Tsikamin (aka Bill) seems to know who the Pale used to be. But that would mean the moose used to be a person, too. Maybe. Bill said there's a legend about something that happens when there's a crime, or a man becomes "over-mighty", but what was the crime, and why does it manifest in people digging gold from under their skin?

All sorts of questions, and the only thing I feel reasonably sure of is Nettie won't enjoy the answers she gets about Caleb. The Pale said he's alive, he didn't say anything about what state he's in, or if he's still human. I think he might be the Carrion Kid now.

What I Bought 2/28/2022 - Part 2

Spent a long Saturday with Alex at one of his gigs. But the weather was nice, and I was probably overdue to get my ass in gear and actually do something over a weekend. For today, we have two third issues, one of them a conclusion.

Tales from the Dead Astronaut #3, by Jonathan Thompson (writer), Jorge Luis Gabotto (artist) - That's a very cruel funhouse mirror they've got there.

All the stories wrap up. The shapeshifting rock star performs a song at the funeral of his friend and partner, before retiring to an empty bathroom to stare in the mirror. As he has through the previous two issues, Gabboto draws the musician changing appearance in each panel, but here he gradually grows taller and more humanlike as he goes along. I'm guessing that by the end, he's back to how he looked in the good old days, but maybe he's just mirroring his deceased pal?

In the story of the species that wanders through space, the individual who decided to set out alone is gradually turning the world they landed to a green one full of life. The rest of his people have remained in the little copse of trees they arrived in, going through their death/rebirth cycle. So he's the one who's "found" what they sought for however long, by creating it himself. The others either don't realize it, or don't care. There's something interesting there, that notion that many of us are looking for something unique and expecting it to just land in front of us, rather than trying to create it. Or we think it couldn't be that simple, so we don't recognize it when we see it.

Alexander and his sister Lily go to war, and she wins, tearing his suit apart and exposing him as a frail little person. That's fine, but I wonder what she's going to do now? Great, you (eventually) stopped your warmongering brother. That ending feels the most perfunctory, the big man is actually small, and Gabotto's art doesn't really seem suited for a power armor fight.

As for the dead astronaut himself, apparently he wasn't supposed to leave the examination room, so the aliens are chasing him around. His face gets torn off, but he's still alive and leaps back into space. Not where I expected that to go, but OK. Overall a mixed bag. I think all three stories had issues where their part was stronger than others. The Star's was probably issue 2, the one about the colonizing aliens, I think either this issue or the first.

Impossible Jones #3, by Karl Kesel (writer/inker), David Hahn (penciler), Tony Avina (colorist), Comicraft (letterer) - It's certainly one approach for displaying your collection, but she's definitely not in mint condition now.

Three years earlier, we watch Even Steven face off against Bloodblade, and shrug off a knife in the back to win. The FBI sent two agents to try to learn more about Even Steven, but one of them is Fosca, who was Impossible Jones' woman on the inside for her heist gone wrong, and the one Jones was questioning about that last issue. Unfortunately, Fosca's made a connection with Bloodblade, now Saint of Knives, and Jones is put on the run. Out the window, in fact. Neither dies, a couple more heroes show up, and Saint of Knives ends up with knives in his chest. Meanwhile, her friend Jimmy's adapting to his power when he gets attacked by Homewrecker. I started laughing typing that name. Still better than "Polecat", though.

I don't know if Saint of Blades has some specific knife ability, or it's just telekinesis and knives are a handy focal point, but I like the variety of uses we see. Not just him making the knives track Jones as she tries to dodge, but he can levitate as long as he's holding onto a knife, and he pulls a door off its hinges by drawing the knives back to himself. Although it seems like the knives would just pull out of the door, but whatever.

Along those same lines, Jones continuing to figure out new things she can do on the fly. The spreading of the suit into wings, forming a third arm. Polecat's nervous question of whether she'll get rid of it by having it fall off, along with her own comment that she's gotta try and get rid of the right one, made me laugh. We see heroes struggle to adjust to their new powers, but it's usually in trying to find their limits, or in learning control and making mistakes. Tobey Maguire's first attempt at web-swinging, where he just crashed into the side of a building, for example. Here, she alternates between reveling in what she can do, but also being confused and disturbed by it. And all of it makes sense, considering she still doesn't understand where this power came from.

It's a little hard to believe she was a successful thief prior to this, considering how much she wings everything. She tries to make peace with the Saint of Blades by wrapping up Polecat, and when that fails to impress him or Captain Lightning, she turns around and saves the heroes from the Saint of Blades. Then decides she might as well speak to the press and play along with the hero thing in two panels. 

Charitably, it shows an ability to adapt on her part. To figure out the advantages and angles quickly. As she notes, heroes don't get shot at by cops (maybe in her fictional universe, let's ask Spider-Man about that), and people tell them all sorts of useful stuff. I am curious what sort of resolution we're going to get in the fourth issue. Is she going to figure out if Fosca was the one responsible for her current state, is anyone going to figure out who she really is? I'm not expecting everything to get answered or settled, because I think Kesel and Hahn are trying to turn this into something that has legs, but I think something has to get some closure.

What I Bought 1/10/2022 - Part 1

Despite the place I planned to buy them from having their shipment delayed for a week, and then something weird going on with the post office for three days last week (the package showed as not having even reached the post office, then was suddenly in the state with no updates in between), I have the last three comics from 2021. Huzzah!

Tales from the Dead Astronaut #2, by Jonathan Thompson (writer), Jorge Luis Gabotto (artist) - Not a one of them masked. Terrible protocol breach.

The dead astronaut was picked up by an alien vessel and by the end of the issue, may no longer be dead. Turns out we're not getting three new stories, but continuations of the three from the first issue. The shapeshifting rock star finds being a solo act depressing, while his buddy lives it up drinking and meeting women. Until he dies. Turns out the machinist guy that decided to conquer the world had a sister even better at making things than him. Who built her own war suit and promptly killed her brother. Probably. And in the story about the people who live connected to a grove of trees that float around and land on different worlds searching for life, one member has decided it might be better for them to create something themselves, instead of just looking for someone else to have already done it.

Of the three, the last is most interesting to me because I could see it go several different ways. Split along generational lines, the one stays behind alone while the others move on (and maybe drift back millions of years later), the one gets killed as defective, a bunch of other possibilities. The other two, I just don't care that much either way.

Gabotto's art still has a lot of panels where either the linework is very light or the coloring (which still seems like watercolors) overwhelms it and makes things kind of muddled. It's not all the time; comes and goes and maybe it's as simple the main characters get heavier lines and less washed colors. It makes them pop off the page more than all the supporting characters, solidifies their standing as the important one. But it still gives the whole thing a messy air. 

Having bought two of the three issues, I'll probably just go for it and buy the third later this month, but it'd be in the hope there's something intriguing waiting at the end, because for now, this mini-series is not producing much reaction.

Impossible Jones #2, by Karl Kesel (writer/inker), David Hahn (penciler), Tony Avina (colorist), Comicraft (letterer) - That's a cool jacket. I would take one of those, put it right next to the '90s Ray jacket I would buy if it was a thing that existed.

This issue is all a flashback to immediately over Belle realized she's got weird powers. She has to escape the ruin of the Tech Arcana lab, with powers she doesn't entirely grasp. She pulls that off, but her attempt to track down the member of her heist who betrayed her runs into some complications. Her first guess agrees he did graze her with a gunshot and throw her in a closet (though he doesn't recognize Belle, maybe bullets bouncing off her threw him), but he wouldn't know how to toss her in a 'weird-ass sci-fi room'. 

So she goes looking for the lady who helped them break in. Who seems suitably nervous (and also doesn't recognize Belle), but might be about the palette-swapped Clockwork Orange looking guy calling himself the "Saint of Knives." And as with all stretchy people, bullets may not bother Belle, but sharp instruments do. There's also a couple of pages devoted to Belle's friend Jimmy, who thinks she's dead and starts fiddling with the device they stole. Which turns him into something like the Spot, but with pixels rather than dark circles.

Kesel and Hahn are really working hard to try and worldbuild on the fly. Quick descriptions of different parts of the city, established crimelords, alien cultures, things like that. I don't think the story is getting bogged down in it. . .yet. We'll see if they can continue to toe the line. Hahn's working to make the sections of the city look distinct in how apartments to look, and while I was glib about Jimmy's transformation, it's honestly kind of cool.

What I Bought 10/4/2021 - Part 2

It's David Hahn Day! I mean, I don't think it's his birthday. It could be I guess, but both comics today were drawn by him, so according to the Blog Constitution, that counts.

Midnight Western Theatre #5, by Louis Southard (writer), David Hahn (artist), Ryan Cody (colorist), Buddy Beaudoin (letterer) - Alex has got some serious veins on his shins.

The flashback portion shows us that Ortensia woke up after the guys who killed her father tried to sacrifice her. She was not dead, or at least not dead dead, and they were all crispy fried. Then a woman named Sarah, who looks like a rather desiccated Pilgrim found her. And that's all we get on her backstory.

The main part of the issue is her first meeting with Alexander, 15 years later, when she's hired to kill the "Chupacabra" feasting on some ranchers goats. Surprise, it's a very lonely for Revolutionary War soldier turned vampire! Alexander is OK with dying, if he can just have a conversation first. Ortensia reluctantly agrees, he offers his origin as having gotten lost marching in the snow and being found by a peculiar woman. Who then bit him on the neck. He escaped, but now he's a vampire. Who only feeds on animals, mind you.

It's interesting that Hahn gives Alexander vacant white eyes, except in the page where he's feeding on the goats and they're black voids with a red dot in the center. But for the woman who rescued/turned Alexander, Hahn gives her eyes that are entirely black. Is that some signal as to the difference in their status? She's a full vampire, he's not? Or just a representation that she's killed and fed on many people, and Alexander has refrained. One tainted by their choices, the other not.

Long story short, Ortensia feels kinship with someone who was turned into something without a choice, and gives him the opportunity to work for her. Or stay in the cave in what's left of his ragged clothes. And the rest is. . . the first four issues of this mini-series. So far. It feels like Southard left enough space to return to some day. Sarah's an enigma to be sure, and what happened after Ortensia and Alex moved to her property in Oregon is another question. 

Maybe we'll get some more some day. That'd be nice.

Impossible Jones #1, Karl Kesel (writer/inker), David Hahn (penciler), Tony Avina (colorist), Comicraft (letterer) - If you're going to try and stop a thief with a barrier, pick something more sturdy.

Impossible Jones is a hero with stretchy powers, which may or may not come from an other-dimensional alien parasite/symbiote she picked up after being caught in some sort of incident with a quantum generator. Of course, she was caught up in it because she's actually a thief named Belle, who was helping a disgruntled employee of the CEO of a tech company (who is also a super-criminal, possibly with snake powers) rob said company. Belle thinks her crew betrayed her, but at present, the person meddling with the controls of the machine she was trapped in is unknown. Although her buddy Jimmy is definitely acting jumpy.

Even for the comic being 28 pages, Kesel and Hahn fit quite a bit in there. Belle's origin and her crew. We see at least three other costumed heroes and villains each, and here about a couple more. There are all sorts of hints to rivalries and long-running problems, and at least one strange hero legacy, called "Persephone", that seems to be carried by a person for one year, then passed to someone else. 

The hows and the whys are unknown, but I like that Kesel writes it as though this is a universe in progress we've stepped into. The story doesn't stop to explain all the backstory, or this would just be an expository issue. We've got Christmas-themed villainy, betrayals, rivalries, all sorts of stuff going that we hopefully get to tease out as the story goes along.

Kesel's inks soften Hahn's artwork a fair bit. Characters' faces aren't as sharply defined. Ortensia has a jawline that could cut roast, while Belle's is a bit rounder. They have a similar shape to the nose, but Kesel emphasizes different aspects of it than Hahn. Hahn's shadows are heavier, too. thicker and darker than Kesel's.

It fits the characters and their stories, much like Avina and Cody's respective color work does. Impossible Jones is a much brighter book, appropriate for what feels like maybe a Bronze Age super-hero book. Midnight Western Theatre tends to darker colors, but also more solid colors. Less shading. It's Western horror. Even if one of the heroes is a vampire, there's still right and wrong. The ones who hurt, and the ones who help. Belle is a costumed hero sometimes, but she's not above keeping the loot she kept from being stolen for herself. In a bit of a grey area there. Not always bad, not always good.

Sunday Splash Page #125

"There's a New Man Without Fear in Town," in Daredevil #360, by Karl Kesel (writer), Cary Nord (penciler), Matt Ryan (inker), Christie Scheele (colorist), Jim Novak (letterer)

After somehow sorting the whole mess with being presumed dead, and running around in a gritty, armored costume for awhile, Karl Kesel's brief run on the book attempted to move Hornhead back more towards what he was originally. More swashbuckling, smart-mouthed, bantering with his enemies. After so much personal disaster, it feels like it should come off as forced, Matt's own more upbeat version of the "inhuman creature" bit Jack Ryder used to pull as the Creeper. But, maybe because Kesel commits to it, has Matt keep cracking jokes and quips, and doesn't provide a lot of internal monologue about how it's an act, it doesn't feel out of place.

The costume is a lighter, if not more brilliant, shade of red. Less of a grimy feel to things. He's out in the daylight a lot more during this stretch, and the days seem brighter than they were during Nocenti's run. New York doesn't seem quite as grimy or run down as it did in Nocenti's run, although maybe that's just because Murdock has moved back up in the world, economically.

Matt's back to being a lawyer with Foggy, although they get hired onto the firm of a notorious lawyer named Rosalind Sharpe, who has a connection with Foggy. Foggy is finally in on Matt's secret, and more than a little pissed about being in the dark all those years, so Matt keeps trying to make it up to him. By working for Sharpe for one thing, since she makes Foggy's employment reliant on Matt also working there. He's managed to mostly patch things up with Karen Page (they were just starting to try during Last Rites).

This is post-Onslaught, so it's perhaps understandable Daredevil moves more outside his wheelhouse, what with most of the other heroes "dead". He's facing down the Absorbing Man, Grey Gargoyle, Mr. Hyde shows up again, Pyro appears for I think, either his last appearance, or close to it. I think he crops up one more time in X-Men post-Zero Tolerance before the Legacy Virus kills him.

Actually, this run in general provides kind of an interesting snapshot of Marvel at the moment. Daredevil teams up with Spider-Man, except it's Ben Reilly in his version of the Spider-Man costume (the one Spider-Girl would appropriate). Reilly's strangely willing to discuss the fact he thought he was a clone with Daredevil, but I guess he has memories of their earliest team-ups. Foggy starts a tentative romance with Liz Osborn/Allan, who is running Oscorp with Harry dead and Norman not yet revealed to be alive. Black Widow pops up, closer to her more professional and ruthless characterization of the last couple decades, but she's acting out of grief and guilt, thinking she's going down as the last leader of the Avengers, who let her entire team get killed.

Gene Colan comes on as artist for the last few issues, which involve Dr. Fear trying to do. . . something involving the radio station Karen is working at as a late night host. I don't remember what the plot was, probably something about driving people nuts with sub-harmonics in the broadcast frequency. Colan makes New York a murky, shadowy place, but still cleaner than it had been for the past 100+ issues. Just atmospheric.

Kesel's run ends at #364, with Joe Kelly and later Scot Lobdell stepping in as writer for the last 15 over so issues before the title was canceled, then started over for the Kevin Smith/Joe Quesada run. Which led to Bendis, then to Brubaker, and a whole lot of miserable crap. All of which I ignored, so next Sunday we'll skip over all that to the next restart.

What I Bought 4/3/2019 - Part 1

I've slept really well for two nights in a row. I need to go 24+ hours without sleep more often! There's no way that plan can backfire. Think how much more I'll accomplish!

Like I said, I managed to find most of last week's comics when Alex and I hit a store in Vegas, so let's get to them. For today, two mini-series, both still in early stages.

Domino: Hotshots #2, by Gail Simone (writer), David Baldeon (artist), Jim Charalampidis (colorist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - I don't think I've ever seen the Black Widow with a fishnet section on her costume before. Kind of an odd choice by R.B. Silva there.

First half of the issue is everybody fighting Deadpool, until Domino talks him down. Second half of the issue is them going to see Tony Stark because 'Pool says that's who hired him, and Stark sending automated drone armors to attack them. Throw in that Domino really doesn't have any control over this group she's working with, and doesn't seem comfortable in a leadership position besides that, and that's pretty much it.

The fight scenes aren't great, because the focus is really more on what Domino's thinking during the fight. So she's narrating about how everyone else is making a mistake underestimating Wade (which I can't picture Black Widow being stupid enough to do), but it isn't really clear what he's suddenly doing that's so much more effective than what he did the first few pages. Plus, Wade's face gets damaged by one of Shoon'kwa's weapons and his eye on that side gets colored pink. Like, entirely pink. I thought it was supposed to mean he's a fake, maybe Stark built himself a Deadpool LMD, but I don't think so.

That said, when you can see the action, the sense of force and effort is there, and Baldeon's still good at body language and expression work. The bit when Domino asks Natasha, Silver Fox, and Shoon'kwa whether they're on board with destroying this "artifact" or about to get chucked overboard. The reluctance on each one's part to actually do so, how Natasha doesn't change expression at all, and Shoon'kwa won't even look at Domino, and Fox makes this scowly unhappy look as she debates it. When Deadpool is supposed to be getting serious, the shading on him gets heavier, puts the damaged side of his face in shadow, makes him look more ominous.

Overall, the issue has some individual parts I like, but isn't great as a whole.

Section Zero #1, by Karl Kesel (writer), Tom Grummett (artist), Ben Dimagmaliw (colorist), Richard Starkings (letterer) - The store only had the variant cover available. Which is Walt Simonson drawing a bug-boy, so that's not bad.

Section Zero is a weird science group that works for "all governments" under the UN, investigating weird shit. They were looking for an insect-person, and found a young boy named Thom who got a tattoo at a vanishing tattoo place (meaning the place later vanished, not that the tattoos do) and turns into a bug for a day at a time. He goes with them as they head to the Outback to investigate a large feral creature killing livestock. But their contact in the UN is also informing some ruthless group of soldiers about the same stuff. I know, duplicity in the government, shocking.

It's. . . fine, I guess. Kesel and Grummett are trying to do a fair amount of world-building right off the bat, establish the setting, some of the characters' major characteristics, a few mysteries quickly, but it just didn't really take for me. I was sort of interested in how Thom's origin story reminds me of old horror comics, the person who goes seeking something, gets more than they bargained for, and can't ever find the person who gave it to them again.

I'm normally a fan of Tom Grummett's art, and it isn't that it's bad here. He has a solid, clean style that's easy to read. You can always follow what's going on, understand character's emotions from their faces and body language. I'm just not sure if he's the best choice for this book. Maybe I'm expecting it to tilt more towards horror than he and Kesel intend, but I feel like maybe you need an artist whose style would play up Thom's bug form as more horrific, make the other oddities look truly odd.