Saturday Splash Page #236

"The Congregation," in Werewolf by Night (2023) #1, by Derek Landy (writer), Fran Galan (artist/colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer)

A one-shot released in the fall of 2023, revolving around Jack Russell, aka the Werewolf by Night, and Elsa Bloodstone, arriving independently at a ominous castle in the mountains of Colorado. Both are seeking Doktor Nekromantik, and a young woman he's abducted to sacrifice to some nefarious purpose.

Landy contrasts the duo's via internal narration through the story. Jack's is overwrought and dramatic, while Elsa's is breezy and flip. Jack makes his way up the mountainside and tears his way through the creations of Nekromantik that bar his path, while Elsa simply skydives out of a plane in which she hitched a ride, that was owned by some vampires she subsequently killed. When the two run into each other in the castle, Jack spends three caption boxes thinking about how people - like him - let Elsa's attitude slide because she's so pretty, and he could have loved her, if he thought he deserved to be happy. Elsa's caption is, 'He smells of dog.'

The situation they find themselves dealing with is more complex than they expected, as Nekromantik is after revenge, but not against either of them. They're far too late to save the young woman, and Jack spends the last page moping how that's another person he failed, and his life is violence, while Elsa's internal narration insists that it would bother her, if she thought about it. But why do that, when life is so hard already? They reach the same endpoint, but draw different conclusions from it.

Other than the last few pages, which take place the following morning, the story is set entirely at night, and Galan goes with a limited and stark color scheme. Everything, save the glowing red eyes of the shadow creatures Nekromantik made, is colored some variation of black, white, or grey. It allows for a sharp, high-contrast look that plays up the shadows.

Except for Elsa, who is Technicolor in a world of black-and-white (the scenes in the jet before she reaches the castle are also in color.) A bit more bronzed than you might expect for someone who spends her time hunting monsters at night, but her clothes, her hair, the flash of red if she uses the Bloodstone, all of that is in color. It sets her apart from everyone and everything else in the story, including Jack. 

Which is something to explore. In terms of color, Jack is treated as the same as Nekromantik, his monsters, and the thing he seeks to summon, while Elsa is not. Why? Simply because she's still human, despite the weird alien rock in her palm she got from her caveman father? Jack is human, at least some of the time. Is it something about purpose, that Jack and Nekromantik were each driven by some stronger motive, duty or revenge, while Elsa at least gives the outward appearance she's just there to make monsters go boom? I don't think it's a matter of the others being driven by baser instincts, because Jack keeps narrating about how he's trying not to lose control and just tear things to shreds, so he's clearly resisting those urges.

Saturday Splash Page #233

"New Coke X-51," in X-51 #1, by Mike Higgins and Karl Bollers (writers), Joe Bennett (penciler), Slick (inker), Mark McNabb (colorists), Benchmark (letterer)

One of my back issue projects last year was the brief "Marvel Tech" line, consisting of a grand total of three series, all kick-started by events in various X-Annuals in '99, none surviving past a year. The Simonson/Ferry Warlock we'll see before the end of summer, and the Casey/Manco Deathlok next year. Today, it's Machine Man/Aaron Stack's first book since that mid-80s mini-series set in 2020. Michael Higgins and Karl Bollers wrote this book together for 4 issues, and then it's just Bollers. Bennett pencils all 12 issues, with Bob Wiacek as inker in most of the later issues.

So, Machine Man helped the X-Men keep the Red Skull from taking control of a Helicarrier. Yeah, I dunno. Machine Man appeared to die in the process of keeping the Helicarrier afloat to be evacuated. Nothing left but a head, he uploaded his consciousness into a blank LMD and, thinking itself "Special Agent Jack Kubrick", it set out to find what was left of his body. The head eventually gets attached to the LMD, and you get what you see up there.

Good news, Machine Man's body is now made of nanites, so he can rebuild and improve himself. Bad news, that's because at some point - I assume during Operation Zero Tolerance - he got captured by Master Mold, and Bastion's consciousness was implanted in his brain. So someone who gave his life working with mutants to save lives, is now overcome by the desire to kill mutants whenever he sees them.

That's the push-and-pull of the first 8 issues. X-51 sees Sebastian Shaw (hoping to prevent there being a Sentinel more powerful than the ones he sells) standing next to Gyrich (still unaware Shaw is a mutant)? He tries to kill him. (Gyrich, naturally, doesn't put it together. I like to think, when Krakoa happened and Shaw became an open mutant, Gyrich punched himself in the dick for being an idiot.) X-51 goes to the Avengers for help, and is greeted by Justice and Firestar? He tries to kill them. Shaw's Sentinels attack him and the X-Men try to help? He attacks them.

It's a constant, and frankly tedious, pattern. Especially since X-51 is now apparently so strong none of them can stand against him. The X-Men get trounced. Even when Vision shows up to help his teammates, X-51 is too much for him. A Brotherhood of Evil Mutants get rolled. The only things that slow him down are things related to him. Namely the apparent precursor to the X-Series, a big computer brain called X.E.R.O. It's mostly angry it was abandoned and forgotten for decades, until Gyrich woke it up to kill X-51. It failed, then took over AIM, easily overwhelming MODOK (off-panel), in an attempt to finish the job. I mean, I seem to recall Bastion lost to just Iceman, so I don't see why X-51 is suddenly such an unstoppable dude.

There's an issue inside Aaron's mind, a final battle between Aaron and what his father, Abel, taught him, and the piece of Bastion inside him. Aaron wins by erasing everything from his past (except, somehow, his memories of Abel.) So he's evolved beyond the hatred, but at the cost of all the memories of his friends and his past life. Earthly attachments discarded?

Except then we get two issues of Aaron trying to keep a young biker from destroying himself in a quest to avenge his buddies, who were killed by a rival gang. The rival gang get transformed into some weird techno-organic things that keep growing as they merge with other machines including, eventually Aaron. (Bennett makes them look appropriately awkward and clunky for how uncontrolled the process is, but otherwise, the designs are nothing to write home about.) Now combined, the lot fall through the Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but only Aaron emerges, with stars in his face.

The 12th and final issue is more visual novel than comic. One big image per page with a column of text on the outer edge. Most of that is wasted on a recap of Aaron's backstory - not like they hadn't done that already - and then he fights XERO with the aid of his buddy's biker gang (now wearing hideous mech suits like refugees from some '80s toy line cartoon) to avert a future apocalypse brought about by machine intelligence. Then he goes back through the Monolith to join the Celestials, the final page implying he'll become a Celestial one day. Less "God in the machine," and more "God is a machine." Either way, my eyes about rolled out of my head.

In line with the notion of Aaron Stack evolving, Bennett shifts his look over time. Ditches those weird straps in issue 6, when a killer Shaw hires tears them off and lashes Aaron with them. After deleting (most of) his memories, Aaron goes back to the look where the purple extends up the side of his head and over the top like a skullcap. In general, the design simplifies as the series progresses. Fewer visible gears and weird external struts, maybe Bennett trying to do Kirby-style. Then the "star field" look on his face at the very end.

OK, fine, the look changes as he goes through trials. I'm less sure about all the personality and mentality shifts. A demon in his mind, urging him to hate and destroy mutants for being different? Baser instincts he has to rise above. Aaron tries to hide (in the satellite X.E.R.O. initially used against him), running from the problem rather than facing it. When a friend from his old supporting cast is endangered, he reemerges. That lets Shaw's Sentinels (and the X-Men) find him. So he abandons his past, presumably to move beyond such connections that could be used against him.

Except not his memories of his father? And then he helps some random biker, trying to keep the guy from wasting his life on vengeance. Isn't he forming new connections that would make him a target all over again? Won't him flying around in broad daylight fighting techno-organic bikers get him targeted by Sentinels again? I guess he ascends before it matters, but it doesn't demonstrate much of a shift in his thinking.

Thankfully, NextWave established the Celestials found Aaron to be a complete loser and sent his ass back to Earth. Although I guess someone retconned that NextWave Aaron isn't the original Machine Man, but after all the destroying, rebuilding, memory wiping that goes on here, what would even qualify as the original at this point?

Sunday Splash Page #390

"X-Terminate the X-Apes," in NextWave #11, by Warren Ellis (writer), Stuart Immonen (penciler), Wade von Grawbadger (inker), Dave McCaig (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)

As a plot description, NextWave was about 5 heroes who find out the top-secret organization they're working for (Highest Anti-Terrorism Effort), and its corporate sponsors (Beyond Corporation), are creating all sorts of dangerous weapons. So they go rogue, stealing a ship and traveling the country, attacking various installations of freaky crap.

In practice, NextWave seemed to be about Warren Ellis giving Stuart Immonen lots of fights between angrily sarcastic heroes and weird and/or cool shit to draw. As one of the caption boxes says after a sequence of kicking and exploding things, "This is what they want!"

The "they" in this scenario I assume applied to the readers. The readers say they want action, they want fight scenes, they want cool one-liners and all manner of weird shit? Well unhinge your jaw, because Ellis and Immonen are jamming a funnel down your throat and pouring in all you can take.

So, of course, the book sold like crap. There were no crossovers! No guest appearances from more popular characters! No event tie-ins, unless you count the cover for issue 11, which proclaimed it "Not Part of a Marvel Comics Event", and featured Machine Man holding a sign that read, "Mark Millar Licks Goats" (Those poor goats.)

It was just a book about five characters running around blowing up stuff like samurai robots, or Mindless Ones summoned by the Dread Rorkannu on behalf of the Beyond Corporation in exchange for $100 and some of those "Suicide Girls." Clearly, it wasn't making any attempt to take itself seriously, even if the characters were (to the extent they were capable of taking anything seriously.)

The best known character was probably Monica Rambeau, formerly Captain Marvel the 2nd, now a grouchy woman trying to use her limited cred as having led the Avengers to ride herd on 4 lunatics. Or maybe original X-Forcer Boom-Boom, who just goes by Tabby in this book, and gets written as a sort of Valley Girl idiot. Actually kind of weird reading that New Warriors Annual last week and she's shown to know her way around computer databases. Not no more she ain't! Machine Man calls himself "Aaron", and is an arrogant, drunk, robot. Ellis turns Elsa Bloodstone from a Buffy knock-off to Hellboy crossed with the Punisher, combined with an acerbic British attitude. The Captain was a new character, and was just some loser from Jersey who got powers from dumb aliens, who he then kicked the crap out of because he was drunk and thought they were leprechauns. His best moment was probably beating Rorkannu's skull in with a toilet.

They argue all the time. Tabby gives Elsa grief about a European Union shirt (which Ellis later uses to mock the, "Do you think this A on my head stands for France?" line from Ultimates. Which, to be clear, deserved to be mocked.) Aaron keeps calling everyone else "fleshy ones", and at one point gets the shit kicked out of him by the 3 women on the team. The Captain's a dope that everyone barely tolerates and no one worries when he gets smacked over the horizon. It's a workplace comedy, but they all really dislike each other. They just hate Beyond Corp more.

It's a very early-2000s style of humor. They're being chased by Dirk Anger, a parody Nick Fury who yells angrily all the time and keeps trying to kill himself through methods like sitting in a chair staring down the barrel of a revolver the size of a tank, as some kind of gag about masculinity issues or repressed homosexuality or something. Beyond Corp throws a bunch of knock-off Avengers at them, including a guy who got Captain America powers because Rogers took a whiz after the procedure, and the super-soldier serum was still viable in that form. Another guy got Hulk powers because he tried to huff gamma-irradiated nuclear waste. They're led by Forbush Man, who makes a lot of proclamations about how mighty he is, especially with the girls.

I can't remember laughing a lot when I bought the entire run at one of the first Cape-Cons. Either I didn't get the joke, or (more likely) I didn't read it as a joke at all. I was mostly just impressed at all the strange things Immonen and Ellis came up with for them to fight. And Immonen draws the heck out of all of it. Forbush Man uses the power of his "Omni-Mind" to send each member of the team into some ugly alternate reality, and Immonen shifts his art style for each. So he draws Elsa's nightmare world - where she wasn't diligent enough exterminating monsters and they've overtaken the world - in a faux-Mignola style. (Tabby was unaffected by Forbush Man's power, because she's too dumb, you see.) Issue 11 has 6 consecutive double-page splashes, including the one up there, of NextWave just tearing their way through things like brontosaurs with optic blasts, or MODOKs that are Elvis (and shoot cheeseburgers.)

Of course, the last one has the tagline, "nextwave: blatantly wasting your money since 2006." But it's only a waste if I feel ripped off. Relative to a Bendis comic where the artist only gets to draw people sitting around talking about nothing that couldn't be handled in 2 pages or less, this was a steal.

Bits and pieces of this series have leaked into larger use around the Marvel Universe. Elsa Bloodstone most obviously. She seems to be getting used in some book, somewhere, pretty much constantly, and it's always Ellis' version. Although I think most writers leave out an element of enjoyment she gets from her work that we see here, in the shooting and decapitating robots with shovels.

I don't see a lot of Boom-Boom these days, but I think the "Valley Girl" characterization kind of stuck. Brian Reed used this version of Machine Man in Ms. Marvel volume 2, but when Jeff Parker added the character to the cast of Red Hulk a few years later, he went back to the classic look and characterization. But it was a Red Hulk book, so who gives a shit, really? Al Ewing used Beyond Corp in one of his Avengers books (I think Luke Cage and the Mighty Avengers), as did the Amazing Spider-Man writers between Nick Spencer and Zeb Wells' runs.

 Monica was part of the cast in Ewing's book, so when Beyond returned, so did the trench coat and "Auntie Monica" nickname. The trench coat was also part of Monica's look when Kelly Sue DeConnick used her in Captain Marvel volume 7. I think most writers who've use Monica since NextWave give her a bit more of a blunt approach. Take no shit, don't defer or get pushed around. So maybe she's a case of gradual bleed into the character, rather than a wholesale revision like Elsa and Tabitha got.

The Captain, I think may have vanished entirely. I guess there's no place for a super-strong, flying idiot in the Marvel Universe. Or, he's not the type to save the day unless someone's cutting a check.

Strange Thoughts Come In a Turkey Coma

When Monica Rambeau (aka Captain Marvel, aka Photo, aka Pulsar, aka Spectrum) was in NextWave, she had a tendency to refer to herself as "Auntie Monica", usually when she was pissed off and about to hurt something.

So obviously, she needs to fight an enemy called "Anti-Monica". Her power would probably be an ability to shift between different forms of matter, since Monica's able to do the same with forms of energy. Maybe something like Metamorpho, or Chemical Lad from the Legion.

A cheerful, endlessly upbeat person who is perfectly happy with the team she's part of (unless she's a solo act, which sure, why not) and has no interest in being a leader. if she was ever part of whatever her equivalent of the Avengers would be - and she probably wasn't - she didn't think it was for her, and doesn't miss it..

All of which would probably amuse her NextWave teammates. Probably prompt at least a few of them to offer Anti-Monica the other Monica's spot on the team. Which Monica would no doubt get them back for later.