Saturday Splash Page #212

"Ready Stance," in Roche Limit: Monadic #3, by Michael Moreci (writer), Kyle Charles (artist), Matt Battaglia (colorist), Ryan Ferrier (letterer)

The third and final Roche Limit mini-series, Monadic appears, at first glance, to take place on Earth. Except the first characters we see are Recall creator Alex Ford, Watkins, aka the guy dumping people into the Anomaly, and the night club owner Gracie. In other words, all people who died on or around the Roche Limit colony in the first mini-series. Pretty soon Sonya the cop and her sister Bekkah, who are both supposed to be on Earth, pop up. So does the blind swordsman/drug lord Moscow. And Sasha, the scientist from Clandestiny, is messing around with a radio telescope somewhere out in the wilderness, occasionally bothered by a young girl and her father.

Monadic feels a lot like Dark City. It's a comparison I made more than once when the book was first coming out, but what can I say? All these people, somehow, are in a place that isn't real. Where their memories may not even be real. Alex is standing over a dead body he swears he didn't kill, being told by a mysterious doctor he needs to flee and find the "Black Tower." There's even a sequence where he gets the runaround trying to find a train, only to be stymied as no line seems to go there.

The creatures from the Anomaly want to understand humans, so they can replace them. But they want to do so minus whatever it is that makes us sacrifice our own lives for others. And for some reason, Alex Ford's particular sacrifice in the first mini-series is the problem, even though Moscow acknowledges it's a feature of our species. So why do they need to kill Alex? I'm not totally sure how he's even there, unless his body drifted into the Anomaly and his soul was separated.

Human souls seem to be a problem, something the Anomaly rejects, which is how you end up with the shiny orbs people were interested with in the first mini-series. And so there are two different plans, running concurrently, that involve bringing those souls into contact with the Anomaly. Bekkah and Sonya try to kill Moscow and feed his to the "dark king" atop the tower, which Charles makes look a lot like an Evangelion. Meanwhile, Sasha's regained her memories and contacted Danny aboard the ship he, Elbus, and Colt escaped on. The latter two are long dead, but Danny helps her load the ship with souls to fly directly into the Anomaly.

OK, but here's the thing. We're told, in the first mini-series, that the Anomaly erodes souls. That just living on Dispater slowly kills people and turns them into the black-eyed things that overran the colony. Alex drug, made from something on Dispater, and therefore something altered or tainted by the Anomaly, speeds the process up, but that's all. So if souls can be destroyed, why are they so repellent and dangerous? For that, matter, how does Moscow even still have a soul? He was fully on board with the forces within the Anomaly before the end of the first mini-series (when he got shot in the head, I should mention.) His eyes were already dark; shouldn't his soul be gone, replaced by one of the creatures?

And the ending, I don't know. Sonya and Bekkah succeed in chucking Moscow's soul into the creature. It falls, a bright pink-purple light erupts from its mouth. Next page, a ship flying into darkness. I'm pretty sure it's the one Sasha and her daughter - the girl and her dad were Sasha's deceased family, or facsimiles of them created from her memories - are piloting into the Anomaly. A yellow beams hits the ship. It explodes, bright, wobbly blobs I assume are the souls float in space, there's an explosion and something collapses.

I assume the "something" is the Anomaly, but was the yellow beam the pink-purple beam from the page before, or something different? Why did it change color? Were they on the colony this whole time, and how, since Danny had been on that ship long enough for Colt and Elbus to age and die, and their adventure was 75 years after the first mini-series? Wasn't Danny on the other side (wherever that was) in his ship? What happened to him? Weren't there already creatures on Earth, sending the doomed missions like in Clandestiny, for decades? Did they die with the Anomaly destroyed, or are they still there?

I don't think I'd reread these mini-series in close to a decade, and boy, had I forgotten how muddled and disappointing I found the ending. 

Saturday Splash Page #211

"Hanging Garden," in Roche Limit: Clandestiny #3, by Michael Moreci (writer), Kyle Charles (artist), Matt Battaglia (color artist), Ryan Ferrier (letterer)

Released just a few months after Roche Limit concluded, but set 75 years after the end of that mini-series, Roche Limit: Clandestiny is focused on a disparate crew of hired to deliver a mysterious cargo to what is supposed to be the abandoned colony of Dispater.

And when I say "disparate", I mean it. Elbus is a professional soldier, same for Lee, Maggs, and Colt (most of whom don't live long enough to demonstrate much in the way of personalities), who seem to have worked with Elbus for a while. But Kim is some sort of botanist or biologist, Sasha is a scientist (I can't really discern her area of expertise beyond that), and Stockton. . . I have no idea what he brings. He and his twin brother had some sort of business about giving people back dreams, which I suspect means they were able to replicate Recall without Ford's help. But the brother is dead, and some rich uncle sent Stockton on this delivery run. I think the scientists were requested or recruited by Moiratech, but under what pretext is unclear. "We have a ship delivering. . .something to a colony that's been abandoned for decades. Want to ride along and poke at stuff?"

As it turns out, Dispater had changed a lot in 75 years. There are trees now. An entire forest on a planet that couldn't support life, and at least one animal, vaguely boar-like, though Charles draws it like it's exterior is made of shifting plates or interlocking pieces. The city is abandoned, save for massive shadow things that swirl and shift like liquid and seem generally unconcerned by bullets. Don't care for fire, though.

And in a small compound on an isolated edge of the colony are two beings. One is an AI constructed from the memoirs of Langford Skaargred (although there's a flashback that suggests Langford's body drifted into the anomaly, but it shows him with his helmet on, and Roche Limit showed him removing it as his air ran out, so maybe that was just a broader example of people being chucked into the Anomaly) and placed in a robot body. The other is the first artificial human, Danny, or "Hello Danny," since that was his answer when asked for his first words (he was looking in a mirror at the time.) Danny supposedly killed the child of the Moiratech CEO and was to be executed, but was sent here instead.

Which I don't really get. OK, the people running Moiratech have long since been either co-opted or replaced by the shadow-things from the other side of the Anomaly. Danny is, due to his lack of a soul, immune to the corrosive effects proximity to the Anomaly or the materials of Dispater (which I assume are irradiated or otherwise altered by radiation from the Anomaly.) But if he was sentenced to be executed, why send him to someplace which is theoretically no danger to him, but puts him close to the center of your plan?

There's also the fact the forest apparently shows people what they want, which Danny says is the worst thing possible, because people almost always want more. As he puts it, he's seen dozens (because this is the 13th cargo run) of people enter the forest, and not one ever wanted the cure for cancer. They want wealth, they want power, they want revenge on their perceived enemies.

I was going to say that was a bizarre turn after the first mini-series, where Recall sent people's minds back to a particular memory and let them relive it, while rotting their soul. But if the things everyone wants are based on what they perceive as past injustices or mistakes, then it's still them being wrapped up in their past. Only now, the desire manifests in the physical world, somehow. Stockton sees his dead twin (and is killed by him.) Kim sees the wife and child she lost, Sasha sees the husband and child who died in a car accident while she was off working. They regret, they want to do it over, do it right this time, but all they can really get is a facsimile. Which both of them acknowledge and ultimately reject, to the creatures' displeasure.

The Skargred-bot wants them to focus not on trying to escape back to Earth, or even destroying the ship they've unwittingly brought the final piece of with them, but on killing the monster. Which he says will definitely get them all killed in the process. It feels like, with how he describes each past crew as trying to have circumvented this "truth", that it's related to what the forest does, granting people what they think they want or deserve, based on their perception of reality.

But if, as Danny says, humans shift reality to fit what we want it do be - and boy does that feel accurate - why is Skargred-bot's "truth" anything more than the reality he wants to make happen? You could say he's a machine, and not prone to the foibles of humans, but he's an AI based on the memoirs of one particular human. His base is human, specifically an idealistic human who bankrupted himself trying to build this colony, then killed himself rather than fight to fix it. Skargred was definitely a person who saw what he wanted in the world around him, and couldn't deal with what happened when his blinders finally fell.

As it turns out, Sasha must agree, because she stays on the planet to try and confront the monster, while Elbus, Colt and Danny swipe the fresh spaceship. Sasha appears to die, and the others ditch a plan to return to Earth in favor of, attacking another ship that appeared from somewhere. None of this is aided by the fact Charles seems particularly rushed. The art gets rougher and simpler, linework thicker and jagged in places. Characters' faces begin to get oddly elongated or barely visible. Battaglia colors things like the light is being filtered through a kaleidoscope, strange streaks that almost overwhelm the page. 

The comic ends with Elbus, Colt and Danny piloting a ship into the Anomaly and the last panel is a bunch of outlines of ships, colored the same as the surrounding sky, flying, somewhere. Towards the cast? Away from the cast? Are the yellow streaks engine trails or weapons? No idea. Especially since Danny theorizes the monster they're contending with is the Anomaly, then they fly into the Anomaly, and come out in the place with all the ships. Which would seem to suggest the shadow creatures come through the Anomaly, not that they're part of the Anomaly.

But there's still one more mini-series to get through. Will it help everything make sense? If my vague recollections of reading 10 years ago are anything to go by, no. 

Saturday Splash Page #210

"The Black Sun Group," in Roche Limit #2, by Michael Moreci (writer), Vic Malhorta and Kyle Charles (artists), Jordan Boyd (colorist), Ryan Ferrier (letterer)

On the edge of the Andromeda Galaxy sits an anomaly. Like a black hole in that it swallows light and energy, but without the intense gravity. Around it sits a dwarf planet, Dispater. On and within Dispater, a colony, Roche Limit. The dream of the son of a billionaire, the colony was failing before Moiratech and its 3 founders stepped in, with a vision of finding new resources beneath the surface. That vision has failed as well, and the colony is now a backwater land of criminals and addicts, in thrall to a drug made with the only unique mineral found on Dispater, a drug known as Recall. And it's into this that a cop from Earth arrives, looking for her sister, Bekkah.

Roche Limit was an odd book for me in a particular way. Up to then, certainly in the lifespan of this blog, the titles I bought were in some sense known quantities. The majority being from Marvel and DC obviously. Even the selections from other publishers were mostly things I knew previously from TV (the Buffyverse stuff, Boom's Darkwing Duck title), movies (the various Rocketeer mini-series), video games (all the Bloodrayne stuff.) Of the rest, I knew GrimJack from my cousin's collection of the original series well before the Ostrander and Truman did Killer Instinct or Manx Cat. Atomic Robo and Empowered had both been praised by multiple comics bloggers I read for years before I got around to try either.

Roche Limit? It was its own thing, not a continuation or extension of any pre-existing concept. I didn't know any of the creative team by prior work. The book being titled after an astronomical concept I was familiar with happened to catch my eye, and that, seemingly, was enough to take a chance. Which means this mini-series is, in some way, the start of all the oddball stuff I've bought from various other publishers over the last dozen years.

As to the mini-series itself, Moreci has things several threads that cross or combine at different points. Sonya, an Earth cop who spends all her savings and most of her pension to buy a ticket to come find her sister. She runs into Alex Ford, a slick-talker who knows more than he's telling. Alex is also the creator of Recall, which is all that's keeping him alive, but also what's keeping him in the colony.

There's also Janice, a nightclub owner missing an eye, and her chief goon, looking for several girls who've went missing just like Bekkah. You have Moscow, the drug lord who controls Alex, but is increasingly less concerned with such matters. A Dr. Watkins, who keeps dumping people into the Anomaly. The bodies he brings back are comatose at first, and rapidly rotting from within, while odd, glowing stone appear in the mines outside the colony.

And then there's the history of the colony itself. Each issue begins with part of a recording by Langford Skaargred, the idealist who started the colony. He had a dream for it, but like most dreams, when brought into reality, there were pieces missing, or things that just no longer made sense. He turned to Moiratech for financial help, but their dream, to the extent they had one, was simply more of what they already had.

Neither got what they wanted. Roche Limit is no shining waypoint on humanity's trek to another galaxy, nor is it a great hub of commerce and corporate profit; it's a decaying, crime-ridden backwater Earth is all too willing to ignore. What Malhorta and Charles show us are tight clusters of apartment buildings, rehab clinics with cracked walls and dirty floors. Watkins has a dingy dissection lab with pipes and cables all over, and rooms full of cages. Janice's nightclub looks a little brighter, a little nicer, but it's an isolated outpost. The Moiratech CEOs seem to live in a vast auditorium in a skyscraper overlooking the city. It's big, and empty, and there's just nothing to it. No business takes place, no discoveries, no growth. More a tomb than anything else.

Likewise, the people we see are often small, taking up limited space in the panel or on the page. They're dwarfed by walls that hem them in, or an Anomaly that sucks them in and spits them out like the husk of a sunflower seed. Lots of people brandish firearms in this mini-series, but even when they actually shoot someone, they're not drawn as looking powerful or cool. Guns aren't much use in this situation, at best a temporary reprieve. 

Faced with a spiraling situation, we see the choices people make when about what's important. Some, like Moscow, embrace nothingness as a truth. Others retreat into their pasts, via Recall, but it leads to the same point, rotting them out from within, just faster. Still others focused on meaningless turf battles. Moreci introduces another crook who thinks that Moscow's lost focus and he can seize control of the drug trade. Great, he can be the biggest tick on a tiny, disease-riddled dog's ass, but that's enough for him. You could possibly lump Janice and Woodbury into this category, but there's at least some suggestion Janice actually cares about the girls that are going missing, and is trying to protect more than just her status. And when things fall to pieces, she and her crew face it together.

Sonya and Alex, ultimately, are striving to find someone they care about to move forward. Even if Alex knows there really is no future for him, he figures he can help someone who believed in him. Sonya and Bekkah both have experience with what drug addiction costs, but rather than fall back into reliving the happy times before it ruined things, they each, in their own way, try to make something better going forward.

Which makes it seem like this is an existential struggle against nihilism, in which case Skaargred's failure was not in the attempt, but in the fact he gave up. He saw his dream fall apart, and rather than try to salvage it, or even help anyone, he consigns himself to the vacuum. As for the Moiratech CEOs, they were only concerned with profitability and found themselves engulfed by something greater. In the process, it seems to have taken the drive from them.

It's strange; I would have figured people considered as successful as the 3 "explorernauts" had a rapacious will to consume and control, to have. As they are now (that's them in the splash page), they're marionettes with a lazy hand on the strings. Maybe they think, by granting Watkins time for his research, they'll learn how to control all this, but it feels like they want the takeover, but have no drive to make it happen. Content to wait for some critical mass to be reached. It's Moscow who lights the match and Moscow who, eventually, eliminates them as surplus to requirements. Downsized, in a sense.

Scourge of My Wallet, Maybe

Perfectly normal reaction to being in another event thing.

Annihilation: Scourge was a mini-event Marvel released in December of 2019, consisting of six one-shot issues. I passed on it at the time due to a) each issue being $5, and b) half of them being written by Matthew Rosenberg, who put me off his work with that Multiple Man mini-series he wrote. But as a discounted, used tpb, eh, what the hell. Spoilers from here on.

The gist of the story is the Cancerverse from Thanos Imperative is back, but rather than try to force its way into the Marvel Universe proper, it invades the Negative Zone first. Worse (in many ways), the Cancerverse finds the Sentry (or the Void, whatever) hanging out in the Negative Zone, and they team up. So, C'thulu-enhanced power of a million exploding suns. Various heroes get roped into trying to help stop all this. The Fantastic Four, Nova, Beta Ray Bill, the Silver Surfer, each of which gets a one-shot.

Half of the one-shots seem to be about confronting trauma. Christos Gage and Diego Orlotegui's Fantastic Four story focuses on how Johnny Storm has pretty much tried to forget the time he spent dying over and over in the Negative Zone during Hickman's FF run. Which included forgetting the people who apparently relied on him as a leader. I don't know, I don't read Hickman's stuff. Also, Reed's the one who suggested to Bob Reynolds he might be able to separate from the Void in the Negative Zone, which is how the Void (who somehow got all the power, is that how it works with him now?) ends up with the Cancerverse. So yet another fine mess Richards creates which he (and the rest of his family) must now deal with.

I honestly just figured it was the Cancerverse's version of the Sentry to begin with. Maybe they didn't have a Sentry at all. What a wonderful universe, minus the extra-dimensional beings devouring your soul.

Nova (whose story is written by Rosenberg with Ibraim Robertson as artist) has a crapload of bad memories dredged up by all of this. He's spending his days drinking heavily in various cantinas on Knowhere, trying to forget. Now he can't keep running. Not only confronted with Annihilus, but forced to team up with him. And facing the Cancerverse again after he was part of it and escaped once already. He has to not only confront it, he ends up having to let it inside of him again as part of a plan to stop it.

Then there's the other two. The Silver Surfer (by Dan Abnett and Paul Davidson) one could fit in. The Surfer's undergone some changes as the result of some Donny Cates mini-series (I knew who wrote it without looking because the story mentions it involved Surfer fighting Knull, God of the Symbiotes. Who else but Donny Cates?) Surfer is for some reason concerned his changes may be the cause of a great disaster he senses approaching. As it turns out, he's not, because it's the friggin' Cancerverse. But he's forced to actually get off his butt and intervene. He's incorporeal now(?) but he can merge with people, including Bob Reynolds. Both of them are forced to reach out and connect, rather than hiding away somewhere.

The Beta Ray Bill one by Michael Moreci and Alberto Albequerque, I got nothing. He and Lockjaw are hanging out on some planet that loves them, another of Annihilus' ships makes it through a rift the Sentry somehow forced open, the Sentry follows, Bill can't beat him, but he can hit him with Stormbreaker and drive him back into the Negative Zone. Then Bill and Lockjaw have to go to the Negative Zone to get Stormbreaker back. 

I mean, what's the point at all? The Sentry gets into the Marvel U. for about three seconds, then shoved back in. Just don't have him get out, and this story is pointless. Bill serves no major role in the conclusion either, other than being one more hero to try and help. So what's the story saying? That he wasn't really doing anything on that world? That's not totally his fault, since he didn't realize the locals were trying to stage things for him to fight because they liked having him around.

But I'm not really sure why this whole thing exists. The endgame is to destroy the part of the Cancerverse that broke back in. But that only happened in this story. Was it supposed to be some coda for Nova's experiences? He was supposed to die there, but survived once by giving in. So now he has to give in again, to make it vulnerable so it can be killed. Except Annihilus somehow brings him back to life on the last page. I'm not complaining that Rider didn't get killed off in this mess, but it makes it all seem especially pointless.

Of the artists, I'd say the Orlotegui/Juan Vlasco/Erick Arciniega team on Fantastic Four and the Davidson/Matt Milla team on Silver Surfer are the most distinctive. Orlotegui does the most with the Cancerverse versions of characters truly looking horrific, rather than just "they have red eyes and maybe a Venom tongue" that most of the other art teams adopt. His version of Crystal looks normal, except her face is just one giant mouth. (Not sure about the reveal being in such a tall, narrow panel, though. The Thing is his spiky rocks look, but the spikes are placed unevenly and there's extra mouths all over the place. And the entire team is wrapped up in Reed's body, a together forever kind of thing.

The Surfer book is definitely the most colorful. Davidson seems to lean a little more into Kirby Surfer in the length of the board and the width of the shoulders than a lot of other artists I've seen (who seem more towards the Buscema version.) Milla plays with the Surfer's body being black instead of silver now to reflect all kinds of light, and his Negative Zone is a much trippier-looking place. Bright and varied colors all over. Empty space isn't just a uniform black curtain broken up by stars. It's blues and blacks (and sometimes purples and reds) with worlds haphazardly strewn about like someone dumped a bunch of Tropical Skittles on the page. All the other artists draw the Negative Zone as basically looking like out outer space. Davidson and Milla remember it's supposed to a bizarre, alien dimension.

The rest fall into that general range of workmanlike and inoffensive. Not really doing anything that particularly catches the eye. The coloring in the Nova one-shot seems particularly muddy, and I don't if that's supposed to be some reflection of Nova's mindset, struggling with his experiences, or what. The Omega issue that closes the whole thing out is not helped by having Manuel Garcia inked by four different people (Rafael Fonteriz, Cam Smith, Wayne Faucher, and Garcia himself), and three colorists (predominantly Federico Blee, but also Rachelle Rosenberg and Arciniega.) 

Sometimes it makes Garcia's art strongly resemble Paul Pelletier, and others times it looks nothing like him. Some of these folks really favor heavy blacks in their work, shadow everything, others ink it so everyone's lower half of their face looks like an old man's. Where the skin sags around the mouth and kind of wipes out the jawline? Even seems to happen to Ben Grimm in one panel. Half the time it's like they can't keep straight whether Johnny Storm is rocking a beard from one panel to the next.

With shipping, I may have ended up spending about $1.70 per issue on this, and that was probably too much.

What I Bought 8/16/16

I finally got to see Ant-Man. Some of it, the first 30 minutes. And I was flipping back and forth between it and One-Punch Man at the time. But what I saw seemed OK, I guess. I'm sure I'll catch the rest of it eventually. These are the other two comics I got earlier this week, one of which is closer to two months old. I've only had two books come out in the last two weeks, though. Stupid five Wednesday months.

Wynonna Earp #6, by Beau Smith (writer), Lora Innes (artist), Jay Fotos (colorist), Robbie Robbins (letterer) - And that was how Wynonna learned the hard way not to stand on graves and fire guns into them as a way to celebrate New Year's.

Wynonna is forced to confront Johnny Ringo, who has managed to trap Doc Holliday, and is therefore sure he can handle this girl. He's wrong, and winds up with a bullet in his head and gets dragged back to Hell. Agents Dolls and Valdez took care of the remainder of the gang menacing the tourists, in spite of Valdez being quite unhappy that her gear changed to a period-era dress when they entered city limits. So Wynonna is ready to go forward with the special revolver, and possibly Wyatt's spirit is along for the ride, according to Valdez and probably Holliday, anyway. Which is the sort of development I could find concerning, depending on how active a presence he is. If it's simply a case of additional power to her, fine, but if he starts offering advice, eh, that could get annoying. Have to see how it plays out.

I had kind of expected Wynonna to have to fight her way to the final confrontation with Ringo, but that would have spoiled the surprise for him of her having the Peacemaker. Although I was also surprised all it took for her to get that was for Doc to give it to her last issue. Beau Smith: Subverting my expectations of traditional narrative structure! Which is fine, since I suspect it was a given this is how it would turn out, so why waste a bunch of time on it? Get the stuff you have to and move forward to what comes after.

Smith puts a lot of little humor bits in his writing, and Innes' style seems to work well for them. Valdez' irritation at that dress she got stuck with, and Agent Dolls' amusement with her (also how pleased he is with the clothes he got). Although Dolls (whose first name is Xavier), has a personal license plate of "X8VR", which is just, no. Never have a personal plate of your own name.

Also, the full-page spread of Wynonna preparing to have her showdown with Ringo. The last panel of the previous page was Ringo, feeling cocky and drawn from a relatively low angle looking up at him. Supposed to make him look imposing and dangerous, especially after Holliday's warnings (and the fact the panel next to Ringo is Doc struggling futilely, unable to help). Then you go to the next page, and here's Wynonna, shot from an even more extreme upward angle, calm, ready, the ghost of Wyatt behind her. Big, impressive shot, completely dwarfing Ringo's just before, and showing how out matched he is.

Roche Limit Monadic #4, by Michael Moreci (writer), Kyle Charles (artist), Matt Battaglia (colorist), Ryan Ferrer (letterer) - Fun with the Cosmic Spirograph. And I'm guessing on the credits because I can't read the damn things because of the stupid choice they made for text color against a black backdrop on the inside cover.

OK, human souls are poisonous to the creatures from the other side of the Anomaly, which is why they're ejected from any bodies that try to enter. So you have the one group that eventually manages to kill Moscow and capture his soul, then try to trick the big monster in the tower into taking the deceased Alex' soul instead. Independent of that, you have Sasha and her daughter who are going to pilot a ship full of all those ejected souls into the midst of the alien fleet and detonate it, killing them by human soul exposure. And both these things work, I think. There's a definitely an explosion of the ship that results in a bigger explosion that destroys the planet, which I assume would solve those problems. Although in the second mini-series, everyone pretty much assumed there were already some of these creatures back on Earth (which is why doomed missions kept being sent to the colony secretly), so I don't know what's happening there.

The art really doesn't help. In previous issues, there were stretches where Charles would seemingly stop inking over his pencils, and the work would have a rougher feel to it. I tended not to like those parts, because the visual clarity of things declined sharply. This entire issue is like that. Near the end, when Bekka and Sonya manage to force feed Alex' soul to the Final Boss, he reacts by barfing a stream of purple energy into the sky. On the next page we see Sasha's ship heading towards seemingly empty space, and then an orange beam strikes it from behind and triggers the explosion. I don't know if that's meant to be read as deliberate, a dying effort by the creature to stop her, but it doesn't understand her plan, or just a freak coincidence that doesn't matter because she was going to blow up the ship anyway. Or if that was something entirely different striking the ship, or not even something striking the ship, but something else entirely. Not exactly ideal, as you might imagine. There are points in the book I would almost say Charles is going for a later-period Frank Miller look (the panel of Bekka decaptating Moscow in particular), but I'm not certain that's true, and I don't think he's quite pulling it off.

Ultimately, the aliens are defeated by the human willingness to sacrifice ourselves for others. Which is a trait the aliens had scorned, and were pretty vocal in pointing out how they were going to exclude it from themselves when they took over as humanity. It's strange to me that they seemingly understood it existed in people, understood it was a compulsion that can propel us forward, but either didn't recognize it was at work in all this people confronting it, or didn't recognize the danger it presented. They understand humans will give their lives to save others. These humans in front of them seemed determined to stop them. So perhaps they, too, are willing to die in the process, and them should take this a little more seriously? Is the point that the concept is ultimately so alien to these beings' way of thinking that even if they think they grasp it - and can thus dismiss it - they don't really get it? Or that for all our screw-ups, all the selfish decisions we make that the creatures were able to exploit up too that point in the story, that capacity for self-sacrifice is intrinsic to us, and by excluding it from their attempt to be us, they fail at their goal?

What I Bought 6/21/2016 - Part 4

The last of this round of reviews. I have nothing substantive to add to this opening paragraph. Maybe I should ditch them entirely.

Henchgirl #8, by Kristen Gudsnuk - Old school Nintendo cartridge cover. Solid choice.

Mari's really getting into being evil since being injected with that serum. Fred is roped into fighting crime with a new hero called Celestial Angel Amelia (Sailor Moon-style character), who hooks him up with a shroud that heals his injuries, which causes Fred to become a little more reckless in his heroing. Mari finds out the two are hanging out and tries to beat Amelia up, only to fail miserably.

So the girl who didn't want to stay on her parents' farm was Amelia, not some previously introduced character I didn't recognize. Good. I hate when that happens, makes me feel I'm not paying attention. I'm guessing Mari is going to try and enlist the Butterfly Gang in helping get revenge on Amelia, assuming she doesn't interfere with one of their schemes first. I'm not sure what's going on with Coco. If Gudsnuk's having her experience regret for what she did to Mari now that they're friends, or if she's just getting tired of being evil. Also, Mari seems less effective when she's trying to be evil, rather than when she just went along with the schemes and tried to get them done in the manner least likely to hurt people. Probably because super-villains typically don't take the logical approach to committing crimes, with the costumes, and big explosions, and grabbing attention.

When Coco starts to tell her origin to Mari (before Mari gets distracted by finding a treasure chest behind the couch), it shifts to Coco standing in a spotlight, with leaves swirling around, and a dark background. Very melodramatic, which made it funny. Gudsnuk's good about using those sorts of cliches for jokes.

Roche Limit: Monadic #3, by Michael Moreci (writer), Kyle Charles (artist), Matt Battaglia (colorist), Ryan Ferrier (letterer), Tim Daniel (designer) - The upside-down sidewalk splitting to reveal the world all the characters are trapped in is a nice image. Solid work there, though I wonder about the use of the shade of purple around the lower edge, since that usually coincides with the aliens, but it's on the "normal" side of things.

Alex dies of his injuries, releasing the pink glowing orb that is his soul, which gives Sonya and her sister an idea. They approach both that doctor and the deceased Gracie's underlings and convince them they need to kill Moscow and replace his soul with Alex', which will fix things somehow. Which requires reaching the tower, and somehow killing Moscow despite his rapport with the aliens. So that won't be easy, especially since he sussed out their plan almost immediately. In the other plot thread, Sasha reached the city with her memory-created husband and child, and finds a way to contact Elbus' ship. Except Elbus and Colt are dead, because it's been who knows how long. But old Hello Danny the android is still alive, and he recalls what Elbus had figured out about a solution. He doesn't tell us, but I guess we'll find out next issue.

So my guess is either Sonya's plan or Sasha's won't work. the question is which one. Frankly, given the power Moscow has on his side, I would bet against him dying. But he's the closest thing to an actual physical incarnation of the threat at this point, so I'd sort of expect him to die, just so we get that moment of the villain being defeated. Or it could be one plan would defeat the aliens, whatever the means at this stage, and the other is the one that's going to keep all these people from dying when this simulation/dreamworld collapses.

Charles' artwork shifts so much in how detailed it is, even within a single issue. Some of the panels with Sonya's face in it during the meeting with Gracie's goons are extremely simplified, almost just some vague dots suggesting noses or eyes. And then other pages, he gets much more detailed, a lot more lines, eyes much more defined, her nose more prominent. It's likely he has a very simplified style, a more detailed one, and another somewhere in between, and which he's using doesn't necessarily seem to have much to do with what section of the book you're in (he doesn't necessarily go simpler as you get to the end, like I'd expect if he was rushing). It's frustrating, because I end up liking some of Charles' work, and then hating other parts of it in the same issue.

What I Bought 5/10/2016 - Part 4

Monday was the 3500th post on Reporting on Marvels and Legends. Criminiy Pete. Don't know quite what to think of that.

Roche Limit: Monadic #2, by Michaeel Moreci (writer), Kyle Charles (artist), Matt Battaglia (colorist), Ryan Ferrier (letterer), Tim Daniel (designer) - Judging by the cover, the story has become another of those stories about shrinking down inside the President to defuse a tiny nuke, or remove a blood clot.

Sasha remembers what was happening, and decides that, like it or not, she has to venture across that body of water. She also acknowledges that the Man and Girl are the husband and child she lost at some point in the past, and even though they are presumably creations of the aliens designed to learn about her, she can somehow awaken her husband's memories in this version of him. Elsewhere, Alex has seen the Black Tower and decided he needs help. So he finds his girlfriend Bekkah, just in time for both of the to be pursued by Moscow, the crazy blind swordsman mob boss who is serving as some sort of avatar for the creatures. He actually runs Alex through, but he survives long enough for Bekkah's sister, the cop, to show up and get them all out of there and try to head for said Tower.

So I don't know. The idea that the aliens want to somehow replicate humanity's individualism, but without an individual's capacity for self-sacrifice, is intriguing. It doesn't seem possible. If you're an individual, if you can make choices, then you can make that choice. You can also choose not to make that choice, but the choice still remains, whatever variables you put into it. Which suggests the aliens don't really understand what they're trying to duplicate at all? Which might explain the whole thing with Sasha's husband. He shouldn't be there, since he wasn't on the expedition to the colony. Which means this isn't really him, yet he can have the memories. I've mentioned before that these mini-series have at least captured the sense of an alien group, with abilities and drives people can't necessarily grasp. So humans have done things without realizing what they're getting into. Could work the other way, too.

Battaglia's colors are still excellent. The blue he uses for the water is this very placid blue, but it's a perfect solid sheet of it. There's no wind or waves, no shadows or ripples. It's how a child might color a body of water, and while it stands out distinctly for the dirty, dusty yellow of Sasha and her surroundings, it also looks distinctly fake, like it was painted on. And the purples for the streets of the city, I just really like that particular color. It works so well when you go from the inside Bekkah's apartment, all sickly green and faded yellows, then turn the page and you're into that deep purple, with the pink and red for energy and movement. The purple has a liveliness to it the color for the panels set inside lacked - I feel like breathing the air in Bekkah's apartment would be like sucking down fiberglass particles - but it's an ominous life. Crap's moving around out there you'd rather not see.

Wynonna Earp #3, by Beau Smith (writer), Chris Evenhuis (artist), Jay Fotos (colorist), Robia Robbins (letterer) - Arm wrestling for souls, tonight on ESPN17!

Earp is sent into a bar, and rapidly gets hit on by some hick that swallowed a thesaurus. She punches him out, and then this large lady steps in, adn the two set to fighting. Which earns them both a chance to fight for money, which was apparently Agent Dolls' whole plan, because the large lady is the Valdez he called last issue. Of course, he neglected to tell Wynonna that, then gives her shit when she gives him shit about his poor leadership approach. They arrive for the fight, and find the rules changed somewhat, but they do alright, excepting Valdez getting shot twice, which was intentional on her part, to give Earp motivation?

I have a feeling Agent Dolls is going to get killed before this is all said and done, and if I'm meant to be sad about it when the time comes, Smith has some work to do. Because right now, I don't like the character very much. People who play the "need to know" card are never my favorites, especially when they play it with people who are actually in the line of fire, while they sit comfortably somewhere else. Plus, I think he's looking for any excuse to jump on Wynonna, out of some belief he needs to break her down so she'll be a more pliant agent. He sends someone in to fight her, and doesn't tell Wynonna it's set up beforehand, he really shouldn't be surprised she's still a little fired up afterward. Take a few punches, let her calm down.

Not so sure of this talk about Wynonna being "the heir". I should have expected it, but I guess I hoped we weren't going to get into chosen one/destined lineage stuff. Or maybe I'm just more interested in Valdez, the possibly thousand year old Mayan princess. That sounds pretty cool, and so far, she's basically Cassandra Cain if David Cain had fed her a ton of growth hormones as a kid, so not a surprise I'd think she was cool.

Different artist this issue, Chris Evenhuis. Not sure if Innes needed a catch-up month, or if it was a deliberate shift. It works well enough. Innes gave Wynonna a sort of gleeful smile when she was fighting, which wouldn't have fit the tone of this issue. Too many trust issues and secrets among the group, Wynonna doubting herself at the wrong times. Other than maybe the verbose demon hillbillies, not much humor. Evenhuis handles the violence and the anger well. He has a clean, straightforward style, nothing too flashy, but he makes sure all the information you need is on the page and can be followed. The initial confrontation between Wynonna and Valdez was good. Wynonna lunging forward to punch Valdez, three panels of Valdez slowly reacting (spitting blood, mulling it over for effect, cocking her fist), then the last panel being her fist smashing into Wynonna's face. Again, nothing revolutionary, just solid storytelling.

What I Bought 3/29/2016 - Part 1

It's been interesting to me, watching the reactions to Batman vs. Superman, as I've seen people whose opinions I respect who liked, and others I respect who despised it. I'm still not going to see it, mind you, because it doesn't look like anything I'd enjoy, but it's still interesting.

Descender #11, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Dustin Nguyen (illustrator), Steve Wands (letterer and designer) - TIM seems remarkably calm, especially considering his admission in the issue he feels something akin to pain.

The Hardwire can't find any sign of TIM's dream in his brain, and Telsa is both starting to maybe care about TIM, and definitely doing a bad job of concealing her mistrust of the Hardwire. TIM-22 is jealous of TIM-21's ability to feel affection for Andy and other humans, and he's not too happy about 21 having replaced him as Psius' favorite. So he tries to kill him. Or maybe that's just part of Psius' plan to see if another near-death experience gives TIM-21 another prophetic dream. Andy is still trying to negotiate assistance from his ex-wife, a plan not aided by the fact the Gnishians tracked his ship and are on the attack.

I can't decide if things are picking up any. Everything seems to be happening in small increments. I'm not sure why Telsa would be surprised the Hardwire worship the Harvesters. They were the ones who showed that the organic species are not invincible, and could be resisted, seemingly with impunity. Yes, their actions also created a lot of hardship for robots everywhere, but Old Testament God was frequently a dick, and people still worshiped him. I'm mostly curious at the difference in Driller the UGC grunt observed since Andy showed up. I'd probably be more curious if it was something we'd seen, rather than been told about, but that's not the way this book is going to operate, I guess.

Nothing much has changed as far as the art goes. It's still a very pretty book. The contrast between the expressions of TIMs-21 and 22 at any given moment is used well. The sadness on 21's face when he hadn't actually found Bandit, contrasted with the blankness on 22's face in the background. 22's eager smirk at the robot army being constructed, against 21's shocked look.

Roche Limit: Monadic #1, by Michael Moreci (story), Kyle Charles (art), Matt Battaglia (colors), Ryan Ferrier (letters), Tim Daniel (design) - I think it's supposed to be a broken mirror, but the way the border curves around it makes it seem like the faceplate on a helmet.

This book has done a full-on swan dive into Dark City. Alex Ford, who was the drug maker with the bomb in his chest in the first mini-series, finds himself alive in a city, with the corpse of Gracie, who ran the nightclub in the colony, next to him. Watkins who was doing experiments on people warns Alex he has to find the Black Tower. Which leads to a sequence of Alex trying desperately to find a train that will take him there, although no one can seem to give him proper directions to one. And Sasha, the scientist who stayed behind on the colony in the second mini-series is living in an observatory, being visited by an adult male and a child called Man and Girl, until some old guy tells her she needs to move her recording instruments to a different section of sky, and she picks up a transmission from the leader of the expedition in the second mini-series, and she starts remembering things.

So people are dead, but not dead? Or trapped in some simulation or dream created by the things from the other side of the Anomaly, trying to figure out humans? Or the alien creatures have absorbed their souls and this is some attempt to break them down, incorporate their essence somehow, by getting people to buy into the illusion? I don't know. It's not an encouraging start, especially with the whole sequence of Alex trying to catch a train and getting the runaround, which is straight out of Dark City. I guess I should be glad Moreci didn't try to start with an entirely new cast again, given how poorly I thought that went last time.

Battaglia's color choices are probably what stands out most. In Sasha's place, the colors are softer, they blur together more, and they're usually warmer, friendlier colors. In the parts that take place wherever Alex is, the colors are usually these sick looking ones. Like there's a yellow haze over everything, the way it might seem in a room full of smoke with a dim lamp. Everyone is yellowish, and even when the background shifts, it's to a solid color of something garish. An obnoxious green, or a bright orange. It grabs your attention, and sometimes corresponds to moments of violence (though there are plenty of those where the color doesn't do that).

What I Bought 10/20/2015 - Part 2

Friday was the two DC books, today is for the two books from outside the Marvel/DC circle. Two weeks ago, I was running some numbers to amuse myself during a mandatory workshop on collaboration and thought non-Marvel/DC books might just outnumber DC for me this year. Then I realized I'd forgotten a few DC books I bought early in the year - like those 3 issues of Klarion - so never mind.

Atomic Robo and the Ring of Fire #2, by Brian Clevinger (words), Scott Wegener (artist), Anthony Clark (colorist), Jeff Powell (letterer) - They're gonna need a bigger gun, and a bigger boat.

The Action Scientists get Robo's head up and running, and set about a plan to build him a new body. Which requires traveling to a freighter sitting in disputed waters that houses the international super-science black market (which is itself a remnant of the USSR's version of Tesladyne). They start putting their shopping list together, and even find Broughton, another Tesladyne employee, and the only person with any chance of building a new reactor to power Robo. Then the ship gets attacked by a Biomega (kaiju, basically), which we've learned in the b-plot are increasing in number (thus Majestic-12's takeover of Super Science Team 5's headquarters, and the effort to construct more giant robot suits, for which they could also use Broughton.) Fortunately a Chinese sub arrived and fired some missiles, so the giant monster went away for now.

I have this feeling the Kid's interest in fungus as a growth medium for replacement human parts (I think that's what she was talking about) is going to be relevant to the Biomega thing. The fact she was so eager to get a sample that she forgot she was talking about a monster large enough to easily smash an oil tanker was kind of a tip-off. Also, there was a back-up story once that showed China had a mech defense force team, only instead of Power Ranger style, one pilot per suit, it was a single robot with 5 people controlling it (mentally? it's been awhile since I read it). I feel that could end up being significant, too. So more stuff happening has gotten me considerably more engaged in the story than I was after the first issue. Even if Robo's a head in a little moving box, at least he's active again. The Hackers joke was lost on me, since I've never seen the movie, though I guess I can appreciate using fictional names (I'd kind of like to use the name Vash first used with Wolfwood at some point but "Valentinez Alkalinella Xifax Sicidabohertz Gombigobilla Blue Stradivari Talentrent Pierre Andri Charton-Haymoss Ivanovici Baldeus George Doitzel Kaiser the Third" is kind of a mouthful. Most JRPGs will not let you make a character name that long.

I think Wegener's really softened the lines on his work, or else someone's upped their shading game. Would that be him, or Clark? The shading seems like it's over the colors, which makes me think Clark's doing it as he colors the work, but shading is part of inking, which is presumably something Wegener does himself. Anyway, they're doing an excellent job on shadow effects and general expressiveness of the characters. It's good stuff. Also, the coat Lang's wearing while they're on the Vasilisa is pretty cool. I feel like I've seen one like it before, but I can't think wear.

Favorite line of dialogue is Broughton's, 'As the chief safety guy, it's my duty to yell at people so we can get through this alive.' This has been my impression of people who are concerned with workplace safety. When will they learn the old motto, "Safety third"?

Roche Limit: Clandestiny #5, by Michael Moreci (writer), Kyle Charles (artist), Matt Battaglia (colorist), Ryan Ferrier (letterer), Sarah Delante (flora/fauna), Tim Daniel (design) - I don't have much to say about that cover, so I'm going to mention I hate how the credits page is done, because the people's names and titles are extremely difficult to read against the backdrop. Which, if you're wanting credit for your work, seems counter-productive.

As we learned a couple of issues ago, Sasha isn't leaving the colony with the others, she's going to stay and kill the thing causing all the trouble because she knows what it is, though she doesn't exactly share the revelation with the rest of us. She ventures into the forest, finds Kim's corpse - nice to know what happened to her after she wandered off a couple issues ago! -  and is approached by the whatever in the form of her dead husband. She stabs him, white lightning/threads/something comes from the woods and the Monster is revealed as a giant robot? Sasha manages to kill that by shooting, and before she dies, talks to the wraith impersonating her husband who admits these creatures are a hive, and thus find humans, with their individuality, amazing. So they try to be humans by consuming a person's soul. OK, sure. Meanwhile, Elbus, Colt, and Danny took the ship they'd unwittingly brought parts of here and rather than go to Earth to find the creatures already there, fly into the Anomaly to find their source, only to encounter a lot of spaceships.

So the creatures consume souls to become individuals. Simply possessing the body turns it into those shuffling corpses that tore the colony apart. I'm not clear on why passing through the Anomaly disassociates a person from their soul, though. But I'm not clear what the Anomaly is. Did the creatures make it, or is it a chance occurrence? If they apparently have spaceships of their own, why haven't they come barging through in them until now? They surged out as a formless mass near the end of the first mini-series, seemingly without difficulty.

I can't shake the feeling Moreci and Malhorta didn't plan this out enough. It has a certain awkward pacing to it that reminds me of stuff I write, where I'm pulling it together as I go along. Things dropped and seemingly forgotten until it's convenient to pick them up again. Kim going off alone and no one bothering to wonder about her until near the end, and I'm not even sure why a botanist was sent on this mission. I know whatever reason given for the expedition was a smokescreen, but what purpose was she going to serve? The first mini-series made the surface of the planet appear barren and rocky, so why send someone who knows about plants? And I'm still not sure how the Recall drug will end up tying back in, if it even does.

Also, the art shifts on this widely from page to page. At times I'd swear it was an entirely different artist, but I think there's just a lot of variability in how much of the respective load Charles and Battaglia are carrying. The last 5 pages in particular, I think Charles may have gone with less detailed figurework, and Battaglia's trying to fill in the gaps with more color, because things become much more about different blobs of color and almost no detail, especially on anything around the characters. Sasha's hair keeps a same general shape, but the details of it shift a lot, from being very frizzy for a few pages as she prepares to part company with the others, compared with a much more uniform mass for most of the rest of the pages. She's still distinguishable as the same character (though there aren't a lot of other options as to who it could be), but it's distracting. I did like some of the first few pages after she enters the forest. Charles and Battaglia combine for some very effective use of a purplish color and a lot of shadows to make the forest seem like a presence that's moving in closer. Even the things we're supposed to see are sort of half-glimpsed in shadows, so it's easy to wonder what is going to step into view, and what isn't.

What I Bought 8/19/2015 - Part 4

I think there are only 6 comics coming out for me this month, and there are 5 Wednesdays. It's going to be pretty thin by the looks of things. Now watch 4 of the books come out next week.

Descender #6, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Dustin Nguyen (illustrator), Steve Wands (letterer/designer) - Nice touch having that hole in the finger overlap with TIM's eye. Also that it's a right hand, which is the one Quon's missing now.

In flashback we learn that Quon was able to build his robots because an archaeological dig found an incredibly advanced robot lying damaged and inert in the ruins of a dead civilization not known to be that advanced. When Quon and his mentor woke it up, it spouted some barely intelligible but ominous sounding warnings. The mentor was wary, Quon was too busy seeing dollar signs, so he stole all the data and went into business for himself. His story doesn't exactly impress the King of Gnish, who orders him killed, but then the robot resistance arrives to rescue TIM, and they have their own TIM-bot.

Which is not the big last page cliffhanger I think Lemire thinks it is. TIM was one of a series, why would I be surprised there's another one around? I'm not clear on how long there was between TIM-21's activation and the Harvesters attacking, but surely Quon had time to build more. I know civilization went on a robot-destroying bender after the Harvesters, but since we know some robots survived, another TIM just isn't that big a surprise.

I just noticed that during the flashback, Quon says what they've learned from the robot will change everything. Which makes me think of Zola's reaction to the Cosmic Cube in the first Captain America movie. Nothing good ever comes of someone insisting x will 'change everything.'

At the end of the flashback, when Quon chooses to steal the data, I like how the page is laid out. It's basic, 3 panels above, 3 below. Quon goes into shadow in the bottom 3, once he's made the decision to value his own gain over everything else. The top 3 gradually zoom in on him, because Quon's story focuses on him and what he did (which makes me think Solomon will appear later, having been off doing his own follow-up research), but the bottom 3 move in on the robot, with Quon serving as a dark void behind him. Suggesting either doom, or the unknown danger lurking in space, which represents wherever the Harvesters came from, and their mysterious reasons for doing so.

Roche Limit: Clandestiny #4, by Michael Moreci (writer), Kyle Charles (artist), Matt Battaglia (colorist), Sarah Delaine (flora and fauna), Tim Daniel (design) - Is that Moscow's (the blind crime boss) sword? What the heck? Can't see it doing much good, since I doubt any of the people in this story know how to use it.

As it turns out, all these expeditions have been a cover by Moiratech to send pieces of a spaceship to the colony. A spaceship which will bring that immense monster in the jungle to Earth, and let it affect everyone on the planet. And this expedition brought the last section. The A.I. version of Langford insists they have to kill the monster, and die in the process. Understandably, the crew isn't OK with that. They opt to try and steal the ship instead, so they can return to Earth and warn people. They encounter a lot of the creatures, including the resurrected twin(?) brother of that scientist who went into the forest and died. The twin is fully committed to helping the creatures get to Earth, because they need something from human before humanity kills itself? But oh well, psycho twin gets his ass beat and they steal the ship, but they're going to stick around and do something.

It's kind of a mess. Danny says exposure to the Anomaly withers the soul, which sort of jibes with what we learned in the first mini-series (the effect of the Recall drug and such), but doesn't explain how entering the Anomaly causes a person's soul to break off from their body. I'm not sure if that's an inconsistency on Moreci's part, or if it's meant to represent a gap in the character's knowledge. There probably haven't been any humans who have entered the Anomaly since Danny arrived, and it's possible Langford's memoirs (which is what the A.I. is based on), wouldn't have any record of that either. In which case they wouldn't know that. Also, I feel like we're short one character, Kim, the scientist that saw a different life she could have had, with her girlfriend and child, if she hadn't taken this position. She was determined to reenter the forest last issue, and I don't think we've seen her since. Am I meant to assume she's dead, or is she going to make a dramatic, last minute appearance? No one in the book seems to remember her at all.

I wonder if Charles is starting to feel rushed. Some of the action sequences on the last few pages looked really rough. Like he was trying to use heavy inking to cover for not putting as much detail into his pencil work. And whatever Sasha sees on the last page that tells her the Black Sun has arrived isn't exactly clear from the art. The third panel has a ship in it, against a red and orange back drop, with a black sphere in one corner. I guess that could be the Black Sun, but if so, I feel like it should have been given a much more prominent placement in the panel. This is supposed to be a big deal, important enough that Sasha's decided to heck with survival and warning Earth, let's go back to the incredibly hostile world and fight. The art needs to convey the sense of the threat, and it just doesn't. I'm left grasping at what I think she saw. In issue 4 of the previous mini-series, the last page was a full-page shot of the Anomaly, with a huge black shape emerging from its center, as one of the cast drifted into the Anomaly. That got my attention, because of the contrast between the colors, and the scale. Here, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be looking at.

What I Bought 8/4/2015 - Part 1

Might as well get started on those other books I picked up. This'll be a bit of an odd one, since it's the first and third issues of a mini-series, and I'm probably going to have to reference the second issue as well.

Roche Limit: Clandestiny #1 and 3, by Michael Moreci (story), Kyle Charles (art), Matt Battaglia (colors), Ryan Ferrier (letters) - I'm not sure there's eve been in anyone in fiction who stood in that pose that was at all trustworthy.

What do you need to know? The expedition is sort of a loosely composed group of mercs, scientists, and soldiers. The only friendships are the limited ones they've built since they signed on. Their ship was shot down on approach to the colony, and it was an attempt to find who did it that lead Elbus, Colt, and Lee into the ruins of the city in issue 2 (Lee being the dude who subsequently got eaten). They did find the launcher, but it was automated, and there was a note claiming it was put there by the remnants of the 12th expedition, and implored whoever read the note to destroy their cargo. But as far as this group knew, they were only the 3rd expedition, not the 13th, never a good sign. Stockton, the psychologist, who went into the weird forest that shows you things you desire in issue 2, is found dead, when Danny, Elbus, and Sasha try venturing through that forest, supposedly headed for a compound which might have parts to fix their ship. Elbus got drawn in by the forest, and Danny brought Sasha to some place else, a place where the founder of the colony, believed long dead even before all the crap that went down in the first mini-series, persists as some computerized record of his engrams put inside a robot body. He says he needs Sasha's help to save the human race, presumably from whatever was on the other side of the Anomaly.

Oh, and something impersonated Stockton, possibly killed one member of the crew, shot another, and drove off with the cargo. The cargo the note implored them to destroy. And there's something huge and dangerous in the woods.

I'm not sure Moreci's doing enough to distinguish these characters from each other. Scratch that, I know he isn't, because I have to repeat their names to myself to keep some of them straight. Of course, he's killed probably three of them already, and I don't know where Kim is. She was hellbent on going back into the woods after she saw a life where she didn't take a job with Moiratech, and had a family with her girlfriend instead, but after that conversation at the start of issue 3, we didn't see her again. Danny has the sort of standard, "android frustrated by human's and their faults" personality, but he's got reason, considering he was convicted for killing a baby when, to hear him tell it, the child's mother did it and pinned it on the artificial being. I do actually like the idea of Elbus praying to all the major deities of the people who have died under his command. He doesn't hold with any of the faiths, but it's a way of showing respect for them that was a little different, at least.

Roche Limit is supposed to be three 5-issue mini-series, meaning 15 issues total. So we're a little over halfway through at this point, and some of the pieces are starting to fit, though I haven't a clue where Moreci intends for it to go from here. Moiratech's founder is the only member of an expedition to study the Anomaly up close that didn't die or go crazy, and his company later bought Langford Skaarsgard's company and the colony, and the company's 3 heads at the time where those creepy fuckers in the previous mini-series who all got killed by the blind swordsman mob boss. I'm not sure what happened to all the other people altered by exposure to the dangerous substances in the soil. Did they starve to death? Did the things coming through the Anomaly kill them, absorb them? Were they the fertilizer for this creepy forest? The forest has to be some other manifestation of the same weird properties that helped create that Recall drug. I can't figure what Moiratech would be sending to the colony, though. Seems more likely they'd be wanting to bring something bac

I think it was a mistake to show, at the beginning of the first issue, a flash ahead to how things are going to stand for this expedition at the end of this mini-series. Sasha's shown as alive, and planning to confront the threat, while telling Elbus to get off-world fast. So we know those two are going to last at least that long. I don't think the scene added anything, and it takes a little away since those two are in no danger until we catch up to that point. Unless Elbus was replaced like Stockton.

I'd swear that as the series is progressing, light and dark are getting more extreme. There seem to be a lot more instances in issue 3 of people's faces either deeply in shadow, or in the sharp glare of a bright light behind them. I don't know what that means, if I'm right. People can't maintain a steady path, they drift towards the extremes, equilibrium gets lost? Elbus was backlit almost to the point you couldn't see him when he admitted he prays to ask forgiveness of those who died, so he's walking towards the light and looking back. Is it "the light"? Sasha and Kim had a conversation about the forest from a cliff looking out over it, the Anomaly behind the forest. Kim's looking into it, and Sasha away, but then Kim is determined to go back there, to get something she never had, while Sasha is trying to deny she wants to go to get something she lost. I imagine that one is less about the lighting, and more about their position relative to the forest (plus the placement of the Anomaly above the forest, since it's the source of everything).

I still can't say this has turned into anything great, but I'm also still curious about the mystery behind the Anomaly, and how all these disparate pieces are going to tie together, assuming they do. What was the deal with a person's soul separating from their body if they went through the Anomaly, and the soul appearing on the colony's surface as a glowy pink rock?

What I bought 6/12/2015 - Part 3

I still haven’t found the first issue of Descender around anywhere, or the first issue of the new Roche Limit mini-series (or the last issue of Deadpool for that matter), but let’s go forward with what we have.

Descender #4, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Dustin Nguyen (illustrator), Steve Wands (letterer and designer) – Looking at Driller’s hand, I wonder if his fingers can split into smaller fingers. That’s what the furrows suggest, and it could always serve as a way to do things requiring a fine touch. What that would be I can’t say.

Dr. Quon patches TIM up while Telsa asks him about what he knows, and tries to get his help by promising to find Andy (the boy TIM was a companion/brother for). Of course, Quon and Telsa both know no shuttles are recorded as having actually escaped the mining colony, but Telsa has a personal grudge against the Harvesters, and a dad that’s way up in the UGC hierarchy, so she’s in one of those “by whatever means necessary” mindsets. But her willingness to lie to a robot that looks like a little kid will have to wait to bite her on the ass, because the ship is attacked by some unsavory types who quickly incapacitate all three robots and plan to take them to Gnish, where they’ll apparently be thrown into a giant vat of boiling, molten metal. Actually, I was wrong. I went back and looked up that description of Gnish from the backmatter in issue 2, and it says the Melting Pots are gladiatorial combat arenas for robots. So TIM’s going to be torn apart by some other big robot. Unless this turns out to be where all those “Harvested” he saw in his dream are.

It seems strange to me that if this were such an important mission, that the UGC sent one small ship with only two soldiers and one scientist (who will be useless in a firefight). Telsa mentioned the UGC must have a rat pretty high up for the Scrappers to have beat them to TIM, maybe it just has people who don’t want the truth about the Harvesters found? Either because it would lead back to them, or because there’s more to gain in keeping the populace scared of a boogeyman they don’t understand or know anything about.

I liked that page of Telsa remembering what happened to her mother. The way the robot (and also the buildings) are these vague shapes, little more than light or dark outlines, but her mother is in sharp detail. Also how the robot’s head is at the top of the page, with these white spaces for eyes that draw my eyes down to the ray beam, which naturally leads to Telsa and her mother. The white eyes for the robot contrast with Telsa’s dark eyes, and also give it this impassive, emotionless look. Which is interesting, because if we take it as Telsa’s memory, it means she doesn’t imply any personal motive in the robot’s act. She doesn’t see it as breathing fire or laughing as it kills her mom. It’s this barely defined shape acting from motives she doesn’t know. All that matters is what it did, which is kill someone she cared about.

Roche Limit: Clandestiny #2, by Michael Moreci (story), Kyle Charles (art and cover), Matt Battaglia (colors), Ryan Ferrier (letters), Sarah Delaine (flora and fauna?), Tim Daniel (design) – It would help if they would put the credits on a page where the illustrated background doesn’t make it so damn difficult to read some of these people’s names. Cripes, go to the trouble of starting to try and give credit where it’s due, and they want to make a game of it. It’s like one of those activity book pages where you find the 5 apples hiding in the barnyard.

OK, no first issue at this time, but based on what I read online, this is set 75 years after the pervious mini-series, and we’re following an expedition of sorts to the colony to determine what’s happened. And things have basically gone Aliens on said expedition. The odd shadowy creatures that were probably what we saw crawling out of the Anomaly near the tail end of that last mini-series are loose and killing people, and there’s an odd forest where people see what they want, which as the android left over from some prior attempt at this same thing observes, is very dangerous. I’m sure it will be, now that one fellow overheard this and went there straight off, and a lady named Kim has suffered a head injury and doesn’t remember why she would be here, or why she would have left her son, which we saw in flashback she promised not to do. So obviously the kid is dead, she just doesn’t remember it right now. That’ll end spectacularly badly, I suspect.

I’m cautiously optimistic. At least this doesn’t look like it’s going to be a bog-standard detective story like the last one. That just felt like a waste of a perfectly good setting. Of course, now it’s more survival horror, and the setting is somewhat different, more wild and bizarre, but that’s fine. I think that better suits my interests at the moment. At the moment I can’t say I care about any of the characters yet, outside of perhaps the android Danny, and that’s just a reflexive response to a) his tale of woe about why he’s there, and b) how rudely Elbus (the tough sergeant type) treated him after he saved Elbus’ butt in the city. Of course, it could turn out he’s still alive because he’s working with the creatures. They might be very interested in an artificial life form, and how it fits into their whole “nothingness” idea. Assuming there is some sort of intelligent mind at work somewhere in that world.

I enjoy Battaglia’s colors, especially the purple/magenta he uses at different spots, usually when there’s confusion, or when things aren’t going as the expedition planned or hoped. Elbus tries to make this big threatening speech to Danny, and Danny casually breaks the handcuffs immediately after. The other half of the crew uses ammonium carbonate to wake Kim up, and she flips out and pulls a gun on them, asking about her son. Stockton ventures into the forest to get what he wants, and I’m guessing finds his (deceased?) brother, with both of them getting panels in that color. It’s an eerie, unnatural color, a sign of something being wrong, or off, and it works well as an attention-getter among all the panels with grey or black backgrounds of dark forests and ruined cities.

What I Bought 3/24/2015 - Part 10

I had a dream a couple of nights ago where I was out jogging, and I was so happy about how easily I was running, on what was the second half of my jogging route. Then I was really disappointed when I woke up and went jogging, and did not feel like I was running free and easy.

Roche Limit #5, by Michael Moreci (writer), Vic Malhorta and Ben Holliday (artists), Jordan Boyd and Marissa Louise (colors), Ryan Ferrier (letters) - Looks like a couple of crazy kids unlocked the power of love there on the cover. Not sure that's going to help them in the current situation.

Alex pulls Bekkah back out of the Anomaly, so her body is once again devoid of a soul. Now they can return to the colony and find her soul (which is the glowy pink thing those teens found initially, which has since fallen into Gracie's hands), and recombine it with her body. The doctor behind the whole thing dies in the landing (Alex having apparently learned his piloting skills from either Indiana Jones or Launchpad McQuack), but asks them to go find the soul that they just ejected from Bekkah's body. One thing at a time, though.

Moscow, formerly kingpin of the colony, now loyal servant of what is emerging from the Anomaly, kills the three founders who had been lurking in the shadows, even though they were also presumably servants of the same thing as him. Then he and his horde or sorta-zombies storm Gracie's place, kill everyone in there, and take Bekkah's soul. Alex arrives and somehow kills his way through the cannon fodder, and even takes out Moscow with one of those nifty, "slide under the sword strike, then shoot" moves. Soul recovered, he tracks down Sonya and Bekkah, who have procured an escape craft, reunite Bekkah with her soul, and take off. Except Alex still has that bomb in his chest, with a proximity sensor, so he can't go to Earth. He says his goodbyes, gets in a spacesuit, and drifts until he blows up. Back on the colony, that dark mass disgorges three creatures (they remind me of some of the Dark World creatures from Metroid Prime 2), which find that soul Watkins asked Alex to find. Because Alex couldn't be bothered, I suppose.

Which is an interesting place to end, I think. Before Alex dies, he takes a bit of his Recall drug, so he can relive a moment when Bekkah told him something that meant a lot to him. Namely, that she loved him for who he was, but also for the great person she thought he could be. But the supposed "great person" made no attempt to recover the soul that had been inadvertently placed within Bekkah's body, even when Watkins told him where it would appear. Alex just couldn't be bothered to even try. Bekkah's soul was important enough for him to risk going and getting, but that other person? Pfft, who has time for that?

It's an odd thing. The colony itself corrupts people, either because of the radiation coming from the Anomaly, or just something in the air and the soil (I wonder if the planet came from the other side of the Anomaly originally, wherever that would be). If you take Alex' drug, which uses minerals from the planet and refines them, it accelerates the process of making you one of the loyal followers of the Black Sun. A drug that encourages people to live in the past, rather than moving forward and making new memories, makes you a slave of this strange thing. But just living on the colony will do the same thing, if you stay long enough.

The Black Sun seems to be one of those set-ups where they want to remove the uncertainty and need, by removing everything about the person. Like how Darkseid wants to bring "order" to the universe, by eliminating any will other than his own. So how does that intersect with a drug that keeps one stuck in the past? I guess if they're in that happy or loving moment, they want for nothing, so the search to fill any emptiness inside them evaporates. But they stagnate?

Why are some people seemingly mindless zombies, but others, like Moscow, seem to retain some aspect of personality, and possibly even individuality? I have this feeling Moscow, and those three founders came to the Black Sun under other circumstances, but I'm not sure what. The founders were explorers originally, so they could have traveled all the way through the Anomaly, but I can't picture Moscow subjecting himself to that experience. My guess is the founders contacted the Black Sun, whatever it may be, directly, trying to make a bargain with it. Power, eternal life, something. Moscow notes before he kills them that they were looking for fulfillment through greed, though that can take many forms.

I can't put it all together. How does the Anomaly separate a person from their soul? Why is the body still capable of functioning without it, or with another person's soul in there? Why doesn't the person seem any different with someone else's soul? Bekkah seemed like Bekkah (as far as Alex and Sonya were concerned) even with someone else's soul, and that soul didn't fight to avoid being booted out of that body at all. Which seems odd. I'd think it would struggle to avoid becoming disembodied again.

The next mini-series is supposed to be set 75 years in the future. If the Black Sun has had that long to establish itself on the world, we might get a better idea of what it's after and what it is. That's my biggest issue with this mini-series, it was hard to care about most of the characters, because we didn't really get to know them much. Gracie clearly had a long backstory, and it probably heavily involved both Moscow and her subordinate, Woodbury, but we never got much of it. As a result, I didn't feel much of anything when they died.

What I Bought 1/28/2015 - Part 2

The weather reports said flurries over the weekend, we got about 5 inches. So far, that's the most significant snow we've had this winter, though they're talking about more tomorrow. I don't have to do much driving these days, so the only reason it bugs me is that the road crews didn't get it cleared off entirely, and what's left get packed down until it's like ice (assuming it isn't actually ice). Running on ice isn't much fun, since your feet slip a little on every step. Walking through snow is another matter, provided you have good footwear, but that's neither here not there.

Roche Limit #3 and 4, by Michael Moreci (writer), Vic Malhorta (artist), Kyle Charles (art assists, #3), Lauren Affe (colorist, #4), Jordan Boyd (colorist, #3), Jim Campbell (letters, #4), Ryan Ferrier (letters, #3) - I have kept thinking that face reminds me of something, and it finally hit me. That episode of Scooby-Doo, where the robot is running amok through the old amusement park. He looked like just like that poor guy there to the left. So all we need to solve the problems on this colony are pot-smoking teens are their Great Dane.

Alex (the drug maker with the bomb on his chest) and Sonya (the cop from earth) continue their search for Sonya's sister Bekkah. But it seems the people addicted to Alex' drug are developing some ugly side effects. Black eyes, bad skin, tendency to speak in dire warnings, that sort of thing. They track down a scientist named Sinclair, who is behind the disappearance of her sister, but claims he isn't. And his goon got ahold of a cane with a gun hidden in it, so they had to back off.

There's a lot of running around, but it boils down to this: When Sinclair dumps women into the anomaly, it separates their souls from their body. this was discovered by some of the initial explorers, who are presumed dead, but are still lurking in the background somewhere, preparing. He reels the bodies back out, and the soul pops up in the mines, as those glowy things the two teens found one of previously (which they subsequently lost to the goons working for that madam, Grace, though I doubt she has any clue what it is). If the body remains soulless, it turns into these black-eyed weirdos (though it doesn't have to be the same soul. In fact, Bekkah is up and moving around with someone else's soul in her, though I can't tell if it makes a difference). But it'll happen anyway, because the planet itself is poisonous, because of something the anomaly emits. And Alex' drug, made from minerals found on the colony, provides a concentrated dose. Now all the empty/poisoned wackaloons Sinclair has collected from his tests have been set loose by former kingpin/black-eyed wackaloon Moscow, and are killing everyone else in service of whatever is on the other side of the anomaly. Sinclair, Alex, Sonya, and Bekkah know doodley squat about all that, because they went back out into space to try and get Bekkah back to normal by dunking her in the anomaly again. Except something is coming through from the other side, probably the Black Sun all the wackaloons worship.

I have no idea how all this is going to come together. There's only supposed to be one issue left in this arc, and I don't know if the next arc (whenever that comes out) will pick up where this leaves off, or if it'll time jump forward, or maybe backwards. I don't really follow how Bekkah can have someone else's soul in her, yet she apparently behaves and remembers all the things Bekkah does. But without one, you become some weird, murdering, dark-eyed lunatic thing.

You could really tell Malhorta was getting assisted on the art near the end of issue 4. Characters' faces got considerably less distinct and more simplified. Some of the buildings look really rushed. But the color work is still excellent. I especially like how vivid the Anomaly is. It's this bright light that naturally draws the eye, that dominates every scene it's in. And yet, it's deadly. We want to explore it, find out of there's something on the other side, but that doesn't lead anywhere good.

Although, you explore, and you lose your soul, and become a slave to some larger, destructive force? Kind of an odd message. I mean, yes, everyone who stays there is doomed to that fate, but the people exploring get it faster, even than the people who try to use a drug to escape into fond memories of their past.