Saturday Splash Page #152

"Nightmares of the Frontier," in Space Outlaws #2, by Marco Fontanili

Normally I wouldn't do a 3-issue mini-series when only two issues had been released. But considering the second issue came out a year ago, there's been no sign of the third issue, or even a re-solicitation, and given Scout Comics in general seems to be circling the drain, doesn't seem much point in waiting.

A dangerous alien escapes a Martian prison and crash lands on Earth in the American West of the 19th Century. Concerned what F-24K could do, the Martians (bug-looking things) send a killer robot, code-named "OV3RKILL" after the fugitive. F-24K hijacks the body of some poor farmer that was about to kill himself anyway, while the robot pulls a Terminator and takes the clothes of the first dumb cowboy he encounters. By the end of the second issue, the robot's just caught up to its target, and the real fight is about to begin.

A real fight we'll likely never see. It's a book light on plot or characterization, and long on style and vibe. Fontanili uses thick lines and heavy blacks in his work, making everyone's jaws or eyes stand in sharp contrast to their surroundings. A lot of close-up panels on the sort of body horror F-24K likes to inflict. Most of the comic is in black-and-white, with color - mostly shades of yellow or red - saved for added contrast or significant moments. So the poor farmer's eye may be colored in black-and-white, but the tendrils of F-24K's body that squiggle around it are in a bright magenta.

What I Bought 12/8/2023

So, because I met Alex to help with one of his gigs (and keep him company while he got his new stomach tat shaded), I had time to swing by the comic place in the next town over. Which had not only the one book from last week, but the remaining book from last month I hadn't found yet. Huzzah!

Fantastic Four #14, by Ryan North (writer), Ivan Fiorelli (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Reed Richards is so awful, even the Sinister Six want in on kicking his ass.

The FF have returned to New York, to await the return of their home and their kids. But someone's building a receiver dish (out of wood?) in the middle of the lot. Worse, none of the people doing it know why. They're just doing things a phone app game tells them to in return for rewards. Not like, cash, rewards in the game.

This includes the Lady Sinister Six, Sinister Syndicate, whatever that group from Nick Spencer's run called themselves. Who the FF beat in 2 pages? Oh come on, I've seen the FF struggle with teams led by the frickin' Wizard for multiple issues.

Anyway, this is all the work of some tech billionaire dipshit who is using the app as some form of Asimov's psychohistory, getting people to do little things to create a future he wants. Little things, like giving a guy an extra day's vacation, which results in a supply chain shortage somewhere else. Except, billionaire guy doesn't know anything about any construction at the site of the FF's home. Someone else is using his app for their own ends. I suspect the app itself. It's one step towards the singularity, or the Dominion, or whatever goofy-ass thing is supposed to be waiting in the future according to the X-books.

Reed takes the plea to help as a chance to delete the app and all the data, then Johnny torches the servers. Problem solved! Except for the part where Reed mentions he might try making a 'simpler' instance. Just to predict when another app like this might appear. And to predict when he needs to start building another Negative Zone prison, probably. For the second time this week I ask, are we just forgetting Civil War happened now? I'm pretty OK with that, but less so when it lets Richards off the hook.

Oh, and their home didn't appear like it was supposed to. Guess somebody forgot to carry the one.

Space Outlaws #2, by Marco Fontanili - Guys with mustaches, oversized guns, a frightened horse. It's either a western or a '70s film you shouldn't let children watch. Which describes a lot of Westerns, now that I think about it.

F-24K spends most of the issue being chased by Texas Rangers, as it's spent it's limited time on Earth killing, robbing, and generally having a grand old time. One of the rangers manages to shoot it, and F-24K wakes up tied to a table, about to be chopped up and, possibly eaten?

The alien just tears its way out of the body its wearing and kills the lot of them with a lot of severing of limbs and heads and bisecting bodies and whatnot. When there's only one guy left, he prays for deliverance. Instead he gets some super-science bomb chucked into the cabin by the kill-bot chasing F-24K. It kills the man but not the alien, so next issue will be the big showdown.

Yeah, not a lot of plot. Fontanili switches from the magenta he used as his primary color in the first issue to more of a luminous, golden-yellow. It seems to mirror the sky with the setting sun behind the chase on pages 2 and 3. After that, the usage varies. Sometimes Fontanili still uses it for backdrops. Other times he colors in the entire character (except the white of their eyes) and leaves the background in a greyish-blue or black. Sometimes everything is in the golden-yellow. I can't peg a pattern to it. The flashback to F-24K's activities since hitting earth is all in heavy blacks and greys. Like the acts already lost their luster and it's on to the next hit of excitement.

What I Bought 7/28/2023 - Part 2

The dangerous heat broke on Sunday. Even better, it's sporadically raining (which I'm told we need.) Maybe we can have more bearable weather for the remainder of summer, but I probably shouldn't hold my breath.

Monday was final issues, today we're looking at first issues.

Wild Cosmos #1, by Curtis Clow (writer), Mauro Madalari (artist), Yinfaowei Harrison (colorist), Toben Racicot (letterer) - Ah, a derelict space station. Nothing ever happens on those.

A crew of smugglers, running low on supplies, try to look for salvage in an old space station. They walk into a trap and the captain wakes up in the clutches of some mustachioed guy who likes gardening. The captain will rescue a person for this guy, and in return, get the one surviving member of his crew back.

That's the entire issue basically. We don't learn much about Cooper, the captain, other than he feels a responsibility to his crew. Pity most of them are dead now. Don't even know the name of the guy that's forcing Cooper to work for him, or anything about him, or his people, or this woman he wants retrieved.

The comic feels thin, a feeling not helped by the art. Not that Madalari's art, or Harrison's colors are unclear or confusing. You can pretty easily tell what's going on. But there are a lot of splashes or double-page splashes that don't need to be. Two characters in spacesuits moving across a void (which is blank white space). Another double-page splash of the explosion that was the ambush on the left side, the art fading to black on the right side. Then another two pages of just black, with dialogue from a conversation Cooper had at some point set against it. A full-page splash of Cooper drifting among the debris.

Taken together, it makes the issue breeze past, but in an unsatisfying way. The plot's barely begun, the characterizations are skeletal at best, and the art isn't so nifty it demands the amount of space it's being given.

Space Outlaws #1, by Marco Fontanili (writer/artist) - The only copy I could find was with the variant cover, which leans more towards body horror.

F-24K is a parasitic organism that escapes prison on Mars and flees to Earth. Specifically to the Old West in Texas, because it's the 19th Century. The Martian authorities, wishing to keep their existence secret from Earth, can't risk sending a large enough force of soldiers, so they send one killbot instead. OV3RK1LL, to be exact.

F-24K lands on a failing farm and takes possession of the owner's body. It's not a pleasant scene, as Fontanili closes in on the man's eye for three consecutive panels while the parasite makes room for itself by gradually ejecting that eye. OV3RK1LL, meanwhile appears in a circular burst of red-pink light near some cow-puncher and demands his clothes, boots, hat and gun. This Terminator homage proves ineffective, because it's over a century before that movie will exist, so the man tries to shoot the machine, and get a hole through his head, courtesy of his ricochet.

Fontanili's got a thing for eye trauma, although this time it's merely pulped, rather than left to roll on the ground. The right eye this time as well, where it was the left with the other fella. Don't know if that's significant beyond making a point that neither of these beings running around Earth is good for the locals.

You could say not a lot happens in this, either, but I think Fontanili did a better job laying out the "who" and "why" than Clow did. And the art is stylized enough it needs the room to operate. It has a horror feel to it, with the character's starkly outlined against their surroundings, their faces deeply etched and lined. Even the humans look strange, exaggerated with jutting noses and square, gleaming teeth set in dark voids for mouths.

It's mostly black and white, with Fontanili use the red-pink hue for effect as needed. Usually for otherworldly things. F-24K is usually shades of that color. OV3RK1LL's single, central eye is, too. The results of their actions get the same treatment. The eye being flung out is given a smaller inset panel with that shading for the background, while the larger panel of the new host's face, a tentacle waving from the socket, remains in black-and-white.

It's really effective, although I especially like how, as F-24K's future host prepares to end his life, the noose is entirely absent of color. Not without detail; Fontanili makes it so you can see fibers of the rope that stick out, distinct from the whole. But with as little color as the gutters between panels. It's an ending, a stop to the story, not a part of life, and so it's distinct from everything else.

So, one success out of two isn't bad.