Saturday Splash Page #123

 

"Under the Boardwalk," in Steeple #8, by John Allison (writer/artist/letterer) and Sammy Borras (color artist)

This entry in John Allison's ongoing attempt to give me an even more skewed (albeit more positive) impression of England than Midsomer Murders has starts with Bilinda (or Billie) Baker's appointment as the new curate to the church in Tredregyn (which I am never able to spell without double-checking first).

Unfortunately, the Reverend Penrose is less interested in tending to his flocks' spiritual concerns, and more focused on cleaving the skulls of the wannabe Swamp Things that keep emerging from the sea. She does make a fast friend in Maggie Warren, except Maggie is a member of the local Satanist church. Well, opposites attract, or so 9 million fanfic writers keep telling me.

Or maybe opposites keep each other at a distance where their opposing polarities and gravitational pulls are in equilibrium, resulting in a dance around a barycenter, because Billie switches to the Satanists, while Maggie ends up staying in the rectory and sort of taking on curate duties for Penrose, although his housekeeper Mrs. Clovis handles most of it.

There's a mixture of shorter plots while more longterm arcs build in the background. Penrose may be dealing with increasing attacks of the creatures from the deep one week, a bunch of horny witches holding a convention the next, or some doofuses wanting to install wind turbines as a way to commune with God.

Meanwhile, you've got Penrose slowly crumbling under the guilt of the death of Billie's predecessor, two rival Satanist churches - one Billie's part of, and another run by Maggie's scumbag British lord of a father - circling like vultures. Maggie's trying to sort out what kind of person she is and wants to be, while Billie's adapting to the reality of praying to Belial and the risks that entails. It's great when it gets you money to pay rent, but there's always consequences for such things.

More supernatural bent to the plots or no, Allison still ends most pages with some clever line or dry comment. His art isn't overly detailed, but when he needs to emphasize the opulence of a room, or the sleaziness of a "sesh gremlin", he can do it. He keeps the characters on-model, but again, exaggerates as needed. If Billie and Maggie are really hungover, he can skew the proportions or angles on their surroundings, or play up Penrose's size and grim visage when he's doing his "avenger of the night" stuff.

Laughter Counts as a Higher Power, Right?

Look, lady. You can't do that with your own work. It takes the fun away from the fans with too much time on our, I mean, their hands.

The 3rd volume of John Allison's Steeple, subtitled "That's the Spirit!", covers a lot of ground, mixing between silly one-off adventures and stories that are setting things up for future developments. Billie is still a priestess in the local Satanist church, while Maggie is living in Billie's old place alongside the reverend, though I doubt Maggie is considered a curate.

After the two leads manage to keep a drunken enabler of a foul spirit from ruining Christmas with Mrs. Clovis (the reverend's housekeeper/caretaker), it's time for a crossover. Shelly Winters, who Esther helped get into publishing children's books in the pages of Giant Days, shows up in Tredregyn for a book signing and is abducted by creatures of the deep who regard one of her books as holy writ for the raising of their dark god. Shelly's emergency contact is Charlotte Grote, the top teen detective (ages 15-18) from Wicked Things, who teams up with the Billie and Reverend Penrose to locate Shelly.

Mostly, it's Charlotte being befuddled about what is going on with this town, which is a nice alternative perspective. Even Billie seemed to adapt rather quickly, although her levels of good cheer are probably acting like beer goggles. Although it's funny in itself that switching to Satanism hasn't altered her fundamental personality. She explains to Charlotte that her thing, so far as Satanism goes, is non-judgmental humanist community outreach and I think I just broke out in hives. Or maybe that's poison ivy.

It's all over relatively quickly and with no harm done, so long as the crap Shelly scribbled won't actually raise an elder god. Never can tell with those things. Guest stars having successfully survived and larked off to whatever story Allison next uses them in, he turns to the question of Billie's drained bank account. A prayer to Baphomet gets Tredregyn used as the setting for what seems very much like Midsomer Murders after a big and unexpected storm wrecks Devon. Certainly Midsomer Murders matches Penrose's description of all the priests being milksops or murderers, although with the history of religious conflict in England I'm hardly surprised. Either knuckle under to the shift in churches or getting to killin' in the name of your God, right?

In the midst of that, Penrose has to deal with some sort of shaggy creature laying eggs underneath the docks, while Maggie's father invites her home for a celebration. Of the two, the dad is a much bigger problem, and looks set to be one moving forward. He might serve as a focus to unite the disparate forces in town against him, except the Reverend Tom of the local Satanist church is making his own plans that will probably mess with Penrose but good. 

It feels like Allison's building to Penrose realizing he's got to be an inspirational figure to the townsfolk, rather than skulking about in the shadows punching mermen. Essentially the lesson Robert Pattinson's version of Bruce Wayne had to learn in that recent The Batman movie. Either that or Penrose steps away from the church and Billie unites both churches with her as vicar/high priestess/whatever you'd call an Anglican Satanist.

Allison's writing is much better than that movie's, however. Certainly funnier. His pages almost always end with some gag or visual joke, and more of them land than not. Whether that's Billie leveraging her being announced as a "priestess to watch" in Sex Magick magazine, or the "sesh gremlin" disliking feeling judged when the girls rebuff his offer of another drink.

What I Bought 1/27/2020

It was weirdly cold yesterday. Yeah, it was January, but for there being no wind to speak of, it felt a lot colder than the low 30 degree temperature it supposedly was. Maybe due to it being cloudy all day. That's your one day late mid-western U.S. weather forecast. In other news, two comics, both wrapping up their current stories.

Steeple #5, by John Allison (writer/artist), Sarah Stern (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - As Jimbo once noted when speaking of the Devil, there is a man who has eaten a lot of meat. I'm pretty sure that South Park episode is over 20 years old now, and I'm depressed.

The Reverend is away trying to find himself, and Mrs. Clovis is gradually concluding Billie might not be terrible. Then Billie offers to vacuum so Mrs. Clovis can have a day off, but the witches that were paid to resurrect the vacuum, really just put a hex on it to make the user doubt their calling. Meaning Billie questions what she's doing in the Church. Maggie is having similar doubts about being a Satanist, so they essentially switch places. Which is probably for the temporary best, since the mermen have decided to attack in force, and Maggie motorcycle was a more effective weapon than whatever Billie would have brought to the party.

And that's where things stand. Billie's in with the orgies and whatnot, Maggie's on the outs with Master Tom (although I wonder if Brian would still be her friend), and may form a reluctant friendship with Reverend Penrose and Mrs. Clovis. If the book ever continues. I like the idea of people feeling like they aren't supposed to be a certain way, or feeling as though what they're doing is getting them nowhere, and trying to be something else. And that it isn't always easy to maintain that change. If it's not something you really want to be, or be doing, it's hard to convince yourself to continue.

The flashback to Maggie's previous life as a protestor of most everything cracked me up. I think she needs to change up the pattern on her signs, though. Don't let it get to where people can predict the cadence, that lets their eyes and ears glaze over.

Infinity 8 #18, by Emmanuel Guibert and Lewis Trondheim (writers), Franck Biancarelli (artist) - Trees with teeth are not something to be approached. Not without a flamethrower. Yes, they're in the vacuum of space, so obviously I meant a space flamethrower.

Leila and Bert find the central console so Bert can talk to the memories of dead people. They quickly get sidetracked because the sentient fungus thing attached part of itself to their ship and is taking over the central console. They flee, they meet the aliens responsible for this whole place. The aliens state they did gather these corpses from across the universe, and construct a device to give them access to those species accumulated knowledge, but it's purely academic. Then they're destroyed while trying to stop the fungus thing. At least they gave Leila and Bert a shuttle first. So, mission complete, time to leave, right? Well, not exactly, because when Leila tried to look up Bert, he noticed there was a coffin with him inside already there. There's still a mystery afoot.

Well, I figured they were going to miss meeting the architects of all this, but that wound up not being the case. Instead, it's that the architects are lying to them. Which isn't surprising, really. If someone found you hoarding dead bodies from all over the place, I doubt you would explain exactly why you were doing so. Especially if there wasn't a compelling need to do so.

It's amazing how much less imposing the Captain of the Infinity 8 looks when he's presented as a small holographic projection, rather than his true form in his giant aquarium chamber thing. He looks kind of silly. I like that the fungus creature's look evolved from where it was last issue. Granted, that look is now more Groot-like, but it has eyes now, a more expressive face. It actually swings its arms as it walks, instead of letting them hang limp beside it as it did before.

What I Bought 12/20/2019 - Part 1

Nothing like 60 degree weather two days before Christmas. Entirely normal! Although my dad's ecstatic. He said over the weekend he'd like a solid six months of this. Sounds a little boring to me. besides, if the ground hadn't been wet from last week's 6+ inches of snow, excavating the pipe that runs to his sewage lagoon would have been a real pain.

Sera and the Royal Stars #5, by Jon Tsuei (writer), Audrey Mok (artist), Raul Angulo (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - Nothing much, just a blue skinned lion man with a lightning sword.

Regulus emerges and tries to take control of Sera to fight the dragon person chasing them. It doesn't go very well, as Sera and Regulus seem to be in dispute about who is running the show. The rest of the Stars are trying to reach a bridge in the realm of the dead where Sera can pull them back into the realm of the living. They're having their own problems with the other of the two dragons, plus some giant swamp deity thing, that really wants Sera's soul. Or just hates all the Stars, because they attack both sides.

Our heroes escape, but there's a lot of disagreement. Regulus wants Sera to leave her physical body behind, because it limits his power. Sera wants to return and rescue her family from her uncle, while the Stars insist she help them. Which is really the issue here. At no point did Sera want to be involved in this. Mithra forcibly placed Regulus inside her, basically threatened with visions of doom if Sera didn't help. As a result, Sera wasn't there when her family's kingdom fell, and her brother died. The Stars basically poo-poo that, a necessary sacrifice for a greater cause. Yeah, saving their asses. That's allegedly going to help humanity somehow, but that could be a lie. Deities have been known to lie for their own benefit, just like humans. And what does it even mean that time isn't going to flow properly if the Stars aren't awakened?

No, that's actually something I'm curious about, because I'm not at all clear what will happen in concrete terms if Sera doesn't succeed. It can't be anything too terrible, because her mother was supposed to complete the quest, failed, and yet, life continues.

I don't know what the deal is with that one river deity or whatever it is, but I like Mok's design for it. The stringy seaweed hair, the patches of moss or barnacles growing here and there. Brackish water seems to drip from it constantly, like a waterlogged sponge. The character designs for this series have been great. The fight scenes were brief, but we see a little bit of what each of the Stars can do, how their abilities and skill sets differ.

Now the book is on a break until February, and we'll see where things go from there.

Steeple #4, by John Allison (writer/artist), Sarah Stern (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - I ended up with the variant cover, which makes Witchfest look like either a street carnival, or a cosplay convention.

Billie foolishly agrees to volunteer for Witchfest. She even signed in blood, which is just damn foolish. Billie ends up enjoying herself, as this apparently lets her reconnect with her ill-spent youth. I'm assuming she and Maggie may have gotten freaky during some big midnight thing that was going on. Although "Walk of Shame" could have a different connotation for a curate in the Anglican Church. Reverend Penrose has a bad night, as he's captured by a witch who. . . steals his pants. This leaves him feeling rather embarrassed, so he takes a sabbatical, confident Billie can handle things with her community involvement. And Mrs. Clovis may have enlisted a witch to resurrect her nice vacuum cleaner. Well, Billie knows how to break vacuums, so there's nothing to worry about.

The part where all the witches are swapping legends about Penrose is pretty funny. Especially the panel where it looks like he strolled in direct from a cover shoot for some bodice ripper romance novel. Still wearing his white collar, natch. Billie's repeated frustration as people accuse of her off being a temptress or whatever. Well Billie, you don't act much like people expect a woman of the cloth to behave.

There's one issue left, and I have no idea what's going to happen. Part of me thinks there'll be a need for punching, and Penrose will have to step in, but I could see him not bothering to come back. Or he comes back because Billie switched teams to Satanism and he has to train Maggie as a new curate. Everyone keeps suggesting she's just trying to convince herself and everyone else she's wicked, which leaves me wondering why. Maybe we'll find out something about that. Or maybe not.

What I Bought 11/20/2019 - Part 3

It's a day for John Allison books, which is good. But that also means it's time for me to say so long to Giant Days! That's bad. But it comes with a free Frogurt! That's good. I was lying, there is no Frogurt. That's bad. Or maybe it's good? I liked frozen yogurt when I was a kid, but I'm not sure that's the same as Frogurt exactly.

Steeple #3, by John Allison (writer/artist), Sarah Stern (color artist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - Did someone play Stairway to Heaven?

All the townspeople are united in their distaste of the incoming wind turbines, which are being installed by a company run by a pair of former Christian musicians. It's bad enough the Satanists and the Church unite. Granted, the Church is because Reverend Penrose fears they're trying to use the latent energy in the area to open a small doorway to Heaven, which will probably not remain small. The Satanists just hated having giant crucifixes outside their windows. As it turns out, the ecological issues related to wind turbines apparently piss the Lord off, so it doesn't work. In the aftermath, Billie is concerned she's not godly enough, while Maggie is worried about the opposite.

I'm surprised Magus Tom wears a collar like a reverend. Or at least that he'd wear it backwards, with the white part in the rear. Or, given this guy, the collar would probably be wrapped around something other than his neck. They guy tries to commit to the evil thing. Loves to tent his fingers like Mr. Burns, leans forward in anticipation a lot. The pink sweater is a nice touch. Again, not what I'd expect, especially given how Brian and Maggie dress like they're attending a metal concert. Just goes to show you can't judge by appearances. Well, you can probably judge a little bit by Tom's upside-down crucifix.

As to Billie's concerns, trying to figure out what God wants of you seems like a sucker bet, but that's probably why I'm not in the religion business. I assume the mistake is that she's worrying about, rather than just doing what she thinks is right. Or maybe she's spending too much time worrying about trying to convert Maggie? I don't know. I'm not really sure how that friendship is going to play out. If Maggie will abandon her faith, or Billie just accepts it as part of who Maggie is, or what. I'm assuming there will not be some dramatic fistfight for all the theological marbles between the two.

Giant Days: As Time Goes By, by John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Whitney Cogar (color artist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - There's 10 more empty wine glasses just out of sight.

Esther is on thin ice with Daisy and especially Susan because she keeps missing their monthly get-togethers. Because she can't say no to the two creepy assistants to the boss at the publishing company. She gets away in a last-ditch move, but they pursue her because. . . they're assholes? Succubi? They manage to multiply and hitting them with a bus didn't do much, so perhaps their televangelists. Fortunately, Esther knows about curses, and McGraw had an. . . unusually large key.

It's an interesting mix of circumstances. Esther seems miserable personally and professionally. It's curious that she's doing so badly at making friends, but I guess her time at university started poorly, too. Daisy's on Cloud 9, as things are going well with Saffron, which I didn't expect. Susan wants to do more amputations, but work is otherwise good, and she and McGraw were doing well, until she found out he was forgoing career advancement to stay close to her. Which pissed her off, because she's a cat, apparently. Ed's finding the world of banking about as exciting as I figured he would, but I don't know if he and Nina are still together.

God, the Cressidas' faces just look so bizarre. Like a particularly untalented child trying to approximate a human face using a bedpan as a model. Which is great! Makes them look fake and weird and plastic, which they are. They way they hang over Esther, invade her personal space -and it's always them trapping her between the two of them - try to drag her wherever they want. Susan's boiling fury at them is wonderful. I'm going to miss Max Sarin drawing this book so much.

I don't know what Esther's going to end up doing. If she reverts to college Esther, something, rash, impractical, and distinctly unwise. But that would be entertaining, even if it becomes a train wreck. I wonder if we'll see the outcome tangentially in some other book of Allison's down the line?

What I Bought 10/25/2019

I'm pretty sad to see Deadspin is quite possibly in its death throes, because the vulture capitalists shitheads running either don't know what the fuck they're doing, or don't care. Still, I like that, after telling the writers to "stick to sports", the writers turned around and posted about appropriate types of wedding attire and the good dogs they met while in Mexico. Go down swinging if you can.

Unrelated, I just figured out the Properties option for the images is how I can have alt text for the images I post. Damnit, I could have been working more stupid attempts at jokes into these posts for months now! I'm just going to use it for the scanned images I add, though. No sense going overboard.

Sera and the Royal Stars #4, by Jon Tsuei (writer), Audrey Mok (artist), Raul Angulo (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - I assume that's supposed to be an eye glowing yellow, but it looks like a mouth.

Sera and the two Stars, plus the guy on the cover, named Formalhaut, continue their journey through the underworld, trying to find a way out. Given they are being pursued by the mysterious people in purple robes, they decide to take the risk of asking the Council of the Dead, who are not ecstatic at all these other gods and a live human hanging around. But they also won't intervene when the purple-robed folks start a fight while Sera tries to dream their way out of here. And while she's trying to manage that, there's something inside her demanding to be let loose. I don't think it's the Spirit of the Dance, but you never know.

I figure these five issues have to just be the start of something larger, because I can't really see how this whole thing is going to be resolved with one issue to go. Especially not when Antares is making reference to 'great battle to come' that all the stars were supposed to take part in. Plus, it seems Sera's mother isn't actually dead, which raises the question of where she is, and why she didn't finish this quest. Is Sera being duped, is awakening the Royal Stars a mistake for humanity? Aldebaran mentions that, from their perspective at least, all life on Earth exists because Ra, the Sun, dreamed them into existence. If you awaken someone and you're a function of their dream, will you vanish?

I like the variety of underworlds, representing various belief systems. I don't which one involves caves with giant mushrooms, Luigi and Mario's perhaps, but it looks like a cool place to visit. Certainly wouldn't want to spend eternity there, though. The design for the creatures that attack Dream Sera are interesting. Flowers that come to life, but insectlike appendages formed out of the petals as needed. Creepy thing to have chasing you while you look for a bridge, that's for sure.

Steeple #2, by John Allison (writer/artist), Sarah Stern (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - I actually got the variant cover, because it was in the front of the stack of copies. Plus it looks like the Reverend is fighting a couple of Swamp Things, which I think means Mike Sterling is legally compelled to buy this.

Billie decides she's not leaving after what she learned last issue, but she's not down with the monster punching. She's going to do community outreach, but hits a snag at convincing dissolute teens to take an interest. Until, after a chat with Maggie, she convinces them cleaning up litter will really stick it to their rival in Boscastle.

These have got to be pretty stupid teenagers to fall for that. Then it starts raining and the two muck creatures emerge from the sea. The Reverend's having a little trouble fighting his, but Billie has somehow had a pleasant conversation with the one that followed her and the trash patrol to the church. The Reverend's not ready to buy into the power of friendship, and Billie's not prepared for what goes on at the Church of Satan. 'Wow. This place is certainly quite. . . orgy forward.' is a heck of an observation. There are a lot of funny lines in this, which is not a shock if you've read Giant Days. Really, as tempting as it for me to just list dialogue that made me laugh, you should just go buy the comic yourself. You'll probably laugh harder that way.

Allison's art style always looks kind of simple to me, but it works. There's enough range each character is easily identifiable. Different body types, clothing styles, helps to make them memorable. Well, I suppose Billie and the Reverend dress the same, but that's unavoidable given their profession, and they don't look or act similar at all, so it's not an issue. Billie has those big round glasses, which somehow make her eyes look even bigger. You'd think since she so often has a wide-eyed, shocked expression, the size of the glasses would make her eyes look smaller in comparison. I guess they're large enough compared to the rest of her face to counteract that. I'm actually very impressed by how Mrs. Clovis can manage to scowl in so many different ways. There's one page she scowls in every panel, but it always looks slightly different. That must take a lot of practice.

What I Bought 9/18/2019 - Part 2

Fall is this typically slow time at work, at least in the office. Which is good motivation to get out in the field and do inspections. Plus, if it actually decides to act like fall, the weather is delightful. I love fall so much more than summer or winter.

Anyway, we were bored enough Monday to read through an appeal filed on a decision our director made and there's a paragraph where they discuss "hoe-ramming" as a method of dropping pillars holding up the ceiling of an old underground mine. In the next paragraph they spelled it "ho-ramming" and we've been making jokes about that all week.

Steeple #1, by John Allison (writer/artist), Sarah Stern (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - Can hardly blame her for not picking up two hitchhikers on her motorcycle, especially when one is a giant man with a cow skull for a head. And his cloak would certainly get caught in her wheels.

Billie (the brunette on the cover) is a trainee priest sent to assist Reverend Penrose in the town of Tredregyn, which has reputation for being a land of horrors and boogedies. Her car bursts into flames as she reaches town limits, but the other lady on the cover, Maggie does give her a ride into town. Maggie also works at a local pub, and according to Billie's new boss, is a servant of the devil. Which, considering the reverend spends every evening fighting supernatural horrors is more literal than is typical. Unless that eyeball creature he was trying to cast into the sea was just some dude in a spooky mask. In which case the Reverend and Billie may be murderers. That's probably not the case, though.

'Stop ambushing the bereaved! That's not the Church of England way!' cracked me up. I wonder at how accurate that is, though.

So this could go a lot of ways. Penrose looks like he's running on fumes, but doesn't believe Billie is cut out for this work, her handy use of vacuums as a weapon aside. But I'm unclear how much of what I'd consider more typical church work Penrose does, which is what Billie seems eager to do. Meet the community, help them with the love of God or whatever. So does Billie prove she's more able to fight than the reverend suspects? Or does she befriend Maggie and bring down the devil worshipers from within? Or maybe she rallies the community to the reverend's aid and they help him fend off eldritch horrors? Or does Maggie convince Billie Penrose is off his nut and turns her around? It's the first issue, possibilities abound.

It's interesting that everyone except Billie and Maggie are drawn with shadows under their eyes. Granting Billie is younger than everyone else, and I'm unclear on whether Maggie is an older woman, has gone grey early, or dyes her hair, but most of the locals are frazzled, or worn, or just aged. Not exactly an easy life up in North Cornwall I guess. Penrose reminds me a little of Old Man Bruce Wayne from Batman Beyond. Probably the scowling and black clothing that does, but especially in the scene where he first meets Billie he has that tired, slumped shoulder look. He's trying to stand straight up, but the energy isn't there anymore. Also, I'm curious to see Allison draw more strange beasties, just to see what designs he comes up with.