Saturday Splash Page #245

"Insult to Attempted Injury," in Union Jack #3, by Christos Gage (writer), Mike Perkins (penciler), Andrew Hennessy (inker), Laura Villari (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer)

I bought this 4-issue, late-2006, mini-series in back issues last year. Came up somehow or the other in the comments at House to Astonish, and it wasn't expensive, so I figured, what the hell?

MI5 gets word some new AIM splinter group called "R.A.I.D." wants to establish themselves as the #1 terror organization in the world, after Wolverine hacked up thousands of HYDRA guys in Millar's Wolverine run. R.A.I.D.'s staging a massive strike on England, via a crap-ton of C-list super-villains out to do as much damage as possible. By the time Union Jack's been contacted, there's only 8 hours until it starts. Excalibur is off on assignment elsewhere, and the folks in the U.S. are busy with Civil War.

So, besides Union Jack, you've got former Assistant Director of SHIELD Contessa Allegra Valentina de la Fontaine, banished to the hinterlands of England(?) when Fury fell out of favor and got replaced with Maria Hill. *cackles in disbelief* You've also got Sabra, and a new Arabian Knight. An Israeli and a Saudi. No tension there.

I'm guessing the Knight's new design is Perkins' work. He ditches the turban, in favor of a sleeveless tactical vest and fatigue pants. The flying carpet has been unraveled and turned into the clothes he wears and automatically hardens like armor to any attack, but does not give him the ability to fly, so I guess it was a tradeoff. I feel like the scimitar used to be on fire, which is not in evidence here, outside of one panel where it looks like there are blue flames following the arc of his swing. Being mystical, it can cut anything. Actually, the re-design of the Arabian Knight might have been the point of discussion at House to Astonish. Characters receiving updated, less stereotypical designs perhaps?

Gage positions Union Jack (Joe Chapman version) as a man of the people. His relationship with Spitfire fell apart because they're from different worlds, what with her being landed gentry and him painting houses for a living. I can't figure which of them objected, but if it was him, Joe might be a damn idiot. 

That said, he doesn't care about political divides. If people are willing, he'll take the help. When Contessa suggests that, given his past history of objections to mass murder (that time he turned on Mr. Hyde and teamed up with Captain America), Batroc might be willing to roll on his buddies Zaran and Machete, Joe's up for giving it a try.

He's also not one for compromises. When Arabian Knight offers to let Joe kill him, so he can use the Knight's mystic sword (because the Knight's too concussed), Joe refuses. He's not killing an ally. He also objects to the MI5 guy withholding news of the impending attack from the public. All the more when it becomes clear the politicians got the word, and blabbed to all their wealthy pals. Of course, while Jack does tell people to shelter in place, he's a fool to think they'll listen, creating a lot of gridlock which the villains exploit. But "the people" come to his aid, especially in the big fight against the final threat.

Speaking of villains, besides Zaran and Machete, you've got Crossfire and his Death-Throws, Shockwave, Firebrand, Jackhammer, Boomerang, Jack O'Lantern, Ecstasy, and the Corruptor. Like I said, C-list. More critically in this story, they're all in it for the money. None of it is ideological for them, and against this version of Union Jack, that's not enough.

He's almost suicidally determined to stop them. He gets stabbed in the chest, through body armor, by Zaran, and just keeps choking him until Zaran surrenders. He dares Bombshell to throw a bomb at him when he's so close. Risk ending up scarred because of her revealing costume on the chance his won't protect him. He goes after Jack O'Lantern hard enough the guy decides to run - which seems on point, Jack O'Lantern's always been a chickenshit, no matter which guy is wearing the flaming pumpkin - only to end up run over by a flying car. This after Jack gets repeatedly zapped by Shockwave, before risking electrocuting both of them by cutting open the suit while they were in a puddle of water.

I think Perkins and/or Gage oversells it in the final issue, when a multiple-story dreadnought kicks Union Jack across Trafalgar Square and into a building, hard enough to break some of the stone the building is made of. Jack gets up and stabs a flagpole into an opening created by the Knight and Sabra and hits the liquid nitrogen reserves. As far as I know, Jack is not superhuman.

The final issue is also when Jack puts it together that, though this wasn't an inside job, it had some help getting as far as it did. It boils down to another chance to show Joe Chapman doesn't compromise his ideals, and doesn't find the sacrifice of innocent people to further some amorphous idea of "security" acceptable. Even if it makes him persona non grata with government agencies going forward.

It's funny, the MI5 guy asks Union Jack if he's planning to rush to future crises on the bus. Setting aside I think the UK has a much better public transportation system than the U.S., it didn't look like Jack was getting much help at the start of the mini-series, when he was killing vampires by himself, and apparently spending half his paycheck on silver bullets. But, as a man of the people, maybe Jack can bum rides off delivery drivers and street racers he's helped in the past. It worked for Kim Possible.

Saturday Splash Page #244

"Not Their Mess," in Unstoppable Doom Patrol #5, by Dennis Culver (writer), Chris Burnham (artist), Brian Reber (colorist), Pat Brosseau (letterer)

A 7-issue mini-series originally solicited as a 6-issue mini-series in 2023, Unstoppable Doom Patrol took place in the aftermath of, I think, Lazarus Planet. A DC event where the entire planet got rained on with Lazarus Pit juice and gave a bunch of people new powers. Something like that; I pay less attention to DC's Big Events than I do Marvel.

Point being, there's a crap-ton of new people with powers, many who can't control them, or are being exploited. The Doom Patrol find them, rescue them, bring them back to a massive underground facility - lovingly depicted in cross-section by Burnham and Reber across two pages in issue 2 - where they can be safe, and also learn to control their powers. Hmm, where have I heard most of this before? Eh, maybe the Doom Patrol have a long history of that sort of thing; I know there's the occasional influx of new characters, who are usually slaughtered by the next writer. *glances in Keith Giffen's direction*

The core roster is Robotman, Elasti-Woman, Negative Man, a new character called Beast Girl that can affect the fight or flight part of your brain, and a person with new powers that run off anger who gleefully calls himself Degenerate. The Chief is now one of Crazy Jane's various personalities. Long-time characters like Niles Caulder and Mento are around, but Caulder's sidelined into an advisory role, and Mento spends most of his time in a tube, and is limited in what he's allowed to do. Which doesn't feel very much like taking care of a metahuman to me. At least, not in a way different from how the people experimenting on Degenerate would.

Culver really leans into the idea of the Doom Patrol as outsiders from the rest of the superhuman community. They butt heads with Batman in the first issue, which is also where I learn that, at least as far as the Chief is concerned, the Flash is the only metahuman on the Justice League. Aliens, Atlanteans, and Amazons don't count. I assume that would extend to sorceresses, androids, and guys who drink a potion that lets them stretch, or however it is Dibny's powers work. Aren't Aquaman and Wonder Woman kind of mutants by the standards of their people? What about Metamorpho, or Firestorm? Black Lightning? Oh well, it's just the Chief gatekeeping who gets to be part of the community. Nothing troubling about that!

In issue 3, Robotman and Negative Man haul ass cross-country, Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner on their heels, because their latest rescue is a guy that seems to be getting along with the Starro clamped to his face.

The primary antagonist is a government agency, led by Peacemaker. Still outfitted like he is in the comics and the John Cena TV show, including the bedpan helmet, but not nearly as much of a dumbass. More a sadist, who figures anything is acceptable to "protect" his country. Including giant robots with "PEACE" stamped on them. At least the giant robots aren't purple. 

Running in the background, at least until it steps into the foreground, is a plot by certain parts of the Brotherhood of Evil. Mallah turns on the Brain and sides with General Immortus in a plan involving candle wax, a magic ritual, and the grave of former Doom Patrol cast member Dorothy. Something about humanity's fear of the world's end via nuclear fire using her powers to take physical form, and now it's back, in Immortus' body. His withered, decrepit, nasty body.

A big fight spans the last two issues, but it's more about the actions the Doom Patrol take. The Chief trusts Caulder not to work behind her back to retake control, and they encourage Mento to fully let loose with his powers, and trust that they'll keep him from abusing that. The Chief also steps back to let Jane talk with The Quiz - every superpower you've never thought of, does it reset after each fight? - and convince her to help them. When Peacemaker shows up at the end, Degenerate chooses to cover everyone's retreat, trusting they'll rescue him later.

The mini-series went from 6 to 7 issues because DC decided to have some weird mini-event during the summer, where almost everyone on Earth was magically put to sleep, Robotman being one of the few exceptions. So Doom Patrol got a one-shot Burnham drew, and this book got a mid-series fill-in with art by David LaFuente. LaFuente's art is much more exaggerated than Burnham's, but the issue is focused on the team's mental health professional, who uses her power to access the 5th dimension to help people deal with what's on their minds by projecting it. So it's what people feel or perceive, rather than what's true, so more realistic art wouldn't really fit.

Burnham handles the other 6 issues (Reber colors all 7). His style is closer to realistic, but not in a constrained way. He can draw weird, and get detailed, both of which seem essential if you're going to draw a Doom Patrol book. The blob monster up there was an attempt by a corporation to create a superhuman that automatically adapts to threats presented to it. As you can see, it needed a bit more testing. The Brotherhood have a lady with tiger heads for hands, there's a creepy little girl with living, curly, blonde hair. Burnham draws those without them seeming out of place. In the Doom Patrol's world, stuff like that is normal. Degenerate's body morphs and shifts depending how angry he is. Mostly in terms of getting spikier, but also bulking up. Beast Girl has an adorable, fuzzy look that matches her bubbly, eager personality.

The one downside is the book, after a panel promising the Doom Patrol would return, ends with the "Eternal Flame" being dumped into the Bleed and encountering Danny the Street, who is being tortured by the Batwoman Who Laughs. *weary sigh* I never understood why "Batman who is a Joker" was supposed to be such a multiversal threat, so I really don't understand why Batwoman Who Is A Joker is what someone thinks is a good dun-dun-DUUUUUN teaser for the Doom Patrol. Not that it matters; there's a new Doom Patrol book starting up soon, and I can't tell that it's going to pay any attention to this mini-series. 

Saturday Splash Page #243

"Ballroom Black Tie Blitz," in U.S.Avengers #2, by Al Ewing (writer), Paco Medina (writer), Juan Vlasco (inker), Jesus Arbutov (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)

At the conclusion of his New Avengers volume, Al Ewing had Roberto Da Costa take the step of placing his "Avengers Idea Mechanics," under the U.S. government. They no longer risk imprisonment if they confront a threat on U.S. soil, but now Da Costa's got a boss: Captain America.

Unfortunately, it's HYDRA Cap, aka Stevil Rogers. The book spends half its 12 issues - 5 through 9, and issue 10 deals with the fallout - on Secret Empire tie-ins. Some of the attack comes from within, AIM scientists angry their boss sold out to "The Man." Of course, they're helping HYDRA take over the world, so they just end up working for a new "The Man," but no one ever said people like that possess any level of self-awareness.

And at least we aren't told Sunspot actually anticipated all this and Stevil's playing into his hands. Nope, Da Costa gets blindsided and spends most of the tie-in near death in a holding cell, until Toni Ho works out something that lets him use his powers without dying (he got poisoned by Terrigen Mist during that whole mess where Marvel put the X-Men at cross-purposes with the Inhumans.

. . .Which came after the period where the X-Men were at cross-purposes to the Avengers, because the Avengers objected to risking the entire planet on Cyclops' unsubstantiated belief the Giant Space Firebird That Might Be His Second Ex-Wife was coming to Earth to restore mutants, but before the period where the X-Men were at cross-purposes to the Eternals, because the Eternals objected to mutants getting immortality. More crosses in the X-Men's recent back history than End of Evangelion.)

Of the other 6 issues, the first three are about some refugee criminal loser from an alternate timeline future who's looking to loot all the nice stuff 616 has, because it isn't a post-apocalyptic wasteland (yet.) He's ultimately a pathetic dope, obsessed with making things that look impressive but are actually crap, and constantly backstabbing his lackeys because he thinks he deserves everything and should never have to honor his promises. He sets up in some half-constructed Murderworld, gets someone to build him a power armor out of gold (which is a bad idea), and folds like a house of cards on a wobbly table.

The last two issues involve the team traveling to space to locate missing team member Cannonball. Who, it turns out, has been sold to that planet of Skrulls cosplaying as gangsters. Except now they're cosplaying as Archie Andrews, sorry, Richie Redwood, and his crew. Albeit, only a very particular era and version of the Richie Redwood lore. It's basically Ewing poking at people who complain about representation or things changing in their comics, which, OK, sure.

The roster is mostly different from New Avengers. Wiccan and Hulking are gone. Ditto White Tiger, Power Man, Hawkeye and Songbird. Squirrel Girl and Toni are the main holdovers, and Toni was more Tech Support/Science Exposition Delivery Device in the prior volume. Now she runs around in a huge armor suit filled with "non-lethal" weapons. Like pulse cannons. Not lethal! Just really painful. The pain is how you know you're still alive! Her girlfriend, Enigma, is trying to get Toni to stop with the weapons, non-lethal or otherwise. Squirrel Girl remains delightful, though not nearly a big enough presence in the book to really elevate it for me.

There's also General Maverick, previously an antagonist, now a liaison who keeps getting involved with the missions. His "dollar store Thunderbolt Ross" shtick is not aided when he gets an implant that lets him transform into a Red Hulk for an hour a day. Which he punctuates by yelling, "Hulk Plug-In, Get to Sluggin'!"

That's, that's just awful. I'd rather be punched by a Red Hulk than have to hear him yell that. Yes, I know it's a play on that '70s cartoon with the kid who transforms into the Ever-Lovin' Idol of Millions via his "Thing Ring." That does not make it not awful. Does Avengers Idea Mechanics not have a Marketing Department?

Paco Medina draws 8 issues, with Vlasco as his inker. Paco Diaz draws the other 4, and mostly inks himself. Jesus Arbutov keeps the look of the book fairly similar throughout, rarely going to dark or murky with the colors or tones. Even when things are going badly, the book is mostly bright and things are easy to see. I think it's the notion that the world is not past saving, even if the fascists are winning at the moment. In that first, 3-issue arc, the Captain America of that alternate timeline future (Luke and Jessica Jones' daughter) outright tells the team there was supposed to be a horrible event last year, and Sunspot's crew somehow prevented it from happening. Nothing is set in stone, there's still light in the world, so don't stop trying. 

Medina and Diaz's styles aren't what I'd call wildly distinctive. Neither gets too experimental with layouts or panel perspectives. Things are kept straightforward, easy to follow the action and the sequence of events, easy to see what characters are doing. Medina's toned down the excesses in proportions I remember from when he was drawing Daniel Way's Deadpool, while Diaz struggles with hands looking oddly small at times, or selling some of the emotional beats. The characters sometimes look more like someone trying to act shocked than actually being shocked, if that makes sense. There's an example in my review of the back half of the series.

Saturday Splash Page #242

"Dark of the Moon," in Vengeance of the Moon Knight (vol. 2) #1, by Jed MacKay (writer), Alessandro Cappuccio (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer)

The first volume of Vengeance of the Moon Knight - which I usually forget exists - came out in 2009, after volume 3 of Moon Knight. Which I bought for 11 issues, but retain only 1, which has no splash pages, and therefore did not get a Sunday Splash Page entry. This volume follows on from Jed MacKay's volume of Moon Knight, which I tagged as volume 8, and concluded with Marc Spector getting blown to bits.

With Khonshu imprisoned in Asgard, there's no bringing Marc back. So the rest of the cast - Reese, Soldier, Hunter's Moon, Tigra and 8-Ball - are trying to carry on the work of the Midnight Mission in his stead. Well, Tigra is really more intent on hunting down Black Spectre for killing Marc - though I'm pretty sure Zodiac took care of him - but in theory, they continue to protect those who travel at night and whatnot. Except, who's this guy in the palette-swapped outfit calling himself Moon Knight and beating the crap out of criminals?

The new guy's identity is the mystery of the first few issues. Once he demonstrated his powers in issue 2, I had him figured. I was even right about it, which was nice.

MacKay returns to the approach of inserting flashbacks of events between excerpts of conversations with Marc's psychiatrist, Dr. Sterman. Except it's a different character each issue. Reese in issue 1, Tigra in issue 2, Hunter's Moon in issue 4, and so on. A way to explore not only how each of them is handling Marc's death - Tigra, poorly, the others varying degrees of better - but what he meant to them.

(In the first issue, we see in flashback that, since Marc was Jewish and none of them knew what to do, Reese contacted Ben Grimm for help with the rites. Because Ben, as Mr. Knight mentioned at one point in MacKay's first volume, always sent Marc a card at Hanukkah. So Reese is trying to honor what she can of Marc's heritage. That was a nice little scene that I enjoyed.)

Then the book gets, should I say hijacked? Diverted maybe, into Blood Hunt tie-ins. Which, for those who can't keep track of Marvel's baker's dozen of events a year, was the one where someone hijacked all the Darkforce users' powers to blot out the sun worldwide, and vampires ran amok. Something to that effect. Vampires prey on night travelers, Fists of Khonshu are supposed to protect night travelers, one fist (Hunter's Moon) is apparently not enough, and so, they need Marc back. Which means freeing Khonshu. From Asgard jail. Well, shit, Loki escapes from there all the time. How hard can it be?

Alessandro Cappuccio draws the first 5 issues, and 7 in total. His work, with Rosenberg's colors, is much the same as it was in Moon Knight. Thin, sharp lines. Minimalist on the backgrounds, unless it was a particular setting like Sterman's office. New York City feels like a very sterile, empty place in Cappuccio's world. Rosenberg sticks to solid blocks of color for the surroundings, and leaves the shading for the characters. The world doesn't have much give in it, and the characters deal with that by closed themselves off in certain ways. Focused, in denial, deflecting with humor, diving into anger.

Devmalya Pramanik draws the other two issues, and is trying to find his footing with the characters. The designs are little rougher, proportions wonky at times, though some of that is Pramanik gets more creative with the perspectives and page layouts. But the characters are more detailed, a wider range of expressions that run towards exaggeration but don't go over the line, or at least not far over the line.

End result - and how they bust Khonshu out is clever, in the sense it makes me grin - Marc's alive again, vampires are defeated, and then he has to deal with the imposter. I guess because they're using his title and not Hunter's Moon's. That's where the volume ends, at 9 issues, and the next, which we might reach by year's end, begins. 

Saturday Splash Page #241

"God's Mistake," in "Future Present from God", in Wanted!, by Eiichiro Oda

I reviewed this 5 months ago, so we won't belabor the point. Wanted! is the collection of Oda's work prior to starting One Piece. It consists of 5 stories, including Romance Dawn, a kind of first draft for One Piece, as it stars a rubber boy with a straw hat named Luffy, who wants to be a pirate, but ends up fighting more dishonest pirates.

Most of the stories revolve around twist endings, and the protagonist, up to that point portrayed as a goofball or not someone to take seriously, turns out to be a badass. Gill Bastar, star of Wanted! spends most of the story either avoiding the many bounty hunters after him for the price on his head, or defeating them through trickery like, "Look over there!" It's only at the very end he turns out to be such a great marksman the ghost of a bounty hunter he killed with trickery moves on to the other side, having realized (if unwilling to admit it) he'll never find someone skilled enough to take revenge for him.

Describing him like that, Gill sounds like Vash the Stampede if he really did turn murderous once pushed far enough.

You get stories with a swordsman whose fixation on disrespect appears to doom a town to destruction via dragon, who in the end exposes a couple of frauds, and kills the dragon in one swing. Or a monk who spends most of the story running in terror from an evil spirit haunting a forest, only to immediately overpower the spirit once he learns it killed and ate his master. Maybe Oda wanted to do the comedy, but still have the cool finish. I'm not sure it really works, as I don't find much of it funny. 

You see his artwork evolve, especially as he gives himself more room on the page by decreasing panels. His lines tighten up and grow thicker, the characters look less sketched and more sturdy and defined. It doesn't hurt his ability to exaggerate expressions, and I think the additional space helps his action sequences.

Saturday Splash Page #240

"Rocket into Danger," in Warlock #1, by Louise Simonson (writer), Pascual Ferry (penciler), Mark Morales (inker), Steve Oliff (colorist), John Costanza (letterer)

And we're on to the second of the three "Marvel Tech" line books. Doug Ramsey died in New Mutants, then Warlock died 30 issues later, presumably to make way for the kewl X-Force era. Some strange hybrid appeared years later, dubbed "Douglock," but turned out to just be Warlock with some of Doug's memories from those times they bonded.

After being used to create the Phalanx - oops - and being used by the Red Skull to take over that Helicarrier that X-51 got blown up stopping from crashing, Warlock's free and on a mission: Seek out and absorb all traces of the Phalanx on Earth. Unfortunately, he soon comes in contact with Esperanza (or Hope), a young girl who seems outwardly fine, but can infect others with the transmode virus. There's also a transmode-infected monkey that Hope befriends and protects from Warlock's half-hearted attempts to absorb him.

The trio face threats on two fronts. On one side, a person called Mainspring, a withered-looking grey guy with a big cranium and what look like camera lens or something fused into his skin. He ran the organization that was experimenting on the Phalanx traces, in some idea of advancing humanity through technology. To them, Hope is a great potential tool, especially when she proves able to infect inanimate objects, which, I guess was not considered possible previously? I don't know, I avoided the Phalanx stuff like a techno-organic plague. Warlock is interfering by denying them the material they desire.

On the other side, a group calling themselves Psi-Cops, led by a woman named Psiren, who Ferry draws as basically Amanda Waller if she shaved her head. Simonson gives her a fair amount of Waller's stubborn attitude and self-righteousness, though lacking the Wall's biting sense of humor. The Psi-Cops run around in white spandex and use various mental powers to destroy techno-organic beings and those who'd use them to endanger Earth. That Warlock also wants to remove all traces of the Phalanx, or that Hope didn't ask to be infected, is irrelevant. They have the potential to create more techno-organic monsters, so they need to be destroyed.

Ultimately, Psiren's younger brother, Psimon, disagrees and helps Warlock and Hope escape. After issue 3, they're on the run from both sides, with Psimon also using his telekinetic powers to help Hope learn to control her transmode abilities. Hope works on not letting her emotions get control of her, Psimon works on his confidence, on not comparing himself to his sister, and pushing his limits. Warlock struggles with guilt over being responsible for the Phalanx that infected Hope, and his own emotions around her and Psimon's friendship. Then Hope gets jealous when first Shadowcat, and then Wolfsbane show up, and Warlock starts acting different (presumably due to the aspects of Doug that imprinted on him.)

Simonson largely avoids jealous spats between the various girls, despite issue 7's cover implying Rahne and Hope were going to fight over Warlock. Kitty's just happy to see Warlock's still alive, and written as old enough to probably not see any rivalry between her and Hope, while Rahne's empathetic enough and open enough with herself to break down Hope's barriers (and also provide a nudge that helps Hope evolve her abilities in important ways.)

Simonson brings in Psycho-Man for one issue because Hope's power is messing with the Microverse somehow, to make everyone work on emotional control (with an assist from special guest-star Spider-Man!) Although Simonson's Psycho-Man is a lot more empty bombast than I was used to. More like a petulant child at times, but maybe the point is he never learned to control his emotions, because his machines do it for him.

Although Hope internal monologues at one point that Warlock barely changed shape once they ran into Shadowcat, it's a matter of degrees. Ferry's artwork is wildly different from Sienkiewicz's. Much rounder, much softer-looking characters, especially Warlock. There are no jagged projections of tiny metal bits jutting off at right angles. Instead, Ferry's Warlock is like a living toon. Highly malleable and using the ability almost constantly. Blimps with hands and feet, a T-Rex, puffing himself up with a Superman-style physique and chest symbol. Even when maintaining the form Hope describes as a 'boring old boy,' he'll still project a fluid-looking tendril from his forehead to interface with a computer.

Simonson keeps the threats coming. Mainspring finds Bastion's (siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh) severed, damaged head in the desert, and after a battle in the New York sewers where it had seized control of one of his robots, Mainspring strips away all the outer layers of programming to get to the core. And that's how I learned Bastion was the result of the amalgamation of Master Mold and Nimrod going through the Siege Perilous back in the Outback era of Uncanny X-Men. I had no idea, and didn't really care, but just throw it on the pile of things I learned I wish I hadn't.

Master Mold of course slips his leash, requiring help from the Avengers, but enough transmode-ing takes place to signal the Technarchy, so Warlock finishes his series - at 9 issues, shortest of the 3 M-Tech books - with a rematch against his father for the fate of the Earth. He wins, with a lot of help from Hope and even the Psi-Cops, and the trio (plus Rhane and the little monkey) decide to stick together and help Warlock remove more Phalanx infection stuff. Which was probably never referenced by any later writers. I don't even know if Warlock showed up in anything between this book (which concluded summer of 2000) and his appearance in the Abnett/Lanning Nova run in 2008, where he'd returned to the Technarchy homeworld (and where Paul Pelletier used Warlock's more classic look.)

Saturday Splash Page #239

"Legion of Losers," in The Weakest Contestant of all Space and Time, ch. 5, vol. 1, by Masato Hisa (writer), KRSG (artist)

Hitomu Yoshizawa is an office drone, remarkable only in how little he can actually accomplish. He doesn't want to go to work, but doesn't want to get in trouble for not going to work. So he lays on a park bench and daydreams about how that could happen. Maybe a truck could crash into the building! Oh, but he doesn't want the driver to get hurt. Maybe the truck is hijacked! By terrorists! But the hijacker has a heart attack and dies painlessly. Oh, and the security guard is patrolling elsewhere in the building so he doesn't get hurt. And on and on, an endless stream of pointless hypotheticals.

So the god of his reality deems him the most useless person in the entire universe, and dumps him into a death battle tournament against dozens of other realities' candidates. Hitomu dies, again and again. He doesn't even try to fight back, the fear of doing anything, even to defend himself, too overwhelming. Finally, it comes down to him and 4 other contestants who also lost all their matches. Hitomu basically has a breakdown, but in the process, deduces the arena floor is not one solid piece and there's a lever that will open it, dumping all five of them into another world. Unfazed, the former god who arranged the contest says this was a planned alteration. Those five will now be hunted by all the other contestants, and this time, death will be permanent.

At the end of the first volume, Masato Hisa says this is the first time after 16 years as an artist they're writing a story. Rather, it's the first time the draft was actually accepted, because apparently the editors wanted Hisa to also draw the story, and I guess Hisa didn't figure they had the time? For whatever reason, having KRSG draw this one was acceptable, although it seems to have ended/been canceled after just 2 volumes.

The basic formula is, Hitomu is repeatedly presented with moments to try and fight or kill his opponents. He rejects them, choosing to flee instead. On the rare occasion he considers fighting, he fully expects to die. Fighting is just a way for him to give up without necessarily looking like he's giving up. All the time he spends pondering hypotheticals apparently makes him good at noticing little details and putting them together into plans. So he leverages the skills the other 4 have to make their escapes.

You have K, from a reality where war has grown so pervasive everything has been conscripted, including cleaning robots. He talks big at first to disguise the fact he has no actual ability to fight. (Hitomu calls him a "war virgin" and draws uncomfortable parallels to his own behavior when he invited a girl he liked in school back to his room.) Tofu Brat is some mythological figure that obsesses about his hat and his plate with tofu on it, always muttering snide remarks, then denying he said anything. Godden is some sort of Pokemon caterpillar-thing that passes out at the drop of a hat, spewing a strong, flammable silk in the process.

The slime girl was originally just a basic slime, like you'd see in a DragonQuest game, but some of Hitomu's blood got on it and it changed shape. To resemble a naked slime girl version of the girl Hitomu demonstrated no game with back in high school. Yeah, I don't know. It wasn't like Hitomu was thinking of her at the time he was bleeding. And he gives the slime girl the same name as that girl, Sayaka.

The gods are presented as capricious and cruel. While there's some talk of contestants being awarded "useless points" for fucking up particularly badly, the gods don't care about the outcome. They just want to be entertained by how pathetic the contestants are. Like one of those obstacle course competition shows, except everybody's really out of shape.

When one god gets happy his representative showed ingenuity and looks ready to actually make a kill, the others are embarrassed by his enthusiasm. When he tries to subtly interfere, causing his scarecrow to fall into a river, his entire reality is erased. This all seems to be part of some plan by the former god who arranged the tournament, to show how petty the gods are and make people disgusted with them, but I can't see the point.

If they can erase an entire reality just like that, what was Hitomu going to accomplish? He certainly isn't going to kill the gods, that would go against his whole nature by involving doing something. But even if he convinced every other contestant to refuse to fight, so what? When a cartoon pig questioned the point of the contest, his god - who I would describe as Liberace Abe Lincoln - rips the pig's face off and screams at it not to question him. I don't think Hitomu could Rube Goldberg his way out of something like that.

Saturday Splash Page #238

"The Direct Approach," in The Web Annual #1, by Mark Waid (writer), M.C. Turner Alan (penciler), John Lowe (inker), Linda Kachelhofer (colorist), John Costanza (letterer)

I discussed the one round of Annuals the Impact Comics line had when we looked at The Legend of the Shield Annual in 2023. The Web Annual was the first chapter of the overarching story of Templar - a massive guy with a Fu Manchu 'stache, whose legs look like he has water retention issues - trying to reveal the location of a holy grail (the Holy Grail?) via a series of ecological catastrophes. But, as I used a page from that in Sunday Splash Page #302, and the Web's part is only really significant in that it's the one time "Rad" Stiles gets to do anything of use in 15 total issues of The Web, I figured I'd highlight one of the other stories running through the annuals.

Across 4 of the 6 annuals, Waid charts the history of the Jackson family and how it intertwines with the original Shield. Who, by what passed for the present day in the Impact Comics-verse, had vanished decades ago, along with his super-suit. So in 1953, the Shield is bribed into rescuing the son of "Lucky" Jackson, a notorious mobster, with the promise of a written confession of enough crimes to put Jackson away for decades. Matthew, who has an eidetic memory and serves essentially as his father's ledgers, is less than pleased that the man who rescued him then hauls his dad off to jail.

The story jumps to 1958 Cuba, where Matthew is preparing to take over the organization from his father's right-hand man. If he can survive the rise of Castro, and the ample opportunities it provides for backstabbing. The Shield, even if there's not much he can do about the societal upheaval on the island, saves Matthew, who turns away from crime. We learn in the 3rd part that his son Tony is hanging with a bad crowd, idolizing his grandfather (still in prison), despite Matthew talking up how great the Shield was, and ends up doing a favor for a certain Mistah Big in their city. Deliver a package to a certain home by midnight on Halloween. Matthew, who is pretty much a stringbean in every chapter, throws on a Shield Halloween costume and saves his son from getting blown up by the bomb.

Which brings us to the 4th part. It was depressing, but a perfect fit for being in The Black Hood Annual. Set in the "present day" - meaning, 1992 - we find Tony still living in his hometown of Soundview. In part 3, we were told it was the 5th largest city in the country, a thriving place. Now it looks like another dying, post-industrial city, and Tony has taken all his father's talk about the Shield to heart in the worst way. He roars around on a motorcycle, wearing what's left of that Halloween costume over a leather jacket and calling himself the Shield. Tony's trademark seems to be, upon finding criminals, to say, 'Okay scum, it's Judgement Day,' then kick the door in and start shooting. Maybe spout some Schwarzenegger-isms while beating up the crooks.

He lives alone in a ratty apartment, smoking cigs and doing pull-ups. Says his wife is the streets, and she needs a firm hand, which is, not great. As the narrator puts it, when his father died, Tony went a little nuts. Even his grandfather, finally out of prison, can see this is bad, and is pretty blunt Tony is not the Shield. Which doesn't stop Tony from walking to a trap to rescue his grandfather, one set by an old friend. A trap that gets him and the friend killed. No one but "Lucky" comes to Tony's funeral. Well, except for one older gentleman with orange-red hair. Hint, hint *looks significantly at the splash page.*

The arcs don't quite line up. The Jackson family don't exactly get more decent, as Matt's probably the best man of the three, but circumstances around them seem to decline steadily. Lucky was the biggest wheel in what passes for Impact's version of Vegas (or maybe Atlantic City?), all glittering lights and fancy parties. Then Matt's trying to hold a casino together in a country about to be flipped on its head. Then the setting shifts to a different thriving city, that ten years later looks like a dump.

Is it that, the further you get from something's origin or true existence, the more distorted perception of it becomes? Lucky understood the Shield, who he was, how he acted, what he believed, enough to use him, and was just honorable enough to stick to his deal. But Lucky was never going to be the type to stick his own neck out. Matt comes to respect the Shield and what he stands for, but isn't strong enough physically to be him. His lone act of heroism gets him killed. And maybe, in an effort to distance himself from his and his father's criminal past, Matt got too lost in hero worship. He forgets there are limits to what the Shield, or one man in general, can accomplish. He understood that in Cuba, but by Tony's adolescence, he'd forgotten, and the Shield was nearly godlike to him. Tony's physically strong, but that aggrandized view of the Shield, plus his father's death, did a number on him. The vigilante he becomes can't save anyone, and it hardly occurs to him to try until his grandfather is endangered. He figured if he just kept beating up scum, it would fix things eventually.

Saturday Splash Page #237

"Truant Officers," in The Web #5, by Len Strazewski (writer), Tom Artis (penciler), Bill Wray (inker), Eric Kachelhofer (colorist), Vickie Williams (letterer)

The Web was a bit of a rarity in the Impact Comics line as an ensemble book (Black Hood had a revolving cast, in a sense, which we'll get to when Sunday Splash Page gets there.) Where the other books revolved around solo heroes, "The Web" was an entire government organization. It had existed since the late '60s, with a broad mandate to investigate the unusual, but seemingly really created to investigate the disappearance of that generation's superheroes, the American Crusaders. Without success.

There were multiple agents, with different areas of operation, varying levels of public visibility, and different approaches. They eventually got powered armor, although the power was transmitted from some central station, and required authorization to use, even before Web fell on hard times as the years passed and budgets shrank. Eventually they were roaming swamps in business suits, chasing reports of UFOs.

With the emergence of new superheroes they're back in business. More money (but also more oversight), and more staff. That's where Strazewski makes his mistake, the cast is simply too large. From top-down, you've got Powell Jennings, who is some dipshit prep-school goober appointed as head of the agency. Of the field staff that are holdovers from the earlier years, there's Bill O'Grady, in charge on-site (that's him in the flak jacket), "Big Daddy" Rothco (the bearded guy), the Sunshine Kid (a spiritualist/hippie type), St. James who gets brought in to run tactics, "Jump" Kennedy, a pilot whose girlfriend was abducted by aliens a decade ago, and Gunny Beaupre. There's another guy, who calls himself "Troy" but is referred to by others as "Brew", who shows up in another issue.

Among the new generation, there's "Win" Winfield, whose older brother is part of the same prep-school dipshits as Jennings, Rad Stiles, the aggressive dickhead of the cast, Buster Thomas, the scientist who devised the updated version of the armor, where the power boost circuitry is actually wired under their skin, and Saleh/Silver, a former DEA agent and St. James' estranged daughter. Plus, the three kids up there (from left to right, Jamal, Alyce and Kevin, although Jamal is sometimes white and sometimes black, depending on the issue), who found an old Web base when Big Daddy used it after stopping a theft in the first issue.

That's too many characters! Especially when we're told, in issue #2, only one of them was intended to be the actual "Web" that was out in the field, in public. Double-especially when they're crossing over with the other titles, or devoting pages to guest-stars. Buster teams up with The Fly in issue 5, the (3rd) Shield guest-stars in issue 12, and The Fly, the Comet, and a third hero get suckered into attacking Web in issue 9. Plus, the last two issues are written by Paul Kupperberg, listed as "guest writer," so he brought in yet another old agent (up to then unmentioned) for his own story.

As a result, the book feels overstuffed and directionless. Plots or character arcs make little progress. Some characters get basically nothing. Issue 8 implies Winfield's desperate to prove himself after being compared unfavorably to his brother all these years. That doesn't jibe with his behavior up to then, where he seemed content to stand back and let others lead. Nothing's ever done with the tension between Silver and her father, beyond the initial argument that shows it exists. "Jump" has one run-in with a UFO, this time with working armor, but it ends inconclusively and he doesn't tell anyone about it or try to get any help. I couldn't tell you a thing about Rad or Gunny. Not likes, dislikes, motivations. Nothing.

The kids - who insist on being called "the Posse" - get one back-up story where Big Daddy tries to teach them how to drive some vehicles. While they don't crash, they're reckless enough he yells at them to stop after two pages. Also, O'Grady talks about maybe using them for undercover or intelligence gathering, but putting them in bright yellow armor on loud vehicles, while likely to increase their life expectancy (at least the armor part) doesn't seem great for that purpose. At least the kids negotiated themselves $25/month in pay, which is $25 more than they were initially being offered.

Generally, the focus is on O'Grady, Sunshine, Big Daddy, and Buster. O'Grady struggling with an administrative role and chomping at the bit to do fieldwork instead. He never really sorts that out, never gets better at handling Jennings' particularly irritating brand of making unreasonable demands, then blaming O'Grady when they backfire. Sunshine spends a lot of time making remarks that are supposed to be sage or clever and pretending to kind of be above the fray, but it's Kupperberg who comes closest to addressing the flaws in that, as the laidback attitude lets a former agent who built his rep on a lie get put in charge of peoples' lives. There could have been something for Big Daddy, training the kids, but again, that got almost no page time. Thomas is a scientist by trade, who submitted to the procedure she developed after early attempts went badly. She isn't supposed to feel very confident using the armor, but that only crops up intermittently.

Maybe the plan was always for the "1 agent" bit to get thrown out by circumstances, but that could have been something to make better use of such a bloated cast. Have a real sense the characters are competing with each other to be that "1 agent", and the negative impact that has. Maybe Buster shifts towards tech support, coming up with new gadgets for the armor, or Sunshine sticks strictly with training. Some characters wash out, or maybe "Jump" vanishes pursuing his vendetta against the aliens.

Tom Artis draws the first six issues, then guest pencilers for three issues, then Hoang Nguyen for three issues, and Barry Horne draws Kupperberg's two-parter. I'm not sure Artis' art was suited to such a crowded book. His art looks alright in the larger panels, but once he has to cram more characters in, or the panel space shrinks, things get messy and disorganized. His art always looks very busy to me, a lot of small lines and hatch marks on faces and clothes, though I guess that could be Wray's inks. With room to operate, like a full-page splash, it's fine. In the 5th panel of a 6-panel page, with 4 characters involved, not so much. The coloring also overwhelms the linework at times, rendering characters indistinct blobs.

Nguyen fares better, at least once Mike DeCarlo starts inking in issue 11. The previous issue, the linework alternates between almost disappearing and giving characters oddly exaggerated mouths. DeCarlo seems to use a thinner line, but it's a stronger one. The characters are solid, distinct. The action is clear and easy to follow. Just in general, it's less busy-looking, but it's also an issue that focuses heavily on just Silver and how she ended up with Web, so there's not as many people in mass-produced armor running around at one time.

The book's also plagued by miscommunication between writer and art team. Panels that don't show what the dialogue implies is there. In several of those cases, it's like there's a one-panel delay between dialogue and art, the latter running behind the former. It's worst in the guest penciler issues from 7 through 9, so maybe it was a time crunch thing. There's a page of a fight in issue 8, a 9-panel grid, that's a complete mess of dialogue that doesn't seem to match the action. There's no flow to anything, to the point I'm not sure if you're supposed to read down the columns or across the rows, because it doesn't really work either way.

Taken as a whole, it's by far the weakest of the core six titles.

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 #235

"Out of the Box," in West of Sundown #1, by Tim Seeley and Aaron Campbell (writers), Jim Terry (artist), Triona Farrell (color artist), Crank! (letterer)

Dooley O'Shaughnessy's an Irish immigrant deeply regretting getting involved in the American Civil War. As it's only 1861, he's got several years of it to go. Unless he dies in battle. Or happens to unearth a vampire who tried to sleep out the conflict in a grave.

Remarkable though the odds are, it's the third thing that happens, and Dooley spends the next decade as Constance der Abend's loyal assistant, helping her to slake her thirst on the corrupt or wicked. Robber barons, child killers, highwaymen, people like that. Until someone burns her home, and the native soil within her coffin, forcing Constance to return to the place of her birth. A town sits there now, Sangre de Moro, and it's home to its fair share of monsters.

The book ran 10 issues, split into 5-issue arcs, in 2022 and 2023. The first arc was Constance (or Rosa, as her birth name) trying to get some soil from where she was born, and finding her birthplace now home to some strange cult. She and Dooley are also pursued by Frankenstein's Monster and a creepy little scientist by the name of Griffin. The Monster found God and decided the Lord said kill monsters. Griffin just wants to dissect strange things in the hopes of unlocking the keys to something more.

In the second arc, the quartet have come to an uneasy detente, but new agents move into town at the behest of Dr. Moreau, and play to both Constance's ego (she was a renowned opera singer in New York before the flight west) and her thirst (she's trying to only feed on the evil, but the town is too small and lacking in such people.)

Seeley and Campbell pull in horror elements from a lot of sources. Unfortunately, most of them are ones I'm not familiar with, so any significance kind of whizzes right past me. I recognize Moreau selling the land he'd purchased to a brokerage in England run by a Renfield is a Dracula reference. That the "blind god" Griffin sees when he lets Moreau experiment on him is probably Lovecraftian. Maybe the grey little things roaming the wilderness that cry "ooot!" and have a paralytic tongue are (Canadian?) chupacabras. The fact Constance's father became a werewolf by eating part of the dog he killed trying to protect his wife and child (killing his wife in the process)? Don't get that. Is that a normal method of becoming a werewolf? I thought they had to bite you, not the other way around.

That's probably not an issue, other than I'm missing details. Seeley and Campbell establish that this or that constitutes a Problem, and the cast need to confront it. Terry and Farrell, who illustrate the entire series, keep the threats grounded and solid, only veering occasionally into something that hints at being beyond perception. Moreau's beast-people are basically human, just with animals parts stitched on here and there. But there's a banshee in the second arc, and her face is kept in shadow, save for her teeth, which gleam out of that darkness. In the first arc, the quartet pass through some weak point between dimensions and encounter something that's possessed a horse. Terry and Farrell channeled some strong Berni Wrightson for that creature.

The series really revolves around Constance and Dooley's relationship, and that's where I think it falls short. Not that it's a poorly set up relationship. Dooley feels grateful to Constance for helping him escape the war and educating him, but is growing increasingly uneasy at what he's part of. Constance likes Dooley, probably sees him as a bit of a wayward youth (he's an adult, but she's over 200, so it's a fair perspective) to guide and tease. She cares about him enough to mediate her hunger, but at the same time, resents him a little for his morality that constrains her.

The issue is, Seeley and Campbell leave a lot of things unresolved, or meat on the bone, if you prefer. The first arc turns on Dooley and the Monster, and to a lesser extent, Griffin, deciding to try and deal with this crazy cult leader who has his followers drinking the blood of Constance's father to try and ascend to some higher plane. Constance wants no part of it, until her father (who she claims to despise and want to see dead) points out she cares about Dooley. Then she turns around and shows up to help. Why then, due to words of someone she doesn't care about?

That isn't resolved by the second arc, when Dooley seems bent on trying to protect the citizens of Sangre de Moro from supernatural threats, but can't do much on his own. Even the Monster is limited. A lot of it falls to Constance, who still doesn't really care. Even with her native soil readily at hand, she needs blood, and desires praise from people she thinks are worth it. (Bit of a social climber.) When the eastern businessmen, Moreau's lackeys, show up, talking about bringing the railroad through town, which will mean more people, specifically more evil people, Constance is all ears. That they promise to build an opera house, praise her singing, only makes the offer sweeter.

But even if Constance acknowledges they played on her ego, and she should have listened to Dooley, the core problem is not resolved. Whether she continues to help Dooley with his defender of the night act or not, she's a vampire. She needs blood. Sangre de Moro is a pissant, backwater town in the middle of the desert. If she's going to willingly restrict her potential prey, she's going to starve. No solution is offered, not even Dooley occasionally opening a vein for her. The friction between Dooley's Christian morality, and the necessities of Rosa's existence, remain unaddressed.

(She comments once during their flight west, that if he can't find someone, she may have to feed on him. Dooley treats it as a joke. I don't think it was.)

Maybe if the book continued, they were going to address that, but it's been over 3 years, so I doubt anything is on the way. 

Saturday Splash Page #234

"Action Figure," in Wild Dog #2, by Max Collins (writer), Terry Beatty (penciler), Dick Giordano (inker), Michele Wolfman (colorist), John Workman (letterer)

Created by Max Collins and Terry Beatty in the late 1980s, when, as mentioned when we discussed The Punisher, the United States loved itself a guy who ran around shooting people who "deserved" it. OK, fine, the U.S. always loves a guy who runs around shooting people who "deserved" it. We're a fucked-in-the-head country.

Wild Dog was sort of a homemade, street-level vigilante. A guy who pulls together a costume from stuff you could buy in stores. Camo pants. A jersey with a local school mascot on it. A hockey mask. He drives around in a pickup truck. No specially modified battle van for Wild Dog! He does however, have a fair amount of guns, a bulletproof vest under the jersey, and a taser built into his glove.

(At one point, a character states Wild Dog's used existing tech to give himself capabilities rivaling Superman. I know they powered Supes down a bit post-Crisis on the Infinite Earths, but let's be real here. Wild Dog hasn't even given himself capabilities rivaling Booster Gold.)

Wild Dog started with a 4-issue mini-series in 1987, revolving around him fighting a, you could call them a terrorist, paramilitary, or revolutionary group depending on your perspective. The "Committee for Social Change" were operating in the Quad Cities area (which is in eastern Iowa/western Illinois, on the banks of the Mississippi River.) They decide to punctuate their statement about tearing down existing political and social systems via killing a bunch of honor roll students, or attacking a military arsenal to steal a bazooka that launches some powerful "fuel air bomb." In both cases, Wild Dog shows up and tears down their existing circulatory systems via some hot lead.

Running through the mini-series is the question of who is under the hockey mask. A local reporter who was rescued in the first issue pursues the mystery as a way to bolster her career, and a government agent suspects one of his three high school football pals - now a police lieutenant, a Pulitzer-winning journalist and an car repair shop owner, respectively - is the vigilante and wants him to work for the government. We get a little bit of their backstories and philosophies to see why he thinks this, and so we can make our own guess. But Collins plays it such that we're left wondering if maybe Mr. Agent Man, Graham Gault, is just trying to throw people off his trail.

The final issue settles the question, as we learn why Jack Wheeler turned to vigilantism and where he got the money to open his shop (and presumably, buy all these guns.) But we're left with the question of what his cop friend is going to do with the knowledge. Turn Jack in, or help him by feeding him info? It's a different approach, keeping the protagonist almost silent and anonymous through most of the story. His motivations only hinted or guessed at based on which suspect you think he is.

The approach does mean the final issue is almost entirely flashbacks that give us more details about Jack. If you figure the mystery of Wild Dog's identity was the most important part, then it's a suitable climax to go back to the very beginning, the detective laying out the sequence of events. If you were expecting a climactic confrontation with the remnants of the Committee, either as they make some final push towards a goal, or just try to eradicate Wild Dog before he does the same to him, it falls flat. I must fall into the second category, because I was underwhelmed by the final issue.

Wild Dog would go on to get a spot in Action Comics during the stretch where it was a weekly anthology title. With the identity mystery resolved, I assume his war on crime took prominence there. I haven't read those, but when Action Comics went back to being a monthly Superman book, Wild Dog got a final one-shot where he was targeted by a guy hired specifically to capture him on behalf of a crime family. Which he did, but the fine print ended up getting the crooks in the end.

I learned about Wild Dog because he got some play in the mid-2000s comics blogosphere. The makeshift costume and taciturn personality seemed to make him someone bloggers liked to point and gawk at. Geoff Johns used him briefly in Booster Gold, as part of the last bit of resistance - with Hawkman, Green Arrow, Pantha and Anthro - in the "bad" timeline where Booster keeps Ted Kord from getting his skull perforated by Max Lord. Spoiler alert: A guy with some Uzis doesn't last long against OMACs and a mind-controlled Superman. There was a version in the Arrow TV show, and I think another version in one of the lousy New 52 Suicide Squad books (I'm not going to look at any of those comics, or even my old reviews, to confirm that.)

Then Gerard Way used the Jack Wheeler, auto mechanic version, in Cave Carson has a Cybernetic Eye, as basically the one friend Cave had. Which was a curious choice, but I guess Way wanted someone who was both out of his depth in subterranean empires, yet largely unconcerned about it as long as he had something to shoot and something to shoot at.

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?

Saturday Splash Page #232

"Batter Up," in Yakuza Fiance ch.24, vol. 6, by Asuka Konishi

As far as I know, Yakuza Fiance isn't finished, but it's been over 18 months since volume 8 was released in the U.S., and I haven't seen a listing for volume 9 in months. So, rather than wait indefinitely. . .

Somei Yoshino is a high school student and granddaughter of Somei Renji, a major figure in the yakuza that dominate the Kansai region of Japan. Renji announces he's looking into Yoshino possibly marrying the grand-nephew of his old friend Miyama Gaku, a major figure in the largest yakuza org in eastern Japan. It's decided Yoshino will live at the Miyama house for a year and get to know this Kirishima.

What she gets to know is there's something off about him. He's a sadist, a masochist, hiding all that behind a polite facade until he gets bored and tells Yoshino she's too normal and boring too interest him and should just go into sex work. Or run home and report to her grandfather what he said so there'll be a turf war and Kirishima might get killed. Yoshino refuses to let herself lose to this guy, but in revealing her inner mettle, shows him a side of herself - read: violent - he finds incredibly appealing. Now he wants to marry her, while she finds him alternately infuriating and terrifying.

Yakuza Fiance is a weird reading experience, because I really like a lot of it. I like Yoshino, who is mostly very polite and even a little socially awkward, but has an explosive temper in the right circumstances. Plus, her hair sometimes covers one eye and I'm a sucker for that a lady with look. I like her childhood friend Shouma, who broods a lot, but has good banter with Yoshino and is generally a sarcastic smartass. Renji's goofball exterior is more of an act than Yoshino's, but it's still funny. Yoshino's friend Tsubaki is the kind of person who just loves drama, and will try to create it if it doesn't happen organically, but she legitimately cares for Yoshino and tries to help her.

There are some funny parts, and a fair amount of hand-to-hand fighting that Konishi depicts very cleanly and with a nice mixture of acrobatic moves and people just wailing on each other with whatever limb is available. There's a mystery Konishi's slowly been peeling back around the death of Yoshino's father, and some sort of internal power struggle in the Kansai crime families that I'm curious to see a resolution to, even if I don't understand all the relationships involved. So much of this book is enjoyable.

Just not half of the co-protagonists. I'm sure Konishi intends for Kirishima to be unsettling. Certainly in the first volume when he makes his abrupt shift in character, but I've never really stopped finding him unsettling. Even as Konishi shows how besotted Kirishima's become with Yoshino, or delves into Kirishima's past to show he's never been able to find someone that really understands him and what he wants, he still creeps me out. He's slipping tracking devices into Yoshino's electronic dictionary, or hacking her phone so he can follow her or track her social media.

And it's not like Yoshino doesn't tell him to stop. She does. Repeatedly. She gets new phones and he's immediately got the unlock code. She can't outmatch him physically, she's not smarter than he is, not savvier than he is, not luckier than he is. The only edge she's got is that he's apparently in love with her enough that she can maybe keep him in line, but, again, it's not like he does what she says all that often. He goes behind her back constantly, and while some of that is due to the real reason she's living with him (which is related to that mystery), I guess I don't expect that to change if the threat passes. 

Kirishima certainly seems dedicated to protecting her, but so does Shouma, who at least tends to keep Yoshino in the loop about what he's doing when it involves her. And yeah, Kirishima seems charming and pleasant towards her, hanging on her every word, but he acts that way to almost everyone, and that's all it is with those other people. An act. The same act he put on for Yoshino, until he got bored. He can say that won't ever happen, but given his whole personality, that's hard to take at face value. Tsubaki sees that he just agrees with whatever other people say, because he doesn't really care. He's just letting them talk, and most people are fine with that. Yoshino knows that he apologizes for things when she yells at him, but doesn't actually stop doing those things. What he says and what he means or does are wildly different.

It's weird, because I know I'm doomed to disappointment. There have been a few bonus chapters that show us glimpses of the future, and Yoshino and Kirishima are living together. This is, somehow, going to work out between them, and yet, I haven't stopped buying the series. The positives, thus far, have outweighed the negatives.

Saturday Splash Page #231

"Working Girl," in Zaya, by J.D Morvan (writer), Huang-Jia Wei (artist), Neurobellum Productions (letterer)

Zaya is a retired former agent of a covert group known as Spiral, now living out her days as an artist and mother to twin daughters. But you know how it goes, you're never all the way out. There's always one last job. Zaya gets dragged back in to help stop a killer that used to work for Spiral, and is now targeting them. The operation runs into dual problems of the police raiding the ship, and the killer being more resilient than Spiral expected. Zaya ends up killing him inside her own (sentient) ship, while trying to escape from the cops via hyperspace.

Except when she exits hyperspace, everything is wrong. Her kids are now her sister's, and her sister claims to have no sister. No one in Spiral knows her, or how she can find her way through their secret passages and back doors. The killer is married to Zaya's sister, and starts hunting her down. It's one of those stories where the expert brought out of retirement is betrayed, except Zaya wasn't actually betrayed, she just stumbled into a parallel universe. Which leads to a bizarre bit where she's being hunted by a guy while the same guy's corpse in rotting in her ship. Nothing really ends well.

It feels a lot longer than 4 years ago I reviewed this graphic novel, but the first time I mentioned it in one of my solicits posts was in 2020. Maybe that's why. It sat on my "to buy" list for a while before I found a copy cheap enough I'd go for it. But I also thought Zaya was about a former secret agent learning things about their past, and it's not that at all. Would I have bought it if I better understood what Morvan and Huang-Jia were working towards?

It almost feels like two stories crammed together. You have the hunt for the killer in his bizarrely puffy-looking power suit - it's like he's wearing a giant airbag that's already deployed - and people with cybernetic enhancements and the ability to connect themselves to computer systems via wires plugging in at the base of their skulls. Very Ghost in the Shell.

Zaya reprograms the mind of the ship she's provided, granting it free will in the hopes it'll choose to help and not report anything to the authorities. We're told this act essentially constitutes murder with regards to the initial ship mind, but the new version is totally OK with what Zaya did. No concerns, just happy to be free! Huang-Jia marks the difference by depicting the ship's initial projection of its mind as a rigid black rectangle, a miniature version of the doorway in 2001: A Space Odyssey. After, "Lia" (the name Zaya gives the ship) looks more like a floating mass of translucent tentacles.

(Between the highly organic look Lia's mind gets, and the streamlined and sculpted design of the spaceships, the bulky design of Siegram's power suit is all the stranger. You'd almost think he stumbled in from another universe that had a whole different design aesthetic.)

Then you get the whole parallel universe thing where Zaya can't figure out what's going on, and nobody can figure her out, either. Where you see how universes apparently repeat certain patterns, just with different players involved. Zaya didn't exist, but her twins still do, via her sister and the killer guy, Siegram, who in this world apparently got Zaya's life. Recruited off the streets, trusted bodyguard, partially retired when he becomes a parent. As for the twins existing in both universes, that's because Siegram is apparently the father in both universes, it's just that in Zaya's case, Crazy Killer Siegram assaulted her in a cloakroom, while Retired Bodyguard Siegram wooed and married Carmen.

(The bit about Zaya getting assaulted is a sudden flashbulb she gets in the middle of a fistfight with Retired Bodyguard Siegram. Doesn't get much weight, more like Movran figured out late in the story he needed something to explain the twins existing in both universes despite different mothers, and that was the best he could manage.)

Also, kind of strange Lia was so excited about being free, but agrees to help Siegram take Zaya to a government agency that wants to use people who drifted in from other universes to try and explore the phenomenon. So the government can exploit it, naturally. It's a life of indentured servitude, for both of them. When Lia had interior guns that could absolutely kill Siegram. Then dump his body (and the first corpse) and just run for it. Instead, we got a distinctly unsatisfying ending.

Saturday Splash Page #230

"Cubicle Zombie," in Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead, vol. 1, ch. 1, by Haro Aso (writer), Kotaro Takata (artist)

Akira Tendo's a 24-year-old, in his third life-sucking year working for an ad company. Pulling multiple all-nighters, putting in hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime, getting screamed at by his boss, pining after the cute secretary that's sleeping with the CEO on the side. He staggers through days, deep bags under his eyes, barely aware of his surroundings, sleeping among the garbage of whatever quick ramen he ate for dinner at 3 a.m. He might as well be dead.

Then the zombie apocalypse happens, and the complete collapse of modern civilization means Akira doesn't have to go to work any more. He can clean his apartment, enjoy beer, confess his feelings to the cute secretary (who is already a zombie, but oh well.)

Surely though, there's more to do than that? Gradually accepting the notion of his mortality, and that, given the circumstances, it's a more immediate concern than usual, Akira makes himself a bucket list. Though he can only come up with 33 things initially, as he gathers more people to his little group, they start adding to the list.

The 19th volume was released in the U.S. last month, but I stopped after 6. Haro Aso had put together a decent group of 4 characters between Akira, his best friend Kencho, the conscientious and cautious Shizuka, and Beatriz, the German who just loves everything related to Japan. The bucket list concept lent itself to ridiculous adventures, like trying to deliver fish to a sushi chef, or apparently traveling into space in recent volumes. 

Kotaro Takata's pretty good at drawing rotting zombies, and especially when things need to get a little weird. Like volume 2's zombie shark that, thanks to all the zombie humans it swallowed whole, can now move around on land. Because the zombie human's are standing up and their legs extended through the shark's rotting stomach. The art leans a little heavy on the cheesecake, even if you allow for the notion the story is mostly from Akira's perspective and he's single and wants not to be ("meet the woman of my dreams" is item 33 on his list.)

I feel like that's a trend growing steadily worse in most manga, so it isn't exclusive to Zom 100, and it isn't something that, on its own, would cause me to drop the book. Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General is a lot worse in that regard, and I've kept up with it through 12 volumes, and fully intend to buy the 13th. So why'd I let this book go? Partly, I didn't want to commit to a series that long. 

But also, I think the post-apocalypse thing interests me in terms of what people do to survive (I wrote a little about it 11 years ago.) And the whole point of Zom 100 is, you could die any time. You can't content yourself to worry strictly about survival, you have to try and enjoy life. All the characters seem to have dreams of some sort - Kencho would like to be a stand-up comedian, Shizuka really wants to be a doctor - and I assume they pursue those amid all the zany adventures and fleeing zombies. Which is a good philosophy, but ultimately runs contrary to what I was looking for. Going to a casino to win big was not a thing I could picture someone deciding to do in a zombie apocalypse, even allowing for Akira and Kencho kind of being idiots.

Saturday Splash Page #229

"Another of Iron Man's Drunk Monologues," in What If? (vol. 1) #9, by Don Glut (writer), Alan Kupperberg (breakdowns), Bill Black (finishes/inker), Carl Gafford (colorist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer)

These days, Marvel pumps out What Ifs every few years, usually built around the notion that one of their various Big Events would turn out differently. I didn't want to read those events the first time around, so an alternative version isn't much interest to me.

Before that, there was the '90s volume, that ran for 115 issues and was usually about some event or another going differently. Inferno, Atlantis Attacks, The Evolutionary War. Even back then, and even with the writers making sure to explain what was different, I usually didn't care. The big summer events tended to run through the Annuals, and I usually didn't buy those, so they didn't matter much to me. Most of them could best be described as "rocks fall, everybody dies." Marvel Earth, and sometimes the entire universe, always just one hairsbreath away from total annihilation, apparently. 

The second volume did introduce "Mayday" Parker, aka Spider-Girl, so that's one thing it's got going for it.

Before that, the first volume ran for 47 issues across 7 years. I own two of those; besides the issue above, there's #45, by David Anthony Kraft and Ron Wilson, where the gamma bomb explosion links Rick Jones and Banner's minds, and when Rick dies from the radiation, the Hulk goes berserk. Considering the issue costs us half the Fantastic Four and 40% of the original Avengers line-up, you could probably file it under "rocks fall, everybody dies," too. It's fun to break the toys sometimes.

And then there's this issue, where the notion for Agents of Atlas started, which Iron Man showing off some "dimensional transporter" he built that lets them spy on other timelines and worlds. Yes, 30 years before Civil War, Iron Man was invading your privacy under a flimsy pretext. Basically, Jimmy Woo puts together a team to protect (and rescue, when protecting fails) President Eisenhower from Yellow Claw.

The roster is different from what Parker and Kirk would use. 3-D Man's in there (though Parker would eventually add the current 3-D Man/former Triathlon in the very short-lived Atlas series), and while Namora leads them to M-11 (not given a name here, much chattier), she begs off to search for Namor. Who is, presumably, roaming the streets of New York as a bum, waiting for Johnny Storm to singe his beard off. Marvel Boy convinces Gorilla Man to come along by promising to search for a way to make him human again with Uranian science, because Ken's too afraid to even be on the same continent as his wife. The wife who ridiculed his visions of a gorilla?

Glut (or Roy Thomas, since this was his concept, shocking, I know, that Roy Thomas plumbed the depths of forgotten comics history) tries to draw parallels between the characters chosen and the ones Iron Man invited to his little picture show. Gorilla Man and Beast, M-11 and Vision, Venus and Thor, Marvel Boy and Iron Man, 3-D Man and Captain America. The '50s group even call themselves "Avengers", albeit with the absolutely terrible battlecry, "Go, Avengers, Go." Like, holy shit, I'd be embarrassed to shout that and charge into battle. I'd rather yell "SPOOOOOON!" than "Go, Avengers, Go."

Some of them feel like a stretch - 3-D Man's presented as a cocky asshole who likes to wind up Gorilla Man with comments about his smell, which just screams "Hawkeye" - and I can't decide whether Thomas and Glut picked the '50s cast to conform to a current Avengers roster, and that's why Namora didn't stick around, or those were just the Golden Age characters they wanted to use, and they picked Avengers to match.

Also of note, Woo brings them together, it's his arch-foe that's the mastermind behind the plot, he's the one that tracks the villains after they escape with the President, but he doesn't really get acknowledged as part of the team. There's no one pointed to as his parallel among the Avengers. I think Parker makes him the Captain America of the Agents, the driving force that unites them, with enough courage and skill this disparate bunch will follow his lead.