2022 Comics in Review - Part 2

I bought 139 new comics in 2022, which is way up from 107 in 2021. In fact, it's the most new comics I've bought in a year since 2009, when I bought 144. That year Marvel was at 104 books (~72%), DC at 26 (~18%), and all other publishers totaled 14 comics (9.72%), which was a new high up til then. This go-round, Marvel's at 54 comics, which is exactly what it managed in 2021 (it's also pretty close to its totals in 2018 & 2019). In 2022, that's only 38.85%, versus the 50.47% it was in 2021. 

DC picked up a bit of ground, going from 3 comics (2.8%) to 9 (6.47%), but most of it went to the other publishers. From 51 (46.73%) comics to 76 (54.68%), which blows the previous high - 2019's 61 comics - out of the water, although in terms of percentage it's not up to 2020. But that was such a weird year, hard to compare.

Distorted #1-3: Salvatore Vivenzio and Gabriele Falzone's story was different parties seeking out people who were developing powers. There were several interesting characters, but the story seemed focused on this telekinetic teenager who was mostly moping around trying to decide what to do, which was incredibly boring, so I dropped the book. Plus, there were a couple of times where they seemed to reprint pages from the previous issue, and I couldn't tell if that was a foul-up or a deliberate choice, but it was distracting.

Fantastic Four #1, 2: So far, Ryan North and Iban Coello's run on the FF has seen the team split up into smaller units, each dealing with some odd doing. I was fond of Ben and Alicia dealing with the mystery of the town from the 1950s stuck in a time loop, more than Reed and Sue finding a town of Doombots. The former allowed for a bit more humor, but they were both enjoyable.

Grrl Scouts: Stone Ghost #2-6: Jim Mahfood's first Grrl Scouts mini-series in five years barely features the main characters from the previous three mini-series, and it takes place in an almost surreal alien world where people can dive inside others' dreams, and robots can emerge from a person's head.

High Point: As much as I loved the surreal imagery and how Mahfood seemed to change the color scheme or presentation with every scene switch, I think he's smart to ground the story through Dio's search for her boyfriend's ashes. It provides a nice throughline amid all the stuff about butterflies and evil teeth. Dio continues to press forward and always for the same reason, no matter what she runs across.

Also, I loved the "Macho Tailfin" back-up stories, especially the over-the-top '90s pastiche in issue 5. Macho screaming "FREAK THIS, FUCK-FACE!!" while ripping "Baron Razor Shrapnel Strike" in half, then pulling out a huge gun and a smoke machine to attack the henchmen cracked me up for some reason. Look, I never said my sense of humor wasn't twisted.

Low Point: Mostly I worry how long we'll have to wait to get another mini-series. I really want to see Dio meet Daphne, Gwen and Rita. Also, I wonder how different Mahfood's art will look by then.

Ice Canyon Monster #1: I gave this a whirl in February because a shaman raising some ancient monster to defend his home from environmental degradation sounded worth a read. Unfortunately, none of the other 6 issues ever came out. They were even resolicited for October, and still nothing. I'll always have that panel of the monster that reminded of Earthworm Jim's Bob, the Killer Goldfish.

Impossible Jones #3, 4: The second half of Karl Kesel and David Hahn's introductory mini-series about a thief caught in a super-science experiment who gains weird powers. Jones is still focused on trying to figure out who locked her in that experiment, but she doesn't really get an answer here, and her boyfriend goes missing with an unusual piece they stole. I like how Kesel hints at backstory and history for these new characters without getting bogged down by it, and I like a lot of Hahn's designs for the characters.

Impossible Jones - Naughty or Nice: I mean, I just reviewed this last week. Impossible Jones misses out on the chance to steal some original puppets from a beloved Christmas movie to deal with a bomb threat, then gets stuck with Even Steven while he has an existential crisis over how to fairly repay an anonymous gift.

Iron Cat #1-5: Black Cat got canceled, so Jed MacKay's taken the approach of writing various mini-series involving her. Like this one, where her ex-girlfriend teams up with one of Tony Stark's ex-girlfriends (now an AI) to try to kill Felicia. Except, of course, things get out of hand, and loyalties have to shift.

High Point: The parts that are Felicia and Tamara interacting. Both the knock down, drag out fights, and the parts where they're arguing about what plan they can use to outmaneuver Sunset Bain, while running for their lives from dozens of Iron Man armors. It was fun to see how easily they slid back into old habits, even when Tamara was still furious with Felicia.

Low Point: The Iron Man parts. I haven't been reading his book, so I didn't really care about the 49th iteration of someone hijacking Stark's legacy of building weapons of mass destruction to destroy his legacy of. . .I'm sure he built some non-lethal technologies that didn't develop sentience or otherwise try to kill all humans.

Pere Perez' version of the Iron Cat armors didn't look quite as impressive as C.F. Villa's did, either. Less sleek, less dangerous. I think making the cat ears smaller and cuter didn't help, and the claws went from some pink plasma thing to actual claws, which is just not as cool.

Iron Fist #1-3: Six months after Larry Hama's extremely disappointing mini-series which took the Iron Fist from Danny Rand for the, what, 17th time? Alyssa Wong handed the chi of Shou-Lao the Undying over to a character called Swordmaster, for some reason. At the time I dropped the book, it had still not been explained why, if the mystical shards of his sword that were embedded in his hands were not only painful, but interfering with his ability to use the Iron Fist, he didn't just remove them. Especially since he was supposed to be trying to put the sword back together. If he needs the connection to find the remaining pieces, leave one in, but why a dozen?

Jenny Zero II #1-4: The second Jenny Zero mini-series, still written by Dave Dwonch and Broxton McKinney, with Magenta King as artist, has Jenny trying to embrace her father's legacy and become the next Mega Commander One-type, who defends Earth against kaijus. Except just as it looks like she defeated a revived and improved version of the monster that killed her father, she suffers some major losses.

High Point: A fight against a chain restaurant mascot come to life is always worth the price of admission, so let's hear it for issue #2! The color work during Jenny's flashback in issue 3 to what caused her to quit originally was excellent. And I don't know whether King continued to evolve as an artist between the first mini-series and this one, or if the shift to a smoother, less ragged line was a deliberate choice, but it made for an interesting shift in how the book looked.

Low Point: After they went to the trouble of establishing the (evil) Director had a set of triplets who could manipulate a person's memories and emotions, I was sure that was going to come into play. Especially as Jenny seemed to avoid public relations snafus and fell into bed with that annoying Alpha guy. But it never really went anywhere, and the Alpha guy easily defeated the triplets by simply killing one of them. Kind of a letdown.

Kaiju Score - Steal from Gods #1-4: James Patrick and Rem Broo came back for another Kaiju Score story, this time with the safecracker from the first mini-series leading her own crew to try and steal a bunch of gold from the inside of some super-kaijus stomach, while it's being heavily guarded by the Russians. Go big or go home, right?

High Point: I enjoy how Patrick gets into the logistics of these kinds of things, but without it being boring exposition. Although the fact they're stealing heavily guarded gold from inside a monster's stomach helps. And he's very good at playing with expectations. Setting things up so you figure something is sure to happen, but it may not happen the way the audience thinks.

Also, the three-panel sequence in issue 4 where Michelle is pistol whipping a guy to death, pauses to catch her breath, then resumes pistol whipping him was an enjoyable bit. I strongly identify with having enough anger it takes a while to really get it all out.

Low Point: The end was bittersweet, but appropriate for the characters. Michelle figured out she was changing, but the others were going where she was, so that was that. Part on good terms, hope it stays that way.

Lead City #1-4: A former soldier enters a free-for-all tournament of death in some western town to pay for his wife's medical treatment. That's pretty much it. The former soldier doesn't seem like much of a killer, but he's gonna have to kill at least one if he wants to stay alive.

High Point: Eric Borden and Kyle Brummond gave enough of the characters distinct approaches to fighting to make for some interesting match-ups. The Jiao Long Ru Ken fight against Major Walker was probably the best of them, with the classic speed vs. power contrast.

Low Point: With only four issues, and the first of those spent getting the Cooper family to the town, there's not really much time to flesh any of the other fighters out beyond the bare bones. A couple of them get a little more than that, but it makes it difficult to really care. Could be the point I suppose, we don't know any of them, so the option is to pull for Cooper. All of them are unknowns from his perspective, and dangerous. So maybe it works from that approach, but violence without some sort of context for it is weightless.

Two days, and half the comics down. Tomorrow we'll get into the back half of the alphabet (eventually). There's one big ongoing series, then a lot of one-shots and books I only bought a couple issues from.

Sunday Splash Page #253

"Sky-High Prices," in Howard the Duck Magazine #1, by Bill Mantlo (writer), Gene Colan and Dave Simons (artists), Mike Higgins? (letterer)

After Howard and Beverly beat Dr. Bong and were reunited in issue 31 of his monthly series, Marvel switched Howard's stories to a black-and-white that came out roughly every couple of months for 18 months. I only own the first issue, because it's all that's included in volume 2 of the Howard the Duck The Complete Collection.

The Mantlo/Colan team from the last few issues of the ongoing series are still the main creative team here, although Michael Golden and Klaus Janson are the art duo on the first of the three stories in here. Mantlo sends Howard and Beverly back to Cleveland with her uncle who Howard randomly met and befriended in New York, but has decided to open a cab company back home.

Mantlo brings back a couple of Howard's earliest antagonists in Pro Rata, the Financial Wizard, and the Kidney Lady. Except he makes the Kidney Lady into a sort of witch, who tries using magic first to drive Howard nuts and incite the public against him, then has a demon possess a chair of some such nonsense to try and kill the duck.

I feel like that misses the point of what Gerber was going for, that she was a mentally ill woman who fixated on Howard as the source of her fears and woes because he was different, and managed to mess with his life because she refused to leave him be. But hell, it means Colan gets to draw a possessed easy chair, so take the good with the bad.

Mantlo also writes Beverly as a bit more action-oriented than Gerber did, and I don't just mean because the last page basically says she and Howard get freaky in the sack. She seems more involved in the fighting Howard gets caught up in than she did before. Could argue that after Howard left her stuck with Dr. Bong for however long that ended up being - he escaped from Dr. Bong in issue 18, and didn't end up fighting him until issue 30, and that was more because Bong came looking for him - she doesn't feel like waiting around to be saved.

Reading summaries online, it looks like Mantlo sent them back to Howard's world for a while before bringing them back to Earth, then had Beverly break up with Howard in the last issue and the duck becomes a private detective. Which might explain where Zdarsky got the idea to go that route with Howard 35 years later.

Saturday Splash Page #55

"Midnight Cowboy", in Uncanny X-Men Annual #11, by Chris Claremont (writer), Alan Davis (penciler), Paul Neary (inker), Glynis Oliver (colorist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer)

It's the only Annual I own for this book. It's hard to pinpoint when it's set, because the X-Men are living in the school, but Havok is there, and he didn't join until after they'd packed up and ran to Muir Island, and Storm was off to look for Forge not long after Havok's arrival.

But whatever, the team - plus Captain Britain and Meggan, who are there to visit Psylocke - are captured by some incredibly powerful goober named "Horde", who demands they steal the "Crystal of Ultimate Vision" from the "Citadel of Light and Shadow", or else he'll destroy the Earth.

Once inside, they find that the danger of the citadel is that it offers each person their fondest desire, to draw them away from the prize. And so the team is picked off, one by one. Rogue merrily rushes into a Gone with the Wind fantasy. Dazzler embraces being a homeless person, because it's safer to never try. Ouch. Havok, I'm not sure exactly. His body is there, but his mind may have been transported into a star. Davis and Neary make it look good, this enormous, prismatic maze, interrupted by whatever the X-Men happen to be seeing. I think the panels get narrower - either vertically or horizontally - as each one is gradually ensnared.

(Also feels very Claremont for Storm's fondest desire to apparently be to run around with Yukio in Tokyo. Just two gals bein' pals, right?)

It ultimately comes down to Wolverine, who has not spent the issue covering himself in glory. He got blotto up there because this is what would be the anniversary of his marriage to Mariko. You know, if Mastermind hadn't messed with her head and made her call it off. Still find that both a dick move and a really stupid move by Wyngarde. Good idea, fuck with the guy who stabs people even when he isn't pissed off. When Horde showed up, Logan rushed out in a bathrobe, nearly stabbed Dazzler by accident, and gone facepalmed and thrown down the hall into Dazzler and Havok by Horde like a chump. But there's always another chance to make good.

One thing I don't understand is why Horde even needed the X-Men, since he eventually shows up right as they reach the crystal. I guess to distract the Citadel, keep it from attacking him. Although it was able to get Meggan and Captain Britain in one go, so I don't know why it couldn't grab Horde and say, Longshot, simultaneously.

(I also don't know why Oliver colors Brian Braddock like he's Adam Warlock. Looks like the guy went nuts with Spray-On Tan.)

The end of the issue reveals the Citadel is a test, and if you fail, your species is doomed to be frozen in its current evolutionary state. And we see both a Kree and Skrull represented there, and the fact they were deadlocked genetically definitely got used in stories later on, by other writers. Don't know if they just picked up what Claremont set down, or if this was something a few writers coordinated on.

2022 Comics in Review - Part 1

Another year, another week of me looking back at last year's comics. I'm sticking with the same format I've used for 15 years. Look at the title over the first four days, highlighting the good and the bad, then the big, "who was the BEST?" shtick for the final day? Why mess with a winning formula, or at least one that's easy to maintain?

A Calculated Man #1-3: Jack Beans was a former mob money man who went into Witness Protection. But when he's spotted by remnants of his old employers, Jack has to put his perfect memory and analytic skills into killing all of them before they kill him. At the same time, though, he's trying to carry on a relationship with a woman he met online, who thinks all his stories about being a killer are just things he's making up.

High Point: Tobin writes some good conversations, either when Jack is talking to himself, or arguing with the U.S. Marshal who's about to become his new contact when the current guy retires. It helps to flesh out Jack's personality, the areas where he feels very sure of his judgment, and those where he doesn't. Alburquerque and colorist Mark Englert depict a world that looks very much like ours, but they keep it vivid and varied enough that it's interesting. Also, Jack gets creative with some of his killing.

Low Point: I had certain problems with how far Tobin took Jack's ability to predict exactly what people were going to do through the power of math. Again, this is a world where the other characters appear essentially average, but Jack's outmaneuvering them like he's a precog. It stretched my suspension of disbelief. I won't directly speak about the final issue, since it came out last week, but suffice to say, it did absolutely nothing to put that concern to rest. It actually made it worse.

Above Snakes #1, 2: Sean Lewis, Hayden Sherman, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou with a Western about a guy seeking revenge for his murdered wife, with a talking vulture that may or may not be in his head for company. I enjoyed Sherman's color work, but after two issues, I decided I didn't need to read another deconstruction of how people tie up revenge with justice, pushed through the lens of a Western.

Agent of WORLDE #1-3: Philip is, as the title suggests, an agent of WORLDE, a super-science agency that decides what super-science stuff gets to exist (under their control) and what doesn't (basically everything else.) Philip seems not entirely enthused by his work, which will probably come to some sort of a head, if/when the final issue shows up. Deniz Camp's the writer, with Filya Bratukhin as artist, Jason Wordie as color artist, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou as letterer.

High Point: There are panels where I find Bratukhin's art too fussy, too many dots or little hash marks on people's faces. But damn if Bratukhin don't put that excessive amount of detail into some wild settings and characters. And it goes different ways. Sometimes the weird stuff is beautiful and sometimes it's horrifying. I think I liked the scientist who made a bunch of robot children for himself most of the missions so far.

Also, I like how Camp keeps creating missions for Philip where he destroys people that have built themselves these unconventional families, but he gets to go home to his secret family. Why does Philip get to keep his family when these others don't? Simply because he's better at keeping his hidden than those others? I'd like there to be a reckoning there, but I don't think it's that kind of story.

Low Point: I can't shake the fact I don't actually like Philip (see the sentence above about wanting to see a reckoning.) I haven't actually rooted for him to succeed in a single one of his missions so far. Is that what Camp's going for, or am I supposed to empathize with the family man who doesn't like his work, only to get some rug pulled out at the end? I don't know yet.

Amazing Spider-Man #87, 88.BEY, 89: I hadn't bought any new Amazing Spider-Man comics in about a decade, but what the heck, they were gonna use Ben Reilly and the Black Cat. I'm not nostalgic about everything from my childhood, but I am about some things. Probably not my best decision in this case. I did like the issue about Felicia and Captain America trying to get Peter back up to snuff after a near-death experience. But bringing Dr. Kafka back as a clone only to turn her into some Psycho Pirate-esque Goblin, while turning Ben into a villain again, yeesh. Maybe I'll try again in 2032.

Batgirls #2-6: I thought a book focused on Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain (and Barbara Gordon), having their own adventures largely independent of the rest of the Bats would be a good time. But the first arc really didn't do it for me, even if throwing a bunch of armored goons, a super-hacker, and Spellbinder at them was a good try at really making the Batgirls seem like they were on the defensive, so I dropped it. With all the revamps/reboots/linewide resets, it was a bit like looking at someone that really reminds me of someone you used to know, but it's not actually them. Everything's just a little off. I don't think I'm the audience for it, but I hope it found that audience.

High Point: There were some funny parts, like Cass affirming that reading was fundamental in issue #4. The work Becky Cloonan, Michael Conrad, Jorge Corona and Sarah Stern put into establishing "the Hill" as a distinct setting, inhabited by some everyday people for the heroes to interact with outside of crimefighting.

Low Point: While they did explain some things about the "Saints", armored bruisers trying to bring in the Batgirls, after 6 issues, they hadn't explained anything about the Seer was, why she was so determined to hound Oracle, how she kept getting around all Oracle's defenses. They didn't even deal with the fact Seer seemed to know their secret identities, which seemed like kind of a big deal!

Maybe it was a deliberate approach after Barbara's comment she was sure Steph and Cass could handle the Saints if they were prepared, but the perfunctory way they trashed them in the opening pages of issue 5 was kind of a letdown. They spent 4 issues running from these guys, to take them out in half an issue?

Ben Reilly - Spider-Man #1-5: Marvel puts out a steady stream of these mini-series by veteran creators set off in distinct earlier eras of comics. In this case, J.M. DeMatteis and David Baldeon had Ben Reilly in his time as Spider-Man trying to deal with a serial killer. Plus he keeps getting attacked by super-villains while he's in his civilian identity, such as it is.

High Point: The view of Ben's extremely isolated life at the start of the mini-series, where he's still struggling to carve a place for himself in a place filled with Peter Parker's friends and memories, that was good. I always liked that aspect of Ben, so that was welcome.

Low Point: The main villain being Spidercide, yeesh. He's one of those things I don't have nostalgia for. In part because I missed the comics he showed up in during the Clone Saga. The way he seems to keep pulling more powers out of his butt every issue, and his motivations go back-and-forth from page to page was just tiring. He wants Ben to die. No, Ben has to live! He wants Ben to be friends with him! No, he doesn't, he wants to take Ben's place! Ugh.

Blink #1-5: Christopher Sebela, Hayden Sherman, Nick Filardi and Frank Cvetkovic were the creative team for this mini-series about Wren, who's looking for answers about her past. She gets them, but it involves going back to a place she only vaguely remembered. Once she's there, she finds it's hard to make sense of anything going on there.

High Point: Sherman drew the hell out of this comic. The layouts were great, how panels might switch from moving left-to-right to going up-down as Wren gets turned around within the building like in issue 3. Or the panels borders are made of tape reel, or panels are stretched out with hooks through them as we see people being taken apart and rebuilt into monsters (issue 4). It was one of the best looking books I read all year.

Wren's confusion and frustration as she keeps trying to get answers, and everyone keeps giving her just enough to push her forward. Enough to get her closer to doing what they want her to do. She's in a maze in every sense of the world, perfectly baited.

Low Point: There really isn't one. I'm not sure what Sebela's trying to say, but I have some theories, and that's good enough.

Broken Eye #1-4: This was kind of an odd one, by Martin and Xavier Etxeberria and Inaki Arenas, about a young man in 1970s Liverpool who has one eye that can see the past of objects when he picks them up. He gets tangled up in the murder of an aide to the mayor, and then the murder of a friend of his.

High Point: The Etxeberrias put a lot of moving parts in play, allowing for a lot of different interactions and connections. Characters bouncing off each other and creating unexpected ripples. I don't know how accurate a representation of 1970 Liverpool it is, but I thought Arenas gave the city a presence as a place that may have seen better days, and has a lot of history buried in it.

Also, I loved that page of the IRA guy leaving prison, where the center panels are focused on him, while the ones one either side chart his progress from the cells to the outside world. Just really nice work.

Low Point: While I like Arenas' work - it has the clean look I generally prefer - I wonder if something a bit grimier wouldn't have fit the story. All the betrayals and backstabbing, the dirty deals and people lashing out in bitterness.

Also, I'm not sure how I feel about how Seamus knows two women in this series, and the one who works as a dominatrix (and is Chinese) gets killed while the pretty white girl who works with orphaned kids makes it out clean. I guess it's not unusual for a story like this that sex workers get killed, but man it felt really obvious things would end along those lines from the moment both Victoria and Eleanor were introduced.

Damage Control #1, 2: A couple of TV writers and Zac Robson revived Damage Control, but I didn't really enjoy their take on it. It felt more focused on workplace comedy that happens to involve superheroes, than really focusing on situation that could arise from having a company like Damage Control in a superhero universe. So I dropped it. Moving on!

Deadpool #1, 2: Wade's new ongoing series. Alyssa Wong introduced a new group of elite assassins Deadpool would like to join, as well as a new character for him to become obsessed with. All that's fine. I'd even be fine with Deadpool killing Doc Ock. Is it really any worse than that time Ock got killed by Kaine? Unfortunately, Wong also introduced a subplot with a symbiote implanted in Deadpool by a evil bio-engineer, and that's getting most of the focus so far. At least Martin Coccolo is good at drawing the resulting body horror.

Defenders #5: This was another the best-looking comics I read all year. Javier Rodriguez really knocked it out of the park, but I just don't care about these meta-commentary stories about the comic universe as a stand-in for the history of comics themselves. Which is why I didn't pick up the next Defenders mini-series, even though from what I can tell, Rodriguez drew the hell out of it too.

That's it for Day 1. Tomorrow we'll get through a lot more letters, and there'll be fewer books I was disappointed by, which is always nice.

Used Cars (1980)

Rudy's (Kurt Russell) a used car salesman with dreams of running for Senate. He works for Luke Fuchs (played by Jack Warden), who runs a dealership right across the street from his brother Roy's (also played by Jack Warden). Roy learns the new freeway will go through his lot, so he needs to get Luke's. So he arranges for one of his employees to take Luke on a test drive that overloads his heart.

Rudy and the other employees cover up Luke's death and carry on with business, while Roy tries to either sink the dealership or prove Luke is dead. Rudy goes so far as to hijack the transmission of a football game to broadcast a commercial for the lot. Then they do it again later during a presidential address. The second one was pretty fun, for the sheer over-the-top aspect of it. In the middle of all that, Luke's daughter Barbara (played by Deborah Harmon) shows up, looking to reconnect with her dad.

So Rudy's more than a bit of a scumbag, which is funny since Luke seems to be pretty honest. Rudy's out here buying stolen cabs from some guy across the border in Mexico, putting bumpers back on with chewing gum. Even Matilda's dad used super-super glue. But Kurt Russell's charming enough to keep him from being too irredeemable. Plus, Luke did ask him to keep the dealership out of Roy's hands, so in that sense, he's honoring a dead man's wish. That it also gets him more money which he will donate to the (presumably Republican) party to secure the nomination is just a fortunate confluence of events. Trust him!

Some of the bits he and the other dealers use to make sales are pretty hilarious, the bit with the dog and the station wagon in particular. Watching Rudy make an ass of himself to keep Barbara from seeing the commercial they're running is good for a laugh. The end of the movie turns into one of those mad-dash sequences I always associate with '80s comedies. Whether they're trying to raise enough money, or get some piece of evidence, or in this case, enough cars to make it so Barbara didn't make a false claim in a commercial. It's funny, but it drags longer than it really needs.

What I Bought 1/2/2023 - Part 4

Last two comics of 2022! Decided to group the books from Scout Comics together. Works as well as any other sorting method according to my talking baseball cap.

Impossible Jones: Naughty or Nice #1, by Karl Kesel (writer/inker), David Hahn (penciler), Tony Avina and Ryan Cody (colorists), Comicraft (letterer) - So um, what does the "naughty" option entail? Asking for a friend.

The one-shot has two loosely connected stories. In the first, I.J. is planning to swipe the original puppets from a beloved Christmas special when Holly Daze takes over the airwaves and makes threats of a big bomb if she doesn't get a white Christmas. Jones is willing to ignore that, but one of the other heroes shows up, and when it turns out Holly's got some superpowered back-up, Imp can't stay out of it. I like Demolition's design. It's very simple, a t-shirt with a logo and some wrist bracers, but it works. He doesn't talk at all, and based on Imp's description of him, I wonder if he's a bit like Mad Stan from Batman Beyond. A more elaborate look might not make sense.

As it turns out, Holly really did just want a white Christmas, and to steal the puppets while everyone is freaking out over her bomb threat, but she left one for Imp. The other story picks up near the tail end of the first. Even Steven receives an anonymous Christmas gift, and is frustrated that he doesn't know who to give a gift as a thank you. That can't stand, as it's uneven! A gift must be matched with one in return! 

Kesel sets it up that Even Steven's power about keeping things fair extends to his very nature. Not only that he won't join a fight that's an even match, but he seeks out Impossible Jones because he believes she can do impossible things. It's in her name, and heroes' names should accurately convey their abilities.

Imp does come up with a satisfactory solution, and Kesel adds in a little more about either her nature, or her powers, through what could be a throwaway comment by Even Steven. So both stories function as easily accessible standalones, but also work at building on the initial mini-series, which is nice.

She Bites #3, by Hedwig Hale (writer), Alberto Hernandez R. (artist), Dave Lanphear (letterer) - Those photo booths always start faster than you can get ready.

Brenda freaks out over her lifelong nemesis being dead in the dressing room. Elsie alternates between amused and annoyed by the dramatics, but they manage to get Amber out of the mall by stealing her car. When they're ready to dump the body, Brenda has a soliloquy about how even if Amber was a terrible person, it's too bad she didn't get to marry an asshole, have some kids, get addicted to pills. You know, live. Hernandez focuses those panels on Brenda and Amber's corpse, with  Elsie either off-panel or only part of her leg visible.

Probably because she's rolling her eyes, as that's when she reveals Amber's not dead (or going to become a vampire), and all this was to teach Brenda a lesson about the value of her own life. As approaches go, I would prefer a foul-mouthed undead child kill my enemy to an angel showing me the world if I never existed. Push that damn angel in a boiler.

After polishing off the evening watching Lion King - it gets two vampire thumbs up for surprising amounts of murder! - Brenda collects her pay and leaves. But maybe she's not ready to shuffle off just yet. I'm not sure which place on Elsie's list I want to see them visit most. The cockfight, Costco, a strip club? The possibilities for mayhem are endless, although Costco probably has an entire aisle devoted to monster killin', so that might be the way to go.

Amber also wakes up on a park bench, out for revenge, so maybe we'll get more of this some day. I doubt somehow Brenda's completely lost the impulse to end her existence, especially if Amber comes after her (or Elsie) in an ugly enough manner.

I'm curious if Elsie can sprout wings or turn to smoke or anything like that. Hernandez is good at shifting between her looking cruel or angry, with the occasional glimpses of something like childlike joy or happiness. But she never gets too monstrous looking, and I don't know if that's simply something she can't do, or there hasn't been a situation that required it yet. Given everything, I don't know if it would impact how Brenda sees her, but it might.

To Hell And Back - Audie Murphy

Before he was in movies, Audie Murphy was just a kid who ended up in the infantry because the Marines and the paratroopers said he was too small. This memoir only makes brief mention of his life before the war. Enough to know he grew up poor, that his father (himself a veteran of WWI who got a lungful of something toxic) up and left, and his mother died when Murphy was sixteen.

Beyond that, and a few things he discussed with a nurse while convalescing from malaria - apparently he contracted malaria sometime in North Africa, and was gripped with periodic bouts for the remainder of the war, and presumably beyond - this deals strictly with his experiences fighting in either Italy or southern France.

Murphy is blunt about the fact he went into the war with grand dreams, and swiftly learns the reality. He admits that during the war, he's rarely aware of the larger course of the war, or the logic behind the movements his unit makes. There are rumors, there are things that can be extrapolated by the training they're given when temporarily pulled off the lines, but for Murphy and the men he fights alongside, the war is the next field, the next hill, the next defensive fortification they're expected to take.

He describes the men he fights alongside, and to an extent, they could feel like stock characters from a war movie. A Polish immigrant named Novak sure a girl he knows in Pittsburgh is waiting faithfully, who keeps a little stove with him to make coffee. Horse-Face Johnson, who always has another story about, 'this one girl I knew.' Kerrigan, a hard-drinking Irishman and Snuffy, who turns intoa preacher when drunk, begging Kerrigan to repent. Brandon, who receives letters from his daughter back in Tennessee.

It could feel cliche, but those sorts of cliches had to come from somewhere, and the mixing pot of the infantry would present situations like this. And since this real, things don't follow the path a story might. He makes a connection with a nurse while recovering from malaria, but they never meet again. He hears the hospital was bombarded, but doesn't know if she was among the casualties. Murphy writes with a mixture of fondness and exasperation for the guys he knows and all their tics. How it occasionally irritates him when they won't shut up, but other times he's glad for that. He works hard to describe how he can't enrage himself over Novak's death enough to stave off fear that creeps in at night, but when Brandon dies after a couple of Nazis pretend to surrender and cut him down when he steps in view, Murphy's able to describe how he couldn't really process or accept that in the moment.

What follows is one of the sequences that no doubt earned him some of those decorations, but Murphy doesn't allude to that aspect. Medals or ribbons are never mentioned. He scarcely mentions his promotions, from private to corporal, to sergeant, and eventually to lieutenant. They're just another step on a long road to wherever the Army orders him to go. You do notice that he describes fewer of the men who join his command as time goes on and the ones he landed with are gradually whittled away.

Murphy is open about how lucky he was, how easily he could be dead instead of any of the others. He describes seeing two lieutenants dive into a foxhole together and a mortar lands in it a moment later. A mortar hits the ground right in front of him and he's barely harmed, because he was too close to be hit by the spray pattern of the blast. Several men further away are killed or badly wounded. A ricochet catches him in the hip and knocks him down. The sniper fires at his helmet, but Murphy's not wearing it, and that gives him a chance to get the sniper. Those are just the obvious ones, the book is full of moments where you know he could have died if an enemy simply picked a different target.

The writing mixes a matter-of-fact approach with more descriptive phrases. He compares the fear settling into to a fist reaching in to disembowel a chicken carcass, or talks about the dream of a lovely girl he's never seen but would like to meet one day. The moments where he does something particularly wild, he admits he barely remembers, or had no conscious thought of how risky what he was doing was. I'm not sure he's unaware of the likelihood he'll die, but he's either past caring or can't spare the thought to care. He's in the next moment, determined to fight, because that's seemingly how he's always been. Unwilling to stop fighting.

There are a few pages at the end for after victory in Europe is declared where you see the confusion he's left with. He describes wanting to be with others and wanting to be alone, to talk and be silent. It mirrors an earlier stretch when Rome's been liberated, and the soldiers are all it at ease until Kerrigan picks a fight with some flyboys.

'The gun has thrown the krauts into confusion. Evidently they cannot locate its position. Later I am told that the burning tank destroyer, loaded with gasoline and ammunition, was expected to blow up any minute. That was why the enemy tanks gave it a wide berth and the infantrymen could not conceive of a man's using it for cover.

I do not know about that. For the time being my imagination is gone; and my numbed brain is intent only on destroying. I am conscious only that the smoke and the turret afford a good screen, and that, for the first time in three days, my feet are warm.'

What I Bought 1/2/2023 - Part 3

One week down in 2023, and the world hasn't ended yet. To kick off another week, we're looking at a mini-series just past the halfway mark, and an ongoing series a couple of issues into it's next storyarc.

West of Sundown #7, by Tim Seeley and Aaron Campbell (writer), Jim Terry (artist), Triona Farrell (colorist), Crank! (letterer) - Dog soldier? Donkey soldier? Texas Chainsaw Massacre before there were chainsaws?

The merry band begins to fall apart. Finding the fellow they brought to Griffin for medical treatment last issue is now dead, Dooley and Mr. Manor suspect Griffin. Dirck offers a very lukewarm defense of his long-time traveling companion. So after pointing out a pair of punctures on the neck, Griffin grabs his captured creature and marches out of town.

Dooley, hoping Rosa will be able to offer a direction to seek the true killer in, is rebuffed when she insists she needs some sleep, because it's almost daytime, and she's meeting with Mr. Moreau this evening to discuss building her an opera house. They have a blow up and Dooley storms off. Also, Rosa mentions that if she'd fed on the man they brought in, she'd look much more rosy cheeked, which sort of blows my observation that she looks pinker, more human, when she's weakened, right the hell out of the water.

Out in the desert, Griffin realizes carrying around a big cage with a monster in it is a losing prospect and sets it free, before falling down a hillside and finding Moreau butchering animals in a train car.  There's one page in that sequence that looks very rushed, where Terry's lines are smudged and thicker than normal. Meanwhile, Dirck, Dooley and Mr. Manor go roaming the wilderness, and get their asses kicked by a bunch of Moreau's experiments. Also, the useless sheriff is having flashbacks to some earlier point in time, when he wore a weird a hood.

Kind of seems like this bunch can't stand still. Moreau makes a comment about making better predators, and maybe that's what all of them are. Rosa certainly, and Griffin. Maybe less so for Dirck and Dooley, but as they're tied to the other two, they get sucked into it. The nature of their lives won't let them stay within a small confine. If they try, their appetites or requirements for survival make them turn on each other.

Or it's the push-and-pull between chasing one's interests, but being alone, or staying with those they're fond of, but giving up on their passions.

Sgt. Rock vs the Army of the Dead #4, by Bruce Campbell (writer), Eduardo Risso (artist), Kristian Rossi (colorist), Rob Leigh (letterer) - Rock's got himself to pots to piss in, but only enough time for one.

Rock and Easy Co follow the doc. They can't pass through a checkpoint normally, so they take it over, it loudly. Somehow the doctor fails to notice the fire and gunshots, but does notice the truck following him. So the truck comes under fire from a pillbox, and while most of the guys deal with that, Rock and the sniper, Four Eyes, grab a motorcycle and get back after the doc. This brings them to a warehouse in the middle of nowhere, guarded by a bunch of the re-gen soldiers. Must be something important inside, or someone.

Campbell throws in a few funny moments. Rock crashes through a barricade with a big "HALT" sign, and when Four Eyes questions him on it, replies, 'I can't read German.' At the checkpoint, one of his guys is translating the guard's orders, and when he demands papers, Rock rips a bunch of pages out of the truck's instruction manual and hands them over. Risso gets a silent panel of the Nazi just staring dumbfounded, before he starts screaming for the truck to be searched.

This issue does feel thin, though. The place where it ends feels like a decent stopping point for a chapter, but I'm wondering how much will happen in issue 5 and whether these two could have been squeezed together. The dialogue is pretty sparse, which gives Risso and Rossi room to work. There are a lot of nice details. Rock leaning slightly to his left to see around the bullet hole in the windshield.

There's two rows of three panels each where Rock stops their pursuers by rupturing a fuel tank. The top three are the set-up, him gradually getting the bazooka ready. The bottom three are focused on the lead pursuer, and start by showing the light of the shell being fired, then show its path reflected in the guys goggles. It's only in the final panel where the reflection of the tank appears, showing Rock wasn't just firing at the guys chasing them.

Sunday Splash Page #252

"Portrait of an Irritated Avian," in Howard the Duck Annual #1, by Steve Gerber (writer), Val Mayerick (artist), Jan Cohen (colorist), Joe Rosen (letterer)

Set right after Howard releases himself from an insane asylum - with an assist from the demonic half of Damion Hellstrom's soul - and right before Dr. Bong bursts on the scene, Gerber and Mayerick put Howard and Beverly back in Cleveland, sharing a place with Bev's friend Paul and Winda, a girl Howard met in the asylum.

The three "hairless apes" return with some new furnishings, including a carpet. Which turns out to be a flying carpet that whisks the girls off to the isolationist city of Bagmom. Howard and Paul win a radio contest with the help of a smart-alecky magic lamp that nets them two tickets to that same city, and away they go. Bagmom turns out to be in a power struggle between the traditional, religious, isolationist sultan, and his Westernized son (who sold the carpet and the lamp as college furnishings he didn't want), who is making deals with Roxxon to get the country's oil.

Howard's mood swings wildly in this issue. He starts depressed, then blows up at Winda and Beverly when his coffee gets spilled. He's irate at the Roxxon guys for not being concerned the sultan has abducted two Americans, but is willing to humor the sultan when he's presented as one of the strange mysteries of the West that could be theirs, if only they play ball with the delightful Roxxon Corporation. When the prince escapes in a biplane with the girls as hostages, Howard is oddly willing to leap on a modified horsey-ride statue with wings and engage in air combat.

It's hard to really tell what's going on with him. It seems like he's still capable of rising to the occasion when an immediate problem presents itself, but he might be reaching his limit, hence the cycle of low points and explosions. Two issues after this in the monthly book, Gerber spends an entire issue having an existential crisis about the meaning of his work, portrayed through a series of conversations with Howard. So maybe they're both wondering what the heck they're doing.

Saturday Splash Page #54

"Snowblind", in Uncanny X-Men #407, by Joe Casey (writer), Sean Phillips (artist), Hi Fi Design (colorist), RS Comicraft's Saida! (letterer)

Through the '90s, I only bought X-Men comics sporadically. This does mean I mostly missed the whole Onslaught era, so, not entirely a bad outcome. I got back into the X-Men because of Wizard Magazine, of all things. They did a special issue just about the hot new creative teams that were going to shake up the X-Books. Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly were going to take over New X-Men, while Joe Casey and Ian Churchill got Uncanny X-Men. At the time, I wouldn't have known a single one of them from a hole in the ground, but Uncanny was going to have Nightcrawler in the book, while New was going to prominently feature Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Emma Frost. Gee, three characters I give fewer than zero fucks about. Also, Quietly made Xavier's head looked like a peeled potato, which is funny, but was not aesthetically appealing to early-2000s Calvin. Or mid-2020s Calvin, for that matter.

Uncanny it was, then.

I know Casey has said he wasn't really inspired for the project, or didn't have a strong idea, something like that. He took it because, basically, you only get offered a major title like Uncanny X-Men every so often. I think that's a harsh assessment, because you can see the outlines of some of the ideas Casey would go on to explore in his WildCATS work, but it's certainly true Morrison and Quietly were the ones who ultimately set the tone for the line. Having Xavier and the school be openly for mutants, greatly increasing the number of students at the school, the expansion of mutant culture.

Casey focused more on the new economic power of mutants, how they could use it, and how others attempted to exploit it. Archangel using his company to speak at a big European summit, or learning that his company had invested in a brothel specializing in mutant sex workers. Chamber being used by a Britney Spears analogue looking to boost her career from the notoriety of dating a mutant. The last story of Casey's run involved the Vanisher, of all people, trying to become a Mista Big by dealing Mutant Growth Hormone to people looking for the rush of having mutant powers. Considering he got outflanked by Warren Worthington, who is nobody's idea of a savvy businessman, that was never likely to end well. But it did speak to an idea where conflicts between mutants might start being fought with money rather than powers.

The cast Casey assembled was an interesting mix of characters from different eras and socio-economic viewpoints. Two Original Five members in Archangel and Iceman, two All-New, All Different in Nightcrawler and Wolverine, one Gen X alum in Chamber, and then Stacy X as a new character. Chamber and Stacy both had experience with people wanting to use their mutant identity to enrich themselves, although Stacy was positioned as having more control or agency over her life. Quite possibly an unrealistic view, but what we have to go on is she and the other women were friends who seemed to enjoy their lives. Wolverine of course has a lot of experience with people wanting to exploit his abilities, and Nightcrawler was a top act in the circus.

Of course, each of them also learned there were limits to how much leeway the lucrative nature of their gifts bought them. Chamber was tossed aside once he wasn't profitable. Nightcrawler was hunted by a mob once they figured out he wasn't wearing make-up. Logan has an extensive history of being mindwiped and experimented on when he's not being an obedient killer. The X-Ranch was burned down by insane religious bigots once it got too big to remain secret. Once their power becomes a possible threat or challenge, it had to be curtailed, which was only happening more frequently as mutants grew in number and status.

The book went through a lot of artists, many of them with wildly different styles, sometimes in the same story arc. Going from Ian Churchill to Tom Raney might not be too big a shift, but from Raney to Ashley Wood, then over to Ron Garney, certainly is. Wood's stuff is nearly incomprehensible, frankly. I can't tell what the fuck is going on in those issues.

The last three issues of the "X-Corps" story go Garney-Sean Phillips-Aaron Lopresti, without the tone of the book really shifting much. I think Phillips was who Casey really wanted, although it's hard to see his art fitting the more action-packed stories, but Marvel kept giving him more conventional superhero artists. Which I didn't mind, but possibly didn't help with what Casey was going for. Phillips drew the story with the Vanisher, which was rather grounded. Stacy using her powers to get Vanisher off the board for a couple of weeks so Archangel can efficiently buy out Vanisher's guys. There looks like there's going to be a fight briefly, but it's handled off-panel. Perfunctory. The Vanisher can't accept he's not ready to play in this new world.

But I'm not sure the X-Men, as presented by Casey, have entirely adjusted either. There's a hypocrisy where some of them - Archangel and Iceman mostly, the two upper or middle class WASPs - judge Stacy for continuing to hire out her powers to people looking for pleasure or release. The notion Stacy might not be willing to subsist on Xavier or Worthington's lagresse apparently not registering with them. However, they are perfectly fine with her using to seduce Vanisher and keep him in a doped-up euphoric haze for two weeks so Archangel can make his power play. Logan, Iceman, and Nightcrawler all hassled Chamber about dating the pop star. Not so much because they seem concerned for him, but they don't like him letting himself be used like an accessory. I mean, they're right that's what was happening, but it should still be Chamber's call. They're still pretty limited in their view of what's "acceptable".

What I Bought 1/2/2023 - Part 2

Welcome to Friday, unless it's already Saturday where you are, you lucky devil. Today we're looking at the second issue of one mini-series, and the conclusion of another.

Nature's Labyrinth #2, by Zac Thompson (writer), Bayleigh Underwood (artist), Warnia Sahadewa (colorist), Rus Wooton (letterer) - Find all the creatures that want to kill you! Trick question: Everything is lethal!

J. Roe and Nasir reach a checkpoint, where the surviving five contestants wait. It's time for Round 2, or the next stage, and everyone gets a present. Weapons! One for each. you get a handgun, and you get a katana, and whoops, the katana guy gleefully decapitated the guy with the gun. While katana guy gets immolated by flamethrower guy, J. and Nasir keep moving, only to encounter a path full of hallucinogenic flowers. Then they're ambushed by a stereotypical big game hunter with a glaive.

The hunter gets distracted, because he's not the only one besides the contestants roaming around in here. There's at least one feral looking child who ran into flamethrower guy, but the outcome of that is unclear. Flamethrower guy, who is apparently a notorious arsonist, his fate is made much more clear when he catches up to J and Nasir.

The fight is pretty brutal, but some of the proportions and perspectives seem off. Jane slices his throat open with a combat knife, but she looks unusually small, like she's far away or off to one side. Which doesn't make sense, because the panels before that establish they were facing each other and she charged right at him, but he's not even looking at her by the time she cuts him. Then in the next panel, he's uppercutting her in the chin. And I'm very surprised he can fight for that long with what looks like a jugular cut open.

Whatever, he's dead now, so depending on whether he torched katana guy long enough, we may be down to four contestants. I'm curious to see what Nasir's going to do with a Gameboy, as that was the weapon provided to him. Everyone else is given more obvious killing tools, so it kind of sticks out. Is he going to hack their environment with a 30-year-old game system?

Blink #5, by Christopher Sebela (writer), Hayden Sherman (artist), Nick Filardi (colorist), Frank Cvetkovic (letterer) - New definition of "cam girl."

Wren does not kill the one waiting for her. Instead, she's stuck playing witness and ghostwriter as he lays out his life, what he tried to accomplish here, and what he's unlocked. Of the latter, Sebela's going with the, "there are gods for everything," including gods for surveillance and (involuntary) transparency. I'm looking at these pages, and trying to decide if Sherman did the panel layouts to resemble the symbols of major communications or entertainment companies. All these polygons overlapping each other. There's one with a circular panel of Wren, overlapped at 10 and 2 o'clock by smaller circles. Kind of looks like a Mickey Mouse symbol.

Or it's just meant to be all the different cameras. Hundreds of different angles of the same conversation, letting you see it from anyway you choose. Every significant twitch, raised eyebrow, dramatic flourish with a handgun.

Wren learns she had to be drawn back, because the key to bringing this god through was in her. Cy, the monster from her dreams. So much for my theory the monster looking thing that saved her previously was her father, captured and turned into one of the Signal. It was Cy, back in a physical form once he was in this nightmare realm.

The guy behind it kills himself, although Wren turns off the camera right before the end. Given the number of other cameras, it seems kind of pointless, but I guess it's a ritual, and those are meant to be done a certain way. The god wants to see everything, so he offered it even his death. Either way, since Wren didn't kill him, the Static don't get what they want. Unless they kill Wren, who is meant to be in his place. But it's not Wren, it's Cy, and everyone dies except him and her. So Wren flees, but it may be too late for that to matter. Although Sherman shifts back to more ordinary rectangular panels as soon as she's back out in the world, but the more paranoid she gets, the more the angles we view her from start to get weird, and eventually the staticky backdrop in the gutters comes back.

So, where does that leave us? That people don't consider what getting the "whole truth" would really entail? Wren gets that chance, the chance to see everything from where she was born, and all it cost was everything else she had. She's afraid to go outside, she's wrecked her career, her relationships, her life, over this obsession. And she's helped bring some surveillance god into the world directly.

Or that people don't think about how much power they grant others over them with constantly recording themselves, or being recorded. Or they don't even know how much of their life is out there, things they don't remember seeing or doing, but somebody, somewhere, saw it, knows about it.

The Big Steal (1949)

Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum both show up in Vera Cruz looking for the same man, a Jim Fiske (played by Patric Knowles). Greer, because they were engaged, she gave Fiske $2,000 and he bailed. Mitchum, because Fiske stole $300,000 from the Army that was under Mitchum's responsibility. Or so Mitchum claims, but he also keeps using different names - sometimes Blake, sometimes Halliday - and William Bendix is pursuing him as the true thief.

It's an extended chase scene, really. Mitchum and Greer chasing Knowles, Bendix chasing Mitchum. They speed up the film during some of the stunt driving sequences, but the cars still seem to be taking the hilly curves and swerving around various livestock at a good clip. The movie also has some fun with the various attempts by Mitchum and Greer to slow down Bendix, who is excellent at playing a loud, stupid American. The guy who thinks adding an "o" on the end of an English word makes it Spanish, especially if he repeats it at increasing volume.

The movie doesn't really play up the mystery of whether Mitchum is on the level. Not so much he's plays a decent chap; Mitchum is abrasive and condescending with Greer at first, though you could excuse it that he's on the run. It's more that Knowles ditches Greer as soon as possible after she shows up in his hotel room. There's nothing about his hurried, flimsy excuses to Greer, or the way he hurls a suitcase at some guys at a gas station, that screams, "I'm on the level!"

Mitchum and Greer have decent enough chemistry, especially as Mitchum slowly stops treating her like a burden he's saddled with. Greer gets most of the best lines, though, and takes advantage of the fact her character can speak Spanish, while Mitchum can speak, "Spanish." Meaning, he knows a couple of words, but that's about it.

What I Bought 1/2/2023 - Part 1

I have eight books from last month that showed up on Monday. That's the last of the new books from 2022, so once we get through these reviews, I'll jump in the Year in Review posts. Either the 12th or the 13th, depending on whether I've got a book/movie review to post on the 12th or not.

Moon Knight #18, by Jed MacKay (writer), Federico Sabbatini (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Why does Moon Knight only have spikes on one fist? Ya got two hands, Spector, dual-wield those things.

Marc and Tigra march into the Tutor's big show. The Tutor makes a speech about how ineffective and foolish they are, as the old way, versus all his buzz speak and TED talk horseshit. Moon Knight promises to kill him, and Solider uses his HYDRA training to hack into a trigger the sprinkler system. At which point Marc consecrates the water in the name of Khonshu. Burn, baby, burn.

Vampires destroyed, one human servant left alive to tell Dracula to stay out of New York. Yes, I'm sure that's what will keep him out, a trick they pulled in the Constantine movie, not the presence of the Sorcerer Supreme, who whipped Drac's ass more than once.

It's a very perfunctory conclusion. Walk in, talk a bit, trigger the sprinklers, boom, vamps beaten. So easy there's no real sense of any triumph. I guess the point is Tutor's plan was built on him being indispensable, which made bringing everything down rather easy. He just figured he was safe because he was sure he was smarter than everyone else.

With Rosenberg as colorist, Sabbatini's work continues to look very similar to Cappuccio's, the exception being Tigra. Sabbatini softens his lines on her, so she looks softer and more rounded, especially her face. The eyes are rounder, and he makes the stripes on her face wider, less like sharp slashes. The overall effect makes her less fierce, younger looking. It's the first time I've really noticed a big difference between how the two portray a given character.

He also substantially reduces the amount of cleavage revealed by her dress and removes the sleeves.

Deadpool #2, by Alyssa Wong (writer), Martin Coccolo (artist), Neeraj Menon (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - I bought the Peach Momoko variant cover rather than the McFarlane Incredible Hulk homage cover.

Deadpool tries to kill Doc Ock and not get recaptured by Harrower, while symbiote arms keep bursting out of his body. Although the arms are sometimes helpful, they don't have the same priorities as Deadpool. With Deadpool's healing factor and tendency to make jokes about terrible injuries, it's hard to make damage he sustains really look bad, but I'll say Coccolo did a good job here. Especially when one of the arms bursts out of Wade's mouth. I think it's how he shades the fabric of the mask so you can see Wade's body being stretched and his eyes are actually shut from the pain.

The fact Ock then flails his tentacles about trying to dislodge Deadpool, like a frightened housewife leaping on the kitchen table in a Tom & Jerry cartoon, somewhat undercuts the moment, but oh well.

In the middle of the fighting, Lady Deathstrike shows up. Because she and Deadpool were supposed to work on this hit together. Apparently she was there during the entire expository flashback with the Atelier, and we didn't see her because it was Wade's flashback and he was fixated on Valentine, the person with the needles. Which isn't a bad way to play with Deadpool being an unreliable narrator, really, although it feels like the sort of thing that could easily be abused and get really tedious.

Anyway, Deadpool bails on Deathstrike again, they fail to kill Ock, meaning they're not getting into the super-secret assassin club. Which seems like a waste, but I assume the Atelier will become antagonists now. On top of Ock, Harrower, and Deathstrike, who are all pissed at Deadpool, who ran to Valentine for help. Who I'm sure is not going to do anything unethical with Wade or the symbiote.

The Drop (2014)

Bob (Tom Hardy) works in a bar that was once owned by his cousin Marv (James Gandolfini), but is now run by Chechens, who will occasionally use it as the drop point for all the illegal money they make that particular night. Bob finds a puppy abandoned in Nadia's (Noomi Rapace) trash can. This prompts a slow friendship between them, as Bob does not know how to care for a dog.

The movie feels like it's about acceptance. What you have to accept about yourself, what you accept from others. Marv can't let go of the time 10 - sorry, eight-and-a-half - years ago that he was a local big shot. Before the Chechens rolled in, and he rolled over. Nadia has tried to make peace with the person she used to be, when she, 'didn't like herself very much,' but when her shitty ex rolls back into her life, she can't see a way to push him back out.

Bob, on the other hand, seems to grasp power dynamics better. He's honest and straightforward with the Chechens, because he understands that he can't challenge him. The shitty ex, who was also the dog's owner, is another matter. Bob lets the guy flex and preen, and be intimidating. When the guy insists he got the dog chipped and has papers, and Bob must pay 10 grand or he'll go to the cops, Bob goes with. Better to buy the papers and own the dog, legal and proper. When the shitty ex, in conjunction with Marv, overreaches, Bob deals with it, decisively.

The film is not exactly subtle in hinting that there's more to Bob than on the surface. It's fond of lighting Hardy's face in red. It might be only an ear, or it might cover half or more of his face. By the time Bob actually does something, the audience is well-primed for it. Plus, the shitty ex beat the dog before dumping it in a garbage can, so my dad was extremely eager to see that guy get his.

The cop character in the movie feels kind of pointless beyond an exposition vehicle. He seems to grasp everything that's going on, but can't prove any of it. So he's reduced to showing up and asking Bob indirect questions, trying unsuccessfully to trick him into a mistake.

The Best and Worst of Last Year's Pastimes

I barely played any video games this year, and definitely nothing new. With nothing to discuss there, we'll just move on to the other categories.

BOOKS

23 books this year, almost evenly split between fiction (12) and non-fiction (11). Unlike 2021, there wasn't any marked difference in what time of year I read one or the other. I usually had enough of both to alternate.

Starting with the worst, on the non-fiction side I'd say Unexplained Mysteries of World War II. It's probably not terrible for what it's trying to do, but there were a lot of coincidences chalked up as "mysteries", and I admit I was thinking Breuer would have some research to provide plausible answers for the mysteries, but no. It was the one non-fiction book I read this year I felt I didn't get anything from. Supplementary "worst" to the sections of Knight's History of the Mexican Revolution where he goes on about how a Marxist interpretation is so obviously the wrong approach. Dude, I don't care. Settle your pissing contests on your own time.

For fiction, I would have figured early in the year it would be The Predator: Hunters and Hunted, but I think it did what it was trying to do successfully. The desperation of the soldiers came through. Natural Selection was completely ridiculous, but I read the whole book in one night, I can't say it didn't keep me engaged. I think I have to go with Shadow Moon. Granting that swords and sorcery are not really my bag, it's the one I recall being the closest to a slog to get through. Probably didn't help being the first book in a trilogy, so it had to do a lot of establishing and the heroes have to be on their back foot most of the time, but I just wasn't that invested in the story or the characters.

That's the dross, let's get to the boss! Does that work? No, it's terrible. Well, whatever. Non-fiction, Jonathan Meiburg's A Most Remarkable Bird. I didn't know anything about carcaras, but Meiburg made them come alive as a group, tied them into larger ecological or evolutionary processes, and never let the reading get too dry. Beyond that, probably Knight's 2-volume History of the Mexican Revolution. It certainly dragged in places and could have used some useful maps, but I wanted to know more about the revolution and I definitely know more now.

Fiction, I really liked The Polish Officer. Furst was able to give an effective sense of setting and mood, while creating a main character who isn't bad at what he's being asked to do, but perhaps isn't best suited for it. Whether he is or not, the impact his work can have on the war at large is rather limited, and all that mixes together into frustration and depression for Captain de Milja. Other than that, the collection of Raymond Chandler's pulp stories. I didn't particularly care about the plots, and frankly, I'm not sure how much Chandler did, either. But the guy knew how to turn a phrase.

MOVIES

Only 50 movies this year, and not nearly so many horrible ones. Let's hear it for skipping posting on Thursdays sometimes!

Which is not to say there were no horrible ones. Not that lucky, or that discerning, if you prefer. Dark Passage was built around the first-person POV gimmick, but that kid of neutralizes the Bogart/Bacall chemistry for the first half of the film. Fistful of Vengeance probably would have made more sense if I'd seen the TV series that precedes it, and the special effects detracted from the fight scenes, which were about all it had going for it. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter was not terribly well-paced and scenes drug on way too long, but still better than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, which didn't do the necessary work of setting up any of the emotional beats it expected to pay off near the end. There were a lot of other duds - Ghostbusters Afterlife, Once Upon a Texas Train to name two - but I don't know if those were lousy so much as just mediocre.

I think it has to come down to Super Mario Bros and Boo. I even knew Super Mario was gonna be bad, but it was worse than I remembered. It still feels like they had some unused Blade Runner or Total Recall props lying around and thought, "eh put 'em in the kids' plumber movie." I feel so bad my mom went to the theaters to see that with me. Boo felt like it was trying to be a splattercore horror movie, maybe almost a parody based on the acting, but the story didn't really line up with the presentation.

OK, wash the taste out, get the good stuff. The whole thing between Audie Murphy and Dan Duryea's characters in Ride Clear of Diablo was pretty interesting. Likewise, Screamers was not a movie I had high hopes for, but it wound up having some decent ideas in it. I think the top 5 would come down to R-Point, The Harder They Fall, Project A, Vivarium, and The Deep House. Despite the lack of Jackie Chan fighting pirates on a ship at sea (a real missed opportunity) I can't fault Project A's action sequences, even if the plot is a bit threadbare. Not usually watching those movies for story anyway.

R-Point and The Deep House both use the idea of being trapped in different ways, the latter a bit more obviously in the ever dwindling air supply, while with R-Point, it's that feeling that place is actively trying to make them stay long enough to destroy themselves. The Harder They Fall and Vivarium are probably at the top of the list. They have somewhat stronger stories, and give their characters more room to breathe and grow. I think each movie utilizes their settings and especially colors well, to create memorable places and scenes, and The Harder They Fall has some excellent musical choices.

Sunday Splash Page #251

"A Talking Duck Walks Into a Diner," in Howard the Duck #10, by Steve Gerber (writer), Gene Colan (penciler), Steve Leialoha (inker), Jan Cohen (colorist), Jim Novak (letterer)

After his team-ups with Man-Thing and some early solo adventures in Cleveland in Giant-Size Man-Thing, Steve Gerber got the go-ahead for an ongoing series for Howard the Duck.

Gerber continually gets Howard mixed-up in adventures that are somehow both bizarre and mundane. In the first two issues, a sorcerer tries to gain control of the universe, but really he's more of an accountant trying to balance - or perhaps cook - the universe's ledger to grant him that power. That adventures is also where Howard makes his friend real friend among the hairless apes, in the form of Beverly Switzler, who was there for what she thought was a modeling gig but turned out to be a human sacrifice.

From there, even as Howard and Beverly try to find some way to handle stuff like paying bills or finding some measure of satisfaction in life, he keeps running afoul of a mentally ill woman who accuses him of wanting to steal her kidneys. When Howard finally hits his boiling point and they get in a fight, it ends in court where she appears as an entirely reasonable and ordinary woman who was brutally attacked by this crazy duck. Later on it's Dr. Bong, who is really just a yellow journalist who made a career off writing headlines that weren't technically lies, but were phrased so people would take them in the worst, most salacious manner. He's also had a fixation on Beverly and resents Howard because of it.

Instead of a bell over his head, he oughta be wearing a fedora.

Howard's in a world he never knew, but one where he can recognize many of the things he (or Gerber) think are wrong with it. But he can't seem to grasp it well enough to avoid nearly constant pitfalls. Or maybe he just has too many principles to let things slide. Gene Colan, who takes over as the regular series artist with issue 4 and remains on the book up through issue 31 (minus a couple of fill-ins and a two part reunion of Gerber and artist Val Mayerick), is a good fit. With the swirling shadows and slightly distorted expressions, there's a nightmarish quality to the world Howard inhabits. It's a big, dark, crazy world full of things that try to harm a duck just wanting to get by with sanity intact.

Somewhere around the time Howard is anointed a third-party presidential candidate, I start to feel like I'm watching a slow-motion picture of Gerber having a mental breakdown. Howard grows steadily more frustrated and irritated and cynical until finally, when confronted with a nutty Canadian that ruined his campaign (now wearing a beaver-themed exo-armor), Howard simply walks away. He can't take any more, and he sort of drifts for the next year of the book. He gets sucked into things, or things happen to him, and Howard just reacts, survives, and keeps shuffling along.

It's during this stretch where Klaus Janson takes over as Colan's regular inker from Steve Leialoha. Personally, I think the book looks better with Leialoha. Janson's inks solidify the characters and the world too much, the shadows recede. Given Howard in this stretch really seems beaten, just going through the motions with his head down, content to forget about Beverly, to simply hope Dr. Bong will be content with his victory and leave a poor duck in peace, it feels the world ought to be more terrifying. Howard's surrendered, he's vulnerable.

But I guess you could argue that by not fighting the madness he's broken some of its terror on him. He doesn't care any longer, so why should it bother him? Your mileage will vary.

Bill Mantlo's actually the one who writes Howard's eventual big showdown with Dr. Bong, concluding in issue 31, which is where the collections I have ends. The way I understand it, Gerber had fallen out with Marvel by then, and he didn't write the book again, although he did use Howard during his stint on Sensational She-Hulk (which I think I prefer to Byrne's, honestly). 

Howard was I think persona non grata in Marvel for a long time, or smply didn't fit with the '90s, Image-ized Marvel. I guess after Keith Giffen, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning brought Rocket Raccoon back out of mothballs (and ignored Peter David apparently turning Rocket into a trophy, which, good call), Marvel figured, what the heck, why not the angry talking duck that hangs out with Man-Thing? Chip Zdarsky and Joe Quinones gave Howard an ongoing series as a private detective in the mid-2010s, though I only read the parts where he interacted with Gwenpool or Squirrel Girl. My impression is, rather than use Howard to comment on our society like Gerber did, Zdarsky commented on the world the superheroes inhabited.