Random Back Issues #126 - Power Company #2

Hey, it's a rough economy out there. The superhero market is flooded with folks trying to either make enough to get out or make a big enough name to avoid dying in a big event.

The Power Company's first mission is to keep a group of high-tech mercs called the Strike Force from stealing a mysterious stone ring with a big pretty gem from a museum. The gem got hit by an energy blast and out popped a green guy with a staff, riding a dragon.

He calls himself the Imperial Dragoneer and asks what world that the "Dread Master" can add to his dominions. When no one has any clue what he's talking about, he decides they're thieves in the temple and it's time to get to killing.

The team is completely disorganized and getting their butts kicked until Skyrocket - who hadn't even accepted the offer to join - takes command and gets them sort of working together. At which point the mercs re-enter the fray, the brief moment of cohesion is over, and the Power Company get the humiliated.

At least the mercs didn't make off with the "stone doughnut," as their boss puts it. That's sort of a success! Except they stuck a tracker on the dragon, so they'll find it sooner or later, even if their employer - a Dr. Cyber - is kind of a dick. It seems like a time to cut your losses, but you stiff one mad scientist type and so you're blackballed. It's a rough job market for merc teams.

In the aftermath, Witchfire - a musician who uses real magic in her shows - is already looking into music videos and movie deals in case this falls through. Bork's worried he's going to lose his job because he stopped keeping the dragon in a choke hold and got smacked halfway across the city, and Manhunter vanished as soon as the fight ended. As for Skyrocket, she figures they ought to be more worried about the Dragoneer's claims his master would take over the world.

On the plus side, Striker Z's buddy, who used to work for S.T.A.R. Labs before turning to movie special effects, upgraded Skyrocket's flight and power harness. Her parents built it, but they're dead and she doesn't really know how to fix it.

Manhunter checks in. Turns out he didn't bail, he was just busy tracking the Dragoneer his own way: following a big dragon flying around in the daytime. He tracked it to Alcatraz, where the Dragoneer's got the ring set up on a pile of trash. I picture the dragon thinking like a Flinstones' appliance: 'Sigh, it's a living.' Again, rough economy.

The Dragoneer waves his wand and makes a magic sign and says what this world needs is - well, he says a lot of stuff about sin and darkness and a doubled moon, a piece of ice-blue shadow. Doesn't really lend itself to a parody of "Love Potion No. 9." The Power Company's hiding in a fog bank Witchfire conjured up, ready to attack, but Strike Force is on the ground, ready to swoop in once the heroes do all the hard work.

Bold of them to assume the heroes will actually succeed.

In other developments, a woman in a hotel sees Manhunter on TV and is very distressed by it, putting in a call to Japan. And a cop hassles a teen sleeping on a bench in a train station, but the teen's intrigued by a for-hire super-team. She'll end up being the last member of the team, whose introduction we covered 4 years ago.

{8th longbox, 80th comic. Power Company #2, by Kurt Busiek (writer), Tom Grummett (penciler), Christian Alamy (inker), Alex Sinclair (colorist), Comicraft (letterer)}

One-Shot Harry - Gary Phillips

Set in 1963, One-Shot Harry is about a black photojournalist trying to uncover the truth behind the death of a wartime friend of his.

At least, that's what the book is about some of the time. Phillips spends a lot of pages fleshing out Harry Ingram's life, the day-to-day realities of making a living taking photos of ugly deaths, of dealing with white cops who wouldn't hesitate to hit Harry with a nightstick even if he wasn't taking photographs. Additionally, there's a subplot involving a member of a local councilman's campaign that Harry starts dating. Anita's parents are pretty far to the left politically, and a diary with the names of several of their friends has gone missing.

So Harry's theoretically looking for that, on top of investigating his friend's death, trying to finagle work, dealing with the long-term scars of fighting in the Korean War, dealing with the difficulties of his side-gig as a process server, and questioning his career choices. Looming over all that is a visit to Los Angeles by Martin Luther King.

I'm not sure Phillips manages to keep all threads together. Or the plates spinning, depending on which metaphor your prefer. There's a long stretch of the book after he agrees to search for the diary for Anita where it isn't mentioned at all. And that subplot sort of sputters out at the end. But the mystery of his friend's death doesn't really lead to any real conclusion. Harry knows the death wasn't accidental, and he may have killed the two guys personally responsible, but they're just mooks. The mind behind it remains untouchable.

That part is by design, as Phillips often has Harry's internal monologue focused on just how far he can go, even defending himself, when the people trying to harm him are white. Harry isn't of a mind to go a suicide run for revenge, so there's only so far he can go in the society in which he lives. It might also be that Phillips has further stories starring Harry Ingram in mind, and there's further plot development in mind down the line.

There's a trick to adding history of a place without making it feel too much like an infodump, and Phillips mostly manages it. Having Harry as a photog and process server, where he both has to know his way around town, and know what sorts of neighborhoods he's going into ahead of time, helps. I don't know how historically accurate those parts of the book are, but Phillips writes in such a way that it feels like real history.

The only reason I question it at all is that late in the book, there's a bit about Ingram and a childhood friend having dreams of building their own submarine after reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Ingram says they would have named it the Fantastic, after the Fantastic Four. Except Ingram's a Korean War vet, so his childhood would have been the 1940s, not the 1960s. It's just a little detail, and I was reading an "advance uncopyedited edition" that turned up at a book sale, so maybe that was caught and fixed subsequently.

'There were two nicks from bullets grooved in its casing and Ingram rubbed one of them for luck, as he always did. He'd brought the camera home from the war. Fleeting was the notion of photographing normal people doing normal things. Where was the kick in that? Melancholy moments like the one he'd had last night he invariably washed away with booze.'

What I Bought 4/11/2024

I wasn't in the totality of the eclipse last week, but that's alright. The one several years ago swung right through town, so I didn't even have to go anywhere then.

Fantastic Four #18, by Ryan North (writer), Carlos Gomez (artist), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Once again, Sue's attempts to get Reed's attention fail.

It's Alicia as a private detective, trying to find the missing egghead Professor Richards on behalf of his main squeeze, Susan Storm. Ben (in his human appearance) works for/with Alicia. As either her eyes, or muscle, depending on the need.

The story follows the usual pattern of dead-end suspects. Johnny as the dissolute brother who is in debt to the local nightclub owner (role filled by the Mole Man.) Namor as an honest, but arrogant, cop that's hung up on Sue. Gomez doesn't shift his art style much beyond adjusting character's looks and fashion to match the motif. Maybe softens the lines around Sue's face, makes the eyes a little bigger to fit the "dangerous beauty" role. Johnny still has that terrible mustache, though.

Arbutov colors most of it in grey, with certain objects in color. Sue's dress, Namor's uniform, the lights and door of Mole Man's club. I don't really get the rhyme or reason of the choices of what to color. Why Ben's cup of coffee, or the seats in the diner where Alicia questions Johnny?

The whole thing ends up being the result of a Cosmic Cube falling into the hands of just about the last character you'd expect to get their hands on it. No, not Willie Lumpkin. No, not HERBIE. Just stop guessing! Reed turns out to be shielded from the effect (how is Sue's force field holding when she doesn't even know she can do such a thing?) to guide Alicia to it, and she undoes what was done. Though, in noir fashion, she does it knowing it'll erase her world, but that she's already lost a key part of it, so this is the least amount of losing she can end up with.

Ms. Marvel: Mutant Menace #2, by Iman Vellani and Sabir Pirzada (writers), Rob Di Salvo (artist), Erick Arciniega (color artist), Joe Carmagna (letterer) - The cover list Di Salvo as artist, but the interior still says Godlewski. Oh Marvel, when will you stop being a clown car of a company?

Lila Cheney grabbed Ms. Marvel because Lila stupidly made a contract with Mojo, and when she didn't accept him rewriting the terms of said contract, he abducted her most loyal fans. Kamala was the only X-Man she could find, so here we are.

The rest of the issue is Kamala posing as a new member of Lila's group to keep Mojo occupied while Lila looks for her groupies. This starts with Kamala doing some truly terrible mugging for Mojo's cameras. Then, when it turns out the youth demographic really likes "Chord", Mojo throws her into a million different things while Lila's still trying to figure out how to detach her fans from some gizmos they're hooked into which make them, 'real-life engagement bots.'

I have absolutely no idea what that means. That they're forced to watch stuff to falsely pump up viewership numbers? Either way, Lila gets them loose eventually, while defeating a Spiral clone in a fight (and I call bullshit on that), but Mojo drugs her with something that tamps down her powers. Not enough they can't escape, but enough she can just barely send Kamala back home, where Red Dagger is waiting.

OK, Kamala has a space adventure. Fine, space opera is an X-tradition, and so is dealing with Mojo. But what was the point of this issue? We're halfway through the mini-series, and there was no progress on any major plot points. Not the cause of Kamala's weird spasms, not what the ORCHIS doctor lady is up to. She's getting shipments from ape-scientists (as in apes who are scientists), but if I'm meant to know who those apes are, I don't. Not the fact Kamala's friends think Ms. Marvel's a phony because they were mindwiped with regards to Kamala being Ms. Marvel and having been resurrected.

Literally any of that - Bruno helping Kamala test her powers, difficult conversations with Nakia, Dr. Gaiha actually making an overt move - would have been a better use of 20 pages than this.

X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes (1963)

Ray Milland thinks he's developed a chemical that will allow human eyes to see beyond the visible light spectrum. I mean, it worked on a monkey (who went catatonic a few minutes later). What could be the risk?

Well, it works, but Dr. James Xavier sees something besides what's underneath that paper, or under his friend's labcoat, and it freaks him out. Enough the organization that was funding the work decides there are no beneficial uses and cuts off his funding. Oh well, he's still got his career in medicine. Until he overrules the surgeon on an operation for a kid and removes the tumor he saw on her heart. Which makes him guilty of malpractice, apparently. I guess, "I saw it with my x-ray eyes" is insufficient explanation.

At which point the movie gets odd. Xavier's friend assures him they'll find a way to reverse what the serum has done, and Xavier freaks out, shoving his friend through a window, where he falls to his death several stories below. Now he's on the run, playing "Mr. Mentallo" at a carnival, where he comes to the notion of the barker (played by Don Rickles, with a considerable amount of sleaze.) Rickles, after seeing Xavier diagnose a woman's injuries after a fall, convinces him to set up in a dingy apartment as a "healer", who people can visit for cheap diagnoses they can take to the doctor for treatment. No expensive tests required.

Then he decides he really needs money if he's to continue his work, so he runs off to Vegas to win a crapload of money at blackjack. He wins too much, they get suspicious, his special glasses get knocked off, everyone freaks out at his eyes (very cool contact lenses), there's a car chase, things end badly. Whatever he's been seeing that the rest of us can't - ghosts, god, the devil - is too much to deal with. Everything from his friend dying to the end takes about 50 minutes (it's only an 80 minute film.)

It seems like the effect might fade if he stopped using the eye drops, although he also says the effect is cumulative. But he also says that the ability seems to wax and wane, where he can sometimes barely see through a layer of skin, so who knows. He's at a party, and we're seeing people's bare legs, or their bare shoulders and enough of their chests to understand he's seeing under their clothes. He sees into their organs, and sometimes it's actual footage of organs and others it's like a screen of a drawing from a book. The movie uses this yellow-gold ring in the middle of the shot to signify when we're seeing through his eyes, although as things progress, he starts seeing almost photo-negative shots of wires and buildings, or blurred kaleidoscopes.

First Contact with a Closed Fist

Life on the Internet.

I actually bought volume 4 of Star Power, titled The Lonely War, a few years ago, but didn't get around to reviewing it. I asked Alex for Volumes 3 and 5 for Christmas a couple years ago, he bought 4 and 5, and here we are. Well, the copy he bought is in better condition than mine, anyway.

Volume 3 (which I ended up reading online just to see what I missed) revealed the origin of Danica's powers, and also introduced a robot sentry. His designation is "T-O.M", and he's thousands of years old, so Danica naturally named him "Old Tom". With his permission, of course, because she's considerate like that.

Tom factors into a theme of characters wondering if Danica is up to the challenges of wielding this power. There are certain precepts a Star-Powered Sentinel is meant to uphold, and if she doesn't meet the standards, Tom's supposed to deal with that. Terracciano teases that out over the course of five issues, through a series of conversations between Tom and Beena, an archaeologist who had been a background character trying to befriend Danica in the first 2 volumes, and joined the main cast in the third story. So she gets her own little arc of being friendly with, then terrified of, Tom, before finding her resolve to learn from him as a way to protect Danica.

Danica herself is elsewhere, as she's been transferred to a special ship the Millennium Federation uses to travel to star systems beyond their "jump-gate" network. Danica questions whether she's up for making first contact with new worlds, considering her previous experience was the fighting a homicidal Scintillian queen in volume 1. She's also questioned by a psychological operative, or "psi-cop" (that Terracciano and Graham introduced in volume 3) under the pretenses of friendship. The mission involves her being far away from the friends she's made through the first 3 stories.

That the world she reaches is embroiled in some old race war between two groups who no longer remember why they originally started fighting doesn't help. Graham draws the two groups as distinguished by hair color, ear shape, and the color of their eyes. Not all that different from Danica (something she immediately notes), probably for the purpose of emphasizing how ridiculous it seems to her that these two sides are determined to commit genocide against the other. 

All Danica's attempts to protect them accomplish is making her an enemy of both sides. The commander of the emissary ship tells her to simply observe and report back, but Danica can't just float there and watch people kill each other. Worse, Mitch is receiving some sort of upgrades, but it's rendering him unable to communicate with her. So she's really on her own (though Mitch does eventually return late in the proceedings, with a solid light form that's kind of Gumby with a messy pompadour.).

Terracciano has Danica come close to breaking down a couple of times, including fleeing her observation post for a time. Which comes back to Tom's mission to make certain she's a proper host for the power, as well as the psi-cop's concerns that she may not be ready for the less-civilized circumstances beyond the Federation's borders.

(There are also references to Danica's relationship with her parents, where she seems to get along well with her dad, but her mother is overbearing and Danica's feelings for her are complicated. It seems to be her father who instilled in her the idea she needs to help people in a crisis, while her mother's the one who makes her doubt she's ever doing anything well enough.)

We get several panels switching between her watching with increasingly horrified expressions and the two races fighting and dying. Graham doesn't make it gory, mostly bodies slumped and staring vacantly, maybe some (purple-colored) blood stains. But there tend to be several dead bodies in those panels, and the places they're fighting are usually damaged or crumbling, indicating this has been going for a while. Either nobody has time to repair their homes, or no one bothers.

Danica does eventually find a way to help at least some people. The story avoids having her stop the fighting or convince everyone to get along. Instead she finds locals who don't divide themselves, and are considered heretics by both sides. I expected Graham to draw some of the children as having mixed characteristics, but he doesn't. Maybe to emphasize they're more different than Danica thinks from just looking at the surface?

There are also some background plots involving Grex, the angry lady in the panel at the top, interviewing one of those three pilots that tried killing Danica in the first story, and have kept popping up since then. Burke turned on the other two in volume 3, but his backstory here makes it seem like he was a decent guy who made a rash decision, then compounded it with more poor decisions. Making him discuss working for the Void Angels forces Grex to deal with her own past doing the same. 

There is a lot going on in these five issues, most of it pretty heavy. So Terracciano lightens things up with brief cuts to Danica's friends back on the space station watching a show called "Psi-Cop", which includes an episode titled, "Showdown on the Bikini Planet." It's ridiculous, but having the story begin and end with that brings it around nicely to how much Danica relies on her friends and likes having them around, and how difficult it was being away from them.

Sunday Splash Page #318

 

"Bugs' Hunt" in Locust: The Ballad of Men #3, by Massimo Rosi (writer), Alex Nieto (artist), Mattia Gentili (letterer)

Locust was originally solicited as an 8-issue mini-series, but for one reason or the other, it was split into two 4-issue minis instead. Ballad of Men picks up where the previous mini-series left off, following Max through the past and the present.

In the past, Max escaped Ford with Stella in tow, and we see him try to care for this little girl as they gradually escape New York City and travel into the wilderness. They camp out and he makes her pancakes, and Stella generally enjoys the whole experience. It's telling about what her life in Ford's hands was like that camping out in the winter and having someone make pancakes for her counts as a spectacular experience. Except Ford has never stopped hunting them, and eventually catches up.

In the present, Max and a young prisoner/devotee of Ford's he rescued for information on how to get into Ford's base end up captured by a different group of heavily-armed, unhappy people. Ford killed some of theirs, and while Max had nothing to do with it, he did happen to take a laptop belonging to one of the victims, which makes him suspect. But Ford, having already devolved into religious lunacy by the time he recaptured Stella, is making his grand statement, and there's no time for any other concerns.

Nieto keeps the colors dim and murky again, but it serves the story. For three-plus issues, any time we see light, it's a bad thing. It's the headlights of Ford's trucks as he catches up with Max and Stella. It's New York City, on fire because of Max's lunacy, driving the locusts out to swarm the humans who fled to survive. It's torches in some creepy underground ritual altar in Ford's new base, where he thinks he's going to make things right with God by killing Stella.

Only in the last few pages does he switch to a soft blue, as Max and Stella sail towards Iceland. It's still a washed-out hue, because this is no great, cheerful triumph. They haven't truly escaped whatever's come over the world, but they each found someone to care for and to be cared for them. The ending's also a bit of a role reversal from Rosi's Red Leaves, in that the child changes rather than the adult, but still retains some part of themselves, at least for now.

Saturday Splash Page #120

 

"Call-Out Post," in Stormbreaker: The Saga of Beta Ray Bill #2, by Michael Avon Oeming and Dan Berman (writers), Andrea Di Vito (artist), Laura Villari (color artist), Chris Eliopoulos (letterer)

Released in 2005, around the time Thor was being shelved for a couple years via a Ragnarok, this mini-series sees Beta Ray Bill return to his duties as protector of the Korbinites, right when they need him the most. Galactus has arrived, though the Korbinites see him as Ashta, a great destroyer god of their religion (Di Vito draws this as sort of giant purple jellyfish or flagellate protozoan), and he's hungry. As usual.

Worse, Big G has himself a new herald, and Stardust might be the worst of the lot. Stardust carries a religious fervor in its devotion to Galactus, so much so it regards beings refusing to be eaten as an affront. Not just those who try to fight Galactus. Even the Korbinites who are trying to flee, Stardust is intent on eradicating.

While it makes sense Galactus finds such devotion desirable in his herald, after all the others were either too self-serving or too moral, it still annoys me. Galactus knows this is happening and does nothing to stop it, which puts a lie to all those, "Galactus only does what he must," and "Galactus takes no pleasure in it," soliloquies. Then tell your herald not to finish off the genocide you start, you purple jackass.

Between Stardust and a Korbinite religious order that dislikes how Bill talks up the Asgardians, Beta Ray can't save the planet. But he puts up enough of a fight - including one bit where he slams Stardust into an asteroid, then uses Stormbreaker to drive Stardust's own spear through its chest - protecting the survivors, transferred into the glowy orb up there, that Stardust ups the ante to the point of endangering the entire universe by releasing some nightmare creature. The creature, called Asteroth, presents itself as a lady with bat wings and a Witchblade-esque costume. Di Vito didn't bring much of an other-dimensional hellbeast energy to that design.

It feels as though the mini-series kind of goes off the rails there. One too many additional elements, as Bill and Stardust team-up to try and fix Stardust's mess, and mostly fail. Asteroth is ultimately defeated, but Bill and his ship Skuttlebutt end up in some white void, thanked by mysterious beings for their efforts, and at Bill's request, sent to Asgard. Which is destroyed. So much for re-settling the surviving Korbinites there. Oh, and Asteroth hid its essence in the orb and feasted on the souls within. So much for there being any Korbinites to re-settle.

The end result is, Bill is reborn on Earth, in the body of a homeless man that's just died. He's still got Stormbreaker, and can transform into his traditional horse-face form (albeit with a new costume that mostly involves a more elaborate helm and no cape.)

I feel like most of this was ignored. I'm not sure Beta Ray Bill appeared in anything until JMS brought Thor back in 2007. Kieron Gillen referenced Galactus eating the Korbinites' home in Beta Ray Bill: Godhunter, but Bill describes the bit about nearly dying on Asgard and seeing some mysterious cloaked figure take what was left of the meta-orb as possibly just a hallucination.

Sometimes a Symbol's What My Mind (Makes Up) Of It

I mentioned in Monday's post that I thought some of Ferry's page layouts were kind of odd, and possibly were done to represent symbols or something that might relate to tabletop games, since the cast were stuck in one.

Kelvin asked if I could post an example, since I went with the enjoyable sight of Clea walloping Mordo mid-villainous spiel, rather than actually showing the thing I spent a paragraph of the review discussing.

I don't want to post too much stuff from a comic that came out just last week. Don't need to get Peter David on my case like he was after scans daily back in the day. So we'll stick to the page I mentioned first, seen above. This is the one that made me wonder if Ferry was making deliberate reference to something, because it really feels like something I've seen before. Circle atop three narrow (I suppose the middle one isn't so narrow) panels, though the image I see in my mind may have wings on either side of the circle.

None of the others produced as strong a reaction as this one, but that could just be a product of my upbringing, assuming there's anything to any of this. Or I could just be seeing things.

Basil's War - Stephen Hunter

It's a spy thriller set in 1943 France. The British send Basil St. Florian on a mission to recover a copy of a document they believe a Soviet spy is using as a book code to conceal the identity of a mole in their operations. So Basil has to figure out to get to the copy of the document before either the Abwehr or the SS catch him.

Hunter spends 80% of the book switching between chapters focused on Basil's mission and chapters about his briefing in some underground war room typically used by Churchill. The lingering of the cigar smoke is referenced repeatedly. In both cases, it's a constant string of bait-and-switches. A Basil chapter may end with him pulling a gun on the pilot flying him across the Channel, or with the Abwehr having seemingly figured out exactly who they need to be looking for, only for those things to end up being something entirely different when we return.

Likewise, the chapters in the war room are always having Basil think his mission is to do one thing, only to be told it's actually going to be something else. No, we don't need you to find the Soviet spy in Cambridge, we know who it is. No, we don't want him eliminated, we want him to send information to Stalin. No, we don't want you to steal the document, etc. It seems meant to keep the tension up, repeatedly subverting expectations or pulling the rug from under the reader, but it gets tedious after a while.

Hunter keeps the tone of the book light. Probably too light, considering the mission's importance is described as needing to sacrifice thousands to save millions. The French Resistance is mocked, the Nazis are treated as primarily concerned with remaining in Not-Russia (as the book terms it), the occupation of France is depicted as generally no big deal to the French citizenry, ignoring that this is almost certainly not the case for anyone belonging to any of the groups the Nazis were trying to mass-murder.

Florian's written as sort of drily amused with the whole thing. Pithy comments and cool reserve at all times, the biggest issue that this is keeping him away from an affair with Vivien Leigh. One of the blurbs describes it as being a spy thriller in the vein of James Bond, but I feel like Bond flicks usually at least attempt to sell the audience on the importance of Bond succeeding in his mission. That Bond wants to succeed in between the drinking and sleeping around. It's hard to feel like Florian really gives a shit, even as far as whether he survives.

On the plus side, with the spacing and wide margins on each page, the book reads incredibly fast for 270 pages. I got through 235 pages just sitting in a hotel room waiting for Alex and his buddy to sleep off their hangovers. It's like something a college kid would try to pull to stretch the length of a term paper.

'He had gathered up his 'chute to reveal himself to be a rather shabby French businessman, stuffed all that kit into some adder bushes - he could not bury it, because a) he did not feel like it and b) he had no shovel but c) had he a shovel he still would not have felt like it.'

What I Bought 4/3/2024 - Part 2

I've been nosing around through stores with used PS4 games when I have the chance the last couple of months and man, how are used PS4 games still so friggin' expensive? One of the nice things about waiting until 2012 to buy that XBox 360 was that I could buy a crapload of games for less than $20, and in many cases less than $10. Not having much luck with that now.

Deadpool #1, by Cody Ziglar (writer), Roge Antonio (artist), Guru-eFX (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - How did he throw all those grenades when he's already holding two weapons?

Deadpool is doing his usual bit of taking money to kill people. Whatever relationship he had with the Valentine person from Alyssa Wong's run apparently fell apart when Valentine figured out Wade is a dumpster fire, but Wade still has the symbiote that was growing inside him when I dropped that book. Except now it's a giant, red dog that Antonio draws with big, soulful, pupiless eyes. Which Wade calls "Princess", and that calls him "Papa." Giving Deadpool a child that is especially vulnerable to fire seems like a bad idea, unless you're a fan of child endangerment.

His other daughter, Eleanor, is still around, in that she's living with the Prestons in Arizona. Wade is wisely avoiding Preston, who would probably robot-body punch his jaw clean off, but he does visit Ellie to give her a phone with only his number, and he promises to always answer if she calls. I'm sure he won't break that promise at an inconvenient moment!

There's no indication of where Wade or Princess are living, so I assume we're back to Daniel Way-era "living in abandoned warehouses with a single chair made of C-4." Most of this issue is Wade and Princess chasing some French-Canadian named Henry. Why they're killing him is not explained - beyond they're being paid for it - which probably says a lot about Wade's mental state. We could also note Antonio has given Deadpool back the little grey-black booties he wore back in the early, Liefeld-drawn days. That doesn't feel like a good sign.

He has a device on his wrist that makes portals, so they have to chase him across a city, including a bit where they chase him back-and-forth down a two-page spread, and Wade expresses regret for the artist who has to draw it. Antonio makes it seem pretty easy, as they dive through one portal into the next panel and reverse course, then repeat.

Somehow, Henry stumbles into some monk guy who kills him, then tries to kill Wade, then doesn't die when Wade stabs him through the chest and escapes. And he's very excited about the fact Wade didn't die. Though the way Ziglar is writing Wade, he would probably be happy if they figure out how to fix that issue. He's jumping out of planes from 15,000 feet, without a parachute, and thinking that hitting the ground at 120 mph will feel good. Although Antonio draws the landing as Wade just stabbing a guy with his swords like he just jumped a fence, so it doesn't really match the dialogue. Have him land on a guy and liquefy both their bodies!

The Sisters Brothers (2018)

Eli (John C. Reilly) and Charlie (Joaquin Phoenix) are brothers who perform various violent jobs for the "Commodore." In this case, they're given the job to kill a chemist (Riz Ahmed), but not until after they torture a particular formula out of him. At least they don't have to do the actual finding, as that's the job of a scout named Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal). Except that Morris decides he likes the notions Hermann believes in and switches sides.

So on the one side, you have Morris and Hermann, where the two men become friends, and Morris turns back to certain ideals he rejected in his youth. Hermann believes his formula will make finding gold much easier, and with that money, help others like him to establish a true, civilized society. In Dallas, Texas. Well, he's definitely an idealist, and Morris decides he likes the sound of that over helping the Commodore become a wealthier man. Ahmed plays Hermann as a quiet, genuinely earnest man. He can't conceal his emotions, be it excitement, indignation or fear, and maybe Morris, who pretends to simply be a guy on his way to a place, envies that.

On the other, you have Eli and Charlie, where Eli is becoming increasingly disenchanted with the work, and dreaming of a more respectable life. Running a store, marrying a schoolteacher who gifted him a shawl which he takes out and smells before going to sleep. Charlie's not blind to the shift in his brother, but doesn't share his interests. For him, "respectable" is that people know (and more critically, fear) the Sisters brothers.

There's also the aspect that their father was a troubled man, and Charlie believes the same trouble is in them. Which could be real, or could just be an excuse for Charlie's tendency to get fall-down drunk and start killing people. Either way, it's a reason to not ever think about leaving the life of violence. But he's Eli's little brother, and so Eli feels bound to try and watch his back, care for him.

Reilly and Phoenix play siblings well. There's a lot of squabbling and picking at sore spots - Charlie taunts Eli about the schoolteacher's "scarf", Eli gives Charlie grief about using big words instead of just speaking straightforward. When Eli's angry Charlie slapped him in public, Charlie offers him a free shot in return. So Eli punches him in the face, which Charlie objects afterwards wasn't equal.

And yet, when there's trouble, they have each other's backs. Charlie will pull himself from a drunken stupor where he can barely stand to help Eli drive off a half-dozen armed men out to kill them. Eli will go to comfort his brother when he hears him crying in the night (even if it turns out to be a prank.) It's a complicated mess where the two of them may not have much of anything in common besides their blood, but that's enough.

Director Jacques Audiard is fond of shots that are meant to be from the perspective of a character, usually Eli. They're shot a bit like looking through a peephole or a cardboard tube. Just a circle of vision, which slowly comes into focus, surrounded by black. In one case, where Eli awakens from a fever dream, the view is a diagonal slat that slowly widens as he wakes up. I thought at first they were almost marking chapters, that the story had reached a new point, but I'm not sure of that.

The dialogue reminds me a bit of True Grit, in that characters often speak in stilted or awkward ways. It's not nearly as obvious as True Grit, and the characters themselves will sometimes remark on it - Charlie complains about Morris leaving a note that says Hermann left in a "precipitate manner" - but it's still noticeable even without that.

With Hermann, I think it's a matter of education, and that his profession and long-held ideals mean he sees things differently. With Morris and especially Charlie, I think it's a matter of them each trying to be something they aren't. Or maybe for Morris, it's part of his upbringing he hasn't managed to bury. But Charlie has designs on being like the Commodore, so he's definitely aping that man. And the Commodore has an end that's rather fitting, and emphasizes the hollowness of the life Charlie pursued.

What I Bought 4/3/2024 - Part 1

My weather luck when I need to go into the field isn't terrible, but when it's bad, it decides to be bad in unique ways. Snow in April, 50 mph winds in December, what's supposed to be 1 hour of rain turns into 5 hours of intense thunderstorms.

Doctor Strange #14, by Jed MacKay (writer), Pasqual Ferry (artist), Heather Moore (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Oh, don't give the Black Cat boob armor, Ross. She can't hide any tools in that!

Mordo's got the enchanted, living game book, so he's in charge. Strange draws the dragon away, seeing it as more than just something Mordo's using to destroy them. Which leaves the rest of his Secret Defenders to contend with Mordo. Hunter's Moon and Taskmaster are swept up in a scenario where they're leaders of opposing factions, who will ultimately fight to the death. It seems like a game with limited room for creativity, or maybe it just plays into their respective approaches.

Ferry lays out all the pages in curiously shaped panels that feel like they're meant to be symbols, but I have no idea of what. Circle atop three tall, narrow panels. Circle spilling off the left side of the page, on top of a wide panel with a little hill in the middle, on top of another circle spilling off the right side of the page.

But while Mordo's enjoying the show, he forgot about the thief. Felicia may not be into tabletop gaming, but she understands swiping the special book. So she does. Ferry drops the odd panel layouts, so I guess they were meant to reflect being in a game scenario, but it almost feels like the panels should be more rigid, because the game has set rules and only so many locales and creatures. 

Strange returns, having reached an accord with the book's intelligence. Mordo get punched out by Clea, Strange offers the book to I think an evil doppleganger of himself that is living in his house, and Mordo gets chucked in a crypt with the ghost dog and the snakes.

I am unclear if the dog and snakes wandered in by mistake and are now stuck - as Strange doesn't seem to know where they are - or if someone else (Clea, the general) chucked them in as part of a move against Strange, or if they have their own plans to harm Mordo. And then the last page is the start of the vampire event thing I'm going to try very hard to avoid the next few months.

Vengeance of the Moon Knight #4, by Jed MacKay (writer), Alessandro Cappuccio (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - At least Hunter's Moon is a doctor. He surely knows a treatment for crescent-axe-in the pectoral.

It's Dr. Badr's turn on the sofa. He doesn't seem as bothered by Marc's death, as he is by the imposter. Well, that and the fact that with Khonshu sealed up, there won't be anymore Fists of Khonshu after the next time Badr dies. None except the imposter, and that's not OK with him. I think Cappuccio draws Badr as more physically expressive in his civilian duds than his costume.

I don't mean facial expression, since we can't see that under the mask, but his hands are more active in the conversation with the doctor. In costume, his arms are either at his sides, or in front of him, like he's guarding his heart. In civilian garb, he gestures a lot more. When describing how this fake Moon Knight fights, he moves his arms more than he does while actually fighting. Fidgets with his glasses, tents his fingers, puts his hand to his head. Maybe he's more relaxed around Sterman, or more controlled when on the job.

When not with Dr. Sterman, the rest of the issue is Tigra and Badr hitting the new guy where he lives. Which is where Marc died. Great strategy to keep anyone from looking for you, but not great in that it pisses off a tiger-woman once she's found you. And Badr has figured out some of the imposter's identity as a result of those past Khonshu Fist memories.

I like that, if MacKay's going to go the "long and storied" tradition route with Moon Knights, he picked something to differentiate it from other of the other, similar lineages. Iron Fists may have a book about them, but that's not the same as being able to relive their experiences.

Anyway, they unmask the guy, and hey, I was right, it's the Shroud. Sweet, I'm now 8-for-873 on predictions on this blog! Go me!

Sunday Splash Page #317

 

"Bug Hunt", in Locust #2, by Massimo Rosi (writer), Alex Nieto (artist), Mattia Gentili (letterer)

Set in the aftermath of some strange plague or apocalypse where people appear to be spontaneously turning into giant locusts, Locust follows a man named Max through two different time periods.

In the present, he's hunting for a girl named Stella. Stella's been taken by a man named Ford, so Max moves through a dark, largely empty landscape, following a trail of Ford's followers and encampments. Nieto covers everything in extremely dark, murky colors, to the point it's hard to tell what's happening sometimes. That's OK, because most of what's happening is best categorized as, "not good." Child sacrifice, people in heavy robes talking about divine punishment, that sort of thing.

In the past, we see Max and his mother during the early days of whatever is going on. Max is trying to get them to safety, but finding it difficult. Fortunately, they're rescued after a car wreck by a man named Ford. Ford seems organized, disciplined, with a large group of well-armed people ready and willing to follow his commands. I see no possible way that could end with child endangerment!

The scenes in the past have a more varied color scheme. Still murky, but there's the reds of the taillights, the orange of fires burning in the chaos. The former police station where Ford's established his base is tinted a dull, sickly green. Not sure what kind of lighting they're using for that, but I guess you use what you've got in an apocalypse.

It makes sense. The scenes in the past, society is just starting its descent. There's still life and struggle and all that. The scenes in the present, the world has more or less settled into what's passing for normal. The locusts aren't going away, aren't being cured. People are hiding in the remains of what came before, but they aren't building anything back up. It's like a dying star, down to a few faint, flickering embers.

As you can see, Nieto adopts a variety of body styles for the afflicted. I never noticed any pattern to what sort of appearance a given person took after the transformation, but there may be one. Or they may just be at different stages, with that big winged one being the final form. There's a fair amount of body horror, panels focused on people peeling their skin away, revealing compound eyes and exoskeletons, or the giant locusts tearing flesh away from a victim's face. The latter sort of thing usually isn't as focused on as the transformations. The death is an end state, while the transformation signals a new problem to deal with. A stranger, or even someone Max knew well, that's become a threat just like that.

Saturday Splash Page #119

 

"180 x 9mm Invert", in Street Angel #5, by Jim Rugg (writer/artist/letterer), Brian Maruca (writer)

Jesse Sanchez is an orphan, a martial artist, an expert skateboarder who goes by the name "Street Angel." As a caption box informs us in the first issue, she fights 'for the poor, the forgotten, and whenever possible, for food.'

Rugg and Maruca originally published the 5-issue mini-series in 2004 through Slave Labor, though I picked this up as a nice hardcover released through Adhouse Books about 10 years ago. Over the five issues, Jesse saves the city (and the mayor's spoiled, uselss daughter) from the villainy of Dr. Pangea, finds herself in the middle of a ninja/conquistador war, complete with an oblivious Irish astronaut, fends off a demon with the "help" of Jesus, saves a new friend from an escapee from The Ring, and keeps a bunch of rednecks from killing a black guy for being too fly. It is exactly the sort of wild combination of disparate elements I love.

It's a lot of action, with Jesse being mostly irritated she has to deal with all these idiots causing trouble around her, but Rugg and Maruca use that to show her sarcastic teen side. After beating up the cops that tried to bring her to the mayor, she kicks his door in and spends the entire conversation talking through a megaphone she swiped from those cops. While also calling the chief of police a pervert repeatedly. Eh, he probably was. There's a one-page story (where Rugg draws the characters closer to a Little Orphan Annie style) where her friend/sidekick convinces her a baby skeleton is actually a leprechaun skeleton, and Jesse will get a reward for taking it to the hospital.

She does not get a reward. But in a different one-page comic, she gets invited to a birthday party, where she learns about the existence of pinatas and their delightful, sugary innards!

They do sometimes touch on the notion that this is not a great life for Jesse, beyond the gags about Jesse being mad if someone eats her lunch. One story is just Jesse going about her day, hanging out with some of her other friends who live on the street, trying to find some food. That involves her getting embarrassed when a girl from school sees Jesse jump out of a dumpster, and Jesse losing a trucker cap she found in one dumpster, in a different dumpster.

But mostly, it's fighting, and Rugg can vary the presentation of it in a lot of ways. He might have a 3-panel sequence where the first panel shows a cop grabbing Jesse's arm, which flows into the second panel of her other fist clenching, which moves directly into her punching the cop. Or a silent, single image like above. Or a brief sequence of Jesse and another character beating the hell out of each other. Two pages after the splash page above, Rugg gives us a two-page sequence that's just Jesse slaughtering over two dozen guys, with panels scattered across the page, sound effects in 10 different fonts, some of them going backwards across the page, a rocket launcher fired in one panel on the left side of the page, flies clear across the background to explode on the right side of the page. It's excellent work, I'm very jealous.

Rugg and Maruca have done maybe 6 or 7 Street Angel one-shots (released through Image) since this hardcover was released. They're in color, and based on the one I read, it felt like the color takes away the effect of Rugg's shading. But the one I read also didn't have a lot of fighting in it, so maybe it wouldn't have noticed as much during action sequences.

What I Bought 3/30/2024 - Part 2

A month ago, it came out that the folks running Scout Comics hadn't been paying the writers and artists of the comics, or even responding to questions about why they weren't being paid. No explanation for uneven publishing schedules, unfulfilled promises about promoting books, real bad look all around.

The CEO types are in typical C.Y.A. mode, but I guess that explains why I hadn't seen anything released by Scout in the last 2 months. I figured the company went under, and maybe they have for all intents and purposes. Guess I'll have to wait and see if anything shows up.

Deer Editor #3, by Ryan K. Lindsay (writer), Sami Kivela (artist), Lauren Affe (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - A blackjack doesn't seem the ideal weapon for vampires, unless it's soaked in holy water.

Bucky goes to the neighborhood the mayor bought up, and finds Rose, the mayor's daughter there. All the other houses are full of other vampires, a quiet little community they can bring victims to and feed with certainty no one will report anything. But Rose knows nothing about any of this, the neighbors bursting in flame and becoming far less human-looking a total surprise, so what's she there for?

They go on the run, apparently cross-country, while Bucky tries to figure that out. By the time he does, Rose has ditched him and. . .that's pretty much it for Rose until the final page. Bucky goes back to Sheltered Cove with his sub-editor, Soo (the girl on the cover). The two of them go house-to-house, naming the vamps and either staking them or throwing them into the sun, all on video. Which seems like a lot of murders to be recording yourself committing, but I guess the mayor thought it might be too obvious to pass any laws extending protection to the undead.

And that's pretty much it. Bucky knows there's more out there - Rose, most notably - but he's not going looking for it, under some vague, "the story will find you," reasoning. I don't know if that's meant to be a statement on being a reporter versus a "hero." Bucky pursued the story. He was wrong several times, but he kept going and if one element eluded him, he just followed the ones he still had. He's not going to devote his life to pursuing every last thread. It feels like follow-up on the loose threads would be part of a reporter's job, but maybe not.

It feels like Kivela draws more panels that are strictly Bucky's face, or that emphasize the fact he's a deer in some way. A close-up of a lip curled in a challenge, or him turning to address someone, almost nothing visible from the neck down. Lindsay's certainly writing Bucky as more quick to violence, and that usually involves ramming someone with his antlers. If he slams a guy facefirst into a deck railing, kivela draws it so Bucky's hooves are a prominent part. Three fingers (or two and a thumb, whichever), with those long black nails.

I still don't know why they made the main character a talking deer beyond the opportunity for a pun with the title. Deer are traditionally prey, and vampires a traditionally predators, but he's flipped that script. Or everyone can see that he's different, even if nobody is shown staring or acting shocked, so his actions are out in the open. Even on the run, Bucky can't hide. The mayor and his bunch do, however, which might be why he's so hellbent on exposing what they're doing. No shadows, no secrets, out in the light where everyone can see them, like they can always see him.

That's probably not it. I've yet to read anything by Lindsay where I could figure out what point he was trying to make.

Chasing Kangaroos - Tim Flannery

This book is largely about kangaroos. Their past and development, what we know of it, and also their present, as the world around them continues to shift. It's often detailed through Flannery's stories about his own travels around Australia. Sometimes for work, but in the early chapters, it's he and a friend using the Christmas break between semesters to try and circumnavigate Australia on their motorcycles. Mechanical breakdown and subsequent arson cuts the trip short.

The stories include a lot of descriptions of the colorful characters Flannery meets along the way, something that continues once he's visiting different locales as part of fossil studies. This includes a cook for a sheep-shearing crew who is very happy to meet Flannery at first, but becomes increasingly unfriendly because he heard "paleontologist" as "opossum", and thought Flannery was there to get rid of the opossums breeding and squabbling in the ceiling of the bunkhouse. It results in a casual tone which makes the book at times feel like almost a travelogue or reminiscence.

Which is not to say the book skimps on details about the animals. I did learn a lot about kangaroos. How spotty the fossil record is, for one thing. There's a (or perhaps was, the book was published in 2004) gap between roughly 50 to 20 million years ago where they have basically nothing, which makes it hard to figure out the radiation and evolution of characteristics. Plus other smaller gaps closer to the present, during which certain group seem to vanish entirely, while others explode in frequency. Also how many species there, once you include wallabies, tree-kangaroos, rat-kangaroos, padamelons, which I guess I wasn't thinking of as "kangaroos", so much as other types of animals altogether.

As you'd guess, there's a lot of peculiar, specialized biology in kangaroos. In some species, the female can get pregnant while still nursing another joey. Their body takes advantage of the forces generated by hopping to make respiration easier, by having the gut essentially push against the lungs to expel air. There are trade-offs. A roo's foot can't really rotate left to right, due to the features that reinforce it against the impact on the ground.

In the travels of youth portions of the book, Flannery frequently describes encounters with Indigenous Australians, who he had apparently never seen prior to his motorcycle journey. He'll describe the circumstances of their lives in the brief glimpses he gets. Poverty or how wishing a "Merry Christmas" can result in an explosion of anger from an elderly man who had been entirely genial up to then. It feels out of place initially, Flannery deciding to throw his guilt about how the Indigenous Australians had been done wrong.

But he brings it around in the latter stages when he discusses the species that are under dire threat from introduced predators, habitat loss, or climate change. He points to how the Indigenous Australians have been an integral part of the how the kangaroos have evolved or declined for many thousands (at least 40,000) years, and how barring them from their traditional practices, such as burning, have impacted the animals as well as the people. That there is a lot about these animals that white Australians, including himself, know very little about, and may never know if the species is truly extinct, because no one bothered to ask the people who'd been hunting and interacting with them for millennia.

'The Lani were absolutely right, for the kangaroo is host to the worms, which it feeds chewed leaves, while the creature itself feeds upon the worms and their by-products. Thus, in a very real sense, some kangaroos eat worms even though they swallow leaves or grass.'

What I Bought 3/30/2024 - Part 1

Sometimes when I drive at night, I think about the person who came up with these blindingly bright headlights. Seems like three-quarters of all cars have them now. I think about having that person flogged. Headlights that blind all the other drivers, what a brilliant idea.

Morning Star #1, by David Andry and Tim Daniel (writers), Marco Finnegan (artist), Jason Wordie (colorist), Justin Birch (letterer) - Nothing like a family vacation in nature. The ticks, the humidity, sleeping on rocks, the ticks. . .

The book opens on two wildfire-fighters, trying to escape a blaze that's gone beyond their control. Instead, they find the rest of the guys in their squad, curiously frozen in a pile. Wordie colors them in an orange-hued negative look, and no explanation is given as it happens to at least one of the other two.

A year later, the widow of the guy we didn't see get frozen is preparing to take her two kids and the urn containing her husband's "ashes" to the forest. But first she's getting a lot of static from her mother, via her sister, as they want her to move back to Connecticut. The sister is, however, incredibly bad a diplomacy - calling your niece and nephew "screwed up" to their mom's face is not a winning argument -  so that goes nowhere.

The remainder of the issue is the trio traveling to the forest. Mostly this establishes that Charlie, the younger sibling, spends a lot of time lost in his imagination, or "exploring other dimensions" as he apparently describes it. Wordie uses a lot of off-color or neon blues and greens for when Finnegan draws what Charlie's seeing. And he sees something that looks like his father floating in the air outside the fire tower that first night.

So it feels like the book will focus on Charlie. We see that Jolene (the widow) takes no crap from anyone, and maybe drinks a bit. There's a comment near the end of the issue that makes me wonder, anyway. But she seems to keep a cool head with her kids. Takes Charlie's reluctance to speak in stride, at least.

Marabeth we're not given much on. She isn't complaining about spending time in the woods, seems comfortable in the ballcap/t-shirt/jeans look she's rocking (this is set in the 1950s), and is very concerned at the possibility of being moved cross-country and away from her friends. She only seems mildly annoyed by her brother, if I'm reading the eye roll Finnegan gives her correctly when she comments, 'He's exploring other dimensions. Again.' But there's no name calling or second-hand embarrassment at the behavior.

Jackpot and Black Cat #1, by Celeste Bronfman (writer), Emilio Laiso (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ariana Maher (letterer) - What's sparked this sudden burst of generosity by the Black Cat?

Felicia's robbing Chance's flying, invisible casino, and very quickly we're off to a questionable start. Why? Because Bronfman writes Chance as saying the casino's great because, with the patrons being criminals burning their ill-gotten loot, it's all reward, no risk. This is the exact opposite of how Chance operates! This is the character who said "Life is dull at best, made tolerable only by risk." He's a bigger thrill-seeker than the Black Cat! 

OK, fine, whatever. Chance is just a guy getting robbed by Felicia, whose heist is noticed by Jackpot. Felicia explains some app on her phone is threatening her if she doesn't commit crimes. MJ, recognizing Felicia doesn't typically kowtow to threats, follows her (as a little pink energy butterfly similar to how Psylocke's power used to be drawn), and finds out Felicia's got a new girlfriend.

Jackpot has this Paul guy all the Spider-fans seem to hate do some snooping, interrogates the original creator of the app, then has to keep him and her self from being killed by a bunch of weirdos following orders from an app. Which she does by getting essentially Medusa-hair for a superpower. Oh, and now the app is on her phone, threatening to kill Paul if she doesn't commit crimes.

So, this is a sentient program trying to gather resources for some big plan, right? Basically what Ryan North did in Fantastic Four a few months ago, just more ethically compromised? I mean, that was my first thought, when the app is just appearing on people's phones, and it already knows Jackpot's connection to Paul and who Felicia is, and the guy who originally created the app is clueless. The program's running itself.

But, OK, positives. Mary Jane wanting to stick by her friend, even when her friend tries to keep her out. Felicia being suspicious of someone following her, and not pleased when they don't take the hint. Those character bits felt well done. Don't know what happened to Odessa, but Felicia's got a girlfriend besides in flashbacks, that's nice. I feel like Bronfman and Laiso are being more creative with the powers Jackpot gets. Not wildly so, I mean Darkforce portals and prehensile hair aren't reinventing the wheel, but the energy butterfly thing was kind of nifty. If you're going to give Mary Jane an H-Dial, then get friggin' weird with the thing.

(Along that line, I don't like that she can just immediately spin the thing again if she gets a power she doesn't like. Make her find a way to use what she's got, or wait a while. It's too overpowered to just let her spam the thing until she hits the lotto.)

I don't know if either book convinced me to buy issue 2. I can see talking myself into them, but that's not exactly a high bar. They're both definitely me gambling on the things I like being more prevalent in upcoming issues than the things I didn't care about.

Killshot (2008)

Blackbird (Mickey Rourke) is a contract killer on the outs with his boss in the Toronto Mafia. So when he gets temporarily carjacked by hyped-up idiot Richie (Joseph Gordon Levitt) who claims he's intimidated a local real estate bigwig into coughing up 20 grand, he rolls with it. Besides, the idiot reminds him of his dead younger brother.

Unfortunately, the bigwig's not in his office, but an unemployed welder looking for a career change (Thomas Jane) is, and he chucks the tweaked-out moron out the window. And his ex-wife (Diane Lane) who is a realtor, sees Blackbird's face. So it's into witness protection for them, in Cape Girardeau, no less. I remember, years ago, the guys in the comic store talking about a movie being filmed down by the river. Guess this was it.

To Batman, criminals may be a superstitious, cowardly lot. In Elmore Leonard's world, they're just dumb as hell. Richie no patience, no control, no powers of observation. He brags about robbing a bank for $2,700, or about killing a guy running the register at a gas station, when all these things do is emphasize how stupid and small his "ideas" are.

For all that Blackbird stands quietly a lot or talks about rules, all he's got is one dead brother, another in prison for life, a boss pissed Blackbird killed his side piece, and a blue Cadillac he has to burn after Richie's poorly thought out plan goes pear-shaped. He's more patient, but his self-control and judgment clearly aren't much better. He has to figure sleeping with Richie's girlfriend (Rosario Dawson) is a bad idea, but he does it anyway. He has to know sticking with Richie at all is a bad idea, better to kill him and go solo. But he's trying to make up for past mistakes and does it anyway.

I did want to know why Blackbird didn't want his grandmother to make him an owl, and wanted to be a blackbird instead. I assume there was some significance to the difference, but he never explains that.

Land and Jane are stuck with the less-interesting tasks of being an estranged couple thrown into this mess together. They've tried to have the "normal" life that Richie and Blackbird have either eschewed or simply gone too far afield to have, but it hasn't really worked out. Jane didn't want their marriage to end because he thought it was doing OK, but Lane disagrees, but she still calls him when she's having problems, but she doesn't want him to have a key to the house any longer. He sees the relocation as a chance to start over, she just wants to go home.

So Jane walks and stands with an air of perpetual frustration, like he wants to explode but won't let himself. Diane Lane seems like she's always two seconds from bursting into tears, which she actually does in the first scene where we see her, so I guess that's the effect she was going for.

Communicative Malfeasance

{Clever Adolescent Panda and Calvin arrive at Calvin's apartment building.}

CAP: How are you feeling after your trip?

Calvin: Better than Alex's other friend. That guy did a number on himself. It's never a good sign when you're puking in a Casey's parking lot in some desolate north Missouri town before noon.

CAP: You humans and your addictive vices.

Calvin: *flatly* Oatmeal raisin cookies.

CAP: Where?! *looks around frantically, then leaps on Calvin* Do you have some?!

Calvin: *straining to stay upright* No, get off me!

CAP: Phooey. *climbs down reluctantly* The parking lot looks really full.

Calvin: It's the two maintenance vans. One of the neighbors moved out, they're probably tidying up the place.

{The building's interior is quiet. The duo proceed up the stairs.}

CAP: Well, we have to be ready. Pollock's probably going to show up tomorrow.

Calvin: Maybe she'll bring actual Thin Mint cookies this time.

{The interior of Calvin's apartment is as silent as the rest of the building. Against the opposite wall, a clear plastic tube emerges from the floor, then makes a 90-degree turn at eye level.}

Calvin: That's new.

CAP: *steps closer, sniffing the air* What is it?

Calvin: *ducks beneath the end of the pipe and drops his bag at the dinner table* A warp pipe, obviously. I hope it doesn't lead to an underwater level. Hate those.

{The sound of rushing air suddenly emerges from the pipe. Clever Adolescent Panda hurriedly ducks as the cylinder comes flying out of the pipe and hits the opposite wall.}

Calvin: Hey!

CAP: Don't worry, I'm OK.

Calvin: Never a doubt, with your reflexes. *yells into the pipe* You put a dent in my wall, jerkass!

CAP: *picks up the cylinder* It's marked "urgent delivery."

Calvin: *rolls his eyes* I bet it is.

CAP: Pollock?

Calvin: Who else? Is the tube buzzing or ticking?

CAP: Unh-uh. It doesn't smell like anything dangerous, either.

Calvin: *deep sigh* Well, hand it here and then get behind the breakfast bar. That way at least you'll be alive to avenge me.

{Clever Adolescent Panda hands over the cylinder and retreats into the kitchen, peering from around the corner. Calvin sighs again.}

Calvin: I've had a good run. I mean, not really, but it hasn't been terrible. *pops the top off the cylinder, a paper roll slides out*

CAP: *from behind the counter* What is it? A threatening note? A secret code? A treasure map? *sticks head over the counter, ears perked up and eyes shining* A treasure map would be awesome!

Calvin: None of the above. It is - *scans the paper* a letter asking me to take their online survey to share my thoughts on the pneumatic tube system.

CAP: *ears droop, eyes turn dull* Oh, that's, um, that's, 

Calvin: Disappointing. Deflating?

CAP: Yes. OOOH, but now you can give them a really bad review!

Calvin: Except there's no web address, just one of those Rorschach test QR codes, which *holds up his flip phone* I can't do anything with. 

{A mocking cackle echoes up the pneumatic tube.}

Calvin: You got an up-to-date phone with all the bells and whistles, right?

CAP: *offended* Of course! Pandas have excellent phones, with no tracking apps or sharing of data with third-party companies!

Calvin: And 6G internet?

CAP: *annoyingly smug* 9G. The pages load before you even know you want them.

Calvin: Sounds disturbingly like artificial intelligence run amok. *holds out the paper* But whatever, you access the survey. Be as mean as you want. Pretend you're Deadpool, or me after several hours of driving in traffic.

CAP: *trundles into Calvin's study* No way.

{Cackling laughter echoes from the pneumatic tube.}

Calvin: Motherfu - *screams down the tube* Shut the hell up!

{More laughter.}

Calvin: *to Clever Adolescent Panda* Why not?

{Clever Adolescent Panda reenters the living room, holding Calvin's ragged and smelly running shirt. They hold it up, a wicked grin on their face. Calvin offers a thumbs up.}

CAP: *loudly, right next to the tube's opening* It could be a scam to infect my phone with malware!

The Voice at the Other End of the Tube: Now, wait just a min - 

{Clever Adolescent Panda jams the t-shirt in the tube. It's immediately sucked out of sight to the levels below.}

The Voice at the Other End of the Tube: What this? Oh, ye gods, the stench! *retching* It's awful! *more retching and gagging*

Calvin: It's not that bad, you big baby!

CAP: Yeah, it only made my eyes water a little! *whispers to Calvin* When was the last time you washed that shirt?

Calvin: *shrugs* I dunno. Throw it in the washing machine while you're down there!

{Pounding footsteps on the stairs echo through the walls.}

Calvin: You want to get the door or be the greeter?

CAP: *huge grin* Greeter, please.

Calvin: *steps to the door* You got it.

{Calvin wrenches the door open wide. Pollock comes flying through the entrance, breaching kick rendered useless, and tumbles into Clever Adolescent Panda's grip.}

CAP: Happy April Fools' Day! *belly-to-belly suplexes Pollock*

Pollock: *groaning* Was. . .that. . .necessary?

CAP: It was fun!

Calvin: And what could be more necessary than fun in these trying times?

Pollock: *wheezing* Delightful. Panda, will you please get off me?

CAP: No "Accursed Furball"?

Pollock: Not when my ribcage is being rendered concave by your big posterior!

Calvin: Saying they've got a big butt isn't nice just because you phrase it obliquely.

CAP: Yeah! *sits more heavily. Pollock's eyes bulge* I do have a big butt, though. It's part of my genetic makeup.

Calvin: And part of your low center-of-gravity, pinball-esque fighting style. *Clever Adolescent Panda lets Pollock stand* Now, to brass tacks. What is this contraption out of the 1920s doing in my apartment?

Pollock: *dusts herself off* I'm taking advantage of the growing discontent with an online world increasingly under the control of morally questionable oligarchs.

CAP: Aren't you a morally questionable oligarch?

Pollock: *offended* Absolutely not! There's nothing questionable about my morals.

Calvin: Because they don't exist.

CAP: *busts out laughing* He got you there.

Pollock: Swine.

CAP: *glowers* Do I need to sit on you again?

Pollock: *backpedals towards the balcony* Absolutely not. My point is, I'm offering a way for people to keep in touch with fewer complications. There's no way to store a message in a tube on the cloud, or sell it to some advertising bot. It's the next logical step for people who have shifted away from smartphones.

{Pollock scribbles a note, then stuffs it in the cylinder.}

Pollock: You just put whatever you want to say in the message cylinder, throw it in the tube {throws cylinder in the tube} and away you go! With no one other than your intended recipient any the wiser!

Calvin: As long as they have a tube in their home or office. Doesn't that one just go to my building's laundry room?

Pollock: *eyes shift left-to-right* Yes.

CAP: Does anyone other than Calvin even have one?

Pollock: My office building, but the Pony Express started small, too! The telegraph, the telephone, the Internet didn't connect everyone in the world right from the start, you know!

CAP: I guess that's true. It's going to cost a lot to install these across the country.

Pollock: Not to worry. I have lobbyists working feverishly to get me billions of dollars in subsidies to cover that.

Calvin: {over CAP's groan} Aren't these things going to get in everyone's way?

Pollock: We bury them. That's part of what the subsidies will cover. If we also happen to damage fiberoptic lines in the process, hampering wireless communication, that's just a fortunate happenstance.

{It's Calvin's turn to groan.}

CAP: Hey, how do you make sure it goes to the right place? There's no address label on the tube.*excitedly* Is there some gizmo on the opening you twist until the address appears? Rings of letters and numbers?

Calvin: That would really capture the practical, retro touch.

Pollock: There is, but only at the central routing hub.

CAP: Routing hub?

Pollock: Yes, all the cylinders go to a single location, where my employees will open them, read the contents to learn the destination, then adjust the entry tubes.

{Calvin and Clever Adolescent Panda both sigh.}

Calvin: So you get to read everyone's mail and learn all their stuff?

CAP: And take any baked goods they were sending along? {Pollock and Calvin look at the panda.} What? I never got any cookies.

Pollock: Well, yes. Not to the stealing cookies part, but gathering information, certainly. But I won't sell it! Nothing so crass. I'll use it to gain insights on what people are concerned about or feel is lacking in their lives.

Calvin: {rummaging in his fridge} So you can make products people really need, by directing research efforts that direction?

Pollock: Yes. That way, I don't even need to make targeted ads. It will be enough to simply announce the existence of my latest product and wait for them to buy it.

CAP: I guess that's not so bad. Besides the invasion of privacy. What if your employees try to blackmail people?

Pollock: That would violate company policy. No blackmail or extortion that doesn't offer a cut to me.

CAP: I'm gonna suplex you off the balcony.

{With a shriek, Pollock sprints away, vaulting the railing and landing nimbly in the parking lot below. She rushes to one of the white panel vans.}

Pollock: Ha-ha! Too slow, Accursed Furball! And by selecting a workman's van, you never suspected it was mine to tamper with! Ha - splut!

Calvin: *hits Pollock in the face with an egg* We were going to make a cake to hit you with, but you showed up early.

Calvin: *holds out a carton to Clever Adolescent Panda* Join me?

CAP: *picks egg* I'd be delighted.

{Pollock retreats to the van. An egg spatters against her back before she can climb inside. The van's engine rumbles to life.}

Calvin: *singing* Saw a panel van drivin' by, cocked the arm back and let one fly!

Pollock: *rolls down window, shakes fist* Suckers, they come, a dime a doz - *hit in the face with an egg*

CAP: Yes! I mean, um, we all dressed in comfy clothes, we didn't sneak in because we lived in that home. The eggs did crack on Pollock's, um, dome?

Calvin: Aw man, you let the beat drop.

CAP: Sorry.

Calvin: It's fine. I assume the Beastie Boys would want it that way.

{Pollock escapes the parking lot. Clever Adolescent Panda and Calvin watch her go.}

Calvin: What the heck am I going to do with this tube? Probably lose my security deposit.

CAP: I think what Deadpool did to your bathroom two Blogsgivings ago guaranteed that.

Calvin: Probably just having Deadpool in the apartment did that.

CAP: Yeah. *awkward silence* So, are we still going to make a cake?