Throwing the Baby Out

After reading Way of X #3, I had this thought. Mutants don't always have babies that are mutants, if I remember right. Usually they do, but I know at the time when Mystique and Sabretooth had a son (hell if I know if Graydon Creed is still in canon), he wasn't a mutant. Unless that got retconned somewhere along the way. Making the virulent mutant-hater be a mutant himself seems like the ripoff Twilight Zone twist a lot of comic writers would do entirely seriously.

Point being, it's possible some of those kids in the nursery Stacy and Lost and other people look after aren't mutants. Since all their care is being handled by volunteers, there's no guarantee any of the scientist types are doing anything to test that.

Which leads me to wonder what happens if some of the babies aren't mutants. Humans are allowed on Krakoa, with permission. Like Northstar's boyfriend (husband?) Kyle. I guess Deadpool, if he hadn't been such an ass the time he showed up. It was hilarious to me, but he was still being an ass. Umm. . . I mean, there's probably some other people, right? Wolverine has some old non-mutant buddies that might come hang out and drink beer. Oh, maybe the Power kids could come visit Kitty!

(I'd suggest Wonder Man could come hang out with the Beast, but a) I'm not sure if Simon's alive. I think Rogue may have absorbed him at some point, and b) Hank's a creepy, creepy fucker now. Nobody wants to hang out with that asshole.)

That said, the key phrase is "with permission." Or maybe "by invitation," is a better way of putting it. Whichever. But these babies were apparently just dumped off here and there. Clearly their biological parents don't want them around. There are obviously people willing to take care of them, but is that specific to particular babies, or just babies in general? Is Lost going to care if someone sends a couple of the infants off to a farm somewhere up north, if there are always more new ones?

So what happens then? Do they make arrangements with Social Services in another country that is friendly to Krakoa to take the children? Do they just dump them, toss them through the portal with a cheery, "Your problem now, sapiens!" That seems cruel, but I really wouldn't put it past the Quiet Council, which has been content to ignore this entire situation. Even Stacy is using the "sapiens" nonsense, which is consistent to her character going back to her earliest appearances in Joe Casey's Uncanny X-Men run, but not necessarily a great sign.

Plus, you can just imagine the anti-mutant bigots freaking out about "covert mutants" or "plague babies", or something equally nuts. The life expectancy for those kids is not going to be great outside Krakoa's borders. Maybe Krakoa could find them homes quietly, but it seems like that sort of thing always comes out eventually. Usually at the most inconvenient time. Funny how that works out!

They could just let the kids stay. Krakoa has so many resources they can probably handle it. Given the general attitude of most of the people on Krakoa towards non-mutants these days, I can't imagine that would be a fun upbringing, the sapien among mutants who can't stop telling everyone how much better they are than sapiens. Or they'll be used as guinea pigs by Mr. Sinister or Hank McCoy. Sounds like fun.

Black Widow

It's fine, I guess. 

Florence Pugh seemed to be having fun as Yelena, although getting to play the irritating younger sister seems like a more rewarding role than big sister. The, 'This is a much less cool way to die,' line made me chuckle. The fight they had in the Budapest apartment reminded me a little of watching my friends and their siblings fight, albeit at a much higher level of skill. But the point where they're choking each other with the curtain made me think of two kids where one has the other in a headlock, but their hair's getting pulled or the eye poked or something.

The whole weird family dynamic thing was, I don't know. David Harbour plays Red Guardian as your typical American sitcom dad. A big clumsy well-meaning putz. Who is also a true believer Soviet super-soldier. That kind of humor is pretty typical for Marvel movies, but it felt out of place in what, at times, felt like it was trying to be a spy movie. Everyone else is being so serious, even Pugh, who is playing excited, not silly. 

If there'd been more of them as an undercover family, I think it would have worked there. Him trying to maintain cover and being really unnatural about it. Like Steve Rogers struggling with being inconspicuous in Winter Soldier, a comparison the Guardian would apparently appreciate. By the time the family is together, they're moving into the climax and there's only time for fight scenes and speeches.

Rachel Weisz' character felt like it fit the movie better. She's extremely competent and cool under fire, more than a little morally ambiguous at best with the mind control thing. But she'll also tell Natasha not to slouch at the dinner table. It's still sort of a sitcom mom, but a much more toned down version in comparison to what Harbour's doing. Maybe the movie is too dour without him. Or maybe, since he seems like a true believer in Communism, you also need him to recognize they got used, but their little family still mattered, too. 

I think all three of Melina, Natasha, and Yelena weren't believers so much as they were pragmatists. They were put in situations where they had no choice to play ball, but none of them were under illusions about what they were doing or why. They knew they were just puppets. Maybe Melina with her work with the pigs didn't see it that way, but it seems just as likely she was fooling herself. Like Natasha had been doing when she went to work for SHIELD that it would be different.

When Dreykov was making his big speech about how the world is run from the shadows and blahblahblah, I expected Natasha to point out none of that would have meant a damn thing if the world is conquered by space aliens commanded by an Asgardian. For that matter, what good were all his little widows when Ultron was going to use Sokovia to cause a mass extinction event? But the guy's whole bit is control, so he probably just ignores that.

Taskmaster was definitely not what I was hoping for. Taskmaster being an example of the red in Natasha's ledger was fine. I'd have preferred a freelance killer, but the whole movie is Natasha trying to actually deal with her past rather than run from it, so it's fine. But I was hoping for someone a little more talkative, boastful about their skills, and instead we got a Terminator, basically.

I mean, at least Batroc got to talk a little smack to Steve Rogers.

What I Bought 7/10/2021 - Part 2

It's too bad this book didn't come out the same week as Midnight Western Theatre #2, so I could have had two comics that involve fighting a bunch of religious loonies in hooded robes.

Locust #2, by Massimo Rosi (writer), Alex Nieto (artist), Mattia Gentili (letterer) - Aw, he's got a big bug buddy!

So, past and present. In the past, Max tries to get himself and his elderly mother out of NYC, but isn't very good at driving with giant bugs on the roof of the car. Fortunately, they get rescued by some helpful, heavily armed folks who turned a police station into an armed compound. Don't worry, though, they describe themselves as 'Good Christians.' Yeah, those two words used in combination have never meant anything positive. Led by the mysterious "Ford" Max is seeking in the present. 

Speaking of the present, Max makes his way to a cabin in the woods, where he finds a lovely little congregation in the basement. All of whom are preparing to kill some kid because if they kill the unclean God will stop the plague or some such shit. It really sounds more like they're a bunch of white supremacist dipshits, but they've also captured some of the locust people to use as weapons? Or perhaps they've somehow converted them to their cause. Otherwise I'm not sure how they were able to mark the little crosses on their foreheads. Anyway, someone set them loose, so now Max has that to deal with.

Nieto gives every location a different sort of color motif. The scenes during the escape from New York are mostly greys and blacks, so that the fires and taillights can stand out more in contrast. So everything is very muddy, but then there's this one streak of something brighter to catch the eye. Even if it's just to highlight how overwhelmingly dark everything is. He kind of does the same with the scenes in the basement, but cuts it down to really just black and red. Makes everything ominous and menacing.

The couple of pages of Max' approach to the cabin are dominated by blues and whites, with the snow and the looming mountains. Initially, there's no sign anything is wrong with the world. He could just be an average hunter or nature enthusiast out and about. It gives it a peaceful air that's shattered when he comes across a couple of mutilated bodies that have been strung up in a tree.

Plotwise, both threads seem to follow the notion of false haven. Max reaches a place that seems promising - either in terms of being safe, or in terms of having the child he seeks - only to find danger lurking instead. The presence of the locusts, but more the people. Ford's the danger in the past, and however they've captured or turned the locusts in the present, it's the people planning to use them for a specific purpose. Big surprise, people are awful.

Sunday Splash Page #175

 

"Turns Out, Worms Can't Read Maps," in Earthworm Jim #2, by Dan Slott and John Lewandowski (writers), Barry Crain (penciler), Sam De LaRosa (inker), Ed Laz (colorist), UL Higgins (letterer)

I'm guessing this is not what you expected to kick off the "E's" with. Or maybe it was, if you know my affection for the old EWJ.

A three-issue mini-series from mid-90s Marvel, written at least partially by Dan Slott (he gets plot credit at least), which I was not expecting when I bought this several years back. It's kind of an odd bird of a story. It's not an origin, except perhaps for Peter Puppy's friendship with Jim. Jim's already a well enough established hero that there's a background subplot about several of his villains hiring Evil the Cat to sic his lawyers on Jim with a lawsuit for all those times he beat them up.

(The lawyers keep get waylaid one way or the other. Going to the wrong address, chasing ambulances full of injured super-villains, stuff like that.)

The main villain actually ends up being Bob the Killer Goldfish of all things, who tricks Princess What's-Her-Name into agreeing to marry him to save Jim's life. The comic's version of the Princess is sort of a weird amalgamation of the cartoon's version (where she's a hardbitten rebel leader/warrior princess), and the video game version (who seemed like sort of a bubblehead). So she's very strong and ready to fight, but also kind of dumb when the plot requires demands it. Not unlike Jim, actually.

Barry Crain and De LaRosa handle most of the art chores, except the back third of issue #2, which is drawn by Manny Galan and Carlos Garzon, who utilize a simpler, cleaner style. De LaRosa really likes to shade in as many muscles on Jim's suit as possible, and Crain's version of Jim is much more animated and a little feral looking. The top of his head is always moving or squiggling about, and he can get a distinctly manic look in his eyes at times. Crain also likes to add little details to the background. Like having one of Evil's lawyers look like Pinhead from Hellraiser, or what looks like a TIE Fighter getting plowed through at the top of the splash page up there. 

Which fits with the general tone of the comic, a nearly constant stream of jokes, one-liners, puns, sight gags, the occasional meta-joke, etc. I'd say there's more misses than hits, but there's a few that are kind of funny.

What I Bought 7/10/2021 - Part 1

So, three books last week. The two for today are both in the penultimate issue of an arc. One of them does a lot more with that than the other.

Runaways #37, by Rainbow Rowell (writer), Andres Genolet (artist), Dee Cunniffe (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - I'm really not sure what everyone is so shocked about in the context of this issue. Although Nico only looks mildly concerned at best.

This issue is almost entirely silent for 16 pages. Then the last two pages have a bunch of dialogue. Yes, that only adds up to 18 pages, because that's how many pages there were in this comic. Swell, right? I think that's the second time this year they've stiffed us on pages with an issue. And Genolet is a good artist, the work is pretty and all. Emotions are clear, even if I'm not always clear on why exactly they're having that emotion. Still, it's not so great it demands to be seen sans any actual talking.

So what did happen? Nico is frustrated about her fight with Karolina about letting a genie steal part of her soul when she uses the staff. Which is, to be clear, a stupid thing to agree to, but they seem to make up. Although some of Karolina's people show up looking for her, whatever that means. Present Gert and Victor find Future Gert and Present Chase making out, and Present Gert is not happy and runs off. Is she not happy about how she turns out, or that she seems fated to end up pining over Chase?

Admittedly, that would be a rough realization to have, but I don't know for sure because nobody says anything. Oh, and Future Gert cries while hugging Victor, which probably doesn't bode well for him.

Gib found someone to offer him sacrifices. Relax, it's cats, who bring him mice. Mice which Doombot must then vacuum up, and why doesn't he build something to do housecleaning? Wouldn't that be beneath a Doom? Also, Alex Wilder is still around, which is probably bad news.

I don't see why this issue needed to go Silent Era, and if you're going to do that, then fucking commit. Don't half-ass it.

Jenny Zero #3, by Dave Dwonch (writer/letterer), Brockton McKinney (writer), Magenta King (artist), Dam (color artist) - Seeing your emotionally distant and deceased father figure in cloud formations is a common coping mechanism.

The government agency is becoming increasingly evil, as they try to intimidate Jenny hotel heiress friend, to no effect. But, their telepath pokes through Jenny's uncle's mind and figures out where she went. And their evil leader orders them to either get Jenny to work for them, or bring her corpse back so they can incorporate her DNA into their stormtroopers. I feel as though that development happened extremely quickly, but to be fair, the comic has largely been focused on Jenny making an ass of herself for two issues as an avoidance technique, so there probably wasn't an opportunity.

Anyway, Jenny's busy tracking down an old associate of her father's, who tried to approach her about training years ago. It's a middle-aged lady who is the master of an entire temple, and she's gonna teach Jenny some drunken master stuff. Well, Jenny's a drunk, so she's halfway there! I think they get approximately one day of training in before the government dorks show up and there's a big fight. And once Jenny gets involved, it's really a "big" fight. I'd see myself out, but this is my blog, and my ass has fused with the chair.

Somewhat abrupt shift into cartoonish supervillainy by the mostly unseen Action Science Police aside, there's actually several bits in here that made me laugh. Ms. Sheratin deciding to call the terribly named Alpha Major "Chad". Aiko's ways of testing Jenny. First, knocking her flat on her ass. An oldy, but a goody. Then throwing a cup of tea at Jenny to catch, only for Jenny to punch it, and both of them being very confused by the other's actions. The dog is as amused by it as I am.

The best might be when "Chad" is trying intimidate Aiko and he snaps his fingers, and nothing happens. You turn the page and all his guys are still down the hill waiting because 'The snow is really giving us hell on the comms', so they couldn't tell if that was a signal. Idiots trying to look cool and failing miserably will always be funny. At least, I hope so. If not, this world may not be worth living in.

So, is the fin on the head for these Ultraman types always a natural growth like it is for Jenny, or is it usually a helmet, like the Rocketeer? I'd always assumed the latter, that it was something added to the costume to look cool, but Jenny actually has a headfin, because either her faces uniform didn't have his helmet, or she opted not to wear it. It looks fine as is, although it's kind of weird how much it seems to cause King to flatten out Jenny's nose when drawn from straight ahead, versus in profile. The bridge kind of disappears.

King does a really good job drawing "Chad" to look like a complete ass. Although I'm not sure I've seen a fictional guy with pink hair who wasn't. This doofus, Quentin Quire, there's probably some others I'm forgetting, but those two are strong date points in favor of my hypothesis. He's wearing a purple band-aid under one eye at the beginning of the comic for no apparent reason. He's not wearing it when they attack Aiko's temple, and there's no noticeable scar. So it's an affectation, and an incredibly dumb one at that.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

I've discussed parts of Terminator 2 several times on here. The scene where the orderlies are so busy trying to restrain Sarah Conner they somehow don't notice the enormous man with the shotgun walking towards them. My concern with the presentation of psychiatry in the movie. It looks like, in a footnote to my review of Poul Anderson's There Will be Time from 2010, I predicted the plot of the sixth Terminator film. Blind hog, acorn, you know how it goes.

Never really discussed the film entirely, though. So, short review, I really like it. Probably more than the original, definitely more than T3 or Terminator: Genesys (I haven't seen the other two.) It's like most sequels, though, in that it wouldn't work anywhere near as well without the first film. Terminator, like Alien, works perfectly well as a standalone film. T2 (like Aliens) relies on the first movie for some of its story beats to land. Sarah Conner being a completely ripped head case doesn't land as well if we haven't seen her as the terrified, confused waitress. It's cool on its own, but the contrast adds something. Same with having the first movie's antagonist become the protector in the sequel, while the new antagonist is an even more advanced machine. March of progress, villain upping its game, take your pick. And both those sequels are more conventional action movies, whereas the originals are more suspenseful. The smaller budgets required more to be hinted at, less shown until key moments.

(Although I've been thinking, Kyle can't bring weapons - or clothes - back because nothing technological or artificial can come with him. The T-800 skates by because it's flesh and blood over metal. Which suggests they could have tried stashing some futuristic plasma grenade inside Kyle's body like he was a coke mule, but anyway, the T-1000 doesn't have any flesh. It's all liquid metal. So how does it make it back unscathed?)

And T2 is definitely less suspenseful. It's a much brighter looking movie (the better to see some very cool stunts and effects), and even though the T-1000 is a move advanced killing machine, there's not the sense of John, Sarah, and "Uncle Bob" really being in severe danger. There's the long stretch after they escape from the hospital until the big shootout at Cyberdyne where the T-1000 has no clue where they are. Which is sort of a silent testament to Sarah's preparation over the years. Contrast that with the first Terminator, where even once Kyle has found Sarah, he seems certain the Terminator will find them again, it's just a matter of time. There's more of a constant background terror that it could show up at any moment, because it's relentless in its pursuit. Almost like a Friday the 13th movie, only instead of a zombie in a hockey mask, it's a killing machine that looks like an Austrian bodybuilder.

Terminator 2 does use the long quiet stretch to some effect to let us see the three heroes interact. I guess a lot of people don't like Eddie Furlong's John Conner (or at least that's the impression I get when I see people discuss the film online), but I'm fine with his performance. I think you have to make allowances for it being his first acting gig, and he's dealing with James Cameron writing dialogue for him. Not quite as bad as having George Lucas writing dialogue for you, but still sub-optimal. 

I think there is a genuineness to the performance. He's an angry, confused, kind of fucked up kid, because he's had a shitty exhausting life with a mother putting a ridiculous amount of pressure on him. The scene when he realizes the Terminator has to follow his orders, how giddy he is at the power that gives him. This thing his mother has told him to be terrified of, is his to command. How awesome. Not quite the same thing, but when I was a kid I definitely thought it would be cool to pilot Voltron, or one of the Power Rangers' Zords. But if I had, that would have ended badly for a lot of people.

He immediately tells the T-800 to get rid of some guy that was only trying to help, because he wants to see his cool toy in action. That turns in a second when he realizes the Terminator's definition of 'get rid of this guy' is "shoot him in the face". A kid gifted incredible power he doesn't grasp the danger of. And you can tell his feelings towards Sarah are mixed. She's his "real mom" and he cares about her. He keeps that photo from the end of the first movie with him, even when he's just going to the arcade. When he thinks she's in danger, there's no hesitation on his part that they have to save her. 

At the same time, there's definite resentment. That he couldn't have a normal life because she's so hellbent trying to get him ready to survive the War Against the Machines. You can hear it when he and the Terminator are working on the truck in Mexico. John talks about the one guy they lived with for a while that was cool, who taught John about engines. Then he sort of scoffs and says, 'Mom screwed it up, of course. Started going on about Judgement Day, and how I was this great leader.' Every time John starts to find some stability, a life like other kids get, his mom wrecks it because she can't stop thinking about the future. Sarah's trying, in her own way, to keep him safe, but she can't see there are things John wants from her he's not getting. 

Linda Hamilton's got this fierce protectiveness in her, almost feral, but she doesn't really know how to comfort her son (she and Arnold sort of swap the traditional gender roles.) She wants to check him for injuries, but then she berates him, calls him stupid, for risking his life for her. She doesn't seem to get why it would be important to her son to make sure she's OK. It doesn't even register. You start to see it breaking through when she's thinking about the T-800 and how, not only would it do everything possible to protect John, it would always be there for him, never lose patience with him. Let him teach it elaborate high-five sequences.

There was an oral history of T2 on The Ringer (which is fun to read, especially Arnold being befuddled he's not killing anybody in this movie), and there's a bit in there from Cameron about how part of the notion he had, and part of the thinking behind having the T-1000 appear as a cop, was to be about how people make themselves into terminators. Where we abandon compassion. Sarah very nearly falls into that. She makes the same mistake Skynet makes. Skynet always acts as though, if it kills John Conner, it wins. There will be no Resistance if he's dead. It might occasionally target his future High Command (Terminator 3), but it's still trying to kill him, too. 

Sarah decides if she kills Miles Dyson, that's it for Skynet. It'll never exist. We already know that's nonsense, because we've seen Dyson works for a big company with an entire team studying the remains of the first T-800. But Sarah's fixated on the notion that all it takes is knocking over one domino, even when the T-800 tells her Dyson is only the one considered most important, not solely responsible. 

(T6 apparently makes it entirely clear that killing John doesn't make a difference, because there's still a Resistance. Resisting an entirely different AI, apparently, so even though Sarah and John did keep Skynet from coming into being, it just got replaced by some other artificial intelligence. Which is pretty depressing. But at the rate things are going, the climate will kill us all long before machines can. Probably do it more efficiently, too.)

Anyway, I like Terminator 2 a lot. The way all the characters come together in the psychiatric hospital, and Sarah's escape in general is fun to watch. The highway chase scene with the helicopter and later, the liquid nitrogen truck (and that was a real chopper flying under overpasses, not CGI, which is terrifying. I couldn't pilot a helicopter under an overpass in Grand Theft Auto without damaging it, and that guy did it for real.) The movie uses Arnold well, Hamilton's aces, I already said I like Furlong's performance. Robert Patrick as the T-1000 gives a good performance. He's got that unsettling intense expression when he's moving. He can drop it occasionally, smile or say "thank you"and have it not reach his eyes, but mostly it's just there, along with all these movements that are just a little stilted. The way he turns his head or walks, or whatever. It could seem like overacting since he's supposed to be imitating people, but he is a machine trying to imitate a person, so he is overacting. Presumably he'd get better at it over time, since I imagine he can learn from experience like the T-800, but he's a brand-new experimental unit. It's still early in the learning curve.

What I Bought 7/6/2021 - Part 4

Over the weekend, I managed to pick up all three comics that came out last week I wanted. So we'll get to those starting on Friday. In the meantime, here's the last two books from last month. Monday was for second issues, but today is for third issues. Trying to get over the hump in their respective storylines.

Way of X #3, by Si Spurrier (writer), Bob Quinn (artist), Java Tartaglia (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - Kurt has interesting DTs.

Kurt gets really hammered at the gala for reasons I'm unclear on, and frankly, don't get a fuck about. In the aftermath, he's wandering around and sees a cloaked figure handing out something to lots of mutants. And it's Stacy X! The comic is 5000% better for me already. Kurt is appalled to learn she's handing out contraceptives, which, well, he is Catholic.I guess he wouldn't agree to using his powers for abortions then. Stacy points out that plenty of mutants have been following the first law about making more mutants, and apparently just abandoning them at a place called the Bower Stacy and some other mutants run to care for them. (It's also a place people can come with partners they want to spend time with, however they define that.)

Bravo Krakoa, great fucking hustle once again. Maybe the first law should have been "make and raise more mutants," asswipes. Anyway, Legion's busy searching for, sigh, Onslaught, and also using his telepathy to short circuit a potential relationship between a couple of young mutants. Onslaught's still on the loose though, so they return to the bar, and it turns out Dr. Nemesis is hassling Dazzler all the time because he's actually really into her. Hell, man, who isn't, but I'm never a fan of the "hostility is a mask for attraction" trope.

So some of the residents of Krakoa are looking after the babies. Which is nice, but it sounds like a voluntary thing, rather than something the Quiet Council established. Actually seems apparent from what Stacy says the Krakoan government hasn't done shit for all its newest citizens, too busy in their dick measuring contest terraforming Mars. So the Bower is like when people start a gofundme to pay their hospital bills, because the U.S. government is a useless pile of shit. Yes, Krakoa has certainly moved beyond "sapien" thinking. Man, it is really hard not to want to see these assholes fall flat on their faces.

You Promised Me Darkness #3, by Damian Connelly (writer/artist), Annabella Mazzaferri (letterer) - Yeah, I got nothing for you.

The Anti-Everything and Sage are both moving their plans forward with 10 days until the big show. The Anti-Everything's plan is to steal power from as many other comet-affected people as he can. Sage's plan, well, Sage isn't saying, other than that his(?) plan is much better. It involves Sebastian getting control over his powers, since he was apparently important to the Anti-Everything's father's plan.

Which has possibly given the Anti-Everything an inferiority complex, or daddy complex. Something like that. We learn that during a flashback sequence to the first time he almost caught up with Sebastian and Yuko, and she used her power on him and his goon squad. Which might explain why that one girl had run off and was living in an alley last issue. There's another flashback before that, to the Anti-Everything finding some other comet types over a year ago and having what I assume was a fight. Connelly draws everything so closely focused on people's face I can't tell much of what's going on. But a character named Igny says she used an energy bomb, sooo, I guess there was an energy bomb.

I get Connelly's not really writing this to be some big superhero throwdown comic. It's more of a, creeping apocalyptic doom sort of thing. The sense of impending horror. Especially since the Anti-Everything seems to take powers by breaking people down and absorbing them into himself. Someone Sebastian and Yuko met was melting, and then she seemed to break into a bunch of little globs. Like the inside of a lava lamp. And when all he's doing is drawing people sitting around talking, it works fine. His tendency towards extreme close-ups is fine.

But man, it would be nice to actually be able to tell what's going on more often. Anytime something actually starts to happen, it's just a mess. The backgrounds are so inky and dark, even if you can distinguish the person and what they're doing, there's no context because you can't tell where they are in relation to anyone else. It's like every person in this comic is in their own separate little world, talking and acting, and sometimes it intermingles with someone else's world, somehow.

Life of Crime

Two small-time crooks (played by Yasiin Bey and John Hawkes) decide they're going to abduct the wife of a crooked apartment developer (played by Jennifer Aniston and Tim Robbins) and ransom her for $1 million. Things naturally do not go according to plan. Problems range from Robbins already having planned to divorce her, to his mistress getting involved to protect her interests, to the guy whose house they stash Aniston at being a Nazi sympathizer and an attempted rapist.

The scene near the end when he does try to assault Aniston is odd, if only because the movie has sort of played things relaxed and almost comical for long stretches up to then. Like he tries to peep through a hole he drilled in the wall and she jams a lit cigarette into his eye and Bey makes jokes about it. Robbins is down in the Caribbean being manipulated by his mistress like a goober. Will Forte plays some associate of Robbins and Aniston's who clearly is trying to have an affair with her. He shows up during the abduction, and then is more concerned that someone might figure out he was there than in telling anyone she's been taken. Aniston is obviously frightened early on, enough she meekly complies with their commands, but it settles into something more amicable after that. 

Hawkes and Aniston have several conversations about his life, and how she's certain that her husband won't pay the ransom. He brings her dinner on a tray and is polite about it. When she removes some of the tape over her mask to cover the peephole and sees his face, he's sort of annoyed, but he doesn't rage at her or make threats or anything. She's their hostage, but it's mostly very chill. Then the movie goes, "Wait, this is actually not a chill situation, she's a hostage, that should be scary." 

However, even though he never actually lays a hand on her, it's not even subtext that Robbins is an abusive husband. When Aniston asks him to let her drive, because he's been drinking to celebrate winning some golf thing at their country club, he drives recklessly while berating her for always keeping track of how much he drinks. He hits her car, then blames her for parking in the driveway. When she shouts she won't ride with him ever again, he marches back to the car and she flinches back as he reaches in to grab his ugly trophy. (He also publicly refers to her as his 'other trophy,' so real winner there.) So a big, drunk asshole snarling at her to take off her clothes is probably not a new experience.

But then the last 15-20 minutes of the movie after the assault are kind of ridiculous, so I don't know exactly what to make of it. It's not quite that everyone's a dumbass or neurotic like Fargo, so it isn't a dark comedy. But it's a little too relaxed or silly in places to feel like a crime movie. Forte's attempts to disguise his presence at the house could come off as sinister, but instead is just kind of pitiful. Comedy. But Bey's character feels like a competent, careful criminal who just picked the right target at the wrong time. Heist gone wrong crime movie. I'm not sure the two halves mix all that well.

What I Bought 7/6/2021 - Part 3

For today, we've got a pair of second issues. Two issue #2s. One I enjoyed, one not so much. So kind of a good head, bad head thing. This post is starting to feel like a Two-Face crime. Hopefully Batman doesn't come smashing through my sliding door to break my face. I don't think that's covered by renter's insurance.

Yuki vs. Panda #2, by Graham Misiurak (writer), A.L. Jones (artist/letterer) - Meteorologists say the "looming panda" storm front will be with us for a while, bringing high temperatures and extended stupidity.

The first half of the issue is to introduce us to Yuki's friends, Madesin and Bernard. "Madesin"? Really? And her father's a pastor. Why would a pastor put the word "sin" in his daughter's name? Especially when it requires such an idiotic spelling? OK, OK, deep breath breath Calvin, focus on other things. Madesin, yeesh, may be in love with Yuki, or she just may be an enthusiastic best friend. Bernard is the sarcastic, delusional one, who is apparently building himself a sexbot? A little frightened to see how that Chekov's Gun is going to go off. Yuki finally arrives carrying a huge backpack as training. Which her grandfather was hiding inside, so he could pop out and take a photo of them being surprised.

If he's that bored, you'd think he'd spend more time with online dating.

The other half of the issue is focused on the panda, who spends it monologing about everything he's gone through over the years searching for the child who bit his ear. This includes working in a call center and raking some trailer trash lady's lawn without her permission. He also gets fired from his job at the hot dog cart because he's so lost in thought he lets them get robbed. Except then he stops the thief as they run off. But he also burns his hot dog cart hat and attacks everybody, so maybe he's not cut out for customer service. And all that takes place in the same town Yuki lives, not that he knows that.

Not to sound like Ian Malcolm, but I was expecting more of Yuki fighting the panda in a book called Yuki vs. Panda. I know, I know, table-setting, character introduction, mood establishment. And the contrast between the two leads is sort of interesting. Yuki clearly never thinks about that day, though it's unclear if she ever thinks about anything at all. She admits she's stopped wondering why her grandfather is training her like this, or to what purpose. She's drifting mentally through life, while being pushed towards an unclear goal. Her expressions are most often dismay or confusion, and the weight of the crap her grandfather puts her through is literally pushing her down.

The panda, fixated on a particular humiliation, drifts physically through life. He has a clear goal, but no notion of how to achieve it. Jones draws the panda as walking through the world with his head down, wide straw hat pulled low. A sort of perpetual gloom or fog surrounds him outside brief moments of peace that are shattered by the next panel. But the world around him is bright and sunny. People are happy and laughing, but all he sees is his own misery. 

And all of that is me talking out of my ass like I was Ace Ventura.

Midnight Western Theatre #2, by Louis Southard (writer), David Hahn (artist), Ryan Cody (colorist), Buddy Beaudoin (letterer) - A skeleton horse certainly looks cool, but I imagine it's difficult to find a saddle that fits comfortably.

The issue opens with a brief scene from Ortensia's childhood, when her father has a disagreement with some men working for him, but tells her to learn how to read people, and that he knows a good man when he sees one. Given how Ortensia ended up, I'm going to guess he's not as good at it as he thinks.

17 years later, Ortensia and Alexander show up at a disturbing church in the middle of nowhere, looking for a missing girl. The preacher invites them in to be saved, although they'll be crucified if they refuse. So they go in, and descend into a crypt full of idiots in robes. Always encouraging, at least, it is if you're looking to re-enact any number of parts of Resident Evil 4. The loonies worship Samual, which is a red-eyed Doberman. Who just seems to bark mindlessly until Ortensia reaches for her gun. At which point it manages to say "BULLET!" So she obliges, and gives it a bullet. Cue the fight scene.

17 minutes later, everyone's dead save Ortensia, Alexander, and the head priest. Who is very happy, because they've sent everyone on to their god. He asks they do the same for him, and she basically tells him to suffer and die slow. But the girl they were after refused to join, so they'll be bringing back a corpse. Mission accomplished?

The best bit in all this is when Alexander initially refuses to go inside because he's convinced going inside a church is bad for a vampire. Which he thinks he was told by someone in Jersey in 1789. His relief when learns Ortensia is right and that's not true, replaced in the next panel by childish annoyance that he's been afraid of churches for three-quarters of a century for nothing was pretty funny. Although, this feels like a Satanist church, so I'm not sure that's the best judge of whether he could go inside, you know a Baptist church or a synagogue or whatever.

Ortensia is a little gentler with Alexander than she was in the first issue. Not a lot, but she reassures him that he can go inside the church, and that she wouldn't lie to him. It's a bit of a softer moment for her, not quite saying she wants him there to have her back, but implying it. Otherwise, Hahn draws her with a fairly neutral expression until there's violence to be done. A distinct contrast from Alexander's increasingly nervous look as they're surrounded and told to kneel. She's trying to follow her father's suggestion. Watch the people she's dealing with, and having judged the kind of people they are, wait for the proper moment to act.

I'm really enjoying these done-in-one stories, and Southard is sprinkling in other things that I assume are going to build to something by the end. For example, that both Alexander and Ortensia have died previously. Not a surprise with the vampire, and maybe not for her, either, given the skeleton horse, but I'm definitely curious.

Sunday Splash Page #174

 

"Lizard Men Improve Any Occasion," in Dynamo 5 #22, by Jay Faerber (writer), Mahmud Asrar and Yildiray Cinar (artists), Ron Riley (colorist), Charles Pritchett (letterer)

The conceit behind is Dynamo 5 was that the Superman of that world was kind of a horndog, and after his death, his widow (a top-notch reporter) tracks down his various illegitimate kids and forms them into a super-team. Each kid ends up with one of dead old dad's powersets - telepathy, flight, super-strength, shape-shifting, or vision powers - and away they go.

Each of them comes from a different situation, and they're spread out in age a bit. Gage and Hector are both still in high school, Livvie's attending Georgetown, Spencer's an adult living in a series of hotel rooms. Livvie's mother is deceased, but her father (the one who raised her) isn't. Gage's parents are together, but he's got two younger brothers. Bridget lives alone, but her parents seem to having periodic falling outs. Faerber has a couple of the parents find out in different ways, with different reactions. The teens have their own trouble adjusting, both to the truth about their father, to having siblings, and to having super-powers and the strain it puts on their everyday lives. Sometimes to the good, like Gage being determined to help Hector talk to girls. Sometimes bad, when the team learns the other side of Spencer's family tree is a lot different from theirs and reacts badly.

Asrar's the artist for almost the entire series, minus this and one other issue Cinar draws at least part of, and one drawn by Matteo Scalera. Since it's a team book, Asrar goes for the team uniform approach, which a little variation. Scatterbrain gets a hood, puts the emphasis on his mental powers. Visionary's got a helmet with a visor that amplifies his powers. Slingshot gets some of the old armpit wings for maneuvering, stuff like that. Keeps them from being too interchangeable. 

Most of the different hero costumes are pretty straightforward, but I think Asrar has a little more fun with some of the villains. Like Brainstorm, the guy in the background of the picture above, who is a big android body with the brains of five human scientists on it (that's what the yellow bubbles are. You'd think they'd hide their brains inside the body, but I guess it's more impressive-looking this way.)

Asrar doesn't do anything too flashy on page layouts most of the time, but each character has a distinct look in and out of costume, which helps them feel like individuals. The fight scenes are well-drawn, and even the characters who take a physical approach do it differently. Myriad is maybe the most acrobatic, using a lot of flips and jumps kicks, whereas Scrap tends to just charge in a throw haymakers. She's stronger and tougher, but she also doesn't have as much experience fighting. When Gage fights physically, he tends to do so like a football player. A lot of tackles and using his size, which is what would come naturally to him by now.

Faerber and Asrar plays with expectations a bit. Maggie, the widow, turns out to have actually been a secret agent who uses being a reporter as a cover, or maybe an additional way to get information. She ends up keeping secrets a lot, and has her own skeletons in the closet. Which is where Maggie's tendency to act like a Nick Fury/college football coach-style hardass backfires a few times. But the series touches on the fact it's not easy for her to work with the living embodiment of her husband's fidelity. Gage, the big jock linebacker ends up with the telepathy, which predictably frustrates him, while Bridget, the extremely pale (but hot) goth girl gets the super-strength.

Faerber shifts things up a lot with some surprises and twists. Takes Maggie out of commission for a few issues, forcing the team to work without her guidance. The surprise reveal of Spencer's mother that throws the team for another loop. The roster changes once, Maggie's past comes back to haunt the team. There were a few things I don't think ever actually came to fruition, like the reporter Bridget briefly starts dating, or her and Spencer being roomies. On the one hand, it keeps the book from getting stale, because things can change at any minute, but on the other hand, it feels like some things get tossed aside without ever exploring if they could be interesting. Maybe Faerber reconsidered after he started and that's why he moved on from those ideas.

Faerber had a few other superhero books he was writing at the same time - Noble Causes, Firebirds, maybe one other I can't think of - and he set all of them in the same universe. Which gives him the advantage of having other books to introduce characters and concepts in, which could then be sprinkled into this book whenever. Which is a nice way to make a book feel like it's part of a universe that's already been going for a while.

The series ran 25 issues from 2007-2009, plus an Annual and Holiday Special. There was another 5-issue mini-series a year or two later, but it was a big alien invasion thing that used not only a bunch of Faerber's other characters but also some other Image characters like Invincible, and I'm not really here for that.

What I Bought 7/6/2021 - Part 2

Somewhere along the line in May, the fourth issue of White Lily came out and I missed it. I only figured that out when the fifth and final issue came out at the end of June, so I'm just going to review both today.

White Lily #4 and 5, by Preston Poulter (writer), Jake Bilbao (penciler), Kumar (inker?), Alonso Espinoza (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - I know it takes some work to heat up engines in a Russian winter, but this seems excessive.

These last two issues cover a lot of ground. Lilya's fiance, Captain Alexi, is shot down over Stalingrad. Unlike Lilya, he doesn't survive. She goes into a depression, reaching the point where she tries to light her fighter on fire while she's inside it. She decides to focus on killing the enemy instead. Death will find her on its own soon enough. Once the Nazis surrender at Stalingrad, Lilya and Katya are sent to be flight instructors. Katya's happy to be out of the line of fire (and have more chances to woo Lilya), but Lilya misses combat. 

The two of them do have one night of passion, but Lilya gets her wish and is assigned to a frontline squadron at Kursk. Katya, loyal friend/pining lover, goes against her instincts and follows. They're starting from square one almost in having to prove to the commander that women can be successful combat pilots (even though both of them are aces already), but they pull off their first mission, which had killed the last four teams that tried it. Eventually though, Lilya's time is up, when she runs afoul of two Nazi aces at once. Katya has a depressing visit home for leave to try and deal with her grief, and returns to the front. As she puts it, she would 'rather fight the Nazis than her mother. At least fighting them would serve some purpose.' She finds the two aces and kills one, but the other gets her. It's unclear if she at least managed to shoot him down. I think they may have partially collided, but we don't see his plane go spinning off into the horizon, so I don't know.

There's a lot in there I didn't cover. The last two issues are almost 65 pages combined. They could have made this a six-issue mini-series and I wouldn't have batted an eye. Lilya being a harsh training instructor. A sequence after Stalingrad where all their male wingmen start treating them like just sexual objects again. Which is a depressing recurring thing. They get some respect when the heat is on, but as soon as things start looking up, they're dismissed again. A bit during Kursk where Lilya and their Captain share Polish and Russian folktales. Katya doesn't get to share one from Lithuania until it's too late for Lilya to hear it.

The section where Lilya falls into depression after Alexi's death, Bilbao uses mostly smaller panels in rows, to show the progression of time. For example, three panels showing a steadily increasing pile of cigarette butts beside her bed. There's also a bit where the speech balloons of anyone speaking around her are just filled with squiggles to show she's not registering what's being said.

I think Poulter should have held off on the dialogue in Katya's death scene. The last few panels, as she's reaching for a blood-stained white lily she placed in her cockpit are kind of marred by all the "GHEH gheh gahuuuuuuuuh" sound effects for death gurgles. I think the fact we saw her take several rounds to the chest four pages earlier and the way she slumps over in the last panel would tell us she was on her last legs well enough. Bilbao's art could convey what needed to be well enough on its own.

Bilbao also manages to shift his art style a bit for the folktale parts, especially for the Captain's one panel story about the bird trying to touch the sun, and Katya's about the girl whose evil stepmother makes her ask the Baba Yaga for the secret of fire. The latter especially, he mimics the sort of medieval storybook picture feel for most of it. Not so much the very end, when the girl has become fire herself and returns for revenge, but Katya's also clearly thinking of Lilya throughout, and especially at that point, so it fits. Reality intrudes on the fantasy.

I really enjoyed this whole mini-series.

In Our Time - Ernest Hemingway

So my dad got me a book of a lot of Hemingway's early writing, basically up through The Sun Also Rises. Many of them I've read, including The Sun Also Rises, but also the articles about getting free shaves at the barber college, or interviewing Mussolini. And from what I've heard, The Torrents of Spring was a mess. His mean-spirited attempt to poke at some more established author that pissed him off, that just came off as pitiful. No thanks.

But I hadn't read In Our Time before, which is a collection of a bunch short stories. Some of them very short, less than a page. Just quick bits about someone being prepared for execution, or about a bullfight. The others are longer, for 4 to 15 pages, about a lot of the same things. A man trying to get away from things by returning to a river he hasn't fished in a long time, and the pleasure he takes from it ("Big Two-Hearted River".) Those stories, and several others are about a Nick Adams, growing up alongside his dad, or trying to ride the rails and the perils of that.

The story that was maybe most interesting to me was "My Old Man", written from the viewpoint of a young boy whose father is a jockey, first in Italy, and then in France. The mixture of a boy's idolization of his father, combined with confusion when he does things the boy can't understand. The limited view and understanding a child has of what's going on around them, the blind spots and the information they aren't privy to. 

I don't know if the writing style in that story is on the track to what became his signature style. Certainly not as much as some of the Nick Adams stories. In those you can see him developing that mixture of short specific sentences and the longer, more rambling sentences that are almost stream of consciousness about whatever. It feels like he leans more to the short sentences, brief statements about how he's going to make coffee a certain way. Like his friend Hop insisted. And it has to be Hop's way completely. Too bad Hop's not here. But he won the lotto and went to collect. Never came back like he said. And so on.

'All around people were saying, "Poor Kzar! Poor Kzar!" And I thought, I wish I were a jockey and could have rode him instead of that son of a bitch. And that was funny, thinking of George Gardner as a son of a bitch because I'd always liked him and besides he'd given us the winner, but I guess that's what he is, all right.'

What I Bought 7/6/2021 - Part 1

Hey, I finally got some comics! There were about six books I wanted out last week, plus one from the week before, and one from May I missed entirely somehow. So we're set into the middle of next week on reviews.

So let's get to it, starting with an Annual and the fourth issue of a mini-series.

Black Cat Annual #1, by Jed MacKay (writer), Joey Vazquez (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - I actually wound up with Travis Charest variant, because that's what was available. It's fine, if not terribly exciting.

Felicia and her crew decide to take an overseas vacation, but are detained in South Korea by White Fox. She needs Felicia to help because some crime boss has got Korea's version of Superman (or Hyperion, whatever) over a barrel and are demanding the country be placed under their control. She's got a whole team of superheroes to face Taegukgi, but she needs someone to help with the criminals. And she took a page from Amanda Waller and jammed a bomb in Felicia's neck. Sorry, nanomunitions.

Turns out, the gangsters aren't blackmailing him, they busted out some Korean Shadow King to possess him. But the guy decided being Taegukgi is pretty cool and killed them all. Whoops. Felicia found him before White Fox, and lifted the nanomunition injector thing and once they trick the guy's mind back into his body, she lets him monologue a bit and then kills him. Not sure how she knew it would only trigger his and hers, but I'm assuming her luck powers would cause the ones injected into her to malfunction anyway.

There's a five-page thing after this about Nick Fury trying to find these people the Infinity Stones are bonded to and getting ambushed by what looks like some version of Nighthawk, going by the silhouette. I don't care about that, so I'm grateful it stayed out of the main story. Not that the main story was spectacular. Felicia feels like bystander for stretches of it, since MacKay's gotta introduce most of the characters (who do sound cool, to be fair). And White Fox has to compel Felicia's help somehow, because otherwise this isn't the sort of thing she'd bother with. Feel like they could have done the thing where she's in the middle of a job and this whole mess erupts around her, but MacKay did already use that when Blastaar showed up while she was trying to swipe a book from under Johnny Storm's nose.

Vazquez gave White Fox a very different costume from the one she was rocking last time I saw her (that Domino: Hotshots mini-series), but it does help distinguish her from Felicia more. And the sort of holographic multiple tails things is a neat touch, even if I can't see any practical use for it. I feel like Vazquez maybe elongates arms too much, or maybe it's just how skinny her draws Felicia's arms that makes it seem that way. I did enjoy the two pages cutting back and forth between Felicia and Fox' fight against the mercenary death cult and the rest of Tiger Division getting pummeled by Taegukgi, even if the ladies costumes naturally get the strategic tearing effect.

Black Knight: Curse of the Ebony Blade #4, by Si Spurrier (writer), Sergio Davila (penciler), Sean Parsons and Marc Deering (inker), Arif Prianto, Chris Sotomayor and Andrew Crossley (colorists), and Cory Petit (letterer) - No Dane, that's the special drink for the pledges, man.

Dane drank from the chalice so he knows lots of horrible things now. Like how Merlin started banishing anything from Camelot that didn't meet the image he wanted it to project, creating a sterile, I hesitate to use the word Puritanical given that wouldn't have existed but Spurrier does, myth. And how all the past wielders of the Ebony Blade tried to convince themselves they could bear up under the misery of what they did for a greater purpose, but all of them broke and became monsters eventually. So after fighting Mordred a bit, Dane drops his sword and lets himself be knifed in the gut. 

Elsa already left because Mordred handed over the chunk of the Bloodstone so she can resurrect her father. After telling Jacks that, as an orphan, she wouldn't understand the importance of family bonds. Elsa Bloodstone for Biggest Asshole of 2021. I mean, I'd expect that from Emma Frost or Monet, but it feels needlessly cruel for Elsa. But it keeps her from persisting in shooting at Mordred, so plot must be served. Mordred grabs up all the enchanted thingamajigs, except the Blade, to form an Ebony Crown he will use to conquer Britain. Between this guy and the villains from The Union, everyone's trying to conquer the British Isles. Hell, they'd probably be better leaders than Boris Johnson.

When Jacks tries to use the sword to stop him, she's reduced to dust. And since she's presumably not of Arthur's bloodline, it won't resurrect her like it did Dane. Meanwhile, Dane (who knew that was gonna happen to her and just let it), crawled off to die in a bathroom. Well, real feel-good issue there. No, seriously. You can always remind yourself you aren't as big a fuck-up as Dane Whitman when you're feeling down.

No, I know, he's seen how it ends, so there's some big twist coming he knew had to play out like this. Jacks will be back, presumably Dane will, too. Maybe Jacks is descended from Merlin, which might explain her ability to speak with the raven. Maybe Elsa pulls her head out of her ass, maybe she doesn't.

Multiple inkers and colorists rarely bodes well, but the art stays solid here. Davila draws Dane as hunched over, like he's being crushed under a great weight (or about to hurl). The only point where he really stands up straight is the moment he decides he's going to let go of the sword. He's not trying to think of or use all the painful stuff to empower the sword. He's made a decision and come to peace with it.

The Devil Below

I could have tried something good, but I watched this instead. 

Basically, this quartet of guys, headed by a couple of geologists, hire this professional tracker or something to find this coal mine and town in Kentucky that just vanished fifty years ago. The locals all pretend there was never any such town and try to drive the group away. One of the geologists insists that it was probably just a sinkhole or the underground coal seam caught fire. There's a town in Pennsylvania that had to be abandoned because of that. The other geologist, who is the token Religious Guy, says they were actually trying to recreate the bore hole the Russians made that went 8 miles down, and found something.

This could all be a very interesting set-up for the five of them ending up in the underground mine, and bad things happen, and hey, is it monsters, or angry rednecks or just that you're wandering around in an underground coal mine that is on fire. Unfortunately, the movie spoiled within the first minute that it is definitely something down there, because we see something grab one of the coal miners right in front of his father. Which takes a lot of the suspense out of it. It becomes just waiting to see how goofy the monsters look.

I thought they'd go a bit more demonic with the creatures, given the title of the movie and Religious Scientist talking about Russia's Well to Hell or whatever he called it, but not really. I guess big leathery wings wouldn't really make sense for a subterranean creature, anyway.

It's a little interesting that the locals are trying to keep it a secret not because they hate outsiders, or want to be able to feed unsuspecting outsiders to the creatures, but because they're honestly trying to keep these things from escaping and they simply don't think anyone would believe or help them. Their methods could use some work, but that was sorta atypical for these kinds of movies.

Scourge of My Wallet, Maybe

Perfectly normal reaction to being in another event thing.

Annihilation: Scourge was a mini-event Marvel released in December of 2019, consisting of six one-shot issues. I passed on it at the time due to a) each issue being $5, and b) half of them being written by Matthew Rosenberg, who put me off his work with that Multiple Man mini-series he wrote. But as a discounted, used tpb, eh, what the hell. Spoilers from here on.

The gist of the story is the Cancerverse from Thanos Imperative is back, but rather than try to force its way into the Marvel Universe proper, it invades the Negative Zone first. Worse (in many ways), the Cancerverse finds the Sentry (or the Void, whatever) hanging out in the Negative Zone, and they team up. So, C'thulu-enhanced power of a million exploding suns. Various heroes get roped into trying to help stop all this. The Fantastic Four, Nova, Beta Ray Bill, the Silver Surfer, each of which gets a one-shot.

Half of the one-shots seem to be about confronting trauma. Christos Gage and Diego Orlotegui's Fantastic Four story focuses on how Johnny Storm has pretty much tried to forget the time he spent dying over and over in the Negative Zone during Hickman's FF run. Which included forgetting the people who apparently relied on him as a leader. I don't know, I don't read Hickman's stuff. Also, Reed's the one who suggested to Bob Reynolds he might be able to separate from the Void in the Negative Zone, which is how the Void (who somehow got all the power, is that how it works with him now?) ends up with the Cancerverse. So yet another fine mess Richards creates which he (and the rest of his family) must now deal with.

I honestly just figured it was the Cancerverse's version of the Sentry to begin with. Maybe they didn't have a Sentry at all. What a wonderful universe, minus the extra-dimensional beings devouring your soul.

Nova (whose story is written by Rosenberg with Ibraim Robertson as artist) has a crapload of bad memories dredged up by all of this. He's spending his days drinking heavily in various cantinas on Knowhere, trying to forget. Now he can't keep running. Not only confronted with Annihilus, but forced to team up with him. And facing the Cancerverse again after he was part of it and escaped once already. He has to not only confront it, he ends up having to let it inside of him again as part of a plan to stop it.

Then there's the other two. The Silver Surfer (by Dan Abnett and Paul Davidson) one could fit in. The Surfer's undergone some changes as the result of some Donny Cates mini-series (I knew who wrote it without looking because the story mentions it involved Surfer fighting Knull, God of the Symbiotes. Who else but Donny Cates?) Surfer is for some reason concerned his changes may be the cause of a great disaster he senses approaching. As it turns out, he's not, because it's the friggin' Cancerverse. But he's forced to actually get off his butt and intervene. He's incorporeal now(?) but he can merge with people, including Bob Reynolds. Both of them are forced to reach out and connect, rather than hiding away somewhere.

The Beta Ray Bill one by Michael Moreci and Alberto Albequerque, I got nothing. He and Lockjaw are hanging out on some planet that loves them, another of Annihilus' ships makes it through a rift the Sentry somehow forced open, the Sentry follows, Bill can't beat him, but he can hit him with Stormbreaker and drive him back into the Negative Zone. Then Bill and Lockjaw have to go to the Negative Zone to get Stormbreaker back. 

I mean, what's the point at all? The Sentry gets into the Marvel U. for about three seconds, then shoved back in. Just don't have him get out, and this story is pointless. Bill serves no major role in the conclusion either, other than being one more hero to try and help. So what's the story saying? That he wasn't really doing anything on that world? That's not totally his fault, since he didn't realize the locals were trying to stage things for him to fight because they liked having him around.

But I'm not really sure why this whole thing exists. The endgame is to destroy the part of the Cancerverse that broke back in. But that only happened in this story. Was it supposed to be some coda for Nova's experiences? He was supposed to die there, but survived once by giving in. So now he has to give in again, to make it vulnerable so it can be killed. Except Annihilus somehow brings him back to life on the last page. I'm not complaining that Rider didn't get killed off in this mess, but it makes it all seem especially pointless.

Of the artists, I'd say the Orlotegui/Juan Vlasco/Erick Arciniega team on Fantastic Four and the Davidson/Matt Milla team on Silver Surfer are the most distinctive. Orlotegui does the most with the Cancerverse versions of characters truly looking horrific, rather than just "they have red eyes and maybe a Venom tongue" that most of the other art teams adopt. His version of Crystal looks normal, except her face is just one giant mouth. (Not sure about the reveal being in such a tall, narrow panel, though. The Thing is his spiky rocks look, but the spikes are placed unevenly and there's extra mouths all over the place. And the entire team is wrapped up in Reed's body, a together forever kind of thing.

The Surfer book is definitely the most colorful. Davidson seems to lean a little more into Kirby Surfer in the length of the board and the width of the shoulders than a lot of other artists I've seen (who seem more towards the Buscema version.) Milla plays with the Surfer's body being black instead of silver now to reflect all kinds of light, and his Negative Zone is a much trippier-looking place. Bright and varied colors all over. Empty space isn't just a uniform black curtain broken up by stars. It's blues and blacks (and sometimes purples and reds) with worlds haphazardly strewn about like someone dumped a bunch of Tropical Skittles on the page. All the other artists draw the Negative Zone as basically looking like out outer space. Davidson and Milla remember it's supposed to a bizarre, alien dimension.

The rest fall into that general range of workmanlike and inoffensive. Not really doing anything that particularly catches the eye. The coloring in the Nova one-shot seems particularly muddy, and I don't if that's supposed to be some reflection of Nova's mindset, struggling with his experiences, or what. The Omega issue that closes the whole thing out is not helped by having Manuel Garcia inked by four different people (Rafael Fonteriz, Cam Smith, Wayne Faucher, and Garcia himself), and three colorists (predominantly Federico Blee, but also Rachelle Rosenberg and Arciniega.) 

Sometimes it makes Garcia's art strongly resemble Paul Pelletier, and others times it looks nothing like him. Some of these folks really favor heavy blacks in their work, shadow everything, others ink it so everyone's lower half of their face looks like an old man's. Where the skin sags around the mouth and kind of wipes out the jawline? Even seems to happen to Ben Grimm in one panel. Half the time it's like they can't keep straight whether Johnny Storm is rocking a beard from one panel to the next.

With shipping, I may have ended up spending about $1.70 per issue on this, and that was probably too much.

Sunday Splash Page #173

 

"Doom is Getting Out of This Clown Show," in Dr. Doom and the Masters of Evil #2, by Paul Tobin (writer), Patrick Scherberger, Jon Burran and Scott Koblish (pencilers), Terry Pallot and Scott Koblish (inkers), Chris Sotomayor and Guillem Mari (colorists), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

A nifty little Doom-centric mini-series from early 2009. Tobin sends Doom all over the Marvel Universe for 4 issues, teaming up with and fighting various super-villains. In every issue, Doom seems to have acquired some powerful invention, magic, or vital bit of information, but his ultimate goal remains unclear until the final issue. And even once we learn what he's seeking, Tobin has a final twist on it at the very end. Basically, Doom gets himself a magic wish, that can be for anything, and doesn't use it to kill Reed Richards.

I know, I was kind of disappointed, too.

I'm not going to tell you what he does wish for, since you can probably find this cheap enough out there. I could see it as a cop-out, since it goes against the obvious thing we'd expect. But I think Tobin puts in enough work up to that point through the first 3.5 issues that I can understand his choice.

Tobin writes Doom as powerful, but not overwhelmingly so, and self-aware enough to know it. Doom's ultimate weapon is, as always, his mind. Doom isn't stymied when his big attack doesn't stop Blastaar or whoever, because that was never the plan. And each step of his quest builds to the next.

Although I think Tobin plays up Blastaar a little too much. I'm not picking that guy in a fight with the Executioner.

Most of the issues are not such an ensemble cast of credits. The art chores are mostly handled by Scherberger, who had worked with Tobin on Marvel Adventures Spider-Man for a while prior to this. Sticks with classic looks for most of the characters, other than giving Selene something a bit more modest. Gotta protect the kids, ya know. I think his attempts to make Doom's mask expressive sometimes make it look goofy instead, but it mostly works. Everything is easy to follow, the inking and coloring aren't excessively dark or busy, so the art isn't cluttered. The story uses a variety of characters and locales, and Shcerberger makes them all distinct and easy to tell apart. Doom's intimidating when he needs to be, but not all the time, because the story is trying to lure us in to understanding or possibly rooting for Doom.

Next week, the last title in the D's.

Random Back Issues #65 - Scout: War Shaman #6

Come on kid, it's obvious the rabbit was hidden under your shirt. You gotta at least get a big hat or coat or something

War Shaman was set several years after Tim Truman's original Scout series. At this point, Emanuel Santana and his two sons Tahzey and Victorio have taken refuge in a community in some caves. Unfortunately, the Army has set up shop in a town nearby. Santana and one of the cave-dwellers, a Jackson Walker observe them from a bluff nearby. Walker says he can "read" the soldiers, that they're tired and plan to set up shop here. He explains most people have such abilities, but misplace them, and his are strongest among the folks in the cave. He tells Santana he's got it, too, but calls it something else. Santana replies he doesn't need a sixth sense to know to get out of the heat, and they return to the caves.

Back in the caves, Tahzey and Victorio find some of the local kids messing with a rabbit. The leader, named Kidd, "mind-kills" the rabbit, which makes Victorio rush out to object. Apparently the cave folks haven't taught their kids about tolerance, because they call the boys "scummies" and mock their dark skin, calling them dirty. Kidd warns he could mind-kill them too, and Tahzey counters that he's no rabbit. As they leave, Victorio holds the rabbit close and viola! It's alive again.

Kidd and his lackeys are stunned, but a pair of religious nuts called The Dead Men saw it and are sure Victorio is the prophesied one to save them from "The Beast." They plan to abduct him, to protect him from his own father. Seems like a good way to get shot, but Santana had history with the man who founded their cult, so they're kind of a sore spot for him.

Back in town, one man beats the hell out of another. The one getting beat up abandoned his post for a midnight rendezvous with their Commander's daughter. Who is actually the President's daughter, but Rosa Winter's adopted her some time after Santana killed the President. Rosa tries to present this as a lesson, but Laura's not too impressed. 

Back in the caves, Walker's explaining how the entire cave system relates to a Hopi story about the creation and destruction of the world. That the creator grew displeased with how humans were fucking up the world, and those with the proper senses were able to find the caves and ride it out until the creator was willing to try again. He says they're currently on the fourth try, and they've taken to these caves to wait for the fifth.

When Santana points out one world was enough for his people, Walker counters that the Hopi were always more creative than the Apache. Maybe, but their creator kind of sounds like a schmuck, to keep trying again even though humans fuck up the same way every time. Santana decides to snoop around town and after killing one guard with a stupid mark over his eye (between this and GrimJack, Truman was really fond of giving people those sorts of tattoos over one eye), confronts Rosa. The two of them have history going back to boot camp, and it's been a complicated thing. 

He finds out Rosa's been through some changes, namely, she might be more machine than human after the injuries she sustained cleaning up the messes Santana created. For her part, Rosa's decided all her problems stem from not killing him the night he went AWOL, and she's going to rectify it. I've heard closure is an important part of the healing process. So is not picking at scabs. Santana's boxed in, but Laura comes to check on her mom and he's got a hostage. He talks about how Rosa's called the Beast and the Butcher, and kills anyone who doesn't fit her vision of what America should be. I'm not sure Santana's hands are clean enough to be throwing stones at anyone. He tells Rosa to take care of Laura, because she's the only human part she has left. Notable that he and Laura are both crying by then, but Rosa's not. Of course, one of her eyes is mechanical, so maybe she has no more tear ducts.

He's out the window and away on Rosa's motorcycle, but before she can hunt him down, a guy named Redwire shows up. Tells her she has her job leading the Army and rebuilding America. Leave chasing 'a rabbit' to a hunter like him. I know Redwire is someone Santana encountered and tried to kill during Scout, but I can't remember exactly who.

[9th longbox, 64th comic. Scout: War Shaman #6, by Timothy Truman (writer/artist), Sam Parsons (painter), Tim Harkins (letterer)]

Batman: Year One

I've never actually read all of Miller and Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One, but I know the gist of it. Bruce Wayne figuring out what it is that he needs beyond all his training. Gordon joining the most corrupt police force in the country and trying to continue to do things properly in the face of all the corruption, threats, and intimidation.

All of that's here, although it feels much more like Gordon's story than Batman's. I don't know if that's just how this adaptation handled it, or if that's how the actual comics are. But Wayne is already almost all the way to where he needs to be. Gordon is further off. He tried to do the right thing, report corruption once, and it got him run out of his previous position, in a situation where Gotham is the only police that'll take him.  So he has to decide whether he's going to do the right thing again, or start looking away. 

At least that's what it feels like it would be, but Gordon seems to know from the first time he sees Flass beat the shit out of a kid on a street corner what he's going to do. He's already taking notes on how the guy fights for the point when they inevitably have it out. So maybe, like Batman, he's not figuring out what he's going to do, but how. That just reporting things to Internal Affairs isn't going to cut it.

Although based on what we see of the Gotham police, it's hard to say they seem any more corrupt than a lot of police we have today. The cop who shoots Wayne during his fight with the pimp by claiming an unarmed man was "gonna do something." The SWAT team that just firebombs buildings without bothering to confirm who's inside, or is willing to go in guns blazing on a guy who has four kids as hostages. Cops using their badges as licenses to kill? Unheard of!

The Selina Kyle subplot feels only halfway finished. It gets as far as her being Catwoman, but she only manages to to go from having all her crimes attributed to Batman, to being called Batman's assistant, and having Batman throw a (gruff) hissy fit over her spoiling his reconnaissance. There's not a point where her actions get her considered as someone of note herself, or where she and Batman have a real confrontation as their costumed selves (there is the brief fight right before the cops shoot him, but neither of them have found their style yet.)

If it wanted to tie things together, instead of Gordon waiting to consult with Batman about this "Joker" person at the end, it could be Catwoman having stolen sufficiently big or important enough people actually take her seriously. As is, her thread feels as though it's just left dangling off to one side of the start of Gordon and Batman's relationship.