What I Bought 6/30/2025 - Part 1

With the 4th of July coming up, this is the last short work week I get for a couple of months. Unless I want to burn some leave. Which might not be a bad idea if I could get to a point I wasn't going to dread all the shit waiting when I returned.

Alright, jumping right into the remainder of last month's books, starting with two final issues.

Fantastic Four #33, by Ryan North (writer), Cory Smith (penciler), Wayne Faucher (inker), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Reed's already the tallest character on the cover, but he's just gotta emphasize the point, doesn't he?

The FF build a time machine to go back to the creation of the universe, where there were a lot of cosmic rays, so Ben can get dosed and become the Thing again. Except it's an extremely hostile environment, and their powers are fading, and they need someone quick to control the ship. Which requires upgrading HERBIE to do the job, and he's happy to do it, even if the panel where he confirms it makes the FF and their kids all look vaguely sinister.

I assume it's just the layout of the panel, the extreme upward angle designed to make HERBIE the prominent focus while surrounded by all these taller characters, but it does look a bit like a scene from a horror film, where the clueless outsider accepts the offer of a place of honor at the big festival "dinner", and it turns out they're on the menu.

Anyway, they make it to the dawn of time, Ben gets dosed, but the ship falls apart too fast. With his upgrades, HERBIE's able to try and recalculate to just send himself and the FF back, sans ship, watch the energy levels fall too fast for that, and recalculate to send them back without him. Resulting in his getting torn apart in a storm of antimatter and heated plasma. But the upgrades were apparently enough for him to decide he loves the FF, which he takes to mean he's really alive. Which means he's really dying, but he's OK dying to help the FF.

I'm dubious, considering he was programmed to help them, but I guess the idea is the upgrades have made him sentient enough to make the conscious decision now. Either way, it worked. The FF are back home, everyone's got their powers again. Reed restores HERBIE to an earlier version, and he and Valeria discuss whether their going back to that time tipped the balance between matter and antimatter just enough towards the matter side for the universe to unspool as it did.

So, that's the end of that volume. Not a great last arc, just big loop, but that's event tie-ins for you. Mixed bag at best.

The Surgeon #6, by John Pence (writer), Omar Zaldivar (artist), Hedwin Zaldivar (color artist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - Looks like it's time for some elective surgery. Hanover elects you to lose an eyeball.

The doctor is pursuing Little Bird, for stealing her horse and her sword. She gets duped and drugged by a seemingly helpful bartender (Zaldivar does a nice job shifting her from a kindly smiling old lady to a schemer across two panels), who intends to sell her to the Tunnel Rats.

Meanwhile, the First United Nations guys are getting ready to attack the Tunnel Rats, and the boss man isn't impressed with Little Bird's stunt. Neither is Hanover's horse, which is fighting non-stop, so Little Bird lets it go. Can't be dealing with that while pulling a stealth rescue/assault on the Tunnel Rats. The rescue goes well, although there's a weird panel as they're riding in an elevator where all the guys except the boss are laughing and acting kind of giddy. For a second, I thought they'd stumbled into a trap and were getting dosed with laughing gas or something, but I think they're just trying to ease the tension?

The rescue goes smoothly enough, until they get back to the surface, where the rest of their forces are fighting some of the Hot Animal Machines. Little Bird rescues a couple of prisoners, except it's the grandma and Hanover. The doctor proceeds to take a chunk out of Little Bird's neck (though it looks like Zaldivar just showed the same panel twice, but zoomed in and added some blood on the second one.) The Chief is oddly willing to let that go, especially considering Hanover promised to help with this raid and then bailed, but maybe he figures he's got bigger problems.

Her horse shows up, but as she rides off, Little Bird gets her in the hip with knife, which leaves her in pretty bad shape by the time she returns to the peaceful little fort. Where the guy she trained in medicine refuses to treat her, and the chief scientist guy basically says, "to hell with her." I guess because she didn't decide to stick around forever?

Well, maybe if Abner and the other guys had gotten back to the fort to treat the soldier dying of poisoned opium, instead of sitting around drinking with the First Nations guys while she was a prisoner, she'd be more kindly disposed. Just a lot of people making choices that seem strange in this last issue. Not the blacksmith, who takes the advice of how to treat her and builds a sort mobile brace to help her move after she gets better, he's been in her corner throughout. But then Hanover rides off, only to change her mind and apparently set up a little clinic just outside the fort's walls.

So I don't get what Pence was going for there. She thinks she owes them? She wants to prove she's not, 'biting every hand that tries to help'? Let's not forget, her original agreement with these folks was apparently written up while she was drunk as a skunk, and she fulfilled her side of the deal. Maybe she's tired of wandering, maybe she thinks they've got something going that's worth protecting, even if most of the people are assholes, I don't know. It feels like the situation where, if this were a FallOut game, I'd strongly consider destroying the town, but at bare minimum, I'd leave and not look back.

Overall, it was a fairly interesting mini-series. I don't know if Pence plans to return to it. It feels like he was laying out signs the world was changing. Certainly the Tunnel Rats had a much more advanced set-up than everyone else (though I guess they were using an underground missile complex.) I liked the touch of the First Nations crew, I think combining a Geiger counter with a tablet to look for wifi networks as a signal. I don't know what the wifi would be for; maybe they're leftover from the before times, but it was worth a chuckle.

What I Bought 6/2/2025 - Part 3

My boss went on vacation middle of last week, through the end of this week. I have been tapped as interim boss, which has largely meant more data entry and dealing with e-mails and phone calls. If it wasn't on top of all the usual madness (or if I was better at delegating, assuming there was anyone available to delegate to) it wouldn't be too bad. As it is, it sucks. Somebody else can take this on the next time he goes on vacation. There's gotta be someone stupid enough to want to actually pursue a leadership role.

Metamorpho: The Element Man #6, by Al Ewing (writer), Steve Lieber (artist), Lee Loughridge (colorist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - For some people, the sun truly does smile upon them. May those people all burn in its unrelenting heat.

Metamorpho's on his way to the Sun! Solaris, the Rogue Sun, that is, who plans to unleash a storm to push humanity back to the Stone Age! If that means I never have to hear about crypto or "AI" ever again, it might just be worth it. But Rex doesn't agree, so he's going to fly into Solaris, convert his body to Staggium, a superdense element Stagg created that will cause a chain reaction in the core and blow Solaris up. Leaving the Solar System minus the "solar", but small potatoes.

The plan doesn't work, and Metamorpho is narrowly saved from disintegration by Prince Ra-Man's sun, who is willing to give a Rex another chance to win. Because Solaris cheated by fighting a Metamorpho 1 million years in his past. Cue a, flashback, a vision, something of how the fight would have gone in the 853rd Century, which Lieber draws in a parody style of some Golden Age hero I remember being on the cover of a book about bizarre Golden Age heroes.

Why you do that when drawing a fight set way in the future, I don't know. Also, Lieber is incredibly inconsistent about where Solaris is. Why do you need a spaceship if he's hanging out right above your building? Point is, Rex gets one more chance to challenge Solaris, with the power of DC 1 Million Metamorpho, but minus the knowledge of how to best use it. And he only gets the power long enough to change into something once. Rex figures it out, becomes a new Sun, absorbs Solaris, and that's that. Unless the readers write in demanding more Metamorpho!

Eh, I could take it or leave it. It was fun, but Ewing may have started a few too many threads. Which did have the effect of making this last issue feel really stuffed, as he and Lieber try to cover a lot of ground in 20 pages. It's hard for me to picture Solaris running a secret criminal organization, though. That felt out of left field in that sense, even if its inclusion fit nicely with all the "solar champion" stuff. 

The Surgeon #5, by John Pence (writer), Omar Zaldivar (artist), Hedwin Zaldivar and Trisha Mariscal (colorists), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - What, they haven't figured out how to rebuild umbrellas in your post-apocalypse?

Hanover wakes up a prisoner of Chief Long, who turns out not to be interested in her spiking opium, but in the fact that someone is actually producing new supplies of pre-apocalypse medicine. The Hot Animal Machines have a line on it, but they deal in children they abduct to get it. So Chief Long would as soon wipe them out. Hanover agrees to help, and also to treat the guy that came to the fort to warn them of the Hot Animal Machines a few issues ago.

Then she treats the guy (Little Bird), and the two of them bail on everyone else. Then he seduces her, or they fuck, whichever, and he steals her sword and her horse. The whole thing was proving himself as a warrior ("touch an enemy without killing them"). Which leaves her sans transportation, sans weapon, possibly sans pants (or she was in too much a hurry to futilely chase him.) And she ditched a lot of people.

Where that leaves the book with one issue to go, I have no idea. I guess she could go back to the fort, hat in hand (if she still has a hat.) The scientist guy seemed kind of pissed, but the blacksmith pointed out she fulfilled her end of the deal. But I think she's got too much pride for that. Little Bird seemed to prove his point, don't envision him coming back to kill her. The Hot Animal Machines (whatever is left of them) are gonna have problems with Chief Long's group, and vice versa. So what's left for Hanover to do? Find some pants?

What I Bought 5/5/2025 - Part 3

Last week's day off gave me a chance to make a longer trip to take care of some business. The drive itself was miserable, because it poured rain all morning, but the actual business was no sweat, and then I had time to nose around a couple of stores. Found all of last week's books, which we'll get to later this week, and a couple of the digest collections of John Allison's Bad Machinery Oni Press released.

Today is still for April comics, however.

Fantastic Four #31, by Ryan North (writer), Cory Smith (penciler), Oren Junior (inker), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Sue and Alternate-Universe Johnny choosing to settle things with a good old fashioned, "who can open their mouth wider" contest.

OK, at some point since Hickman's Secret Wars, it was established that if one member of the Fantastic Four loses their powers, they all start losing their powers. I know, I thought it was stupid, too, but the editorial box cites Marvel-Two-in-One, which I think means the series, was it Dan Slott and Jim Cheung did post-Secret Wars? Anyway, North's playing off something previously established rather than just making this shit up himself.

Johnny's powers cut out next, so Reed and Valeria (who is narrating the issue) devise a plan to build a multiverse-hopping device into the Fantasticar and go to another universe so Ben can be exposed to the cosmic rays that will bombard that universe's Fantastic Four. It doesn't work, probably because he's from a different universe. Vibrational frequency is off, or something, but North and Smith spend multiple pages on it, in what really feels like padding since we just keep getting small panels of different quartets getting the FF box set of powers.

Eventually Ben, without telling anyone else (though Valeria notices and says nothing) sets the coordinates for the past in their universe, and gets a dose of the same set of rays that transformed him originally. Which means his body, his, regular, human-sized body, somehow shields Reed's spaceship cockpit enough they don't get superpowers, thus wiping the FF from existence entirely.

Doom has to be laughing his ass off. Or at least chortling under his breath, if guffawing is too undignified. On the other hand, Doom may have to actually do something about it, since this would seem to doom the Earth to being eaten by Galactus. I don't know; it's not a great issue. I guess the point is desperate people make bad choices, but it feels really dumb.

The Surgeon #4, by John Pence (writer), Omar Zaldivar (artist), Eve Orozco (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - Looks like a bunch of people I'd have run over while playing Mad Max.

So the remaining marauders want the doc to take some of the (poisoned) opium first, to prove it's the real deal. Instead, it's a fight, and while Colonel Rogers is dying because he took a big slug from one of those poisoned bottles, he's still able to snipe enough guys Hanover can get inside the fort. Where she gives up a lot of blood in a transfusion to try and save Rogers' life.

There's one panel, I thought they'd buried Rogers or sealed him up in a wall, but left his face uncovered. I was trying to figure out what the hell part of a transfusion after taking poisoned dope that was, before I realized an earlier page showed him lying face down on a table or bed, and they'd just hacked some rough hole in it so he could breathe without turning his head. Look, this is a post-apocalypse, there's no telling how medical treatments have been twisted or confused.

Also, we're on our 3rd penciler in 4 issues. Zaldivar continues Yak's trend of making Hanover look younger. He tends to use a lot more hatch marks for the men, but abandons them entirely for the doc. I think the scars on her face are less prominently defined, too. Suppose there's always a chance that settling in one place reduces her stress and her past experiences aren't having such a hold on her, thus the scars fade. But I doubt it.

The rest of the Hot Animal Machines came to see what happened to their buddies, and find the opium vials. Which they take back to camp and enjoy. Hanover assembles the fort's forces to go try and finish the job, not realizing it's already done. Partially from the drugs, and partially from some guys from the First Nations United. They catch Hanover by complete surprise, and when she says so, the Chief replies, "Well. . .we were hiding. You're not supposed to see us when we hide!" I laughed. I can't tell if he's saying it to be funny, or like he's talking to an idiot.

Either way, Chief Long wants to talk to this doctor about whether she really gave out a bad box of drugs. So I figure Hanover's rep is going to be destroyed because she'll either take full blame for giving out bad painkillers, or the townspeople in the fort will say it was all her idea and hang her out to dry.

What I Bought 4/1/2025 - Part 3

Between last month's used book sale and Playstation's various deals for cheap, short games, I've got Thursday posts done all the way to the end of May already. It's nice. But I don't have anything for today yet, so let's get the reviews of these two books from March in the can!

Fantastic Four #30, by Ryan North (writer), Cory Smith (penciler), Oren Junior (inker), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Yes, we all see the obvious joke about getting Ben's rocks off. Take it as given and let's move on.

In the main mini-series, Doom cured Ben Grimm of being the Thing, permanently. For real. No foolin'. We're serious this time. This issue is focused on Ben trying to come to grips with it, since he'd apparently stopped being mad at Reed and gotten comfortable this way.

Or maybe he just got comfortable being super-strong and tough, because when his attempt to stop he and Alicia from getting mugged in an alley ends up with him bleeding out a hole in his hand, and the mugger getting caught by a Doombot, Ben decides this can't stand. So he asks the Puppet Master to fix him. Not turn him into the Thing physically, but make him the guy in his head that he thinks the Thing is. Confident and happy and fun. That is not how I would describe the Thing over the vast majority of his 60+ years of existence, but I guess it's how he sees the situation now.

(Which feels like it implies some still unresolved issues about his being the Thing in the first place, that he's either ignoring his extensive past of being angry/bitter/depressed, or retroactively re-framing it.)

Alicia catches on by dinner the first night (nice touch by Cory Smith to show one of the ghost dinosaurs Reed and Johnny released on Halloween browsing on a tree outside their house) and confronts her dad. Who says he molded a Ben Grimm model, but left it to Ben to decide what to do with it. Alicia assures Ben this isn't the way to go about things, there's some crying, some hugging, things of that nature. Also, I didn't realize Alicia used Puppet Master's own clay against him to make him give his blessing to her marrying Ben. That's not great, though I don't necessarily blame her for not trusting him (and neither does he, apparently.)

I guess this is the approach North is going to take for the remainder of the book's run. Doom does something in the main mini-series, the ongoing series dives into the cast's reactions to it. Is it gonna work? Eh, this issue was OK, but "Ben wants to be The Thing again because he thinks that's what Alicia needs," is especially well-worn ground by now.

The Surgeon #3, by John Pence (writer), Stan Yak (artist), Pinkk3r (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - What did he do, make that codpiece from the radiator of an old Buick?

The marauding hordes are inside the walls, what's left to do but fight? The surgeon's doing her part, but she has a little trouble with the wall of meat on the cover there. But the former soldier, Rogers, got to the armory, and with a rifle in his hands, it's the work of a couple of shots to put him down. Unfortunately, by this point, that's just a small skirmish in the battle, so Pence and Yak show what's going on elsewhere, the people of the fort fighting for their lives and homes with whatever skills that got. You got a blacksmith with a big hammer? Swing it. You know chemicals? Make some bombs.

(I was a little thrown that Pence has Hanover shout, 'Come at me, Bro!' during the fight. Not the confidence it shows, but the first two issues had given me a picture of her as the taciturn sort of badass, who quietly goes about their killing.)

The enemy withdraws, but doesn't leave entirely. Which means the locals are pinned inside their fort, with their livestock. Which, as Dr. Hanover notes, is a good way to get a lot of people sick from cholera or something worse. So the locals come up with the idea of having Hanover deliver a case of "opium" (actually warfarin, an anti-coagulant used as rodenticide) to the Hot Animal Machines, as a peace offering? Hanover notes that's kind of dirty, but agrees. Too bad the remaining members of the gang aren't complete idiots, and Hanover's relying on an increasingly strung-out Rogers to cover her with his rifle.

Yak is penciler/inker for this issue, and his style is rougher than Dolan's was. More cross-hatching and light sketch-like lines. Tends to save those details for close-up panels, and simplify things when he backs the P.O.V. away. The thinner lines also seem to make Hanover look younger. Not like a teen, but I'd say early 20s, at least. Face is smoother, lines around the eyes and mouth are gone or less noticeable most of the time. Dolan's art had me thinking she was at least in her 30s, if not early 40s. Didn't seem out of the question if she'd been wandering 15 years after getting out of med school.

What I Bought 3/5/2025 - Part 3

I'm not much of a sushi guy. It's fine, outside that one time I had it and (combined with several other factors, including a gas leak somewhere nearby) wound up puking in the street outside an apartment where we were celebrating Alex's birthday. But I've never eaten it and been seized by the need to have more. I definitely enjoy gyoza, those pork dumplings. Outstanding. Anyway, here's the first two issues of a mini-series.

The Surgeon #1 and 2, by John Pence (writer), Zahcary Dolan (penciler), Laurie Foster (inker), Eve Orozco (colorist), Marcelo Brisemo (color assists, issue 2), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - Wouldn't be an apocalypse without shirtless guys in goggles and mohawks. 

The surgeon is one Jenny Hanover, who accepts an offer on "Craigslist", a series of watchtowers that hang out signals about requests for one thing or another, to act as doctor for a fort called Turtle Island. Hanover's pretty skilled, and not just in doctoring, and Turtle Island is seemingly very well-run. Good irrigation and septic systems, plenty of food, blacksmithing, ammo, organization. Though I can't tell if Pence is establishing all this to make us suspicious of exactly how they manage that.

The doc gets a little soused at a celebratory party and makes some kind of promise to train up the people in the art of self-defense. Just in time, because the scouts for a group called the Hot Animal Machines find them. Despite her best efforts, one escapes to alert the rest, and now it's your classic siege situation. Right down to the suicide bomber that blows a hole in the fort's walls.

Pence writes Hanover as competent but blunt, and aware of it. She admits to a lack of social graces, and may even apologize for it, but doesn't have a lot of time for hurt feelings from the guy nominally in charge of the fort's defense. And that guy, after getting wounded, is probably addicted to the opium she used as a painkiller.

(The fact she doesn't entirely remember the terms of her agreement with the guy who runs the fort - an engineer - feels like another of those things Pence is foreshadowing. Dolan depicts the party with tall, narrow panels where she's increasingly relaxed and smiling, even as the edges of the panels progressively crumble. Orozco starts with natural coloring and keeps increasing and shifting the tint from pink to blue to a the point where the doc's skin is bright green and her hair is blue.)

Dolan's art reminds me a bit of J. Calafiore's. Not as stiff or scratchy, but something in the squareness of the heads, the particular way he draws bloodspray or violence. Something jagged and brutal, appropriate to a world where a skilled doctor admits she's killed far more than she's saved, because it's much easier to take lives than save them.