Sunday Splash Page #121

"What's Red, White, Blue and Bleeding All Over?", in Daredevil (vol. 1) #233, by Frank Miller (writer), David Mazzucchelli (artist), Max Scheele (colorist), Joe Rosen (letterer)

Starting from Frank Miller's initial run on the book, through Born Again, with Denny O'Neill's run in the middle, I have about six issues. Which is probably not enough to merit touching on, except that so much of what came after was following the same gameplan, or could be seen as a reaction to the trends established during this stretch. The ninjas, the Catholic guilt, the misery.

Oh, the misery. If Matt's not sad over Bullseye killing Elektra, he's miserable over Heather killing herself, or Karen Page has wound up addicted to heroin. Or the Kingpin is destroying his entire life. Taking his money, his legal practice, his home, his friendship, his reputation, and briefly, his sanity. Fun times.

I think Born Again does work pretty well as a single story. It's not Miller or Mazzucchelli's fault writers can't stop going to the same well, in more or less the same fashion again and again. Wilson Fisk trying to destroy a good man, while also trying to buy his own way into the rarefied air of high society. He hasn't stopped being the same criminal he was before, he just wants people to forget about that, or ignore it. it's a long where from where he started, and he wants in.

I don't know if Miller had an opinion about Matt and Karen Page as a couple, but I find the fact she's the one who ultimately sold Matt's secret identity away, interesting, given how the Kingpin's own marriage went. Fisk had to send Vanessa to Europe just to protect her from his shit, his life was poisonous to her. Karen went away, comes back feeling about as low as possible, when Matt's in about as bad a way as possible, and the two of them end up picking themselves back up together.

Mazzucchelli's art has this real focus on both Fisk and Murdock as people, outside their costumes. Matt spends a lot of time in plainclothes, and Fisk seems to spend a lot of time working out or in steam rooms. Lot of panels of him sweating. There's a fair amount of him staring at the city from his hi-rise office in a fancy suit, but even then, he's either a shadowed outline, or it's an extreme close-up of his face. Which is imposing, but also reminds that this is meant to be a human, glaring out at the world, full of spite. Maybe Fisk would have gotten the acclaim and acceptance he wanted if he just focused on that, instead of relentlessly trying to finish off Murdock every time the blind man tries to pick himself up.

As for Matt, I mentioned last week one of the first Daredevil comics I owned was issue #228. Matt spends the entire issue in regular clothes, being slightly unhinged. Mazzucchelli draws him as what I'd call "movie star scruffy" - he's got stubble, but it's even and his hair is still relatively neat, and the clothes he's wearing aren't anything special, but they're clean and whole - rather than "near-destitute and dangerously paranoid scruffy" like Matt apparently is by then.

(Honestly, Matt in that issue reminds me a little of Stallone in Cobra. Maybe it's just the big, reflective sunglasses.)

That said, the way the violence is portrayed tells the story quite nicely. That when Matt punches a guy during a fight in the subway, the guy's head cracks the glass in the subway door on impact from the first punch, to say nothing of the second. Mazzucchelli (who handles the color duties himself in that issue) uses this extremely vivid red for the blood that is startlingly bright against every surface in the issue. Including Fisk's nose when Matt hits him across the face with a nightstick.

It's not like I hadn't seen comics where a character gets punched through a building before this, but characters tend to get up from that. Even if they don't, you don't see them mangled, and I can't really process what having a building fall on you feels like. My head hitting glass hard enough to crack it is more relatable, which makes it more impactful. Same way I was more squeamish watching Evil Dead when someone got stabbed in the ankle with a pencil than I was about Ash losing an entire hand. Point being, the story makes them feel less like these larger-than-life characters, and more like just a couple of dudes who really hate each other.

What I Bought 6/29/2020 - Part 2

We are barely two weeks into official summer and I'm already done with it entirely. Trying to get up at 5:30 to get my run in before work, instead of after, is fucking exhausting. Although the benefit of working at home is nobody's glaring over my shoulder if I fall asleep on the couch for the first hour I'm supposed to be working.

Wicked Things #2, by John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Whitney Cogar (color artist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - I actually bought the John Allison cover, where Claire is sneaking around the forensic scientists, because the shop had it a little cheaper. Don't know why, comic looks in perfectly good condition to me.

Things aren't exactly good for Lotte, as most of the other detectives are giving very slanted accounts to the police, and the victim is in a coma. So at least she'd only be on the hook for attempted murder right now! Claire is trying to snoop around and ask questions, without success. Lotte is successfully fending off the cops' attempts to make her confess, but there's enough evidence it might not matter. Until the commissioner offers her a position as a consultant. A consultant wearing a tracking bracelet, working with a partner who was trying to cajole her into confessing 10 pages earlier, but it's better than prison.

I enjoyed this issue quite a bit more than the first one. Somehow, watching Lotte spar with and alternately freak out over the police was more what I was looking for than the awkward sniping and put-downs of her run-ins with the other snooty teen detectives. I just don't really want to read a comic about a character I like before to interact with a bunch of assholes unless she's going to go John Wick on their asses. Which may still happen. Fingers crossed. I'll reserve judgment on the two cops for the time being. I don't need them to be hopelessly incompetent, but if Lotte can show them up periodically, that'd be nice.

God, the face on that snooty kid in the third panel of page 1. A face begging to be beaten unrecognizable. Top notch work by Sarin, producing that level of visceral reaction. Also with Detective Inspector Dennison leaning back in his chair as far as possible to get away from Lotte's outstretched hand, looking like she hasn't bathed in weeks. Allison always gives Sarin lots of opportunities to draw characters being expressive, and Sarin makes the most of them. It adds so much to the delivery of Allison's dialogue.

Ripples In Time

Chrono Trigger is not a game I really knew anything about until the last few years. It was a Super Nintendo era game, which was a generation of consoles I skipped (going from NES system to N64). And it's a JRPG, which is a genre I didn't get into until maybe the mid-2000s (the first actual JRPG I played, as opposed to an Americanized mimic like Sudeki, was DragonQuest 8). So it fell into a gap.

But I'd come across posts about it online occasionally, and I bought the DS version for my friend a couple years ago (as the Super NES version was prohibitively expensive), so I figured I'd try it myself.

And it's good. Maybe it's a game that rewards repeat plays, since there's more than one ending. It certainly would have helped if I didn't sometimes go three weeks without playing. A few times I'd forget where I was supposed to be going, and more often, why I was going there. Definitely didn't always keep track of places I needed to double-back to once I'd gained some skill or item. That's not on the game, just on my being distracted with other things this spring.

The story starts small, with the main character agreeing to rescue the friend he just made was somehow sent back in time by his other friend's teleporter. Then it spiral into needing to stop an invading army led by a villainous Magus, to confronting some threat from beyond the stars that will ultimately destroy most of civilization, to dealing with the idiots who think they can harness its power for themselves. Friends are made along the way, and since you're bouncing through time, you can alter the outcome of certain events to produce new results in the future. I like getting the time travel ship, if only for the freedom to pick whichever era I wanted whenever I chose, and being able to nose around islands I couldn't figure out how to reach otherwise.

(Although I'm not sure the game always recognizes when I screw up. I'm pretty sure I botched Lucca's chance to save her mother from dying in that one invention, but at the end of the game, she was there at the big celebration.)

Lavos as a threat is fairly impressive, even if it's damn tedious to fight that battle where he mimics a dozen of the bosses you fought earlier in the game. Then, of course, you have to have another boss fight with him immediately after. At least there's a save point before the next two fights against him afterward. Of course, those first two fights came after three consecutive boss fights against other opponents. I really hate that kind of nonsense.

As a villain, Lavos isn't really one. I don't have any sense of what his goal was, other than basic survival. He drew energy from the planet to make himself stronger. I don't know if I'm supposed to read the fact his emergence destroys civilization as his having fed off humanity's own selfish and destructive impulses or not. Queen Zeal's delusional, so used to be looking down on everyone from above she can't conceive of losing or not getting what she wants. Magus is the guy with allegedly good intentions that figures he can justify anything by them. The game gives you the choice to let him join you or fight and kill him. I opted to give him the pointy end of a sword, rather than friendship.

The graphics on the DS are better than the SNES, if only marginally. It doesn't make a huge difference. You can tell what's going on, can usually see where the trail you need to take is (there was one narrow alley in a sewer that I kept missing because it was invisible due to the wall between the it and our viewpoint). The different areas are distinguishable, so are the characters and enemies, that's really all I need. I really didn't notice the music when I was playing, so I can't comment, other than it obviously wasn't distracting or irritating.

Going back to the whole turn-based combat style wasn't my favorite thing after Tales of Vesperia's more fluid approach (aided by being 20+ years newer, no doubt), but it's not off-putting. I like the ability to learn two and three-character combo moves, which is not something I can remember having available in any of the other RPGs I've played over the years.

Although I didn't actually use combos much. I didn't want to commit two or three of my characters all at once, then be left waiting for all of them to get their next turn. Sometimes I'd select a combo move, and before it could go off, then enemy would hit me with some major attack and I'd want to change gears, do some healing. Except now the healer is tied up in the combo attack. So I preferred to keep my options open, rely on a more gradual whittling down of the enemies. Which worked sometimes, and didn't work other times. There were quite a few boss fights I wouldn't have won without looking strategies online, judging by how many times I died even when I did look up strategies.

What I Bought 6/29/2020 - Part 1

There were no comics out I wanted this week, and as far as I know, there aren't any I want coming out next week. But I have a few books from earlier in June that showed up, so let's take a look at the third issue of a couple of DC titles.

Amethyst #3, by Amy Reeder (writer/artist), Marissa Louise (colorist), Gabriela Downie (letterer) - I gotta say, compared to riding a giant caterpillar or a narwhal, a flying horse seems kinda dull.

Amy does receive help from the Kingdom of Aquamarine, except it's in the form of a prince who really doesn't want to accompany her. So there's some squabbling, they find an encampment of nomadic merchants, who Amethyst has to defend from Prince Topaz, and then they use a secret passage that Prince Maxixe knows to get them to Dark Opal's Castle Greyskull looking fortress.

I feel like Amethyst is supposed to be learning a lesson from all this, but a) I'm not sure what it is, and b) I don't think she's learning it. Phoss keeps insisting Amethyst spends too much time in her castle or up in the air with her flying horse, which feels significant. But Amy only seems to take the advice to interact with everyday people like the Banned under duress. She also doesn't seem very appreciative of the allies she does have, for as much griping as she does about all the people that won't help her. To be fair, she did grant the Banned safe haven in whatever is left of her kingdom, which is nice. She still has some sense of right and wrong, she's just weak on the concept of persuasion. Or negotiation.

I wonder if Amy has fallen into some bizarre reflection of Gemworld, where the people she could always trust are now against her, and those she couldn't are actually helpful. I don't know, just a gut feeling, which is almost certainly wrong given my awful track record of predictions.

The opening page is nice, a quick recap done as Amethyst explaining the situation to Lady Aquamarine, set against a backdrop of a map of Gemworld. I love the the lands apparently still form a giant skull. So odd, and given how often the different lands fight, you'd think they'd have spread the landmass out a little more. Make an archipelago in the form of a constellation or something like that. The lands of Diamond being the teeth is a nice touch.

Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage #3, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Denys Cowan (penciler), Bill Sienkiewicz (inker), Chris Sotomayor (colorist), Willie Schubert (letterer) - Dang Vic, what did you eat to create that kind of a cloud?

In 1940, gumshoe Charles Sage takes a case from the sister of a missing factory worker. Maggie and her brother were encouraging the others to unionize, and Jacob's vanished. He barely gets started before some guys show up to gently suggest he drop the case. At which point Charles abruptly becomes the Question, beats their asses, and then turns back to normal. He continues working on the case, but keeps having flashes of being other people, in other times, which he doesn't understand. He gets captured and dragged to a building built on top of the mine the guy last issue died in. At which point Maggie shows up, and stabs him. Man with a Thousand Faces 2, Man with No Faces 0. But in the present, Vic thinks he knows what he's up against, and thinks it's going to tell him who he really is.

I don't know. Having the Question fight an enemy who can take on different appearances as it pleases, who can manipulate people from all walks of life and levels of money and influence, seems like an appropriate match up. As Richard Dragon notes, this isn't an enemy you can just choke the life out of, but Vic is a reporter, he can shine the light in other ways, if he remembers to.

At the same time, the whole past life thing just doesn't work great for me. Denny O'Neill and Denys Cowan gave the Question a certain amount of mysticism (or maybe spirituality is a better word), but he's not exactly magical himself. This smacks a little bit of whatever it was they did with him in the New 52, where he was an angel that forgot who he was. Or was he Judas? Or was that the Phantom Stranger? I know, I know, better to not bring up such things at all.

There are a few points in the issue where Charles' face almost disappears. Not counting the brief moment where he becomes a later reincarnation of himself. Mostly the eyes are shadowed to the point nothing is visible, but sometimes Cowan draws him so that even the mouth is a barely distinguishable line. Maybe it's just a mood thing - this is very much in line with a noir, with the private detective getting into hot water after a dame brings him a sob story - but it's usually when he's following a lead, or trying to put the pieces together. Trying to figure out what the right question is.

The Daily Coyote - Shreve Stockton

The Daily Coyote is about the author, to her surprise, falling in love with the Wyoming countryside and moving there from New York. Once there, she meets a guy who works on predator control for a state agency, and she ends up with a coyote pup he couldn't bring himself to kill.

And so Stockton details her life with Charlie, the coyote. Feeding him, training him, trying to get her cat acclimated to the new housemate. This plus the ups and downs of her relationship with Mike, the challenges of maintaining the cabin she lives in, paying the bills, and whatnot.

Stockton presents it that Charlie often acts as a mirror to her. That the way he responds to her or others reflects something he's picking up in her. When that results in Charlie occasionally behaving aggressively towards her, she figures out he's trying to become the leader because he's picked up on how stressed she is, and that she's not up to being in charge. So he's got to do it. And Stockton conveys her own fear, dismay, and confusion at what's happening, enough so I was worried the story was going to have a bad ending if Charlie kept getting aggressive. You want things to go back to how they were between them as well.

(She mentions using the book the Dog Whisperer guy wrote for guidance, which was interesting to me, not so much because she's using it on a coyote, but because some of the dog rescue people I know through my dad don't think much of that guy's methods. Maybe it's different for a canine not coming out of a traumatic experience?)

I don't get the sense he picks up on her initial fear of the other people around learning she has a coyote as a pet, even though that makes her wary of contacting veterinarians when Charlie contracts parvo, or heavily influences where she lets him be when she puts him outside (for fear someone will see him from the road and just shoot the coyote). But maybe he was young enough at that stage it didn't register as abnormal.

Stockton had a blog in the early 2000s where she posted photos of Charlie every day (and is where the book title comes from), and a lot of photos are in the book. Which is nice. Watching the change in Charlie's size relative to Eli the cat via the photos is neat. The part I probably enjoyed the most was when Stockton would right about how Charlie interacts with other animals. The shifting relationship between he and Eli, or how he got along with one of Mike's dogs, but the others mostly wanted nothing to do with him. There's a part where he makes friends with some new calves, where both parties seem equally curious about each other that was kind of adorable.

'Charlie and I often wandered around the corrals on our walks, and a few days later, after Charlie sniffed around the corn and deemed it nonthreatening, he sprang into the air and dove headfirst into the pile. With ears laid back and a fanatical grin across his face, Charlie dug to the bottom of the pile, the loose corn filling around his legs as fast as he could dig.'

Thrown Into the Deep End

Yeah, that's a lot of laser fire. Or singularity bombs, or whatever it is they're throwing at her.

Star Power is an online comic, but you know me, I prefer to have physical copies of things, so I picked up the first volume, Star Power and the 9th Wormhole, a few months back. The comics follows Danica Maris, a lab technician in the astronomics section of a deep-space research/defense/cultural hub kind of location. Danica gets tapped to be the last of what are called Star-Powered Sentinels, and is almost immediately under attack from forces bent on making sure her stint is as brief as possible. She's got to figure out what she can do, who's after her, protect herself, protect the station, and try to deal with the threat, and do all of it pretty much at the same time.

Michael Terracciano writes Danica as mostly cheerful and eager to help others, endlessly curious, a bit self-sacrificing, and prone to getting down on herself. She seems quick to blame herself if something doesn't work out. But it's kind of endearing, alongside her excitement over the chance to learn and explore, and her tendency to quickly grow attached to inanimate objects. At one point, she's asked to attack one of the station's security droids to test the limits of her power, and she's reluctant to blow it up because it helped her out during her first fight (it's what she's sitting on in the panel above).

There's a lovely sense of just how much is out there that we haven't seen yet. The Millennium Federation, who Danica works for, has a thousand worlds within its boundaries, and that doesn't even encompass one spiral arm of the galaxy. But there's a variety of alien species, albeit most of the ones seen in this volume are roughly humanoid, bipedal organisms. Maybe that's just how it is in that universe, or maybe that's particular to this station, or region of the Federation. Don't know yet. There are mercenaries and the Void Angels, who are some sort of crazy destructive militaristic group, just to start with, could be a number of other problems. The empire that created the Sentinels covered most of the galaxy at some point, and is, as far as we know so far, basically collapsed. But that doesn't mean there's nothing and nobody out there.

Terracciano goes the route of having Danica's powers be known to the higher-ups at the station, and then makes sure those characters are both supportive (within reason), and competent. She isn't stuck under the thumb of useless bureaucrats who make it harder for her to help people. They know their jobs, they do them well, Danica's powers just give them more help with that. It's interesting that both Dr. Brightman and the Security Chief agree they shouldn't let their bosses know, because Danica will end up dissected. They didn't actually manage tom keep a lid on it very long, but that wasn't an approach I expected, either.

I kept thinking Graham's artwork reminds me of someone else's, and the closest comp I could come up with is Salva Espin. Which is fine, I generally like Espin's work. They aren't identical; Graham's inking is heavier than what's normally on Espin's, and that tends to give characters very solid appearances. Strong jawlines, browlines, and noses. Graham doesn't exaggerate for comedic effect as much, but it isn't really that sort of book. The humor is more understated, the style where one character says something, there's a silent panel where it sinks in, then some sort of reaction in the third panel.

I wish there was a little more variety in Star's color scheme for her costume. There are some concept sketches in the back of the trade, and Graham originally toyed with some that had a large star somewhere on the front. Depending on the color, that might have been a good call to break things up a bit. I do like the design for the power's tutorial/operating system, which is a small, swirly ball with some script revolving around it. A little starlike, a little like a ghost, not too flashy (because you probably don't want to alert everyone to the thing helping you out), but distinctive.

Panel layouts are straightforward, 5-7 panels for most pages, the emphasis is on getting the information across clearly to the reader. Graham knows when to back up for a sense of scale, and Terracciano knows when to stop the dialogue and just let characters fight (although Danica is usually trying to resolve things peacefully, so she tends to talk a lot).

The first volume ends with the possibility that Danica burned the power out stopping the 9th Wormhole, but seeing as I just bought the second volume today, I'm going out on a limb that doesn't last for long.

Sunday Splash Page #120

"The Good Old Days Weren't So Good," in Daredevil #154, by Roger McKenzie (writer), Gene Colan (penciler), Steve Leialoha (inker/colorist), Novak (letterer)

I only own one Daredevil comic from the pre-Miller years, and I don't remember how I ended up with this one. Someone gave it to me, but the identity of the person is lost. But hey, Gene Colan art, I couldn't pass that up, right?

I feel as though the broad strokes history of Daredevil is that he was a cheerful swashbuckler type until Frank Miller threw him into a world of ninjas and dead girlfriends, and that's largely where he's stayed ever since, minus the occasional creative team that goes against the flow in one way or the other.

Don't know if that's true or not. This issue is about Daredevil being forced to fight several of his worst foes or the Purple Man will make his girlfriend, Heather Glenn, kill herself. Daredevil spends the entire issue being desperate and furious. Paladin, of all characters, ends up coming to the rescue. It's the only time I've ever seen that guy wearing a cape. The Purple Man knows Daredevil is Matt Murdock, and deduces that Murdock really is blind after his attempt to use a spotlight on him proves ineffective. Purple Man even falls to his "death" by lunging stupidly at Daredevil, because he can't accept losing to a blind man. The enemies are more brightly colored and grandiose in their speech than Miller's, but the broad strokes are kind of similar. If there's any swashbuckling in here, it's Paladin, whose a cocky merc.

This issue does end with DD and Heather walking off together, so that's a bright spot compared to how things went with the whole Bullseye/Elektra thing.

Heather Glenn seems like the forgotten woman in the long string of Murdock's failed relationships. It's always about Karen Page, or Elektra, or maybe the Black Widow (the only one to survive largely unscathed). But I think Heather got engaged to Matt, then forced into breaking it off, and then the late Denny O'Neill had her commit suicide about 65 issues after this one. In that one, she calls Matt up, drunk, and pretends to be in trouble to get him to come visit. He ignores a domestic disturbance as a result, the woman ends up being killed, and then Matt yells at Heather when she calls again. You'd think the time a deeply depressed woman reached out to Daredevil for help, only to get shoved over a cliff instead, would get more play. More guilt for the good Catholic boy.

That comic might actually be the first Daredevil comic I owned. If not, it's the second behind the issue of Born Again where Matt loses it, tries to fight the Kingpin in plainclothes and gets his dick kicked in.

Random Back Issues #35 - Amazing Spider-Man #381

It's Spidey's little "ouch" that sells it.

Somehow we're right back into early '90s Spider-Man, with the first half of a two-part storyline that acted as a breather in the middle of the near-constant BIG CHANGES storyarcs.

The Hulk (in his intelligent "Professor" incarnation) has arrived in New York City on his way back from a thing in Scotland in his own title. After declaring to Customs that the delay is annoying him, he's accosted by Doc Samson, who wants him to attend a demonstration of a new device that will help patients deal with repressed emotions by infecting them with a gamma virus. The Hulk, like probably everyone reading this post, recognizes this is a terrible idea on every level and storms off after telling Samson he's crazy if he goes near that demonstration.

Then Hulk scoffs at the cabbie's notion he requires a ride.

Elsewhere, Spidey saves a teenager from playground bullies, and signs the kid's lunchbox. As he swings off, the kid thinks about how he can get 50 bucks for it. Spidey's just glad to be doing something positive and helpful after the clusterfuck that was Maximum Carnage, and returns home to find Mary Jane in the kitchen cooking up something that includes salmon, asparagus, and oregano. Peter's got his own ideas about what's cookin'. I can't remember if it was a fan theory, or something an actual writer on the Spider-Man books mentioned, but there was this idea this is when Mayday Parker was conceived.

Later, Peter attends the demonstration Doc Samson was talking, about as a photographer. The demonstration immediately goes wrong as the virus, rather than enter the patient, starts trying to escape containment. Samson leaps in to try and hold the cage together, but can't pull it off. By the time Peter's changed into his costume, Samson's gone feral and is yelling about wanting to find Banner. He brings a wall down on the webslinger and leaps off, somehow sensing the Hulk. Who is walking through the park, grumbling about how his shoe size is probably bigger than the SAT scores of all the people running from the sight of him. His musing that simply because he's big and has a rep doesn't mean there's always violence around him is naturally interrupted by Samson landing on him, violently.

By the time Spider-Man catches up, the fight is in full swing, leaving Spidey wondering how the heck one of him will stop two of them. When Hulk gets the upper hand, Spidey jumps in, wrapping himself around one forearm. You can see how well that worked in the first image. It does distract the Hulk long enough for Samson to apply a bear hug. There's a surge of energy, a lot of screaming, and hey! Doc Samson is back to normal! The virus burned itself out. Or no, the virus just latched onto a bigger source of gamma radiation. The Hulk, now stronger and angrier than usual.

Spidey spends most of the next issue playing hit-and-run with the "ultra-Hulk" while Samson goes back to the lab to ask if there's a way to cure the virus. Weird note, in one of Peter David's Hulk issues, Hulk and Samson are having a therapy session, and one of them (Samson I think) refers to having had a strange dream about the two of them and Spider-Man that the other wouldn't believe. I assume that's a reference to this story, but not sure why PAD would be trying to call it a dream.

After this, Amazing goes into three or four part story where Venom's foes the Jury decide, having repeatedly gotten their butts handed to them by Venom, they should go after Spider-Man instead. For bringing the symbiote to Earth in the first place. Then the whole bit where Peter's parents turn out to be artificial beings created by the Chameleon comes to a head. (This issue is the one where Aunt May first starts to suspect Richard and Mary aren't who they appear to be, because of something to do with her anniversary). Then you have "grim n' gritty" Spider-Man for a few issues, and then the Clone Saga kicks off.

So yeah, this is a nice, quiet little two-parter in the midst of all that bullshit.

[1st longbox, 77th comic. Amazing Spider-Man #381, by David Michelinie (writer), Mark Bagley (penciler), Randy Emberlin and Al Milgrom (inkers), Bob Sharen (colorist), Rick Parker (letterer)]

Cast a Long Shadow

This Audie Murphy Western starts out from a halfway interesting place. Matt (Murphy) learns he's inherited a massive cattle ranch. This comes as quite a surprise, since Matt despised the deceased, who he believed to be his father, and who treated his mother (who was probably a sex worker) very poorly. So when the man who delivers the news, the top hand at the ranch, says he and the other employees will pay Matt 20 grand to sell it so they can all have a share and be their own bosses, Matt jumps at the chance.

(The movie came out in 1959, and you can tell because it frames the idea of the workers being their own bosses and running things as a bad idea. That they aren't responsible enough to do it properly, and will just use it as an excuse to drink and party, rather than work. Also that the ones who own a 1/40th share are going to lord that over the ones with a 1/50th and so on. Nope, the only way it can succeed is with one strong, capitalist boss to keep all these bums in line. Collective ownership is a pipe dream according to this movie.)

But he's got to return to the ranch to get the money and sign the paperwork, which bring him into contact with his old flame (good), and all the other people there (mostly bad), who also look down on him because of his mother's profession and lack of a last name. (Although he's constantly referred to as "Matt Brown", but I guess a surname you give yourself doesn't count? And his mother's wouldn't either?)

The jeering of a bunch of slack-jawed, drunken hicks convinces Matt that he'll run the ranch after all. Except he's got one week to do a massive, rapid-march cattle drive or the bank will own the ranch. He doesn't do himself any favors by adopting what he thinks are his deceased father's management methods, firing people at the smallest infraction or defiance to make himself appear big. He alienates some of his few supporters, including his lady, and ends up with a quartet of dumbasses determined to ruin the cattle drive and kill him.

There's something there, in the unresolved daddy issues, that for all his anger towards the deceased, he can't envision running things any differently than he thinks the old man did. That he's gone from directing all his anger and bitterness inward, to sending it outward, now that he has a position of authority to act from.

Problem being, the movie just sputters out. The quartet make their attempt, it fails, with one of them finding his conscience at the last second. Matt learns the truth about his father, they reach Santa Fe. But the two survivors of the foursome just ride off, with no follow-up. The cattle made it, so I guess we assume he saved the ranch and patched things up with Janet, but there's no follow-up there either. The one of the quartet that changed sides was angry initially because he felt he got fired unfairly, and he was going to have to move his wife and children. Now he's dead. How's Matt going to explain that to the widow? How's that going to play out?

It just ends incredibly quickly after the murder attempt fails. Matt never confronts them, or is even aware they were after him. I guess because the war inside himself was more important than what these four did, but it's like the people making the movie got bored, or ran out of time.

The "Powered Armor" Budget Subcommittee is a Choice Appointment

So when I was looking at that dialogue exchange from last Wednesday's post, I was thinking about how it's kind of pompous for Stark to be bragging about how custom-made his armor is, given the immense amount of money he put into designing it. Of course your stuff is top of the line, Tony, you're freaking rich.

But in Stark's defense, he does design his own suits, it's not like he paid someone else to do it. Unless that's going to be the next big disaster in his life. Tony Stark has been stealing other people's intellectual property for years for his armors, and using his financial clout to keep them from doing anything about it. Until that's actually established though, he's makes his own stuff.

And the Firepower armor was originally designed with military backing, so it's not like it was done with whatever pocket change Edwin Cord could find in the couch cushions. I don't know if that's still the case, given that Firepower was trying to break into Stark's HQ for upgrades. He might be on his own now.

But that got me thinking. In our world, the U.S. spends a frankly ludicrous amount on the military every year. Like 15% of all federal spending, and over 50% of the discretionary (appropriations determined) spending. And that's in our world. What's it's like in the Marvel Universe?

The U.S. there still seems to have a standard military like our own, judging by the number of tanks and jets the Hulk smashed over the years. But you also have the Hulkbusters, the various attempts at a Super-Soldier project, stuff like Firepower. I don't know if the Sentinels would fall under that, kind of hard to believe they wouldn't be getting at least some dollars from military spending. All that stuff would be astronomically expensive.

Or maybe it's not. I mean, Jonah Jameson funded the creation of the Scorpion, multiple Spider-Slayers, I think another villain called the Fly, and hired Luke Cage at least once. I would expect a newspaper publisher, especially in the '60s and '70s, to be fairly well off, but that's kind of nuts. As Spidey pointed out once, Jameson could have just given all that cash to the webslinger in exchange for him leaving town, and then Spidey could have been Milwaukee's problem. Or the founding member of the Great Lakes Avengers. Whichever.

So maybe things just aren't as expensive in the Marvel Universe. It's the unseen effect of all the super-scientists running around creating Pym Particles, unstable molecules, artificial intelligences, and new, almost indestructible alloys at the drop of a hat. The ideas keep popping up, so they get devalued. Or the heroic scientists give it away cheaply for the betterment of humanity or something, while the villains' stuff just get confiscated.

The Car (1977)

Damn, this was terrible. Which is what I expected when I stumbled across it on Netflix, but it's even dumber than I figured it would be.

Mysterious car terrorizes a town somewhere in the desert. Car is impervious to bullets, but can't go on hallowed ground. Does not appreciate being cursed at, or perhaps does not appreciate the implication there's someone at the wheel. There's a point where it looks like a pair of cop cars have it beat because they're blocking the road, so the car goes into a roll (where you can see the car is getting damaged), it rolls over both cars (which explode instantly), and then drives out of the explosion unharmed.

I'm pretty sure there wasn't even an attempt at an explanation of why the car showed up there or what it's after, if anything. Why it doesn't kill James Brolin's character when he's standing right in front of it. It's the first time they've interacted, so it can't be that he somehow impressed it, and the car decided this dumbshit redneck cop, riding his motorcycle without a helmet whether he's taking his daughters to school or is in hot pursuit, is the challenge it craves.

The movie reminds me of Jaws in a way. Just a killing machine that humans are largely powerless to resist until they get desperate and angry enough to get stupid. There's even the poor decision to continue with the usual community activity after four deaths, which almost ends in tragedy. The car is not nearly as good as Jaws was at killing people, given the number of targets available. So many children and overweight moms fleeing on foot, on a dirt racetrack, and the car got none of them. Loser.

Fall is Slow

The solicitations for September are mostly rehashes from earlier in the year, which means there's still not much to comment on.

The first issue of Marvel's latest attempt at a Black Widow ongoing is coming out in that month, instead of May. They also moved the start of that Shang-Chi mini-series that was supposed to begin in June to September. So it's not a uniform thing, which is a little odd to me. Maybe it says something about when the Black Widow movie is going to try and hit theaters (Shang-Chi's getting a movie too, right?)

I didn't see any solicitation for Black Cat, Deadpool, or Runaways. I assume they're still going to be coming out that month, just with issues we've already been told about. I hope that's what it is, and Marvel didn't give a bunch of titles the axe.

Along the same lines as Marvel, Dark Horse has gone ahead and pushed the release of the first issue of Spy Island to September. I'd been wondering if it was going to pop up in June, so that answers that. Another three months to decide if I really want to try it. Can talk myself into or out of most anything by then.

The only thing I noticed of interest was the final issue of the Amethyst mini-series. Everything else was a crapload of Joker War and Death Metal nonsense. Hard pass.

Boom! has the fifth issue of Wicked Things. No sign of Sera and the Royal Stars from Vault, but they might just be on a skip month. Magnetic Press is soliciting the 8th and final volume of Infinity 8, but going straight to the trade. I don't think volume 7 has even popped up yet. The single issue version was originally going to end in June. I wonder if this means they're just skipping that approach entirely now.

Vertical is releasing the 6th volume of Kino's Journey: The Beautiful World, although I haven't gotten to volume 4 yet. Viz solicited the 4th volume of Way of the House Husband. I'm still debating whether to get volume 3. Image resolicited a trade from 2013 called Five Ghosts: Haunting of Fabian Grey, about a guy that ends up sharing his body with the ghosts of five authors, and now he can call on their powers. What powers, alcoholism and crippling depression? Period-typical cultural values? My interest in that really would depend on who the five ghosts were. If it's freaking Dickens, or Melville or something, no chance.

Sunday Splash Page #119

"Under New Ownership" in Damage Control (vol. 2) #1, by Dwayne McDuffie (writer), Ernie Colon (artist), John Wellington (colorist), Rick Parker (letterer)

The second Damage Control mini-series took place entirely during Acts of Vengeance, which, if you know me, is considered a plus. They're called in by accident during the initial mass breakout at the Vault, although the biggest issue there is Captain America gets a little annoyed they were chummy with Thunderball. Mrs. Hoag resigns as head of the company to join the Commission on Superhuman Activities, leaving Robin in charge. The Punisher figures out Wilson Fisk was part owner of Damage Control (along with Tony Stark and Mrs. Hoag), and targets Robin as a possible criminal with connections to the Kingpin. Of course, Frank is in Dr. Doom's crosshairs, so he's got other problems.

The main conflict is that, with Fisk and Stark both selling their shares, the company is bought out by CarltonCo, and is promptly run into the ground. The new owner promptly guts the company, slashing pay, benefits, basically everything so he can use that money to pay off debts he incurred elsewhere. Boy, good thing such unscrupulous business practices don't take place all the time these days!

I don't know enough about the editorial staff at Marvel or DC in the late 1980s-early 1990s to know if McDuffie is making a point about either one with how Michael Souris and his weaselly assistant Roy Lippert behave, but I wouldn't really be surprised. Certainly the short-sighted, self-serving, cruel attitude towards the employees sounds familiar to things I've read about how those companies run. At one point, Souris tells Albert, the company comptroller who got Doom to pay his overdue bills in the last mini-series, that CarltonCo saves its tokens for the front office and the subway. Yikes. I'm guessing McDuffie was writing from his own experiences there.

Random Back Issues #34 - Coda #8

When she's trying very gently to explain to you what a dumbass you are.

This replaces Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #28 as the most recent comic to get the Random Back Issue treatment, as this came out at the beginning of 2019. Feels like a million years ago now. Kelvin, you gotta skip this post until you finish reading Coda. It's gonna spoil stuff

Coda #8 is a transition issue, written from Serka, the Urken warrior's perspective. The issue before, she finally got to confront the Whitlord who runs Thundervale. The Whitlords were the dark sorcerers who created the Urken to help them carry out their plans by convincing them there was some great holy reward if they did. Surprise! It was all bullshit, and Serka has become a wandering hero to atone, and also to see if she can find any of their old masters and, you know, kill them.

Unfortunately, this "Whitlord" was also bullshit. Serka headbutted to death an empty suit controlled by little rat things. It was good headbutt, though. So she's a bit out of sorts, and sneaks off alone to a community of Urken at the edge of a massive storm called the Everstorm. Where she allows her rage to take over and rampages until it burns itself out.

Hum, waking up alone, decides that when his wife leaves him a note promising she'll return and asking him to keep his promise not to seek her out, it is obviously time to do exactly the opposite. He's got himself a potion from the Murkrone to "cure" Serka, and it's time to act. If, he can get out of Thundervale alive. His old acquaintance the jester bandit isn't willing to let him go, and it turns into a hell-for-leather chase across the desert, Hum pumping more and more magical acker into Nag to keep it going.

Eventually the idiot rides directly into the Everstorm, and is nearly killed by another Urken before Serka finds him. He tries to get her to take the potion, and well, yeah, that wasn't a good idea. He winds up entirely alone, which is what sends him stumbling into position for the climax of the story.

The big theme of the issue seems to be that these two are married, but neither of them understand each other. Hum obviously doesn't understand her relationship to the berserker aspect of herself, except that it keeps taking her away from him. Serka thinks he doesn't understand what it's like to pin everything about yourself on one goal. He does, even if his goal is a really stupid and misguided one. But so is Serka's. The Whitlords would be a danger, sure, but she just wants to vent all that anger they cooked into her nature on them. She needs counseling, but the hubbie's out here offering pharmaceutical assistance.

[3rd longbox, 48th comic. Coda #8, by Simon Spurrier (writer), Matias Bergara (artist/color artist), Michael Doig (color artist), Jim Campbell (letterer)]

Venom

Blame Alex. I should have known when he texted late last week, asking if I'd see Venom. Then when I visited over the weekend, he insisted I give it a try. Well, it went better than that time he insisted I try the first 10 minutes of the Baywatch movie. It gave me the chance to make numerous innuendoes about tongue or swallowing. Take what I can get.

We get close to two hours of Tom Hardy acting nuts, arguing with the symbiote when it calls him a loser, or asks if he can eat someone. Not quite as far out there as Nic Cage's performance in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, but getting there. Hardy definitely leaves bite marks on the scenery. But watching him act like a lunatic who eats frozen tater tots and live lobsters while looking increasingly pale and sweaty is kind of funny.

Riz Ahmed as the creepy technocrat, high on how special and unique he thinks he is, makes for a pretty solid villain. The part where they're giving the schoolkids a tour, and he acts like he's going to answer the little girl's question, but then brushes it off after some pithy bullcrap. That show of being interested in other people and their questions, but he's so convinced of his superiority and power he doesn't even have to maintain it.

It's something I think he and Eddie have in common, because I don't feel like Eddie, for all that he exposes corruption, really cares about the people harmed by it. It's an ego thing, the joy of sticking it to people who think that never happens to them. Which yeah, is fun I'm sure. Everybody enjoys seeing entitled jerks get their comeuppance, but it's not necessarily a humanitarian pursuit.

Michelle Williams and Reid Scott as Anne and her new beau Dr. Dan do fine with what they've got. I did like that there isn't hostility between Eddie and Dan, them fighting over Anne. Granted, Eddie's got bigger problems, and the symbiote may have ideas of its own, but leaving that sort of posturing out was a good call. Would have just detracted from the movie, and you don't really need it for any emotional heft between Eddie and Anne. She has to weigh the feelings and concern she still has for him against the fact he did abuse her trust and he may always be the kind of selfish person who does that.

The big final battle between the two symbiotes is kind of a mess, with these two CGI goo monsters crashing into each other and throwing themselves around. The car chase through San Francisco is fine, nothing special as those things go. Tom Hardy's terrified reactions as the symbiote keeps saving him are what make it worthwhile.

I don't think it's a good movie by any stretch, but it exceeded my low expectations. That it's willing to be silly and that Hardy's willing to commit to playing Eddie as a guy who fell to pieces entirely once things went wrong helps.

Mocking Stark and Talking Language

I feel like I've never seen the word "bespoke" before this month. Certainly not in the way Tony's using it, to brag about how his suit is custom-made, unique, high-dollar, whatever. Besides this comic, I think I've seen it on Twitter somewhere recently. I figured it was a new word or meaning, recently created by the Gen Z population. Apparently this meaning of the word dates back to at least the 1700 or 1800s, though it only supposedly picked up in the U.S. in the last few decades. Go figure.

That fit for Tony Stark. Not only because he's absolutely the kind of person who brags about how he has the money to get specially-made outfits, and use it as a diss against someone who doesn't. Stark has more than a little Mean Girl in him, or maybe it's just Wealthy Frat Boy. "I say Hammer Industries, your bid presentation is almost as poorly put-together as your latest line of defense droids."

But also because Stark strikes me as the sort of adult who tries really hard to stay current on new slang and terms. Because it pays to be able to speak with the customer or labor pool on their terms, but also because Stark desperately wants to remain cool. "What's up, fellow teens?" And normally he can probably pull it off with what passes for his charm, and the fancy displays, and the high-quality whatever (cars, clothes, liquor, audio-visual presentations).

But he knows, no matter how many times he dies and then somehow brings himself back in a new or rebuilt organic body, he's getting older, and he's gonna be out of touch one of these days. All the kids will laugh at him. Thus, he tries to remain hip.

I feel like he's the only Marvel super-scientist that does this. Richards probably doesn't even think about it, same for Banner. Pym knows he's a lost cause (Hank Pym will never be cool). McCoy is probably relying on just appearing huggably adorable as he ages. T'Challa is just cool, full stop. Shuri and Amadeus Cho aren't old enough to worry about this yet (and given the rate characters age in the Marvel Universe, they never will be), but Cho probably will end up like Stark, while Shuri won't. Cho has too much invested in making sure people know he's the smartest guy in the room, even when he isn't.

Peter Parker probably depends on how much of a loser he's being written as this week. Brand New Day Parker definitely tries to use trendy lingo and sounds ridiculous. Most other, non-terrible, Peter Parkers don't bother. Like Pym, Peter pretty much accepts that he's not going to be cool. He may not always be correct, but his perception of the situation means he doesn't have to try.

The Grandmaster

The movie is about Ip Man, the famous martial artist who trained Bruce Lee, except in some ways it isn't.  It starts in the mid-1930s, and touches briefly on his life under Japanese occupation - his refusal to collaborate, the poverty as a result, the loss of two children to disease - and then his move to Hong Kong after the war, which separates him from his remaining family as he tries to provide for them. But a lot of this is mentioned almost in passing.

It's almost more about the Gong family, because Gong Yutian is considered a Grandmaster among the Northern schools in China, and he's retiring. He travels to Foshan and asks the various Southern schools to select someone as a challenger against him. Despite having few students, Ip Man is the one everyone agrees on, and according to Master Gong, he wins the challenge.

But there's a divide, in that Master Gong's greatest student is his daughter, Gong Er, but she's not really supposed to know martial arts, and can't inherit and carry forward the title of his school, due to being a woman. (When she challenges Master Ip after he passes her father's challenge, so of the other masters advise him not to accept, claiming fighting women is a taboo on par with fighting monks, children, or Taoists). Her father wants her to stay out of martial arts and become a doctor instead. The school's future is in the hands of Gong's top male disciple, even though he's headstrong, cocky and doesn't really get everything his master is about.

It feels like the movie takes its time showing us what she went through in the 13 years between her fighting Master Ip, and them meeting again in Hong Kong. Maybe that's just because it's not as well known, so the filmmakers wanted to flesh it out. But it comes off as kind of a missed opportunity. it sure seems like there's a spark between the two of them, and if Ip Man makes his planned trip north for a rematch as intended, who knows? Instead, the war happens.

The cinematography is kind of interesting. A lot of shots of shadows against a wall, with the light source moving, or light and shadow moving across a person's face. I'm not clear on what it's supposed to mean, but it looks cool. Maybe impulses inside the person that are struggling with each other. There's an obligatory big fight in the streets in the rain, although they get that out of the way early. I liked the fight on the railroad platform near the end.

And there's a lot of focus during the fights on the feet or the hands. Either the person skidding backwards after being struck, or shifting their positioning, which I'm assuming means they're switching styles, or moving from more defense to offense. The way the camera lingers on those shots sometimes made me think of Sergio Leone, when he would pause on the eyes, or the hand as it hovers over the pistol. Drawing out the moment before the violence happens. It's not entirely the same, since the fights here go on much longer than Leone's showdowns, but it has a similar effect when the camera watches Ip Man slide his front foot into a different stance. You know something is about to happen.

What I Bought 6/12/2020

Cape-Con got pushed back to the second weekend in July, and I'm debating whether it would be a massively stupid idea to go or not. I want to, but I don't exactly want to get sick in the process, you know? I found two of the three comics I was looking for from last week. None of the stores in the area still had Amethyst #3 by the time I swung by.

Black Cat #11, by Jed MacKay (writer), C.F. Villa (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - That's pretty tame, as J. Scott Campbell covers go.

The Randall Gate is built, they know where the vault is they're going to steal from, they just need a way to pick the lock. Making a key requires breaking into Tony Stark's company to use a nanoforge. Which involves Felicia passing herself off as a researcher into engineering critical of Stark, then Tony getting distracted by an attack from the guy who kicked his ass back during the original Armor Wars. Firepower doesn't last quite long enough, as Felicia had to stop to knock out Bethany Cabe along the way, so Iron Man's waiting for Felicia when she tries to leave. He's not ready for her to be rocking her own suit of armor, though. I have to question the wisdom of trying to beat Iron Man in a "powered armor suit" battle.

My favorite part of this was Felicia and her crew discussing the different strategies they could use to hoodwink Stark. Mostly just for the unexplained items they mentioned needing to make them work. The Wagering Vicar requires a badger. The Seventeen Stepbrothers means you gotta have a triplane. Maybe she could look up Turner D. Century for that? It's hard for me to picture any of them being less work than having Dr. Korpse write up a bunch of phony articles for this scientists calling Stark a coward. But maybe Korpse doesn't consider that work. Might just be a perk to shittalk Stark. Eh, Tony can always stand to have his ego dinged.

C.F. Villa's artwork has a bit of manga influence, and then reminds me of Oliver Coipel's at times. Certain things about the shading, some of the facial expressions. When characters get surprised, or otherwise exaggerated, the art seems to loosen up a bit. Villa's version of Firepower reminds me more than a little of the Asgardian Destroyer armor, but I haven't seen the character since Mark Bright created him for Armor Wars, so maybe that's how he's looked for a while. The art works, there's nothing incredibly flashy about it, but it tells you what you need to know, and it looks pretty.

Deadpool #5, by Kelly Thompson (writer), Gerardo Sandoval (penciler/inker), Victor Nova (inker), Chris Sotomayor (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - All kaiju are secretly weak against rocks to the top of the skull. That's why they're so tall, so nothing can attack them there.

Jeff the Land Shark is playing with Smash Smash, the adolescent monster on the cover. Except Smash Squared decides to cross over to Manhattan and wreak havoc. Wade and Elsa (who won't stop hanging around and annoying Wade) chase after him. Wade keeps trying to reason with the monster, while Elsa keeps advising him how to kill it. They fight it briefly when it temporarily eats Jeff, but Wade makes one last attempt to talk it out. Two civilians die by nuclear/electric fire, and so Wade has to kill him.

It's funny to me Wade is worried his subjects aren't going to trust him as King if he kills one of them that's rampaging through the nearby city, but neither he nor Elsa think there's going to be any pushback against the legendary Monster Hunter hanging out with their king all the time. I'm pretty sure Elsa's killed more monsters than Kraven did. Oh well, not like Wade's judgment is ever worth a damn. From Elsa's perspective, if things do go wrong, she's on the scene to make them kick-splode, or whatever the appropriate Nextwaveism is.

Gerardo Sandoval takes a much more straightforward approach to panel layouts than Chris Bachalo. Mostly 4-7 panels per page, lot of short, wide panels that take up the width of the page. Easier to follow, if less unique. His Deadpool is more conventional also. Bachalo's Wade seemed kind of small in comparison to the people around, and his clothes seemed kind of loose-fitting, a little lumpy. Might have contributed to him seeming small, since it makes him look like he's wearing his dad's clothes. Sandoval's not drawing Wade as a giant, but he's got the conventional skintight spandex look going, and the usual broad-shouldered physique. If we left legibility out of the equation, I'd take Bachalo each time, but being able to tell what the hell is actually happening is kind of crucial to my enjoyment of comics.

Sunday Splash Page #118

"Seems Legit", in Damage Control (vol. 1) #3, by Dwayne McDuffie (writer), Ernie Colon (penciler), Bob Wiacek (inker), George Roussos (colorist), Rick Parker (letterer)

Superhero fights cause property damage, yet most of the times we see New York City in Marvel Comics, it's basically OK. Superhero fights leave lots of dangerous crap just lying around afterward. Where's that stuff go? Who transports and stores it if the Avengers miss it? Damage Control was ostensibly about how those problems get addressed, but in a way that pokes fun at the Marvel Universe.

The teasing is gentle, because Dwayne McDuffie did like superheroes, did like getting to write Marvel characters. There's affection for the whole thing in his writing, rather than the sense the writer thinks you're an idiot for enjoying this kind of stuff and wants to mock you for it (see Ennis, Garth). It's not mean-spirited when we see the Thing overreact and bust out a wall to signal the rest of the FF because he found out Albert from Accounting went to the Latverian Embassy to make Doom settle his account before Damage Control fixed his building that turned to glass. For the characters, that kind of thing is just normal. Of course Albert would bring their intern along, and of course he would demand Doom provide i.d. if he's going to write a check. Why wouldn't those things happen?

So it's funny, and the solutions to the problems that crop up are clever. The day-to-day reconstruction and demolition stuff is far less challenging for the cast that the mayhem going on within the company. People unhappy about lack of promotions, annoying directives from high up the executive ladder, the office politics bullcrap that always makes work harder, even (or maybe especially so) if you like your work a lot, which most of the cast seem to.

Ernie Colon is able to blend the cast of basically regular, everyday people with the more fantastic elements easily, although most of the Damage Control employees look pretty natural in the spandex outfits marketing forces them to wear in this issue, even if they all despise doing so. Most of the time, those characters take their interactions with the costumed set pretty calmly, at least outwardly. Again, it's old hat for them. But when they need to actually be terrified or fuming about something, Colon gets that across no sweat.

There were two more Damage Control mini-series after this one, and we're going to look at the second one next week.

Random Back Issues #33 - Spider-Girl #87

'Doohickey'? Mayday, please, the appropriate technical term is "dingus" What would your father say?

We're looking at the middle chapter of a three-parter today, where Spider-Girl gets mixed up in a fight between the the Fantastic Four's kids and Apox, the Omega Skrull. Think "Super-Skrull, but with the Power Cosmic".

So you've got Franklin Richards (as Psi-Lord), plus Kristoff (wearing a Dr. Doom faceplate), Alyce and Jake (Ben and Alicia's kids), and Torus (Johnny and Lyja's son, but he's got Namor's eyebrows, although I guess they're supposed to take after his mom). Apox lost last time (about 40 issues ago) because there was a device at the base of his skull that fed him energy, but as Mayday finds out, that flaw's been corrected.

The kids aren't doing much more than annoying Apox, who is there to kill the originals, but it's enough for Apox to signal his Skrull warship to put a force field around the HQ. He thinks it's just to keep anyone from interfering, but the Skrulls aren't complete dopes. It's actually an extermi-field, which absorbs solar energy and will eventually blow up the entire city.

The team has a plan, but Torus gets cocky and gets taken hostage as Apox goes tearing through the building. Franklin and May give chase and pass by a bunch of inactive robots that Reed projects his consciousness into. That seems like the sort of thing you'd see in Earth X, but I picked up some of that last week and Reed's just moping around in Doom's pants. Lame.

Franklin explains Reed's body was damaged by radiation from a villain's doomsday weapon in the Negative Zone, and that Sue has been keeping the tear in reality the weapon formed closed with a force field ever since. The villain isn't named, only that he's a 'cosmically-powered warlord from another dimension'. I'm assuming some from DeFalco's generally derided FF run, but I don't know who it would be.

Apox gets the information from Torus (from telepathy or hypnosis I'm not sure) and reaches the Negative Zone portal. Jake and Alyce (whose powers remind me of X-Ray from the U-Foes) slow him down enough for Franklin and Mayday to catch up and Franklin has him pinned, but Jake makes the same mistake Torus did and distracts Franklin where he loses focus and Apox flattens the lot of them. Jake gets blasted through at least five floors, and Alyce gets knocked clear out of the building and bounces off the extermi-field. Ouch.

May pulls out the classic Spider-move of leaping around and hitting Apox from every angle really fast and. . . it doesn't work. Apox swats her (although he compliments her as the only one who attacked him like a warrior), and rips open the doorway to the portal while May barely keeps Franklin and Torus from being sucked in. Next issue, she charges in alone after Apox to try and stop him.

For a Tom DeFalco book, there is surprisingly only one subplot mentioned in the issue (if we ignore Mayday's long-established crush on Franklin Richards). Normie Osborn is running Oscorp and telling his designers to work on building some weapons. Glider-like weapons. He's being vaguely threatening about it, too. Normie had bonded with the Venom symbiote recently, and so the implication is the symbiote is influencing him. I think there ended up being a swerve there, that Normie's just trying to be focused and confident, but not evil.

[10th longbox, 90th comic. Spider-Girl #87, by Tom DeFalco (writer), Ron Frenz (writer/penciler), Sal Buscema (inker/finishes), Gotham (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer)]