What I Bought 8/9/2014

I was able to find these two books on a scouting expedition to another store last weekend. Hooray!

Captain Marvel #5, by Kelly Sue DeConnick (writer), David Lopez (art), Lee Loughridge (color art), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Sadly, there really isn't even implied punching in this issue, merely the suggestion of punching to come.

I'm not going to get Carol fighting some giant, sentient, world poisoning creature. She is going to fight an entire space fleet. That's pretty cool, I guess. Turns out Torfa has Vibranium, which I had always sort of assumed was strictly found on Earth, because that's how things seem to work in the Marvel Universe, but no. And someone, in a bit of a rush, has been using unsafe mining techniques to get it, and the by-products of that are what poison people. Carol's learned all this just as J'Son has decided to hell with evacuating the healthy, he's just going to kill everyone and take the Vibranium so he can build an invincible fleet. But he'll still be a loser. The leader of the people on Torfa, appears to submit and send Carol away, but does so in such a wording Carol takes it to mean she should do what she does best: beat up bad guys. And yes, I believe Captain America would understand her decision, and I agree with it, so go Carol!

Well, this is promising, but we'll have to see how the big fight issue goes. I am optimistic that, given the chance, David Lopez will make it look real good. He gives Carol some of the most delightful scowls. Also, I just noticed this, but, remember how when they originally gave Carol this uniform, they also gave her that short mohawk? And then nobody who drew the book ever drew her hair that way? Emma Rios and Felipe Andrade each gave her a full head of hair down to her waist, which is about as far from what Ed McGuinness was drawing on the covers as you could get. Well, Lopez normally draws her with a full head of
hair that goes down to about the base of her neck. But when she puts on that mask/helmet thing, it pushes her hair up into the mohawk. Which doesn't necessarily make sense from a practical standpoint, but what the hey.

Ms. Marvel #6, by G. Willow Wilson (writer), Jacob Wyatt (art), Ian Herring (color art), Joe Caramagna
(lettering) - Here, once again, we see the average, everyday working crook, being kept down by a snooty superhero. Won't someone think of the robbers who have to carry their own duffel bags laden with cash? The ones who don't have henchmen to take the punches and do the grunt work?

Kamala doesn't stop any poor, hardworking bank robbers today. She's a little busy, first with the little robots the Inventor has been sending out to find her, then she has to meet with the dreaded Sheikh Abdullah to discuss her recent wayward behavior. Against both her expectations and mine, Sheikh Abdullah is quite receptive to Kamala's vague explanation that she's been violating curfew because she's "helping" people. He advises that if she is still very much a work in progress at "helping" people, she should find a teacher. Otherwise, simply do the very best she can in a proper manner. She's getting her chance, because the Inventor - an attempt at cloning Edison that was unfortunately crossed with a cockatiel - has riddled the sewers beneath Jersey City with traps. Also alligators, which he is controlling to see how readily he can make things behave against their nature. Oh, and Wolverine shows up, which turns out to be hilarious. I mean, Logan does the teaching thing about the value of planned falls versus unplanned falls, and prioritizing.
But mostly it's Kamala geeking out about meeting Wolverine, and trying really hard to impress him and make friends. Which mostly seems to confuse Logan. Now they have to fight a giant alligator.

I completely agree with Logan that it's horrible the story and him and Storm in space, fighting an alien that farts wormholes lost out to a romantic story about Cyclops and Emma Frost in Paris. At the same time, I'm completely certain that's how the results would have turned out on the Internet here in real life. Freaking Internet, man.

No Adrian Alphona on art month, but we have Jacob Wyatt, who does a fine job. His Wolverine doesn't look so good, but Logan doesn't look particularly good in it when Todd Nauck draws it, either. So I'm going
to chalk it up to the new costume being stupid, and ugly. Beyond that, Wyatt did fine. He draws a perfectly
good alligator, as well as a good giant talking Edison-bird. His style reminds me a bit of Adventure Time,
mostly with Kamala, when she's in costume. Some of the big-eyed looks she gets would fit right in on that show. The one after she punches the gator, or the panel after that, when she's checking on it because she's
worried she killed it. Also, there's a nice sort of mirroring panels in the book. The ones on page 7, when
Kamala peers into the manhole, then drops in, and the ones on page 17, when Logan tries his "planned fall".
In each case, there's a small square panel at the top, showing the moment of truth, so to speak, and then a tall, narrow panel of the drop. Kamala's just shows her landing, with the scarf trailing behind, while Logan's shows him trying to angle so he lands smoothly. Because he has to worry about injuries now, and she doesn't. Also, he's experienced enough to know how to do that, and I doubt Kamala is an expert diver.

I liked the scene between Kamala and Sheikh Abdullah. It played against expectations, but also shows people are rarely just one thing or the other. Sheikh Abdullah might very well believe in following all those rules about the women having to be separate from the guys in the mosque, but that doesn't me he's strictly about putting women in the kitchen or whatever. Kamala also isn't some faceless entity to him. He's been teaching there for 10 years, she's been there willing or not for probably the enitre time. He has a decent bead
on her personality. So he doesn't try to stop what she's doing, and there's not even any indication he thinks she should stop. Again, I think he knows her well enough to know when she says she's helping people, she really means it. And he can appreciate that, so he tries to offer encouragement and constructive advice.

Man's Conquest of the Pacific - Peter Bellwood

Man's Conquest of the Pacific: The Prehistory of Southeast Asia and Oceania was an impulse buy. I saw it in the history section of a local bookstore in Cape, and took a chance. In retrospect, I probably should have paid more attention to that "prehistory" in the subtitle, because it wasn't exactly what I was expecting.

I had figured on it being more like what I think of as a conventional history book. Talking about specific events, which happened at a certain time, involving this person or group of persons. Wars, diplomatic treaties, trading missions, things like that. But, perhaps owing to the nature of the cultures being examined, Bellwood takes more of what I'd call an archeological approach. He spends a few chapters describing some of the ethnic and linguistic groups of the region, then begins delving into what cultural evidence of the history there is. Meaning there is a lot of discussion of pottery, or blades and adzes, Sometimes, when such things have been found, he describes villages and homes.

In some cases there is oral history, or well-known family genealogies that can be used to devise at least some basic framework for the the settlement of an island, or the structure of a society. That was more along the lines I was expecting, and consequently, those are the parts that read best for me. At other times, I struggled to get through the lengthy descriptions of what was found at one excavation site or another. When Bellwood explained the conclusions he was drawing from what had been found, about how it suggested patterns of dispersal, or how a shift away from a particular form of pottery might indicate the arrival of a new dominant group, or a growing isolation, it would pick back up again.

The catch is, the book is 35 years old as I type this, and since I know less about Southeast Asia and Oceania historically than I do most of the rest of the world, I don't know how many of his conclusions are inaccurate, or how much new evidence they've found since then to clarify things. It was interesting as an introduction to some of the missteps and problems faced in the early days or archeology. In addition to the usual issues of people letting their biases influence their conclusions, or being too interested in quick (lucrative) results to carefully excavate, there was apparently a lot of "contamination". Information brought in by the first Europeans to reach some of these places, was then woven into the histories of the locals by the locals themselves. So they claim to have visited and traded with people and places they did not, but depending on what remains there are, it can be hard to tell fact from fiction.

What I Bought 7/31/2014 - Part 6

Last set of books from this batch, but I did manage to find a couple of the ones he didn't have, so expect that on Friday.

Hawkeye #19, by David Aja and Matt Fraction (storytellers), Matt Hollingsworth (color art), Chris Eliopoulos and David Aja (lettering) - Look out flying rats of New York! It's a sad, crying clown with a rifle!

OK, Barney's in a wheelchair, and Clint's deaf. Yes again. Counting the time as a child I didn't know about, he's up to 3. And he's being mopey, generally ignoring Barney's attempts to sign to him, which is what he did as a kid, apparently. But Barney finally gets through to him, with punching, and Clint calls a meeting of all the tenants of the building, where he explains they, meaning everyone there, will stop the Track Suits. Then he and Barney go tear up their strip club/meth lab and burn their vans. Hopefully, just the vans. I quite like that Clint is the guy who feels really strongly Avengers don't kill, and Fraction's on thin enough ice already without violating that one. Though he may have, it's been so long since I read some of the early issues I can't remember. Clint certainly didn't seem perturbed when Barney hucked that guy out the window.

You remember when Jaime Reyes got his first ongoing, in the post-Infinite Crisis days, there was a special
Cinco de Mayo issue all in Spanish. But at the end of the issue, they included a translation of all the dialogue for folks like me who studied German in high school instead of Spanish. Yeah, I could have used one of those here. I don't know what Barney's signing. I get the gist of the issue - he's trying to get through to Clint, asking him what he's going to do about this - but I'm probably missing some details. Which annoys me, but here we are. It's a nicely laid out issue. Lots of mirroring between Kid Clint and Adult Clint by Aja, but I really like Hollingsworth's coloring. The reds for all the stuff with the Track Suits. The way the background is yellowish when Barney confronts Clint in the hall, but then as they go to the roof, it switches to the purple that's been adopted as Hawkeye's color in this series (it really seems more lavender to me than purple, but oh well). The dark blues on the rooftop, that faded yellow/tan for the flashbacks to childhood. Everything has its own predominant color, which helps make everything distinct.

Nightcrawler #4, by Chris Claremont (writer), Todd Nauck (arist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) -McKelvie's art is very pretty, and his covers for the series up to this point have all been nice, but this one feels a little sterile. Maybe if he'd put the kick to the face part front and center, I'd like it better, but the main image looks more posed, and less like two characters interacting.

The school's under attack, but the X-Men are handling that. Amanda's able to put Storm and Beast back
together, which leaves Kurt to deal with Margali. Which he does, but the portal Margali opened to Heaven
is still open, which is bad. Kurt and Amanda plan to close it from the other side, but Kurt can't get back in. Kurt, if you'd talked to GrimJack, you'd have known leaving Heaven was probably a bad idea. So Amanda is left to close the portal herself, which leaves her who knows where. I mean, was she in Heaven proper, or somewhere on the path to it? Now Kurt's sad.

Well, I predicted after issue 3 this was going to be Claremont putting his own bow on the Kurt/Amanda
relationship. I was not predicting her making a noble sacrifice, but I should have figured she'd get a better death. Claremont's never seemed like one to send out characters like punks. At least, not the ones he likes. Having Kurt refer to Amanda as 'his heart', so he could say he'd lost his heart at the end was perhaps too cute, though. It seemed out of place when he said it to Logan initially, and then I get to the end and see why Claremont used it, and it makes it worse.

Another thing I noticed, he had Psylocke you the term "mates" in reference to her and Kurt. I noticed
when I read through X-Men Forever, he had her use more Britishisms, shall we say, than I remember
from when he originally put her on the team in the '80s. Maybe because she's in an Japanese body he feels
the need to use those to establish her cultural heritage, in that familiar shorthand he favors. Don't know
for sure, it was just something I had a bit of a hard time picturing her saying.

I probably shouldn't, but I found the panel where Kurt faceplants against the barrier funny. He was trying to be reassuring to Amanda and then SPLAT! Nauck's still doing a good job. He's got Kurt using all his appendages in fights, whether it's grabbing a Trimega arm with one foot, or holding a sword in his tail. That's always been a feature of Nightcrawler's I appreciated, that versatility and the chances it offers for artists. Kurt does seem to be teleporting an awful lot, though. Sometimes it seems like hardly a panel goes by he isn't bamfing somewhere. Wonder if that's significant.

The Conjuring (2013)

One coworker loaned The Conjuring to another coworker, and I wound up watching it with them, and here we are. It's based on a true story about the Perron family who, in the 1970s moved into a home that turns out to be haunted by a particularly malevolent ghost. One so angry and vicious, it has caused numerous previous inhabitants to kill themselves or suffer greatly, so that they too, are haunting the place.

Thus the family calls in the Warrens, a married couple who are paranormal investigators, and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) has the gift to pick up impressions or visions of other people, so she can actually see the ghosts, along with things about them, their lives. That takes a toll, or so the movie tells us. She bears up pretty well, as far as I could tell.

It's very much one of those gotcha! films, where there's the long moment of tension and then BOO! a set of hands appear, or something moves, or whatever. As far as the primary ghost is concerned, I had two impressions. One, I was impressed by its range. While simultaneously manipulating the mother to bring two of her children back to the house so it can kill them, it also staged an attack on the investigators' daughter, in their home, miles away. Two, she's kind of an ass. How many kids does she need to kill? It reminds me of that Daniel Radcliffe film, The Lady in Black I think, where even after they reunited her with her child, she kept killing kids. Watching that film, I had the desire to see someone go back, dig up her grave again, remove her child's body, then huck it into the Atlantic, if she's going to be such a snot about it.

I have no idea what they could have done to the ghost in The Conjuring, though they exorcised it, so maybe that's enough. There were certain threads that didn't quite feel completed for me. Why did the ghost not continue its attack on the Warrens' daughter? Why did I get the impression there was something strange about the daughter? I couldn't tell whether the way her parents behaved around her was simply a result of the paranormal things they experienced, or if they had some concern she was, I don't know, tainted by demonic presence because of some case they had while she was in the womb. There was always this watchfulness which felt less about protecting her, and more like she was under observation for some warning signs.

On the plus side, Mr. Perron (Ron Livingston) was actually supportive of his wife's assertions that something was wrong in the house. Usually in these films, it's the wife and mother (or the kids) that claim something is up, and the husband/father dismisses their concerns and returns to his Scotch. Well, Perron drank a little (understandable in the circumstances) but was full on board with the Warrens coming in, and did all he could to help. So that was a nice change.

What I Bought 7/31/2014 - Part 5

Time for Daredevil comics! Always a crowd-pleaser. But can even Daredevil withstand the onslaught of the dreaded tie-in comic?!

Daredevil #5 & 6, by Chris Samnee (storytellers, #5), Mark Waid (storyteller, #5 & 6), Javier Rodriguez (colorist, #5 & 6, storyteller #6), Alvaro Lopez (inker, #6), Joe Caramagna (letterer, #5 & 6) - The way Samnee drew the cheeks on the nun to the left of Matt and his mother, I can't help feeling like she just smelled something bad. Did Little Matt just beef?

Issue 5 is the tale of how Matt convinced the world Foggy Nelson was dead. It involves a walk in the park, a mechanized Leapfrog, Foggy "sacrificing" himself to save a bunch of lives, and Hank Pym. Waid is really invested in helping Hank Pym as a character, isn't he? Just little ways, but repeatedly. It's fine, he's not trying to make some grand arc of it, just showing Pym is a good guy, whatever his issues and past screw-ups. I really like the "shush" face Samnee  gives Matt on page 19. It's kind of exaggeratted, which makes it kind of funny. He's worried someone might hear the guy everyone thinks just blew up say he's alive, but apparently he's not worried someone might have decided to keep eyes on Daredevil and so is seeing him with the guy everyone thinks just blew up, plus Ant-Man.

For issue 6, we venture into Original Sin tie-ins, as Matt remembers at least one occasion where his father hit his mother. So Matt would like to talk to his mother, who had become a nun when he was very young. But she's gone, arrested. She and some of the other sisters spray-painted graffitti on the outside of a military base's walls, and we arrested, detained without lawyers, and sent to wakanda. Which strikes Matt as strange, especially when he goes to the base and finds it deserted. So he hides out in the Wakandan embassy and listens. And overhears an American general talking with the Wakandan military attache, a Lt. N'banta. Turns out the U.S. leased the base to certain elements in the wakandan military so they could create weapons they wouldn't have been allowed to in their home country. Matt attempts to steal the flash drive, but forgets Wakanda is the most advanced nation on the planet, and it wouldn't be hard for a suitably corrupt and unscurpulous member of their government to find something to incapactitate a man with heightened senses. So Matt gets his ass kicked and hurled out of an embassy window by two pencil pushers, and is mockingly informed his mother is already on a plane to Wakanda.

I'd always figured it was canon that Matt's mother left because his father hit her. He was a fighter by trade, and one not above making poor decisions under pressure, taking the easy way at times. So sure, I could see him losing is temper and punching her. But I guess it would be different from the inside, especially for Matt who bases so much of himself on what he believes to be his father's example. As for this situation, this is one of those times when I'm confused as to ShIELD's reach, not to mention the Avengers. Because this feels like
the sort of thing they would have oversight on, and could exert pressure if they so desired. So either they can't, because it's an ostensibly legal deal, or they don't care, because they're getting something out of it. And N'banta admitted it's highly illegal, so the first one is out. Or they're just lazy and incompetent, which sounds about right.

Rodriguez' colors seem much more vivid when he's working over his own art. Maybe because Samnee uses much heavier blacks inking his work than Alvaro Lopez does on Rodriguez'? Either way, the page where Matt is straining to listen, but thoughts of that memory keep cutting in, that was choice. The deep reds as Matt's working to block everything else out, but that memory keeps cutting in, done in more normal colors. The reds are like pain or anger, the immediate problem he's using to distract himself from this other issue. I was going to say larger, but I'm not sure that's true. Finding out what he seems to have about his father hurts, but his mother being sent to a hostile foreign land to cover up chemical weapon skullduggery is somewhat more dire. Also, the scene where Maggie holds her hand up to the glass, in the gesture you see so often in scenes in prisons. Except Matt can't see, and his radar sense just picks up the glass, so all he "sees" is a series of bars in front of him.

The Invisible Man 1.20 - The Lesser Evil

Plot: Fawkes gets a mysterious envelope slid under his door. Inside is his file from the Agency, complete with reference to a "Solution Beta". The envelope lists a time and place to meet, and who should drive up but Allianora. Fawkes doesn't trust her offer of help, but she employs that old trick Michael Westin utilized so often and makes it look like she's willing to walk away. Well drive away, but you get the point, and he hops in. They travel to Cerberus Sentinel, a private security firm Chrysalis uses as a front, and Darien gets to meet Jarod Stark, who wants Fawkes on his team and warns him the Official is ready to remove the gland and place it in a more willing subordinate. He even has one here in town, a Tim Kirby. So Stark and Allianora put on the pressure, asking Fawkes what Claire's last name is (I thought it was Keeply, but I guess not), and if he knows what happened to the $10 million reward the Agency got for catching the Chameleon (1.14, "Beholder").

The seeds of doubt having been planted, Darien returns to the Agency where everyone does exactly the sort of things that would help the doubt grow. The Official deflects when asked about the money, and this is after he scoffs at Fawkes assertion he was bowling all morning, and rolled a Dutch 200, whatever that is. The Keeper refuses to tell Darien her last name, citing the need to maintain secrecy for her safety. None of which soothes Darien's mind, so he goes snooping in the archives and even as Hobbes catches him, Darien finds proof the 10 mil was stashed in a Swiss account. This convinces Hobbes to side with his partner, and they seek out Tim Kirby. Who tries to kill Darien the moment Fawkes introduces himself, only to get run over as he tries to flee. So Darien confronts the Official, even throws the Fat Man's phone through the wall, and it's then he learns the truth of Solution Beta. It is placing the gland in another host if the first one proves unstable. Like they did with Darien after Simon Cole went nuts. Darien is Solution Beta, and he is also pissed and out for payback. So he agrees to approach Stark as being interested in working for Chrysalis, and his first job is to take out Allianora. Fawkes points out that she's nice, but they have no chemistry, which is what I've been saying all along, but that isn't what Stark means.

Fawkes is confronted with 3 possibilities. Either he is truly meant to kill her, it's a test to see if he's willing, or it's Stark testing Allianora by forcing her to kill the target she failed to eliminate twice previously. Fawkes asks if they can have dinner at her place, and when he arrives and sees her wearing a huge sweater, he has his answer. He passes the test, though it hardly seemed necessary to behave so rudely towards Allianora first. Now that he's on board, the Official presents him with a CD that has a program that will send all of Chrysalis' files to the Agency once it is placed in their system.

Fawkes does this, and is immediately caught, because Allianora convinced Stark to rig the security system to notice sudden drops in temperature. Cover blown, Fawkes is now going to have the gland removed. But Hobbes is there with a back-up team, and they cause sufficient trouble the surgery is put off. And Fawkes somehow talks Allianora into setting him free. Which is surprising considering she had been sure he wouldn't shoot her, and was sorely disappointed when he did. She's a real forgiving sort. Fawkes escapes with the Agency guys, Allianora probably escapes with Stark, and we're told that the Agency did manage to get a little data thanks to the program Eberts wrote. Which seems to piss off Hobbes, but it's probably nothing compared to how Darien feels when he learns the Official is the one who leaked his file to Chrysalis, simply to set in motion a scheme that would get Darien inside. Cripes.

Quote of the episode: Official - 'I make no secret of who I am.' Fawkes - 'Is that supposed to comfort me?'

The "oh crap" count: 3 (35 overall).

Who's getting quoted this week? They're going way overboard. They used "curiosity killed the cat", "he who sups with the devil needs a long spoon", Francis Bacon's assertion that it's knowing little that makes a man most suspicious, the Bible's advice to separate yourself from your enemies, and take heed of your friends, who said we have to do be dishonest with each other to protect ourselves, and Thoreau, who felt one is paid for their suspicions by finding what they suspected.

Times Fawkes Goes Into Quicksilver Madness: 0 (7 overall)

Other: At one point, when Fawkes points out the Official hasn't had him killing people like Chrysalis does with Allianora, Stark tries to counter with people Fawkes has killed, and lists Dr. Carver, who you might remember as the guy who decided homeless people were worthless and stole brain cells from them. First off, good riddance. Second, Fawkes didn't kill him, Carver's own stupidity killed him. He stopped and leaned over a railing right in front of a door that opened outwards. That's natural selection at work, just like when Faith stabbed that Deputy Mayor in season 3 of Buffy.

OK, I looked up Dutch 200. It means alternating strikes and spares for an entire game. That is an incredibly half-assed lie. Admittedly, Fawkes didn't care because he was pissed and suspicious, but man, just stick with the 170 and the 175.

OK, I actually know why Hobbes was pissed. Eberts was being praised for writing that program, and Hobbes had gotten a paycheck minus 800 bucks because he threw someone they captured through a plate glass window, which had to be replaced. That, plus the Official's comment last week that Darien is the Agency's most valuable asset (and Eberts amusement with how much that bugged Hobbes) has Bobby a little irate. Plus, he and Eberts are in this struggle for approval from the Daddy figure, whereas Fawkes is trying to rebel, only to find the Fat Man has him countered at every turn. Maybe Cole should have beaten him a little harder when he had control of Darien's body.

I would like to update the unofficial, nearly hit by cars count, by Tim Kirby wasn't nimble enough. Thanks a lot, buddy.

I am curious as to why Hobbes and his rescue team were all carrying AK-47s. I guess they were trying to distance the firefight to come from any American intelligence agency. Either that or the Official was able to get them on the cheap. No wait, the Agency doesn't have a budget to provide weapons. So they must be from Bobby's private stash. I could believe that.

Credit to Stark. He got involved in defending his headquarters from Bobby's team. Yes, this mostly involved using the corpse of one of his men as a shield until he could pull the pin on a grenade on the corpse's belt, then throw the whole body in with their servers, but still. He did that under fire. For a sleazy executive type, I'm impressed.

The Official is feeling pretty smug right now. I'm not sure he's considering how wary this might make Fawkes about him. And Darien was already pretty wary, even if he did stick up for the Official to Stark.

Favorite DC Characters #3 - Stephanie Brown

Character: Stephanie Brown, aka Spoiler/Robin/Batgirl

Creators: Chuck Dixon and Tom Lyle

First appearance: Detective Comics #647

First encounter: For the second week in a row, it's a comic we already mentioned. This time, it's Robin #4. This issue established a few important facts. That Robin knew Spoiler's identity, and did not approve of her being a costumed vigilante. Conversely, Steph didn't know who he was, and was going to be a costumed vigilante whether he liked it or not.

Definitive writer: Jon Lewis for her time as Spoiler, and Bryan Q. Miller for her stint as Batgirl. Given the editorially mandated disaster her stint as Robin was, I'd as soon ignore it.

Definitive artist: Pete Woods when she's Spoiler, Dustin Nguyen for Batgirl. Woods overall. I liked Steph's stint as Batgirl, but she's still primarily Spoiler to me.

Favorite moment or story: Pretty much any time Steph hits her sleazoid father, the Cluemaster, is a good time. I also enjoyed issue 26 of Cass' series, when Steph took out that Thugee cult member who was demanding to face the one who defeated Shiva (that'd be Cass). But it has to be Batgirl #18, from Steph's series, her team-up with Klarion the Witch-Boy, to help his partner Teekl find love on Valentine's Day. Stephanie did very well considering she had basically zero experience with magic up to that point. Panel at the right from that issue, drawn by the aforementioned Dustin Nguyen. Sorry about the flash.

What I like about her: Admit it, you're surprised she's only #3.

I loved her Spoiler get-up, especially later on when I saw it as drawn by Pete Woods. As I mentioned last week, I like purple - though Steph's costume is really eggplant - and beyond that, I like costumes with hoods. Because I like to wear hoodies, and hoods provide easy shadows around faces to make characters look mysterious or intimidating. In general, I thought her Spoiler gear looked good, and it seemed practical. She wore real boots with treads (also they had the sort of rolled over tops like pirate boots, always cool), she had a few pouches to carry things, but not to a Liefeldian degree, and when she went with long hair, she even cut a hole in the back of her mask so her hair could run out through it in a ponytail. Sensible, and effective, and done on a budget, at least initially.

Satorial discussion aside, I love that Steph never quits. You could rightly point out all heroes overcome adversity. This is true. However, most heroes are overcoming super-villains, an ungrateful and suspicious public, or maybe issues in their personal life. They got bills to pay, or their significant other feels neglected. Stephanie's had those problems, but for most of her costumed career, the biggest roadblocks in her path were other costumed crimefighters. Batman, Oracle, Cassandra Cain, Tim Drake, Damien Wayne. It's been a non-stop parade of other superheroes telling her she sucks, she should give up, put the costume away before she gets hurt. Not exactly a warm and supportive atmosphere to learn the trade in. Connor Hawke and Black Canary are notable exceptions, so maybe she ought to have moved to Star City, joined the Arrow Family. Something for the next reboot, perhaps.

Early on, before I realized just how much of a recurring theme this was, it was a big reason I liked Steph because she was continuing to fight crime against Batman's wishes. This was very impressive to me. Not because I hated Batman - at this stage, I mostly knew him from the animated series or the Tim Burton films, and I was still convinced he was cool - but because he is Batman. Even experienced super-heroes can be intimidated by him. But Stephanie just kept on doing her thing, regardless of his wishes. It's like, you know how sometimes a writer introduces a new character and tries to establish how awesome they are by having them beat up Wolverine, or Thor, or whoever (see Jeph Loeb and Red Hulk)? This was like a really toned down version of that. I don't know that the creative teams intended that to be the result, but showing her as a character who loved crimefighting so much she openly defied freaking Batman really helped establish her credentials with me.

OK, "openly defying" is a bit strong. She stayed out of Gotham, or out of sight of him, most of the time, and on one occasion when he did find her in costume in the city, she ran like hell (turned out he wanted her help finding Tim, this was right about the time he reveals Tim's secret identity to her, after Tim had withheld it on the Bat's orders). Still, she was fighting crime in costume after freaking Batman told her not to! She was able to encourage his various sidekicks - first Tim, later Cassandra - to hang out with her in direct violation of his orders! Sure, if she plays the odds, it's unlikely Batman will have enough free time on any given night to devote to checking to make sure she isn't out there fighting crime without his say-so, but still. Batman's a scary dude. I wouldn't cross him lightly.

And for all that she was criticized for getting in over her head, she mostly seemed to know her limitations. When she was on her own, she wasn't out there trying to capture Two-Face or Killer Croc.  A lot of times, Stephanie was clearing out drug pushers in her own neighborhood, which may not be saving the Earth for aliens, but she's making a difference, one none of the other Bat-family were likely to get to. I feel like a lot of the moments where her reach exceeds her grasp are the ones where she feels she has to prove something to them, to get them off her back. War Games would be an example.

Beyond that, she did try to get someone to train her. Everybody's always too busy, or thinks that would be encouraging her. It's staggering characters as allegedly intelligent as Oracle, Tim, and Bats couldn't figure out Stephanie didn't need any encouragement. She needed training. Occasionally one of them will offer to train her, but it usually turns into some extended exercise in humiliation. Bats sets up a test she's meant to fail, so he can tell her she's not good enough and send her on her way. Again, ignoring the fact telling her that won't make her quit, but hey, he told her she wasn't good enough. It's no longer his problem, right? Steph has to pick up what she can as she goes, learn some things about jumping from Cass, about using grappling lines from Bats, maybe some stuff on detective work from hanging out with Tim.

Eventually she got hooked up with some gear, either from Bats directly or through Tim, but for a long time, it was whatever she could buy or cobble together herself. Her skills at fighting or moving through the city were things she picked up as she went (I think a lot of her athleticism came from being on the gymnastics team, and maybe taking a class in akido). She didn't have parents who left her a ton of money so she could travel the world and learn at the feet of masters. Certainly in the early days of her career, she's self-taught, which is kind of cool. She grows, she learns, she stumbles, she gets back up, she gets better at it on the fly.

There are limits to how far one can go with this, obviously. Stephanie is not a prodigy, and so sometimes things go awry. When she gets fed up with not knowing Robin's secret identity, and someone he knows in his private life is injured in a shooting Robin and Spoiler break-up, Steph starts stalking the girl, believing she will lead Steph to Robin. This very nearly gets a innocent guy killed when Stephanie misreads the situation. That's bad, but again, she's doing the best she can with what she's got. No one sat and down and explained the finer points of deduction to her, or gave her access to a Bat-Computer. So she's not infalliable, but again, learn and grow from mistakes, and she didn't get disheartened by them, or from being on the outside of the group.

A lot of problems - for Steph, for Tim, probably for Cassandra - came about because the Bat-family seemed to delight in making Steph aware of how much they knew about her, and how little she knew about them. At least it seemed that way to her, and it left her feeling like an outsider for the longest time. It comes up on the second page of Robin #4, when Tim says something like, "You decided to go full-time with the vigilante thing? Can't say that thrills me, Steph," and she responds with, "You just love rubbing in the fact you know who I am, and I don't know anything about you" And it goes on for years. When Dinah mentions Oracle, and Steph asks Tim who that is, he's all, "You don't need to know that yet." Ugh.

Even when she was "in", she was rarely all the way in. When she was Robin, she got fired the first time she disobeyed orders. The order she disobeyed was to stay in the Bat-plane, and she did so because she could hear over the radio that Batman was in trouble and wanted to help him. How awful (meanwhile, Damien fucking decapitates a criminal and he gets to keep being Robin). I'm sure the fact that Spoiler was at times less a member of the Bat-family than freaking Catwoman was part of the appeal to me (also the fact that she kept digging in the face of all the stone-walling). She was on the fringes of the group, never getting all the in-jokes or references to past events. Nope, I have no idea why I would identify with a character like that (though mine's self-inflicted, rather than the result of a dickish father figure who rules over said group with an arbitrary and irrational gloved fist).

So, never quits, does not let disapproval get her down, not really part of the group, and has done her best to make her own way. Most importantly, she loves superheroing. She started out trying to foil her father, but quickly figured out she really enjoyed it. You know I like characters who actually enjoy crimefighting. I've been hopping around the Internet a lot lately, trying to find useful images for these posts, and there are a lot of them of Stephanie, in whatever identity she's sporting, having a great time. Enjoying swinging through the city, enjoying getting trained by Batman. Enjoying sparring with Cassandra, or playing rooftop tag with her. Enjoying stopping some guys from robbing a convenience store with Tim, or flirting with him when he gets mopey. Heck, just sitting on a rooftop with Oracle watching a sunrise.Panel at the left from Teen Titans #13, drawn by Tom Grummett, written by Geoff Johns.

In a lot of ways, Stephanie is sort of the unusual, upbeat character. A lot of the Bat-family characters are about hope or redemption, but they aren't typically cheerful. Batman has this goal to eliminate crime, but it's such a monumental task it's largely turned him into a grim figure I'd pity if he didn't treat everyone around him so badly. Cassandra was trying hard for redemption, and her path was inspirational, but she was not a sunny character for much of her history. Stephanie's role in Robin seemed to be exactly the role Tim envisioned himself performing for Batman. She keeps him from getting too mopey or gloomy, and reminds him what they get to do is pretty cool. She was possibly Cassandra Cain's first real friend (depending on whether you apply that label or "big sister/mentor" to Oracle), and I feel Steph is the first one who gets Cass to actually laugh. When they're sparring, even though Steph isn't in the same galaxy as Cass as a fighter, Cassandra appreciates her effort, and enjoys spending time with her. She's sad when their training sessions abruptly end, and she goes back to a life mostly spent alone in her cave. Stephanie's more open with what she's thinking and feeling, and Cassandra responds to that by opening up a little herself.

In a lot of ways, Stephanie is most like Dick Grayson (which makes me sad they didn't interact much). She's probably not the athlete he is (though again, she does pretty damn well for her relative lack of formal training, and Bats himself once said she could be at least as good as Tim, if not better), but in terms of attitude and outlook. Bryan Q. Miller made it a point of his Batgirl run that Stephanie wasn't about vengeance, or striking terror into the hearts of the underworld. She was about giving people hope, helping people feel there's someone out there looking out for them, someone who cares about them as something other than the victim of the moment. It fits. Yeah she donned a costume to bring down her father, and every time he's reared his head since then, she's shown up to punch it. But most of the time, she's just fighting whatever crime she happens along to help people, and because she enjoys it. No avenging dead parents or anything like that.

What I Bought 7/31/2014 - Part 4

Since it's Friday, let's step over to the wrong side of the law for these reviews. Get a little rowdy and such. Teenage rebellion, nefarious deeds, and all that.

Avengers Undercover #7, by Dennis Hopeless (writer), Kev Walker (penciler), Jason Gorder (inker), Jean-Francois Beaulieu (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - I would question making out with someone right next to your own tombstone, but Alex just got out of Hell, so I guess any place is an improvement.

Nico trying to hone her control of her powers with some instructions from recently back from the dead ex-boyfriend Alex. Except Alex' teaching method is mostly to flirt with her. Then she finds out Chase was shot, and though she heals his injuries, he won't wake up. Frustrated with that, she decides it's time to make bad decisions, and makes out with Alex. Also, Deathlocket didn't mention she shot Chase. That's going to be awkward later. So the guy Zemo's crew attacked AIM to get is the person who designed basically all of SHIELD's security and systems. AIM couldn't get anything out of his brain, but that's because they relied on science and super-powers. Hellstrom has magic, so yeah, that's bad. Perhaps SHIELD should do something, but as Hank Pym's discovering, Maria Hill has no intent of invading Bargalia, and certainly isn't worried about the kids. Oh, they killed a man who tortured them! So leave them in the hands of super-villains. Brilliant! At least Pym cares. Too bad he stole Buffyverse Spike's hair, and got his head shrunk in the process (that first panel he appears in, his head is much too small for his shoulders. Rare misstep from Walker).

Good news, though, Cammi's alive! And trapped in a cell right next to Zemo's living room! And Arcade's in a cell next to her! So nobody really died! But I guess my theory about the bad guys actually working for the good guys and testing the kids is going down the toilet. Plus, I think Hazmat may have thrown in full-scale with Zemo. Some young girl with long straight black hair was there sharing drinks with the baddies. Can't be Cammi, Nico was occupied, Deathlocket only has half a head of hair, kind of just leaves Hazmat. It would tie in with her being the one to seemingly toast Arcade. I guess I'll have to see if Hopeless and Walker can tie this whole thing together in the 3 issues they have left.

Nice touch, having Nico's pupils disappear early in the issue when Alex starts winding her up, and having it get progressively worse throughout. By the end, it looks like she's burned out her eye sockets, and magic is just pouring out through her eyes constantly. Not a good sign, but it definitely looks cool (though I wonder how she sees where she's going).

Superior Foes of Spider-Man #13, by Nick Spencer (writer), Steve Lieber (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - It's the Shocker stumbling around in the Rhino head that gets me. That or Speed Demon dumping the Gwen doll. Sick, but funny. Surprised Boomerang went with Kraven's get-up. Does he really want to emulate the guy who celebrated his greatest success by blowing his brains out? Though I guess Fred could be about to find out getting what you always wanted can be hollow.

Boomerang, Overdrive and the Beetle made off with the (fake) painting of Doom's face. I don't know if that means there's never been a real painting, or if this is a forgery of the real painting. Boomerang called the cops, but one of the poor saps that got drafted into his Sinister Sixteen called Mach 7, so now he knows Fred was leading an attack on the Chameleon's headquarters with a bunch of criminals. The Chameleon's not pleased with Fred, and since the Owl apparently knows he got double-crossed again, neither is he. If this doesn't end badly for Fred, I'm going to be stunned, because I still can't believe he's smart enough to talk his way out of it. But our intrepid villains make their way to a safe house in a stolen taco truck, and meet Speed Demon along the way. He and Fred have got something going they aren't telling the other two, and Fred is not doubt preparing to betray Speed Demon at any moment. But someone else is also in the safe house - the Shocker, with Silvermane's annoying, old man head, after they were forced to flee Hermann's apartment to get away from Hammerhead.

I have no idea what Boomerang's plan is. At this point, I'm not even sure what things are and are not part of it, other than he wasn't counting on the Shocker showing up. I'm not criticizing Spencer for this, he's done pretty well so far at putting the pieces in place, then bringing them all together. Just saying, I can't even make a guess at the end game here, 'cause all Fred seems to do is be making enemies, and that's the sort of thing best reserved for people with the power to get away with it. Dr. Doom or Kang can piss off a bunch of villains, because they can incinerate anyone who gives them any lip about it. Boomerang may be punching above his weight class here. But it's nice to have goals, I guess.

I can't figure out what that little "X" Lieber draws on Mach 7's right shoulder is. It honestly looks like a couple of Band-Aids, but surely Abe could afford a better patch job than that. He's looking at freaking buttercup yellow couches and scented candles. Fix your super-suit! Unless it's an insignia. Is Abner a member of the X-Men now? Well sure, why not? They won't let Deadpool in, but accept the guy who doesn't even have powers! I'm sure that's not it, but I don't know what it is.

Samurai William - Giles Milton

Reading that book about the first year of the War in the Pacific got me curious about Japanese history, something I mostly know from anime and what little got touched on in World History classes. Rather than ask my father about it, and risk being buried under another 2 dozen books, I've opted to snoop around on my own, and pick up anything that looks promising.

Which brings us to Samurai William, which is ultimately more about early European experiences in Japan. Especially the life of one William Adams, an English mariner on a Dutch trading mission who reached Japan by almost pure luck, and stayed there. It helped that Adams quickly drew the interest of a prominent shogun of the era, Ieyasu, in the years just before he founded what became the Tokugawa shogunate, which dominated Japan for the next 250 years. I don't think Adams was ever a samurai per se, more Ieyasu assigned him a rank in his court which put him on equal footing with samurai. Which means Adams was able
to help influence certain events, at least so far as Europeans were concerned. By the time he had arrived, the Jesuits had already been there for 60 years, and tensions between Catholics and Protestants being what they are, they had tried to have him executed. Only Ieyasu's curiosity (and Adams' experiences traveling the globe) had spared Adams, and he was eventually able to convince the shogun that the Catholics were intent on conquering his land, and that their religion was merely a ruse to help them do so. Their case wasn't helped by the fact they lied to Ieyasu, portraying Christianity as one united faith. Much as the poor behavior or English and Dutch sailors while in Japan didn't help their case with Ieyasu's son and grandson, both of whom
were much less interested in the outside world, and much more interested in removing outside influences.

There is quite a bit about Japanese culture of that time, but not much about how it had reached that stage, the forces that drove it and such. It's more about how the Europeans reacted to the culture, and the ways in which they adapted, accepted, or struggled against it, while failing to provide a profit for the companies they represented. It's more a book about the early struggles of European imperialism (or mercantilism if you prefer) to deal with the challenges involved in having a branch of your business or empire around the world, given the state of communication and transportation in the early 1600s. At that, it does pretty well, and
as for Japanese history, it at least provided with some details to be curious about and investigate further in the future.

What I Bought 7/31/2014 - Part 3

Greetings to you again from the past. We're reviewing a first issue today. Maybe it's kind of, sort of relevant because the second issue will be coming out today as well.

Rocket Raccoon #1, by Skottie Young (words and art), Jean-Francois Beaulieu (color art), Jeff Eckleberry (lettering) - Took me a little while to realize Rocket's standing on top of Groot.

3 years in the past, we see Rocket rescue Princess Amalya, who seems quite taken with him in turn. Back in the present, however, he's bringing a different young woman with him to watch Groot in a wrestling match. Rocket spends most of the time bragging about himself, but when they land on the Kiss Cam, we learn Rocket is wanted for multiple murders, which sets off an extended chase through a bunch of sewer pipes between him and a bunch of cops who looked like they stole their gear from the cops in The Fifth Element. Oh, and Groot lost the match. On the run, Rocket decides to turn himself in, which greatly annoys his date, who was meant to lure him into a trap devised by Princ - sorry, General Amalya, who is the leader of a confederation of Rocket's angry ex-girlfriends. I'm not sure yet whether the other raccoon is part of their plan, or a wild card, though I lean towards the latter.

This Rocket is going to take some getting used to. I assume he's similar to movie Rocket (though I haven't seen Guardians of the Galaxy yet, not sure when I will), but it also seems consistent with his current portrayal in Marvel's cosmic titles. I glanced through a recent issue of Nova, and Rocket spends most of his time killing people for one reason or another, usually about money. I don't know if the sleazy ladies' man shtick is from Young or someone else, but I'm not sure about this. It's like Rocket's become a combination of Tommy Monaghan, and, and, Gambit. *Shudder*

The book seems like it'll be funny, and I do like Skottie Young's art work. I saw someone compare this book to Earthworm Jim, which a) makes me really want an Earthworm Jim sketch from Skottie Young, and b) seems accurate. But I'm not sure about a Rocket Raccoon who complains about being wanted for murder at the exact same time he's drowning a cop in a sewer pipe.  He's supposed to be a tactical genius! He can't devise plans that don't involve shooting people? So I don't know. I think if I continue with it, I'll just have to treat it like an Elseworlds or something, divorced from any earlier appearance of the character I actually enjoy. I mean, if the character weren't named Rocket Raccoon, and I didn't have any preconceived notions of how he should behave, I would like it a lot. But he is, and I do, so that's an obstruction.

The Heroic Trio

I had heard about The Heroic Trio somewhere along the line, and a foreign martial arts film about three butt-kicking ladies sounded worth a look.

I wasn't anticipating a story about an evil sorcerer, using a young woman (played by Michelle Yeoh) with an invisibility cloak to abduct babies who, based on their date of birth, could potentially become emperors. One of them is going to be the Immortal Emperor, and the sorcerer intends to control that child, and thus, China (and probably eventually the world). Initially, there's only two heroes, or one (Shadow Fox, played by Anita Mui), and a mercenary (Mercy, played by Maggie Cheung). Shadow Fox is very serious about it, very graceful, maintaining a double life as the wife of a dedicated cop. Mercy is loud, kind of silly and immature, but she makes a definite impression. The motorcycle and the dynamite will do that. She also has a miraculous double-barreled shotgun which can fire 5, or even 6 times without needing to be reloaded (unless the plot demands it).

Mercy and Shadow Fox both have past history with the invisible kidnapper, but from different points in her life, and so each has a different sort of emotional connection with her. The story is a bit disjointed, one of those where it feels like they threw a bunch of stuff in there, but didn't necessarily spend enough time developing most of it. Maybe that was a consequence of the movie only have the dubbed version. If it had been in Chinese, and I'd just been using the subtitles, would it have worked better? There are certain scenes that just seem all over the place, where an action or statement might make sense on its own, but not when viewed with what came immediately before or after it. And then there are sequences that worked really well. There was a scene where Yeoh's character confronts Mercy, and appears ready to kill her, that one worked well. She asks Mercy if she has any things she'd like done after she's dead, and Mercy counters, what if she wins? What should she do for her? And Yeoh has a moment of hesitation, and then responds, and the answer, as well as the fact she gives it, says a lot about how she's progressed over the course of the film. But that makes sense, Yeoh's Invisible Woman had the most defined arc of the three, so that adds some weight to her scenes. Plus, some of the details of her character arc are the sort that seem to appeal to me (redemption, characters learning to be open with their feelings, stuff like that).

Having seen so many movies with awesome CGI by this point, some of the effects in the film do look dated, mostly stuff involving weapons flying through the air. But when it comes to the things the cast are able to do themselves, the jumping and fighting and such, that looks quite good, so I was satisfied. It's a film I'll have to watch again, now that I have a better idea what to expect, because I spent a lot of time questioning some of the ways things worked. Why the hospital looked like it was in a warehouse, or some sort of bunker. Was that a precaution to try and protect the babies, and if so, are there more hospitals like that? Because there aren't that many babies in there. Or the methane that wasn't in the hidden lair until it was. Or the wisdom or hurling explosives into a lair full of methane and babies (not to mention keeping babies there in the first place). There are certain things I think I'll be better able to accept on a second viewing.

What I Bought 7/31/2014 - Part 2

I'm typing this up Saturday, so greetings to all of you two days in my future. I'm only going to have Internet access sporadically, so I'm typing a bunch of posts up now. I'll have finished 12 posts in a span of about 4 days. So all the Invisible Man and Favorite Character posts for the next few weeks are good to go, plus most of this week is covered. But I'll be more behind schedule responding to comments than usual.

Harley Quinn #8, by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti (writer), Chard Hardin (artist), Alex Sinclair (colorist), John J. Hill (letterer) - Hey look, a book from just last week! This is almost current!

Harley pawns the rings she stole from that Russian lady she helped Cyborg kill two issues ago. She also breaks up an attempted robbery, though she uses it as a negotiating ploy to get an extra 60 grand out of Sal. And a Hanzo sword. She gives some of the money to Tony, to complete a device for her, and heads off to her roller derby match. She's doing quite well, as you'd expect, until the opposition send in Bertha, who knocks one of Harley's teeth out. At which point Quinn grabs her mallet, charges back in, and beats Bertha to a pulp. Which gets her booted out of the league, but also get her an invitation to "Skate Club", which I'm not supposed to talk about, but oh well. Back at home, Harley has a picnic for her tenants to unveil what Tony built for her: a computer-guided catapult for getting rid of all the poop from the animals she liberated from the pet hospital. And the rest of the issue is hijinks with that, as Tony has some difficulty getting the targeting right, at one point splattering the hell out of DC's offices as Didio pitches his next big reinvention of the line. Oh, and Harley has another creepy guy watching her through binoculars. First it was Syborg, now this.

Reading this through initially, I was dumbfounded they devoted the last 8 pages of this issue to an extended poop-throwing gag. I don't know why, exactly, it maybe just seemed too absurd. But once I thought about it, I laughed. Why not? It seems a little too noisy for pre-reboot Harley, but for this Harley, sure. It's a quick fix, it required relatively little work on her part, and it gives her the opportunity to make a mess. And she seemed so excited about it, wearing her admiral hat and coat, it's hard not to be infected with her enthusiasm. At least, I hope it was enthusiasm. What are the symptoms of dysentery?

I'm going to guess the guy in the meeting at DC wearing the ball cap with "SD" and "LA" crossed out and sketching was Jim Lee? Maybe, possibly trying to get part of an issue of Superman Unchained finished before the heat death of the universe? Our universe, I mean, not the new 52. I go back and forth on Hardin's art. Sometimes I think he overdoes it one the line work, things get too stiff, and Harley starts to look sort of gaunt, which doesn't seem appropriate under the circumstances. This was one of the better issues, though. Things were a little looser, the expressions had more energy to them. Also - credit for this probably goes to Sinclair - I like that they remembered to keep Harley's eye makeup runny in the diner scene, after she'd been crying in the pawn shop (one of the robbers tried a doozy of a sob story on her). It's just visual continuity, basic stuff, but it would have been easy for them to forget it, and maybe wave it off by saying she cleaned up after.

I'll say this for Palmiotti and Conner: they're keeping Harley's attitude towards animals consistent. She really likes pets, even ones that aren't hers. Just the bit where she drops one of her meatballs in the diner, and is perfectly happy to see the dog belonging to the person in the next booth get it. Again, maybe not a big thing, but it's nice to have a consistent piece of characterization in a book that seems to careen from one plot thread to another with limited connection between them.

She-Hulk #6, by Charles Soule (writer), Ron Wimberley (artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - You remember the opening scenes of Pineapple Express? All the different tricks Seth Rogen would use so he could get people to admit who they were so he could serve them? I imagine Jen doesn't have to bother with any of that. If she asks if you are who you are, you admit to it, because you don't want her coming back if she finds out you lied.

Jen's call to Wyatt thankfully cuts out before she can mention the name to him and anything bad can happen. Which gives her the chance to check Patsy's voicemail and realize she got lucky. Meanwhile, back in the Dakotas, Angie was shot in the head, only to be saved by the transference of something from the monkey to her. The file is gone, the courthouse burned down, but Angie recalls what she saw. Back in the office, Jen gets a visit from Kevin Trench (aka Nightwatch), who is trying to find out why he was advised not to speak to Jen. The conversation is interrupted by a lot of demon things that attack the building, all of them calling her name. The demons are defeated, but Jen is gonna have to pay for the damages. However, Jen decides the blue file is too much trouble and brushes off Angie when she shows up to tell what she learned. Good news, Trench passed on her name to a lot of people in the superhero community that could use some legal help, so it looks like Jen will be able to pay for those repairs after all.

Do we get the feeling Trench is up to something? It would be one thing if Jen simply decided the blue file was too much trouble, but the way she brushed off Angie, then seemed surprised when Patsy asked if she hadn't been too harsh, that just screams to me something's up. I mean, it could have been a result of whatever that demon did that locked eyes with her, but there were also those two panels where she was inside Trench's cape. She saw something, or there's something happenin' in there, what it is ain't exactly clear. And now Trench helpfully redirects a lot of casework to her, so she'd be too busy to look into it if she wanted to. And Trench never said who advised him to stay away, Jen merely assumed it was Patsy, and Patsy didn't confirm.

Also, is it relevant the demons used the "BAMF" sound effect when they disappeared? They sure as hell didn't look like the Bamfs that follow Kurt around. We're not going to get some mess with Kurt's father are we? I know Soule's doing some good writing all over the place these days (unless you ask the Superman/Lois fans), but even he can't be so crazy as to think he'd get a good story out of that dumpster fire.

As for Wimberley's art, just no. Can't get into it. Well, that's not entirely true. The way he represented Trench's powers, even if it sort of mimicked Cloak's powers, that was good. Makes him less of the Spawn knockoff he was originally conceived/presented as (unless they've drastically altered Spawn in the 10+ years since I last glanced at one of his comics). But otherwise, the faces tend to look strange, and some of the perspectives he uses are really off-putting.

The Invisible Man 1.19 - Diseased

Plot: We open with Fawkes and Hobbes waiting for a friend of Hobbes'. This friend, Yuri, is going to help them capture a dangerous biological weapons dealer known as The Phone. Fawkes doesn't entirely trust Yuri, who is ex-KGB but now in the Russian Mafia, so he follows him invisibly when Yuri approaches the ice cream truck to make the buy. And there's Arnaud, with thermal vision sunglasses, and a revolver, so Fawkes is off to the races. So is Yuri, for that matter, following Hobbes' orders to run if bullets start flying, leaving Hobbes to deal with the armed henchman. Arnaud chases Fawkes into a dead end, but he used up all his bullets, so Fawkes has got him, right? Nope, Arnaud also brought along a gas grenade and a respirator, so he walks out of the smoke, hops on the truck and rides off, while Darien staggers out, retching and coughing.

There was more than just smoke in there, though, because now Fawkes has the flu. The Keeper comes by with soup, Hobbes drops in spraying disinfectant everywhere, then the Official and Eberts arrive. Amongst all the arguing and temperature taking, Fawkes sneezes Quicksilver. Quickly, to the Agency! Where we find out the gland itself is sick. When Darien tries to go invisible, the Quicksilver turns into some brown, incredibly smelly substance that sticks to his clothes. Well, it's not like going invisible was going to help against Arnaud and his stylish thermal imaging shades. Speaking of Arnaud, he's posing as a chauffeur at the airport to pick up a Dr. Halliday. Once the doc is in the car, Arnaud informs him they really only need his fingers and his eyes. Ominous.

Meanwhile, Hobbes has brought Darien to. . . I'm not sure what it is. There's a Ferris wheel, but also a bunch of small restaurants of various cultures. Hobbes explains all of these are storefronts for the criminal operations of their respective nationalities, and this is a sort of neutral ground. However, none of them have heard of The Phone, or have any interest in biological weapons, which do seem a bit much for mobsters types. More critically, they learn Yuri has been part of the Russian Mafia for over a month, because he owes them a lot of money. About that time, Darien starts Quicksilvering uncontrollably, which with a sick gland means he's nearly encased in an amber-like shell of Sicksilver. The Keep has to cut him out with a bone saw, leaving Darien huddling under a blanket, clearly shaken. She won't even give him a shot of counteragent, because she's not sure what it'll do to him in this state. The Keeper has determined whatever Fawkes has, it's isn't the Helena version of the flu, it's something she doesn't recognize. So she wants to take him to Fort Leavitt, which is a special military hospital for people who know classified stuff, so they don't accidentally leak secrets under sedation or whatever.

It's a good idea in theory, except for two things. One, the Official won't let them explain anything about Darien's condition with regards to the gland, which makes it kind of hard to explain the problem and how it's not a standard version of the fly. Two, one of the doctors on staff was Dr. Halliday, and thus Darien is delivered sedated, directly into Arnaud's hands. But the gland steps up to save Darien's life, as even unconscious, it Quicksilvers a portion of his hair, so Arnaud realizes something is wrong. So he and his assistant scientist abduct Fawkes, leaving the Keep unconscious on the floor. Hobbes had managed to track down Yuri again, after a lengthy chase, but Arnaud's boys showed up to close that leak. Not before Hobbes learned Arnaud sent Yuri to them, to lure Fawkes into his clutches. He gets to Fort Leavitt too late for that information to do any good.

Back at Arnaud's very large hideout, he and his associate are having an argument. The associate claims he can't be blamed because how could he design a virus to not affect something he had never seen? He calls Arnaud a half-scientist, and Arnaud shoots him. Darien wakes up about then, and the two of them have an extended conversation, where Darien questions Arnaud's love of extremely convoluted plans, and claims when he as the chance to kill Arnaud, it'll be real simple. Arnaud dares him to take a shot, so Fawkes punches him in the face, then gets beat up by the goons. So Arnaud has to make Fawkes not sick, so that the gland will be healthy, so he can cut it out of Darien's head, but he shot the guy who might be able to make that happen, so he'll need another assistant. Which requires him to abduct the Keeper out of her apartment, when she and Hobbes stop so she can grab some notes. At least Arnaud said "please".

Back at the hideout, we end up in a test of wills between Arnaud and the Keeper. She wants to know if it's safe to give Darien counteragent, Arnaud wants to know what she's planning to do. As all this is going on, Darien finally goes Quicksilver mad and dispatches the two goons in short order. So much for Valt and Thuggo (only one of those is a name Darien made up). Back in the lab, the Keeper finally explains she's going to piggyback the antibiotic on the counteragent, so Arnaud doesn't need her any longer. Then Fawkes barges in, swats the gun away, and starts to choke him to death with one hand. Claire tries to reason with him, but Fawkes doesn't care if he dies, just so long as Arnaud goes first. Then she bargains with him, suggesting he could destroy Arnaud's stuff instead. At which point Darien turns on her for a moment, but it works. He starts smashing furniture, and Arnaud is sufficiently concerned to tell her where a sample of the original virus is, then escape. Claire cures Fawkes, but there's no useful information to lead them to Arnaud, so Darien is left unfulfilled.

Quote of the Episode: Fawkes - 'Die, cuckoo clock, die!' There are a lot of interesting lines in this episode, but I've known it was going to be that line since I started this series.

The "oh crap" count: 1 (32 overall).

Who's getting quoted this week? Susan Sontag, who said society needs an illness they can identify as evil. Stallone in Cobra, who said crime is a disease, and he was the cure. The Beastie Boys, who said let's get ill. Samuel Johnson, who felt disease began the equality death completes. And Mother Teresa, who said the biggest disease in the world was feeling unwanted.

Times Fawkes Goes Into Quicksilver Madness: 1 (7 overall).

Other: I liked the scene of Hobbes chasing Yuri. Not just because Hobbes stole that kid's scooter after the kid called him a stupid, bald idiot, though that was good. But before that, you can tell Hobbes is running in a calm, measured style, while Yuri's a panicky animal. Looking back over his shoulder, flailing his arms around, constantly trying to speed up. But Hobbes just keeps chugging along, waiting for Yuri to run out of gas.

When Fawkes and Hobbes are at the food court, the mob guy recognizes Darien as having been part of Johnny Castignacci's crew, which is pretty impressive considering that was only true for about 5 minutes (see 1.7, "Liberty and Larceny").

This is also the episode I always remember for the Hobbes/Claire relationship. I usually just remember Hobbes complimenting her on how good she looks in her pants at the end of the episode, and the fact that Claire responds with a slightly shocked "Bobby!". Not angry shocked, though, more surprised that he'd say that in public. There's quite a bit more than that, though. Right before he compliments her, he's trying to explain how worried he was when he came up to check on her and saw her apartment's alarm had been busted. When he gets to Fort Leavitt to report what he learned from Yuri, Claire's still shaking off the effects of the sedative. Hobbes notices immediately something's happened to her, and is worried. And when they get to her apartment, Hobbes expresses impatience and urges her to be quick, which causes Claire to tell him to go on ahead, and she'll catch a cab. It feels like one of those sitcom arguments couples have where the husband is annoyed with how long the wife takes getting ready, which is a little funny since Hobbes hadn't even been into her apartment yet. But hey, it's their first fight. Awwww.

I do wonder, though, where was she going to catch a cab to? They had no idea where Arnaud took Darien.

Really, the main show is Joel Bissonette is back as Arnaud. Whoo! I love Arnaud. He's brilliant, sadistic, charming, clever, a bit of a coward, but with a inner core of steel you do not want to underestimate. Remember, this is a guy who cut open his stomach to try and retrieve a data chip he needed. That the chip was too corroded by his stomach acid is beside the point, what matters is he was willing to do it.

And here he is, back with another ludicrously convoluted plan. Silver Age Superman would be impressed by the contortions he went through. He found a guy who needed money fast, who also knew Hobbes to lure Fawkes in. He found another scientist to design a serious virus that would initially appear to be just the flu. he tracked down a military physician and killed the guy for his fingerprints and retinal scans. Managed to hang around a military hospital until Fawkes is brought in, all so he can perform a surgery in 3 minutes before the next security sweep. That is insane, and I love it.

And I love that when Darien calls him on it, when he suggests Arnaud just sneak up and hit Darien with a bat, Arnaud tries to handwave it with talk of "variable", and "but you could turn invisible". You have sunglasses that enable you to see him! It's like Arnaud is the Riddler, he just can't help himself. You actually see it again with he and Claire in his lab. The virus his now dead associate made is designed to ultimately kill Fawkes, so Arnaud needs her to save Fawkes so Arnaud can harvest the healthy gland. More precisely, he needs her to tell him how she's going to do it so he can kill her, then do it himself. But Claire needs to know if Darien can have counteragent first. All Arnaud has to do is tell her that, but he won't. It's not even that he's trying to get her solution from her, he can't resist gloating about the fact he created counteragent, and Claire is stuck copying his recipe. He mocks her by asking if she was surprised he used an organic base, his sense of self-satisfaction coming through clear as a bell. This a lady he needs help from, and he can't stop pissing her off.

Arnaud is his own worst enemy, because he knows how gifted he is. He knows he's smart, but this makes him think he can always outsmart everyone, and that he can start with a plan that can easily go awry, and it'll be fine because he can easily devise a solution for any problem. He can be very charming, and he's a good liar, so he treats people like crap because he's sure he can get away with it. But this causes him to go through his help pretty fast, and also leads to people really wanting to get payback. Darien would hate Arnaud anyway, for killing Kevin and devising the flaw in the gland that gives the Agency the leash they have on him, but the fact Arnaud enjoys tormenting him so much, that's just the little extra middle finger. It's the guy who cuts in front of you without signaling, and also throws up a piece of gravel that cracks your windshield when he does it.

Ventresca and Bissonette do a good job playing up the animosity between Fawkes and Arnaud. I think half the reason Arnaud enjoys tormenting Darien so, is because he's pissed this ex-con keeps outsmarting him. Darien's the one who saw through his disguise at the I-Man project, who kept him from stealing all the files, who nearly blew Arnaud up, kept him from stealing Kevin's old notes, and Fawkes legitimately wants Arnaud dead, which I think scares The Phone a little. He doesn't want to show fear, so he twists it into hate and sadism. He can't just whack Fawkes with a bat and cut his skull open with a hacksaw, because he has to prove he's smarter first. He has to win his way. Darien just wants Arnaud dead, Arnaud wants Darien to suffer first. It's why Fawkes was willing to die if it meant he'd killed Arnaud first, but Arnaud always has to gloat and waste time having his goons beat Darien's ass after Darien popped him one.

I will agree with Arnaud that shooting people seems like an effective way to win an argument.

Favorite Marvel Characters #4 - Hawkeye

Character: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

Creators: Don Heck and Stan Lee

First appearance: Tales of Suspense #57

First encounter: West Coast Avengers #6, possibly the same comic that introduced me to the Thing. Which is funny, because the running subplot of the issue is Hawkeye constantly badgering Ben to be the team's 6th member. It's Clint being annoying, and kind of an idiot, because he constantly ignores the fact Firebird really wants to join the "whackos".

Definitive writer: It's hard for me to say, because most writers write Hawkeye well. I have to go with either Kurt Busiek or Fabian Nicieza. I've read Busiek's Barton in Avengers and Thunderbolts (also an issue of Untold Tales of Spider-Man). Nicieza wrote Clint's first attempt at an ongoing, as well as a stint on Thunderbolts. I might lean to Nicieza, since he wrote him more in Thunderbolts.

Definitive artist: This is gonna sound weird, because it's not David Aja, not George Perez, and not even Mark Bagley. Those last two are close, but if we're being honest, that cover by Scott Kolins up there is the image I most often have of Hawkeye. It's perfect for him. He's wearing his costume, he's in mid-air upside-down, he's already put one arrow down the barrel of a stunned crook's gun, and he's got another arrow notched and he's ready to do the same to the guy's partner. Critically, he has a smirk on his face through all of it. He knows exactly how cool he is, and he enjoys the heck out of it. After Kolins, it would be Bagley, though.

Favorite moment or story: It's very tempting to pick him shooting Gyrich in the wrist in Thunderbolts #50, because I hate Gyrich. But come on, like I'm going to pick anything other than Clint saving the entire universe by outwitting the Grandmaster in Avengers Annual  #16 written by Tom Defalco, and this part at least drawn by Bob Hall and I think Tom Palmer. Facing a foe who stole the power of Death herself, and one who has rigged the game completely in his favor, Clint wins by challenging the Elder to a new game. And since fair is fair, Clint rigs his game as well. The sheer fact Clint is willing to bet it all on his ability to recognize a rube when he sees one, someone who won't notice Clint cheating, that's awesome.

What I like about him: He's a guy who, armed with nothing more than trick arrows, took on a millionaire genius in a flying tank, and he did it for love. And his own massive ego. But mostly love. What's not to like?

That does kind of sum up the things I like about him. He'll fight when by all right he's completely outmatched, and be absolutely certain he can win, even if part of what's driving him to fight is his own doubts about whether he can stack up. And most of his actions are driven by emotions. I don't think Clint's dumb (he was smart enough to build his own trick arrows back in the day), but he feels things strongly, and that's what tends to determine what he does, rather than any logical thought process.

This gets him into a fair amount of trouble, because when he gets steamed he'll shoot off his mouth at anyone in the vicinity, whether they're to blame or not. Which could get irritating real fast, but if someone points out to Clint he's wrong, he'll cop to it. It might take awhile, but he will admit it, and do so publicly. When Mockingbird busts his chops about completely ignoring Firebird as a potential addition to the WCA, Clint  admits she's right and suggests they immediately head to Espirita's home to ask her to join. He screws up, but he'll try to make amends. Even if it takes awhile, even if it takes going into Hell itself, which is what he tried to do to save Mockingbird years later. It turned out Hellstrom was tricking him into rescuing Hellcat, but still, Clint went right into Hell for his estranged wife (who Clint estranged by being a dumbass about her letting the Phantom Rider fall to his death, not one of his better moments), and then fought to save the T'Bolts after they had journeyed into Hell to help him. Former super-villains should probably stay out Hell as long as they can, generally, but they fact they did it speaks strongly to how much he'd proven himself genuine in his concern for them.

Being able to admit a mistake helps differentiate Clint from jerks like Batman and Tony Stark, who are theoretically more logical in their thought processes, but in practice have their heads so far up their asses they can't even comprehend the possibility they might be wrong, let alone admit it. I can understand why the Avengers put up with him. He mouths off, but eventually he cools down and apologizes. In the meantime, the eruptions of Mount Barton can liven up those occasionally dull days around the Avengers Mansion.

Which wouldn't count for much if he couldn't carry his weight, but he does. Doesn't matter if they're facing Kang, Ultron, Nefaria, the Wrecking Crew, or an Elder of the Universe, Clint's gonna be up to something, whether he's going for a knockout, trying to keep the big bad distracted while the heavy hitters step up, or coming up with a plan of attack himself. He's not the most powerful Avengers, but neither is Captain America, and he does all right. Sometimes a problem requires skill and precision, not overwhelming force.

Clint's going to be one of the last Avengers to fall back, simply because everyone would expect him to be the first, and he's determined to prove them wrong. More than one foe has dismissed him as the weakest Avenger, and wound up regretting it. Crossfire specifically called him out as the weakest crimefighter in New York, only to have his attempt to kill Clint fall flat because he underestimated the guy. He tried to kill Hawkeye with his own bow, and couldn't even draw it back, the grenade arrow he'd notched fell at his feet and blew him senseless. The Collector called him the weakest Avenger, which was why he didn't mind saving him until the last. But Clint got him on the run so effectively the Collector couldn't rely on his arsenal and had to call on his considerable cosmic might. And if Steve Engelhart's Silver Surfer run is anything to go by, the Elder's have enough power to give Norrin Radd a run for his money, or even trounce him, so Clint pushing the Collector to that level is pretty impressive. Even then, he couldn't stop Hawkeye from freeing all the other Avengers.

The funny thing is, Hawkeye knows where he stands in terms of power. During the Avengers/Defenders War, when Clint threw in with the Defenders, he had to fight Iron Man again for a piece of the Evil Eye. Clint declared himself the weakest Defender (true enough when the other members were the Hulk, Dr. Strange, Valkyrie, Namor, and the Silver Surfer), and Iron Man the 2nd strongest Avenger. But in the same breath, he stated that wouldn't stop him from walking home with the prize. He was right too, because Iron Man forgot what it's like to fight against Hawkeye, rather than with him. He thought if he got in close Hawkeye wouldn't be able to use his bow. So Clint smacked Shellhead over the noggin with an acid arrow. Then Iron Man decided it might be better to keep Clint at a distance, and blast him with repulsor rays so Clint can't aim at him. No big, Clint simply fought through the repulsor ray sufficiently that he could fire a magnet arrow on a trajectory that would enable it to draw Iron Man's arm off-target, making him damage a building and have to deal with that.

Now knowing he isn't the strongest doesn't mean it can't get him into trouble. He thinks people doubt him, which is half the reason he shoots his mouth off. It causes him to do rash things sometimes, like decide he should try to capture the Hulk alone. Or approach the Thunderbolts and tell them he got them a chance at a full pardon if they follow his lead, even though the government turned him down flat. These are rash decisions, ill-advised, almost guaranteed to end horribly. Indeed, the Hulk nearly handed him his head, and the T'Bolts eventually found out he'd been lying, which fractured the team at a critical juncture. Somehow, Hawkeye makes it work out. He doesn't lose hope, he just keeps plugging ahead, and eventually an opportunity presents itself to turn things around. The Defenders show up, mostly to make Hawkeye stop harassing the Hulk, but it also keeps the Hulk from mashing Clint into paste. Clint is able to barter what the Thunderbolts learned about a new weapon the government had to kill superhuman threats into a pardon for his team if they keep quiet, even though it means he has to go to prison to keep Gyrich from spilling the beans.

Heh, the fact Gyrich hates him so much ought to be a reason to like Hawkeye in of itself. Gyrich hates superhumans (especially mutants, but pretty much all superhumans), perceiving them as putting themselves above the rest of humanity. But he hates the guy with no powers, the one who simply trained his butt of to be the best in the world at something, who finds a place alongside those superhumans, even more. Though it probably has more to do with their first meeting starting with Clint thinking Gyrich was an intruder and tying him up.

Also, I don't think Gyrich's a big fan of redemption, and Clint is all about it. Clint was the first of the three former criminals to join what became the Kooky Quartet. He'd made a series of rash decisions that ended badly, and breaking into the Avengers' Mansion and tying up Jarvis ought to have been another. But they heard him out, and he got a chance to prove he could be a hero. Since then, Clint's been big on giving people second chances. The Thunderbolts, obviously. The team of super-villains that posed as heroes, but once that became known, tried to save their necks by being legit heroes. Clint gets in there and helps them be a team and take some real pride in being heroes, even if the public doesn't always trust them. Before that, look at his early West Coast Avengers line-ups. Wonder Man had tried to get away from heroing because he was too afraid of dying. Tigra felt completely out of her league and left the Avengers after two missions. When Stark joined the team (in the original mini-series, Rhodey was in the armor), he had only recently pulled himself out of the bottle and gotten his company back together. Hank Pym eventually joined, and well, you already know what a trainwreck his life had been. Clint brings them in, convinces them they can be Avengers, and slowly but surely, they coalesce into a team, with Clint rallying their spirits even when they get lost in time (and he gets injured because Wonder Man is a dope who forgets not everyone is invulnerable like him).

So let's see, he's a loudmouthed smart aleck (good), who is almost always outmatched in raw power but wins anyway with skill, wits, and sheer guts (nice). He says what's on his mind whether it's a good idea or not (I'm envious), but admits to his mistakes (keeps him from being insufferable), and usually doesn't dwell on them overly long (I don't like mopey Hawkeye any more than I like mopey Nightcrawler). And his costume is purple, which is apparently a color I quite like.

What I Bought 7/31/2014 - Part 1

I had to travel to Cape on Thursday anyway, so why not pick up my comics. Unfortunately, Diamond has been shorting him on various books lately, including both issues of Daredevil that came out this month, so I don't have everything that came out in July. Hopefully by the time I get through the books I do have, I'll have acquired the ones I don't currently have.

Deadpool 31 & 32, by Gerry Duggan & Brian Posehn (writers), John Lucas (artist), Val Staples (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - Deadpool's original sin is that he lied to Preston about passing those engineering courses at ITT Technical Institute.

Preston has found Deadpool's daughter, Eleanor, left in the care of Butler's brother some time ago. The brother is suspicious, and refuses to answer Preston's questions, so she leaves. Then Ultimatum shows up, and Preston reappears, smashing through walls in her robot body, tossing around old school bathtubs like nobody's business and generally turning the Ultimatum guys into red paste. Until a sniper damages her computer brain, but she's able to send a signal to Wade first. So Wade completely ditches Disco Dazzler to go find a ride to Chicago, ultimately getting there after Thor hurls his hammer with Wade attached. Thor's kind of a jerk about, but I guess he takes poor toilet etiqutte really seriously. Which is hard to believe considering he's friends with Volstagg. You can't tell me that guy hasn't wrecked a few loos in his day. Wade gets to Eleanor just in time to rescue her from Ultimatum (after having killed a bunch of their guys and disguising himself as one of them), and to watch Butler's brother die of a heart attack. Wade hustles her into an office building as a way to stall until the help he called earlier arrives. Meanwhile, SHIELD got Preston's LMD body running again and she and Adsit are on the way, and we learn what Adsit saw: Wade burning down a home with his own parents inside. Well then.

Oh, and Shiklah showed up to save Dazzler from the vampires and they're killing vampires together.

Figures that just as I decided to pass on upcoming Deadpool tie-ins to the next big event, on the basis that the current tie-ins to the big event of right now have been lackluster, the creative team ups its game. Or maybe it was just they stopped wasting time with vampires. It's not that I don't like Shiklah, or the idea of Wade hanging out with actual monsters, but this whole thing with Dracula doesn't interest me. Maybe if I read that Dracula's Gauntlet mini-series in the future, that'll help. Currently though, it's just something getting in the way of Deadpool spending time with his daughter. Which can only end badly, but I'm still hoping Wade will get some happy moments. Or I'm a sicko who wants to see Wade suffer loss so that he'll horrifically slaughter a bunch of idiots. I'd prefer to think that wasn't the case, but my enjoyment of the issue where he attacked that carrier and killed all the Ultimatum guys says differently.

I have had my complaints about Lucas' art, but he's quite good at drawing graphic violence. His people tend to react to being hit by bursting like water balloons. I mean, he doesn't skimp on it. Wade breaks some stupid cop's wrist, it isn't sufficient to merely show the hand dangling at a weird angle, the bone has to be protruding. Wade gets shot in the face? Have some teeth flying all over the place! There's also a nice page where Preston went out the window in the tub and it lands upside-down. Then she pops up and launches it into the air. Lucas shows the tub at various stages of its flight in that panel, up and to the right, and as it descends, it comes down on an Ultimatum guy standing in a different, smaller panel right next to where Preston is in the original panel.

After a disappointing couple of issues, Deadpool's back to doing what he does best: Killing idiots in matching outfits.